Impact of 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic on Mortality Rates in Savannah, GA, and Implications for Future Epidemic Prevention

Background: The Spanish Influenza pandemic struck the United States in waves from September 1918 through March 1919. This study investigates the impact of the Spanish Influenza on Savannah and Chatham County, Georgia. Methods: Primary death records from the Chatham County Health Department were examined and analyzed for the years of 1917, 1918, and 1919. Historical mortality rates in the Savannah area were compared to those for other parts of the United States and world. Results: Mortality rates attributed to the Spanish Influenza within Savannah closely paralleled similar flu-related mortality rates for comparison populations in New York, London, and Madrid. Conclusions: These local primary data enable Savannah public health officials to understand the historical trends of communicable disease mortality in relation to other parts of the world, and have the potential to serve as a reference when channeling future resources into epidemic prevention in Chatham County

Associating object names with descriptions of shape that distinguish possible from impossible objects.

Five experiments examine the proposal that object names are closely linked torepresentations of global, 3D shape by comparing memory for simple line drawings of structurally possible and impossible novel objects.Objects were rendered impossible through local edge violations to global coherence (cf. Schacter, Cooper, & Delaney, 1990) and supplementary observations confirmed that the sets of possible and impossible objects were matched for their distinctiveness. Employing a test of explicit recognition memory, Experiment 1 confirmed that the possible and impossible objects were equally memorable. Experiments 2–4 demonstrated that adults learn names (single-syllable non-words presented as count nouns, e.g., “This is a dax”) for possible objectsmore easily than for impossible objects, and an item-based analysis showed that this effect was unrelated to either the memorability or the distinctiveness of the individual objects. Experiment 3 indicated that the effects of object possibility on name learning were long term (spanning at least 2months), implying that the cognitive processes being revealed can support the learning of object names in everyday life. Experiment 5 demonstrated that hearing someone else name an object at presentation improves recognition memory for possible objects, but not for impossible objects. Taken together, the results indicate that object names are closely linked to the descriptions of global, 3D shape that can be derived for structurally possible objects but not for structurally impossible objects. In addition, the results challenge the view that object decision and explicit recognition necessarily draw on separate memory systems,with only the former being supported by these descriptions of global object shape. It seems that recognition also can be supported by these descriptions, provided the original encoding conditions encourage their derivation. Hearing an object named at encoding appears to be just such a condition. These observations are discussed in relation to the effects of naming in other visual tasks, and to the role of visual attention in object identification

Delivering through Diversity

Companies with diverse members in leadership positions are more than 20 percent likely to outperform on profitability and have superior value creation. Delivering through Diversity from McKinsey & Company discusses the relationship between diversity and business success and describes the inclusion and diversity (I&D) initiatives that seem to accelerate business performance. This report draws on public annual reports and websites of more than 1,000 companies worldwide and financial data from the Corporate Performance Analytics database of McKinsey and S&P Global. The authors also highlight the I&D efforts of 17 companies across multiple industries. Results show that companies in the top-quartile for gender diversity and ethnic/cultural diversity in their executive teams have better than predicted return on investments, outperform on profitability and are more likely to have superior value creation. Companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity in their executive teams, for example, were 33 percent more likely to lead industry profitability. Additionally, the report reveals that bottom-quartile companies are lagging in comparison to their competitors. The authors suggest that all levels of leadership commit to I&D goals, that managers connect I&D initiatives to growth strategies and company culture, and that I&D strategies should be tailored to local conditions to maximize their impact

Animal Tracks Urban Communities Action Pack

This guide includes Discovery, Awareness, Action and Appendices

The Effects of Mindful Movement and Exercise on Depression

This evidence based review looked at any correlation between aerobics, running, Qi\u27 gong and mindfulness practices like meditation and yoga. What were their effects if any on depression? The findings from meta-analysis concluded that each in their own way did in fact relieve, improve or prevent signs and symptoms of depression as well as other dysregulatory and co-occurring health concerns like PTSD, Anxiety, Chronic Pain, insomnia and addiction issues. There was a clear correlation that an integrative approach to treatments and therapies needs further research in conventional medicine. Some treatments were found to be as effective if not more so than pharmaceuticals. As health care costs continue to rise, alternative, complementary and integrative cost effective treatments and therapies should be researched and considered. This review helps open the door for policy makers and medical professionals to look at treatment modalities in their own professions

Can an ethics officer role reduce delays in research ethics approval? A mixed-method evaluation of an improvement project.

