A Case Study Of The Perceived Effects Of Change In Principal Leadership In An Upper Midwest Middle School

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceived problems that precipitated principal leadership change at the end of the 2008-2009 school year at an upper Midwest middle school and to describe the effects from the perspective of system participants. Using a case study approach, the research focused on the perceived effects of principal leadership change and its\u27 impact on the perception of the school\u27s culture and student success. Three sources of data were triangulated and used to answer the research questions: pre-existing data from focus groups facilitated by an external consultant, open-ended interviews with eight participants from within the system, and historical AYP data. All interview participants were permitted to direct their confidential interview in a manner that provided meaning to them and obtained the most valid research results. The use of qualitative research techniques and the constant comparative methodology were utilized to facilitate thorough analysis of data and recommendations for practice based upon study results. Although it did not develop nor expand current theory, this in-depth case study confirms principal leadership best practices and provides valuable insight in regard to the change process and the impact of principal leadership on that process. Change was initiated at the time of the retirement of a principal leadership team with a very traditional style when school accountability was being highlighted due to NCLB. This middle school went on a dysfunctional journey resulting in a second change in principal leadership after only one year. Now, just three years later, the school has done a complete turnaround and has become a model for others to follow. This work will be of particular interest to district and principal leaders needing to facilitate change in their schools or those struggling amidst the change process to gain a better understanding of how principal leadership can impact change on school culture and student success

Cultural Humility When Caring for LGBTQIA+ Older Adults: A Resource Guide for Occupational Therapy Practitioners and Students

The LGBTQIA+ older adult population has unique needs due to their experience as diverse individuals in a cisgender, heteronormative society. Experiences and effects of discrimination need to be considered when providing care. Occupational therapists have a role in addressing disparities of all marginalized groups, including LGBTQIA+ older adults. Practitioners may utilize cultural humility and trauma-informed practices when treating the LGBTQIA+ population. Existing resources to guide culturally humble occupational therapy care for LGBTQIA+ older adults are insufficient. The purpose of this project was to build on existing cultural humble resources and create a website on the focus of occupational therapy cultural humility considering the LGBTQIA+ older adult population. The capstone project, https://ot4lgbtqia.wordpress.com , was created in conjunction with field experience, providing needed insight while examining the older adult population in general as well as the LGBTQIA+ older adult population specifically. After a two-step process, in which observations at field sites prompted a continued literature search, discussion on the following barriers were added to the website content: internalized discrimination, LGBTQIA+ specific housing options, lack of support for caregiver role, intergenerational differences, and coming out late in life. 20 videos and supplemental resources were created to provide the audience an opportunity to increase knowledge and awareness, as well as augment skills, therefore increasing cultural humility toward the LGBTQIA+ older population.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonesspring2023/1012/thumbnail.jp

NOAA local climate analysis tool (LCAT) data, methods, and usability

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has responded to the increased demand for local climate information by developing the Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT). The tool provides rapid responses to climate questions that historically required an extensive data search, research on appropriate analysis techniques, and complex graphics packages. LCAT offers easy and efficient access to scientifically sound analytical capabilities and trusted climate data. Results obtained from LCAT provide relevant climate information to local technical users, decision makers, and educators that will help build a healthy nation and create resilient communities. To ensure that LCAT responds to the articulated needs for local climate studies, a team of representatives from the NWS field offices routinely collects and ranks needs for capabilities to be incorporated into LCAT. The team also helps to design the LCAT user interface and provides training on the tool\u27s features, methods, and usability. The LCAT framework offers analyses of climate change impacts, climate variability impacts, and correlation

Sexualized and Dangerous Relationships: Listening to the Voices of Low-Income African American Girls Placed at Risk for Sexual Exploitation

Introduction: Youth from low-income, urban backgrounds face significant challenges to maintaining a positive developmental trajectory. Dangerous neighborhoods and stressed relationships are common in these settings and threaten adaptation by weakening the natural assets that undergird resilience. African American girls in these contexts face specific, multiple risks, including gender stereotyping, violence, and sexual exploitation. The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is a multibillion-dollar industry victimizing over 1 million children around the globe.1 The typical victim in 1 city in the southeastern United States is an African American girl 12-14 years old. There has been little research investigating the characteristics of girls placed at risk for CSEC and even less research on the personal perspectives of these girls. Methods: Over 3 school terms we provided preventive intervention groups for 36 African American middle school girls who were placed at risk because they lived in neighborhoods with high rates of interpersonal violence and CSEC. Two group leaders and a process recorder took detailed notes on each group session. Our focus on group conversations over a period of weeks increased the probability of recording spontaneous, open comments by the children and is a promising method with this population. The data were analyzed qualitatively and resulted in an account of the girls’ own views of the environmental challenges and personal experiences that may influence their development. Results: The girls’ language during the group sessions contained 4 themes: difficulty forming trusting relationships, frequent peer aggression, familiarity with adult prostitution, and sexuality as a commodity. Conclusion: Our research shows how girls placed at risk for CSEC view their own lives. These children described violence and sexual exploitation and cited limited supports to protect them from these risks. Understanding the perspectives of these girls should generate future research and intervention strategies to support their coping and resilience

