An evaluation of the Family Well-Being program at the Windsor-Essex Children\u27s Aid Society

Family Preservation Services are intensive, time-limited programs provided to families at risk of out-of-home placement. Workers assist families to prevent out-of-home placement and ensure the child\u27s safety. These programs have been widely used throughout the United States but have only recently emerged in Canada. Studies evaluating program effectiveness emphasize the need to examine multiple outcomes. This study examined the Family Well-Being program at the Windsor-Essex Children\u27s Aid Society following the first year of implementation. Out-of-home placement, subsequent verified maltreatment, and case closure outcomes were studied. A quasi-experimental, matched groups design was employed and existing agency data was utilized. No significant difference was found regarding out-of-home placements or subsequent verified maltreatment. This study demonstrates the importance of evaluation early in the implementation of a new program to ensure program efficacy. Results of this study can be used to further developand enhance the program in order to achieve its intended purpose

Small bowel stomas are associated with higher risk of circulating food-specific-IgG than patients with organic gastrointestinal conditions and colostomies

Objective The effects of food sensitivity can easily be masked by other digestive symptoms in ostomates and are unknown. We investigated food-specific- IgG presence in ostomates relative to participants affected by other digestive diseases. Design Food-specific- IgG was evaluated for 198 participants with a panel of 109 foods. Immunocompetency status was also tested. Jejunostomates, ileostomates and colostomates were compared with individuals with digestive tract diseases with inflammatory components (periodontitis, eosinophilic esophagitis, duodenitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and appendicitis), as well as food malabsorption due to intolerance. A logistic regression model with covariates was used to estimate the effect of the experimental data and demographic characteristics on the likelihood of the immune response. Results Jejunostomates and ileostomates had a significant risk of presenting circulating food-specific- IgG in contrast to colostomates (OR 12.70 (p=0.002), 6.19 (p=0.011) and 2.69 (p=0.22), respectively). Crohn’s disease, eosinophilic esophagitis and food malabsorption groups also showed significantly elevated risks (OR 4.67 (p=0.048), 8.16 (p=0.016) and 18.00 (p=0.003), respectively), but not the ulcerative colitis group (OR 2.05 (p=0.36)). Individuals with profoundly or significantly reduced, and mild to moderately reduced, levels of total IgG were protected from the formation of food-specific IgG (OR 0.09 (p=\u3c0.001) and 0.33 (p=0.005), respectively). Males were at higher risk than females. Conclusion The strength of a subject’s immunocompetence plays a role in the intensity to which the humoral system responds via food-specific- IgG. An element of biogeography emerges in which the maintenance of a colonic space might influence the risk of having circulating food-specific- IgG in ostomates. Includes supplementary materials

Gypsum-DL: an open-source program for preparing small-molecule libraries for structure-based virtual screening

Computational techniques such as structure-based virtual screening require carefully prepared 3D models of potential small-molecule ligands. Though powerful, existing commercial programs for virtual-library preparation have restrictive and/or expensive licenses. Freely available alternatives, though often effective, do not fully account for all possible ionization, tautomeric, and ring-conformational variants. We here present Gypsum-DL, a free, robust open-source program that addresses these challenges. As input, Gypsum-DL accepts virtual compound libraries in SMILES or flat SDF formats. For each molecule in the virtual library, it enumerates appropriate ionization, tautomeric, chiral, cis/trans isomeric, and ring-conformational forms. As output, Gypsum-DL produces an SDF file containing each molecular form, with 3D coordinates assigned. To demonstrate its utility, we processed 1558 molecules taken from the NCI Diversity Set VI and 56,608 molecules taken from a Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) combinatorial virtual library. We also used 4463 high-quality protein-ligand complexes from the PDBBind database to show that Gypsum-DL processing can improve virtual-screening pose prediction. Gypsum-DL is available free of charge under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0

Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors

P4 is a high-level language for programming protocol-independent packet processors. P4 works in conjunction with SDN control protocols like OpenFlow. In its current form, OpenFlow explicitly specifies protocol headers on which it operates. This set has grown from 12 to 41 fields in a few years, increasing the complexity of the specification while still not providing the flexibility to add new headers. In this paper we propose P4 as a strawman proposal for how OpenFlow should evolve in the future. We have three goals: (1) Reconfigurability in the field: Programmers should be able to change the way switches process packets once they are deployed. (2) Protocol independence: Switches should not be tied to any specific network protocols. (3) Target independence: Programmers should be able to describe packet-processing functionality independently of the specifics of the underlying hardware. As an example, we describe how to use P4 to configure a switch to add a new hierarchical label

Use of Social Adaptability Index to Explain Self-Care and Diabetes Outcomes

Background: To examine whether the social adaptability index (SAI) alone or components of the index provide a better explanatory model for self-care and diabetes outcomes. Methods: Six hundred fifteen patients were recruited from two primary care settings. A series of multiple linear regression models were run to assess (1) associations between the SAI and diabetes self-care/outcomes, and (2) associations between individual SAI indicator variables and diabetes self-care/outcomes. Separate models were run for each self-care behavior and outcome. Two models were run for each dependent variable to compare associations with the SAI and components of the index. Results: The SAI has a significant association with the mental component of quality of life (0.23, p \u3c 0.01). In adjusted analyses, the SAI score did not have a significant association with any of the self-care behaviors. Individual components from the index had significant associations between self-care and multiple SAI indicator variables. Significant associations also exist between outcomes and the individual SAI indicators for education and employment. Conclusions: In this population, the SAI has low explanatory power and few significant associations with diabetes self-care/outcomes. While the use of a composite index to predict outcomes within a diabetes population would have high utility, particularly for clinical settings, this SAI lacks statistical and clinical significance in a representative diabetes population. Based on these results, the index does not provide a good model fit and masks the relationship of individual components to diabetes self-care and outcomes. These findings suggest that five items alone are not adequate to explain or predict outcomes for patients with type 2 diabetes