Children\u27s after-school activity : associations with weight status and family circumstance

This study investigated children\u27s after-school activity and associations with body mass index (BMI) and family circumstance. One thousand two hundred thirty-four parents and 854 children (age 8-13 years) completed activity diaries for the 2 hours after school. Parents reported children as more active than children reported themselves. Boys were reported to be more active than girls. Activity levels were generally not associated with BMI or family circumstance with the exception of cultural background. Parent-reported mean child METs were higher for mothers born in Australia (3.3 vs. 3.0; p = .02). Child-reported mean METs were higher for fathers born in Australia (2.9 vs. 2.6; p = .04) and where English was their main language (2.9 vs. 2.3, p = .003).<br /

Access and Barriers to Diabetic Self Care Education and Support Groups in a Rural Southern Minnesota Community

Diabetic education and support groups promote self care, improve health outcomes, and decrease health care costs. Self care, an important aspect of diabetes care, can be promoted through diabetes education and support groups. Few studies have been done to explore rural population\u27s access to and attendance of diabetes self care education and support groups. The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine if residents of a rural southern Minnesota community have access to diabetes education and support groups and what barriers they face to attending the groups. The understanding gained through this study will help to develop nursing interventions to assist the diabetic patient to connect with diabetes education and support groups. The study was qualitative, utilizing the interview method. The setting was a rural southern Minnesota community with six voluntary participants over age 18 with type 2 diabetes. Interviews were conducted with four guiding questions. The study results suggest that intervening early after the type 2 diabetes diagnosis is essential to promoting self management as this is when interest is peaked and patients are most open to learning. Nurses should assess for self care deficits and intervene to promote self care with all diabetic patient interactions. Incorporating diabetic education, such as handouts, websites, education and support groups, and brief explanations of complications, at every visit is important to promote self care

Integrating reading, language arts, science, and social studies curriculum with the use of technology

The purpose of the project was to develop three thematic units for fifth grade that intergrate California State Standards in Reading, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies with the use of technology. The benefits of doing so allows instructional time to be spent on more in depth study of the disciplines, Students make connections across curriculum which allows them to develop a deeper understanding of what is being taught. Also, integrating curriculum with technology engages students and allows them to have more control over their learning environment. When students are actively involved in what is being taught, they will internalize the information for better understanding

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory as an assessment tool for low-income, African American children

The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of the MacArthur- Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) as an assessment tool for low-income, African American (AA) children. The data were from eighty-seven typically developing AA children, aged 8 to 30 months; these children were recruited from childcare centers that served low-income populations in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Each participant’s primary caregiver completed a biographical sketch and a CDI inventory. Two analyses were completed. The first analysis examined the distribution of the CDI scores relative to the child’s age, gender, birth order, and level of maternal education. The second analysis involved examination of the subsections and items of the vocabulary checklist sections of both versions of the CDI. For the first analysis, the children’s percentile scores were found to be normally distributed. Raw scores on the CDI were also found to increase with the children\u27s ages, and a moderate correlation between CDI raw scores and age was identified. First-born children exhibited higher levels of expressive language than their later-born peers. Additionally, significant group differences were found between males and females on sections of the CDI Words and Gestures inventory, but the direction of the main effects varied across sections. Group differences were not significant for level of maternal education, but a restricted range of educational levels may have contributed to this finding. For the second analysis, results indicated that every item (except basement) from each of the vocabulary sections was comprehended and/or produced by one or more of the children. Sections with the greatest number of marked items included the Sound Effects and Animal Sounds and Games and Routines. Together, these results indicate that the CDI can be considered a useful tool for assessing the early language development of low-income, AA children

ATAD3 Proteins: Unique Mitochondrial Proteins Essential for Life in Diverse Eukaryotic Lineages

