Transforming School-Based Mental Health to Heal the Collective Soul Wound

Pervasive well-being concerns of youth in Alberta are steadily contributing to society’s collective soul wound. In response to this growing need, K-12 systems are faced with increased demands for school-based mental health services. Public Prairie School Division (PPSD) provides student mental health intervention needs through onsite access to school-based teacher counsellors and referrals to centralized psychologists. However, decisions regarding mental health practitioner allocations or practice standards are often left to individuals and generally follow historical practice. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) problematizes PPSD’s lack of system-wide approaches to mental health interventions that can provide assurance of improved efficacy and equity in meeting student mental health needs. Transformative leadership applied within a utilitarian consequentialist lens has the potential to improve individual and collective student well-being. The decolonizing lens of scarring the collective soul wound will elevate system leadership to counter pervasive neoliberalism and allow for change and healing within ethical spaces. Actioning psychosocial change using transformative learning theory positions practitioners as co-creators of new counselling practice standards in response to student and parent feedback. Allocation changes stemming from systemic analysis of demographic and referral data should increase equity of access to teacher counsellors. Evidence of improved access and efficacy in mental health interventions will be sought through interconnected plan-do-study-act cycles and more broadly confirmed through a RE-AIM framework. Verifying PPSD’s collective soul wound scar also requires the application of an Indigenous wellness perspective

Cloud Computing and K-12 School IT Infrastructure in Western Canada: From Challenges to Opportunities

This paper is based on the findings of an exhaustive study of all 75 large K-12 districts in Canada's three western-most provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.  This study encompassed over 1.1 million students and a geographical area of 2,258,483 square kilometers.  Facilitating teaching and learning activities for so many students across such a large territory, with diverse provincial regulations, is an impressive feat achieved by the information technology leaders of the K-12 school districts.  Multiple case study analysis, followed by correlation analysis, were used to explore the nature of IT infrastructure and cloud computing use in Western Canada.  A data transformation model mixed methods triangulation design methodology was used.  This paper discusses the strategies used in Western Canada to deliver educational technology resources through to students, teachers, parents, and district staff.  The findings of this study are that cloud computing is the primary IT infrastructure in Western Canadian K-12 education.  All school districts in the three provinces studied use cloud computing for some aspects of their infrastructure.  In instances where cloud computing infrastructure is not used, school-level LAN and server infrastructure is used.  In addition to being an alternative to cloud computing, the rare instances of school-level server use are either to supplement or complement a district’s centralized cloud computing infrastructure, with cloud computing infrastructure existing in parallel

Roles for Ca2+ mobilization and its regulation in mast cell functions: recent progress

Ca(2+)mobilization in response to cross-linking of IgE bound to its high affinity receptor, FcεRI, on mast cells is central to immune allergic responses. Stimulated tyrosine phosphorylation caused by this cross-linking activates store-operated Ca(2+)entry that results in sustained Ca(2+)oscillations dependent on Rho family GTPases and phosphoinositide synthesis. Coupling of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca(2+)sensor, stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1), to the Ca(2+)-selective channel, Orai1, is regulated by these elements and depends on membrane organization, both at the plasma membrane and at the ER. Mitochondria also contribute to the regulation of Ca(2+)mobilization, and we describe recent evidence that the ER membrane protein vesicle-associated membrane protein-associated protein (VAP) plays a significant role in the coupling between ER and mitochondria in this process. In addition to granule exocytosis, Ca(2+)mobilization in these cells also contributes to stimulated outward trafficking of recycling endosomes and to antigen-stimulated chemotaxis, and it is pathologically regulated by protozoan parasitic invasion

The β-blocker Nebivolol Is a GRK/β-arrestin Biased Agonist

Nebivolol, a third generation β-adrenoceptor (β-AR) antagonist (β-blocker), causes vasodilation by inducing nitric oxide (NO) production. The mechanism via which nebivolol induces NO production remains unknown, resulting in the genesis of much of the controversy regarding the pharmacological action of nebivolol. Carvedilol is another β-blocker that induces NO production. A prominent pharmacological mechanism of carvedilol is biased agonism that is independent of Gαs and involves G protein-coupled receptor kinase (GRK)/β-arrestin signaling with downstream activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK). Due to the pharmacological similarities between nebivolol and carvedilol, we hypothesized that nebivolol is also a GRK/β-arrestin biased agonist. We tested this hypothesis utilizing mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) that solely express β2-ARs, and HL-1 cardiac myocytes that express β1- and β2-ARs and no detectable β3-ARs. We confirmed previous reports that nebivolol does not significantly alter cAMP levels and thus is not a classical agonist. Moreover, in both cell types, nebivolol induced rapid internalization of β-ARs indicating that nebivolol is also not a classical β-blocker. Furthermore, nebivolol treatment resulted in a time-dependent phosphorylation of ERK that was indistinguishable from carvedilol and similar in duration, but not amplitude, to isoproterenol. Nebivolol-mediated phosphorylation of ERK was sensitive to propranolol (non-selective β-AR-blocker), AG1478 (EGFR inhibitor), indicating that the signaling emanates from β-ARs and involves the EGFR. Furthermore, in MEFs, nebivolol-mediated phosphorylation of ERK was sensitive to pharmacological inhibition of GRK2 as well as siRNA knockdown of β-arrestin 1/2. Additionally, nebivolol induced redistribution of β-arrestin 2 from a diffuse staining pattern into more intense punctate spots. We conclude that nebivolol is a β2-AR, and likely β1-AR, GRK/β-arrestin biased agonist, which suggests that some of the unique clinically beneficial effects of nebivolol may be due to biased agonism at β1- and/or β2-ARs. © 2013 Erickson et al

circuits

circuits is a narrative Twine Game that explores the act of remembering, witnessing, and narrativizing sexual trauma in a time when conversations about what constitutes sexual trauma, how to talk about it, and which discursive communities have a stake in this discussion are particularly prominent in media, classrooms, and art. Through poetry and photography, circuits looks specifically at an individual’s experiences with sexual trauma in order to explore how the act of writing sexual trauma is negated and rehashed through institutions, on media platforms, and in courtrooms. circuits’ fragmented and cyclical construction reflects the chaos of remembering and repeating trauma. As the story winds around itself, the artificial photos develop, constructing a body as well as a narrative, and suggesting that trauma narratives are not just repetitive, but regenerative. The title of this project, circuits, reflects the interwoven process of narrating one’s own trauma through the body, media, and institutions, as well as the power in and difficulties of reconciling one’s experiences with the trauma of others. Circuits weaves together many conflicting themes including self-identification and self-harm, archival obsessions and erasure, censorship and hyper-publicity, truth and facts, submissiveness and authority, to create an interconnected map of experiences that the reader/player must navigate. My goal in publishing circuits online is to explore how interactive platforms such as Twine can not only make a story more accessible, but allow for new methods of storytelling. This paper copy of circuits is intended to only be read in addition to the digital version