Assessing cultural competence in a mental health outpatient facility.

Cultural competence is a concept that has been thoroughly investigated in healthcare, but there is a dearth of literature and research on this topic as it pertains to mental health services. In healthcare, research has shown that a lack of cultural competence is directly linked to high levels of misdiagnoses, mistrust of healthcare and professionals, and overall poor health in minority populations. Using the Campinha-Bacote model for cultural competence in health care, I explore how cultural competence is defined and operationalized in an outpatient mental health facility. I hypothesize that, similar to research addressing cultural competency in healthcare systems, cultural competence within this mental health facility is not adequately defined and carried out in its daily operations. In order to assess the potential institutional knowledge and awareness of cultural competence, I initially analyzed all policies, procedures, and training documents of the organization. Next, I conducted 15 semi-structured qualitative interviews of various mental health professionals that worked in the outpatient facility in order to ascertain how each individual defined and employed cultural competence, if at all, throughout their work. In my findings, I discovered that there was no clear definition of cultural competence in any of the organizations handbooks or policies. Furthermore, I found that mental health professionals did not have a clear understanding of cultural competence or that cultural competence is an ongoing process. Lastly, I found that the facility offered no trainings or professional development courses on cultural competence. The information gathered from the study can be beneficial to the facility’s work with diverse populations and aid in future research directions on this subject

Capturing Collaborative Challenges: Designing Complexity-Sensitive Theories of Change for Cross-Sector Partnerships

Systems change requires complex interventions. Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) face the daunting task of addressing complex societal problems by aligning different backgrounds, values, ideas and resources. A major challenge for CSPs is how to link the type of partnership to the intervention needed to drive change. Intervention strategies are thereby increasingly based on Theories of Change (ToCs). Applying ToCs is often a donor requirement, but it also reflects the ambition of a partnership to enhance its transformative potential. The current use of ToCs in partnering efforts varies greatly. There is a tendency for a linear and relatively simple use of ToCs that does limited justice to the complexity of the problems partnerships aim to address. Since partnership dynamics are already complex and challenging themselves, confusion and disagreement over the appropriate application of ToCs is likely to hamper rather than enhance the transformative potential of partnerships. We develop a complexity alignment framework and a diagnostic tool that enables partnerships to better appreciate the complexity of the context in which they operate, allowing them to adjust their learning strategy. This paper applies recent insights into how to deal with complexity from both the evaluation and theory of change fields to studies investigating the transformative capacity of partnerships. This can (1) serve as a check to define the challenges of partnering projects and (2) can help delineate the societal sources and layers of complexity that cross-sector partnerships deal with such as failure, insufficient responsibility taking and collective action problems at four phases of partnering

Social survival : humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) use social structure to partition ecological niches within proposed critical habitat

Funding: JW received a grant from the following: Save Our Seas Foundation Grant No. 217-2010- 2020 https://saveourseas.com, Willow Grove Foundation Grant No. 001-2010-2020, Fisheries and Oceans Canada Grant CA No.: 2016-2019- HSP-PAC-8287-A, https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-especes/sara-lep/hsp-pih/index-eng.html, Donner Canadian Foundation Grant No. E-50-20,E50-19, E-50-18 https://www.donnerfoundation.org, Tides Canada Grant No. GF04712. https://makeway.org.Animal culture and social bonds are relevant to wildlife conservation because they influence patterns of geography, behavior, and strategies of survival. Numerous examples of socially-driven habitat partitioning and ecological-niche specialization can be found among vertebrates, including toothed whales. But such social-ecological dynamics, described here as ‘social niche partitioning’, are not known among baleen whales, whose societies—particularly on foraging grounds—are largely perceived as unstructured and incidental to matters of habitat use and conservation. However, through 16 years of behavioral observations and photo-identifications of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) feeding within a fjord system in the Canadian Pacific (primarily within Gitga’at First Nation waters), we have documented long-term pair bonds (up to 12 years) as well as a complex societal structure, which corresponds closely to persistent patterns in feeding strategy, long-term site fidelity (extended occupancy and annual rate of return up to 75%), specific geographic preferences within the fjord system, and other forms of habitat use. Randomization tests of network congruency and clustering algorithms were used to test for overlap in patterns of social structure and habitat use, which confirmed the occurrence of social niche partitioning on the feeding grounds of this baleen whale species. In addition, we document the extensive practice of group bubble net feeding in Pacific Canada. This coordinated feeding behavior was found to strongly mediate the social structure and habitat use within this humpback whale society. Additionally, during our 2004–2019 study, we observed a shift in social network structure in 2010–2012, which corresponded with environmental and demographic shifts including a sudden decline in the population’s calving rate. Our findings indicate that the social lives of humpback whales, and perhaps baleen whales generally, are more complex than previously supposed and should be a primary consideration in the assessment of potential impacts to important habitat.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Optical shield: measuring viscosity of turbid fluids using optical tweezers

The viscosity of a fluid can be measured by tracking the motion of a suspended micron-sized particle trapped by optical tweezers. However, when the particle density is high, additional particles entering the trap compromise the tracking procedure and degrade the accuracy of the measurement. In this work we introduce an additional Laguerre–Gaussian, i.e. annular, beam surrounding the trap, acting as an optical shield to exclude contaminating particles

Glucose Inhibition of Cellulose Synthesis by Pyrenochaeta terrestris

The rate of synthesis of Pyrenochacta terrestris cellulase was determined on the substrates of glucose, cellulose, and cellulose + glucose. Enzyme production was rapid on cellulose, almost negligible on glucose, and intermediate on cellulose + glucose. On the latter substrate, cellulase appeared after the near exhaustion of glucose. The authors suggest that extremely low concentrations of soluble carbohydrate regulate cellulase synthesis

The γ-subunit of the principal G-protein from squid (Loligo forbesi) photoreceptors contains a novel N-terminal sequence

AbstractThe squid (Loligo forbesi) visual system presents as accessible a system for study of G-protein mediated signal transduction as the vertebrate rod outer segment with the added advantage that the major G-protein is a member of the Gq-class. Here the cDNA clone encoding the γ-subunit of this G-protein is reported, thereby completing the molecular cloning of the heterotrimeric G-protein. The deduced protein structure of G-γ has relatively little sequence identity with known mammalian counterparts particularly in comparison with the relatively high degree found for both the α- and β-subunits of this protein. In particular, the N-terminus of the squid visual G-γ contains a repetitive, highly charged region, rich in lysine and glutamate, that has no parallel in other G-proteins. The amino acid sequence of a number of peptides derived by chemical cleavage of G-γ accounted for much of the protein sequence predicted from the cDNA, including the unusual N-terminal region