ATPase family AAA domain–containing 3 (ATAD3) proteins are unique mitochondrial proteins that arose deep in the eukaryotic lineage but that are surprisingly absent in Fungi and Amoebozoa. These ∼600-amino acid proteins are anchored in the inner mitochondrial membrane and are essential in metazoans and Arabidopsis thaliana. ATAD3s comprise a C-terminal ATPases Associated with a variety of cellular Activities (AAA+) matrix domain and an ATAD3_N domain, which is located primarily in the inner membrane space but potentially extends to the cytosol to interact with the ER. Sequence and structural alignments indicate that ATAD3 proteins are most similar to classic chaperone unfoldases in the AAA+ family, suggesting that they operate in mitochondrial protein quality control. A. thaliana has four ATAD3 genes in two distinct clades that appear first in the seed plants, and both clades are essential for viability. The four genes are generally coordinately expressed, and transcripts are highest in growing apices and imbibed seeds. Plants with disrupted ATAD3 have reduced growth, aberrant mitochondrial morphology, diffuse nucleoids and reduced oxidative phosphorylation complex I. These and other pleiotropic phenotypes are also observed in ATAD3 mutants in metazoans. Here, we discuss the distribution of ATAD3 proteins as they have evolved in the plant kingdom, their unique structure, what we know about their function in plants and the challenges in determining their essential roles in mitochondria

TIDieR-PHP: a reporting guideline for population health and policy interventions

We lack guidance on how to describe population health and policy (PHP) interventions in reports of evaluation studies. PHP interventions are legal, fiscal, structural, organisational, environmental, and policy interventions such as the regulation of unhealthy commodities, health service reorganisation, changes in welfare policy, and neighbourhood improvement schemes. Many PHP interventions have characteristics that are important for their implementation and success but are not adequately captured in the original Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist. This article describes the development of a revised reporting template for PHP interventions (TIDieR-PHP) and presents the checklist with examples for each ite

Stemming the Tide of Law Student Depression: What Law Schools Need to Learn from the Science of Positive Psychology

A growing body of literature shows that law students exhibit unique signs of psychological distress, including elevated levels of depression, stress, and anxiety. Law students also report significantly higher incidences of alcohol and drug abuse than their peers at other graduate schools. The article assesses the programs that 75 top law schools currently use to combat these alarming trends and finds that they are primarily reactive and that they do not sufficiently address the source or the scope of the problem. This article explores some of the ways in which positive psychology may be uniquely suited to address this student distress. The scientific literature offers a number of methodologies that law schools could utilize to help insulate students from stress and depression. The article then presents the results of an empirical study in which one of these methods was tested in the law school context. The study showed high rates of depression and stress, similar to the results of earlier studies, and shows a very high correlation between stress and depression. The results also confirm that students who find ways to use their top strengths are less likely to suffer from depression and stress and more likely to report satisfaction with life. Encouraging students to utilize their personal strengths may therefore act as a buffer against psychological distress in law school. The article concludes with suggestions for law schools to incorporate these findings and other well established positive psychology principles into a proactive program to benefit their students

Effects of Individual and Group Therapies on Verb Production in Aphasia

Language interventions are frequently classified along a continuum (Paul & Cascella, 2007). At one end of the continuum are impairment-based approaches that aim to remediate a particular language skill. Successful treatments often utilize models of cognitive-linguistic processing and have been shown to improve language performance in individuals with aphasia (Thompson & Shapiro, 2005; Whitworth, Webster, & Howard, 2005, Wertz et al 1981). At the other end of the continuum is the participant-centered approach. These types of interventions place the client at the center of the intervention. Group treatment is a socially oriented intervention and an example of a participant-centered approach. Studies support the use of conversation group treatments to improve language performance in individuals with aphasia (Wertz et al., 1981, Elman & Bernstein-Ellis, 1999b). Considerable evidence exists in the literature to support both these types of interventions and both interventions seek to improve communication in the individual with aphasia (Martin, Thompson & Worrall, 2008). However, there have been no studies that compare the effects of these two approaches. This study compared the effect of these two approaches on remediation of verb production in aphasia. The goals were 1) to determine if performance on verbs trained in an impairment-based approach, a participant-centered approach, or an integrated context that used both approaches improved to a greater extent, and 2) to determine whether combining these training approaches led to improvements in related language functions and in verbal communication