OBJECTIVE: Frustration continues to be directed at delays in gaining approvals for undertaking health research in the UK. We aimed to evaluate the impact of an ethics officer intervention on rates of favourable opinions (approval) and provisional opinions (requiring revision and resubmission) and on the time taken to reach a final opinion by research ethics committees (RECs), to characterise how the role operated in practice, and to investigate applicants' views. DESIGN: Mixed-method study involving (i) a 2-group, non-randomised before-and-after intervention study of RECs assigned an ethics officer and a matched comparator group; (ii) a process evaluation involving a survey of applicants and documentary analysis. PARTICIPANTS: 6 RECs and 3 associated ethics officers; 18 comparator RECs; REC applicants. RESULTS: Rates of provisional and favourable opinions between ethics officer and comparator RECs did not show a statistically significant effect of the intervention (logistic regression, p=0.26 for favourable opinions and p=0.31 for provisional opinions). Mean time to reach a decision showed a non-significant reduction (ANOVA, p=0.22) from 33.3 to 32.0 days in the ethics officer RECs compared with the comparator RECs (32.6 to 32.9 days). The survey (30% response rate) indicated applicant satisfaction and also suggested that ethics officer support might be more useful before submission. Ethics officers were successful in identifying many issues with applications, but the intervention did not function exactly as designed: in 31% of applicants, no contact between the applicants and the ethics officer took place before REC review. LIMITATIONS: This study was a non-randomised comparison cohort study. Some data were missing. CONCLUSIONS: An ethics officer intervention, as designed and implemented in this study, did not increase the proportion of applications to RECs that were approved on first review and did not reduce the time to a committee decision.The ethics officer pilot and the controlled evaluation was funded by the HRA. The process evaluation was conducted and funded separately by MD-W’s Wellcome Trust Investigator Award WT097899 with no HRA oversight or involvement beyond facilitating access to the database. MD-W’s contribution to this paper was also supported by University of Leicester study leave at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. RA-SS was funded by a Medical Research Council senior clinical fellowship.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from BMJ Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-01197

Animal Tracks Wetlands Action Pack

Welcome to Animal Tracks®, a classroom education program of the National Wildlife Federation focusing on teacher training and environmental education resources. In Animal Tracks materials, the animals and their tracks lead educators and students on an exploration of conservation issues. Thank you for using this Action Pack, our newest resource. We hope you find the Action Packs useful and as a work-in-progress, we welcome any comments you might have for I improvements. As you turn the page you\u27ll see our questionnaire. Please take a minute to fill it out and put it in the mail. We\u27ll include you on our mailing list and you\u27ll get invitations to any Animal Tracks educator workshops that we hold in your area as well as the latest information on Animal Tracks programs and materials. Animal Tracks Workshops are a large part of the Animal Tracks program. The Action Pack series was originally developed as our teacher training module. The workshops are designed to help teachers easily fit environmental and conservation issues into their lesson plans across the curriculum. Animal Tracks workshops emphasize learning by doing and include an interactive discussion of how to successfully incorporate action projects into learning. Animal Tracks has educator materials and information available online at http://www.nwf.org/atracks including the Water and Habitat Action Packs, Current Events Hotline, information about NWF\u27s EarthTomorrow® program for Detroit area schools, Environmental Education Online Conference, Animal Tracks Workshop schedule, and Animal Tracks Online classroom activities. There are also Animal Tracks kids\u27 pages at http://www.nwf.org/nwf/kids/ with our Cool Tour o/the Environment, Ranger Rick® site, resources in Spanish, games, and more fun. The next pages of the Action Pack are a questionnaire and an explanation about how to effectively use the Animal Tracks Action Packs. Again, we hope you find this a valuable resource and be sure to check out all the Animal Tracks Action Pack titles

‘Question Moments’: A Rolling Programme of Question Opportunities in Classroom Science

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.This naturalistic study integrates specific 'question moments' into lesson plans to increase pupils' classroom interactions. A range of teaching tools has explored students' ideas through opportunities to ask and write questions. Their oral and written outcomes provide data on individual and group misunderstandings. Changes to the schedule of lessons were introduced to discuss these questions and solve disparities. Flexible lesson planning over fourteen lessons across a four-week period of highschool chemistry accommodated students' contributions and increased student participation, promoted inquiring and individualised teaching, with each teaching strategy feeding forward into the next