School Consolidation in Nebraska: Economic Efficiency vs. Rural Community Life

We examine the factors driving rural school consolidations, focusing our analysis on Nebraska. We consider statutory and case law, the school financing formulas that drive consolidation and the efforts by rural citizens to challenge those financing formulas in courts. We analyze how rural school consolidations have been framed in newspaper coverage, in order to see the dominant understandings of the cost-benefit tradeoffs in consolidating rural schools. Finally, we study three cases of rural Nebraska school districts for the insights these cases provide as to the challenges of sustaining rural community schools and the effects of consolidation on the students and the communities. Our conclusion is that schools play a vital role in sustaining rural community life, although the costs to the community when schools are consolidated are more difficult to quantify than the economies of scale that motivate those consolidations

Implementing training and support, financial reimbursement, and referral to an internet-based brief advice program to improve the early identification of hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption in primary care (ODHIN): study protocol for a cluster randomized factorial trial

Alcohol; Intervencions breus; Sistema sanitariAlcohol; Intervenciones breves; Sistema sanitarioAlcohol; Brief interventions, Primary healthcareBackground: The European level of alcohol consumption, and the subsequent burden of disease, is high compared to the rest of the world. While screening and brief interventions in primary healthcare are cost-effective, in most countries they have hardly been implemented in routine primary healthcare. In this study, we aim to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of three implementation interventions that have been chosen to address key barriers for improvement: training and support to address lack of knowledge and motivation in healthcare providers; financial reimbursement to compensate the time investment; and internet-based counselling to reduce workload for primary care providers. Methods/design: In a cluster randomized factorial trial, data from Catalan, English, Netherlands, Polish, and Swedish primary healthcare units will be collected on screening and brief advice rates for hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption. The three implementation strategies will be provided separately and in combination in a total of seven intervention groups and compared with a treatment as usual control group. Screening and brief intervention activities will be measured at baseline, during 12 weeks and after six months. Process measures include health professionals’ role security and therapeutic commitment of the participating providers (SAAPPQ questionnaire). A total of 120 primary healthcare units will be included, equally distributed over the five countries. Both intention to treat and per protocol analyses are planned to determine intervention effectiveness, using random coefficient regression modelling. Discussion: Effective interventions to implement screening and brief interventions for hazardous alcohol use are urgently required. This international multi-centre trial will provide evidence to guide decision makers.The research leading to these results or outcomes has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013), under Grant Agreement nº 259268 – Optimizing delivery of healthcare intervention (ODHIN). Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre received co-funding from The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMW, Prevention Program), under Grant Agreement nº 200310017

Impact of primary healthcare providers' initial role security and therapeutic commitment on implementing brief interventions in managing risky alcohol consumption: a cluster randomised factorial trial

Brief interventions; Risky drinking; Primary healthcareIntervenciones breves; Bebedores de riesgo; Atención primariaIntervencions breus; Bevedors de risc; Atenció primàriaBackground: Brief interventions in primary healthcare are cost-effective in reducing drinking problems but poorly implemented in routine practice. Although evidence about implementing brief interventions is growing, knowledge is limited with regard to impact of initial role security and therapeutic commitment on brief intervention implementation. Methods: In a cluster randomised factorial trial, 120 primary healthcare units (PHCUs) were randomised to eight groups: care as usual, training and support, financial reimbursement, and the opportunity to refer patients to an internet-based brief intervention (e-BI); paired combinations of these three strategies, and all three strategies combined. To explore the impact of initial role security and therapeutic commitment on implementing brief interventions, we performed multilevel linear regression analyses adapted to the factorial design. Results: Data from 746 providers from 120 PHCUs were included in the analyses. Baseline role security and therapeutic commitment were found not to influence implementation of brief interventions. Furthermore, there were no significant interactions between these characteristics and allocated implementation groups. Conclusions: The extent to which providers changed their brief intervention delivery following experience of different implementation strategies was not determined by their initial attitudes towards alcohol problems. In future research, more attention is needed to unravel the causal relation between practitioners’ attitudes, their actual behaviour and care improvement strategies to enhance implementation science.The research leading to these results or outcomes has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 259268 – Optimizing delivery of healthcare intervention (ODHIN)

Speaking out about gender imbalance in invited speakers improves diversity.

Omissions of qualified women scientists from major meeting programs continue to occur despite a surge in articles indicating persistent gender-discriminatory practices in hiring and promotion, and calls for gender balance in conference organizing committees

Continuum Double Exchange Model

We present a continuum model for doped manganites which consist of two species of quantum spin 1/2 fermions interacting with classical spin fields. The phase structure at zero temperature turns out to be considerably rich: antiferromagnetic insulator, antiferromagnetic two band conducting, canted two band conducting, canted one band conducting and ferromagnetic one band conducting phases are identified, all of them being stable against phase separation. There are also regions in the phase diagram where phase separation occurs.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX2e file, two eps included figures. Published versio

Spin Waves in Canted Phases: An Application to Doped Manganites

We present the effective lagrangian for low energy and momentum spin waves in canted phases at next to leading order in the derivative expansion. The symmetry breaking pattern SU(2) --> 1 of the internal spin group and that of the crystallographic space group imply that there is one ferromagnetic and one antiferromagnetic spin wave. The interaction of the spin waves with the charge carriers is also discussed for canted, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases. All this together allows us to write the doping dependence of the dispersion relation parameters for doped manganites. We point out that the spin waves posses distinctive characteristics which may allow us to experimentally differentiate canted phases from phase separation regions in doped manganites.Comment: 34 pages, latex file, 1 eps included figure. Minor changes, published versio

Prospects for heavy supersymmetric charged Higgs boson searches at hadron colliders

We investigate the production of a heavy charged Higgs boson at hadron colliders within the context of the MSSM. A detailed study is performed for all important production modes and basic background processes for the t\bar{t}b\bar{b} signature. In our analysis we include effects of initial and final state showering, hadronization, and principal detector effects. For the signal production rate we include the leading SUSY quantum effects at high \tan\beta>~ mt/mb. Based on the obtained efficiencies for the signal and background we estimate the discovery and exclusion mass limits of the charged Higgs boson at high values of \tan\beta. At the upgraded Tevatron the discovery of a heavy charged Higgs boson (MH^+ >~ 200 GeV) is impossible for the tree-level cross-section values. However, if QCD and SUSY effects happen to reinforce mutually, there are indeed regions of the MSSM parameter space which could provide 3\sigma evidence and, at best, 5\sigma charged Higgs boson discovery at the Tevatron for masses M_H^+<~ 300 GeV and M_H^+<~ 250 GeV, respectively, even assuming squark and gluino masses in the (500-1000) GeV range. On the other hand, at the LHC one can discover a H^+ as heavy as 1 TeV at the canonical confidence level of 5\sigma; or else exclude its existence at 95% C.L. up to masses ~ 1.5 TeV. Again the presence of SUSY quantum effects can be very important here as they may shift the LHC limits by a few hundred GeV.Comment: Latex2e, 44 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables, uses JHEP3.sty, axodraw.sty. Comments added. Discussion on QCD factors clarified. Added discussion on uncertainties. Change of presentation of Tables 4 and 5 and Fig.6. Results and conclusions unchanged. Version accepted in JHE

Some Like It Fat: Comparative Ultrastructure of the Embryo in Two Demosponges of the Genus Mycale (Order Poecilosclerida) from Antarctica and the Caribbean

0000-0002-7993-1523© 2015 Riesgo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License [4.0], which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article

MicroRNAs of Gallid and Meleagrid herpesviruses show generally conserved genomic locations and are virus-specific

AbstractMany herpesviruses, including Marek's disease viruses (MDV1 and MDV2), encode microRNAs. In this study, we report microRNAs of two related herpesviruses, infectious laryngotracheitis virus (ILTV) and herpesvirus of turkeys (HVT), as well as additional MDV2 microRNAs. The genome locations, but not microRNA sequences, are conserved among all four of these avian herpesviruses. Most are clustered in the repeats flanking the unique long region (I/TRL), except in ILTV which lacks these repeats. Two abundant ILTV microRNAs are antisense to the immediate early gene ICP4. A homologue of host microRNA, gga-miR-221, was found among the HVT microRNAs. Additionally, a cluster of HVT microRNAs was found in a region containing two locally duplicated segments, resulting in paralogous HVT microRNAs with 96–100% identity. The prevalence of microRNAs in the genomic repeat regions as well as in local repeats suggests the importance of genetic plasticity in herpesviruses for microRNA evolution and preservation of function