Nanomechanical testing of freestanding polymer thin films

A new approach for tensile testing of freestanding polymer thin films has been developed to investigate nanomechanical phenomena with precise control of strain rate, environmental and in situ TEM imaging capabilities. Several techniques for mechanical testing of polymer thin films have been reported previously, but there is a lack of consensus regarding size-dependent mechanical properties1–3. The technique described here is derived from a nanomechanical tensile testing platform known as at Push-to-Pull (PTP) device (Figure 1) using a novel sample preparation approach. A free-standing specimen is placed across the tensile actuation gap of the PTP device such that it can be mounted at the end of a specialized TEM holder for quantitative in situ tensile testing or to a specialized mount was designed to enable PTP experiments to be performed using a stand-alone nanoindenter. With this adaptation, all of the capabilities of ex situ nanoindentation are accessible to PTP tensile testing; which includes environmental control (temperature and humidity), DMA, and a wide range of strain rates. Polystyrene was chosen as a model system for direct comparison with alternative testing techniques. While polystyrene is traditionally thought of as a brittle polymer at room temperature, our initial testing of thin sections has revealed extreme ductility (Figure 1). Ductility in polystyrene thin films has been previously reported in literature1–3, but only to elongations of less than 7% before fracture. Initial results using the PTP device have shown extreme ductility in polystyrene, with strains exceeding 100% without fracture. Our results appear to be independent of strain rate in the range tested; unlike the yield stress, which shows a strong strain-rate dependence. The origin of this nanomechanical pheno Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

HIV-1 sub-type C chimaeric VLPs boost cellular immune responses in mice

Several approaches have been explored to eradicate HIV; however, a multigene vaccine appears to be the best option, given their proven potential to elicit broad, effective responses in animal models. The Pr55Gag protein is an excellent vaccine candidate in its own right, given that it can assemble into large, enveloped, virus-like particles (VLPs) which are highly immunogenic, and can moreover be used as a scaffold for the presentation of other large non-structural HIV antigens. In this study, we evaluated the potential of two novel chimaeric HIV-1 Pr55Gag-based VLP constructs - C-terminal fusions with reverse transcriptase and a Tat::Nef fusion protein, designated GagRT and GagTN respectively - to enhance a cellular response in mice when used as boost components in two types of heterologous prime-boost vaccine strategies. A vaccine regimen consisting of a DNA prime and chimaeric HIV-1 VLP boosts in mice induced strong, broad cellular immune responses at an optimum dose of 100 ng VLPs. The enhanced cellular responses induced by the DNA prime-VLP boost were two- to three-fold greater than two DNA vaccinations. Moreover, a mixture of GagRT and GagTN VLPs also boosted antigen-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T-cell responses, while VLP vaccinations only induced predominantly robust Gag CD4+ T-cell responses. The results demonstrate the promising potential of these chimaeric VLPs as vaccine candidates against HIV-1

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Abrogation of contaminating RNA activity in HIV-1 Gag VLPs

Background: HIV-1 Gag virus like particles (VLPs) used as candidate vaccines are regarded as inert particles as they contain no replicative nucleic acid, although they do encapsidate cellular RNAs. During HIV-1 Gag VLP production in baculovirus-based expression systems, VLPs incorporate the baculovirus Gp64 envelope glycoprotein, which facilitates their entry into mammalian cells. This suggests that HIV-1 Gag VLPs produced using this system facilitate uptake and subsequent expression of encapsidated RNA in mammalian cells - an unfavourable characteristic for a vaccine. Methods. HIV-1 Gag VLPs encapsidating reporter chloramphenicol acetyl transferase (CAT) RNA, were made in insect cells using the baculovirus expression system. The presence of Gp64 on the VLPs was verified by western blotting and RT-PCR used to detect and quantitate encapsidated CAT RNA. VLP samples were heated to inactivate CAT RNA. Unheated and heated VLPs incubated with selected mammalian cell lines and cell lysates tested for the presence of CAT protein by ELISA. Mice were inoculated with heated and unheated VLPs using a DNA prime VLP boost regimen. Results: HIV-1 Gag VLPs produced had significantly high levels of Gp64 (∼1650 Gp64 molecules/VLP) on their surfaces. The amount of encapsidated CAT RNA/g Gag VLPs ranged between 0.1 to 7 ng. CAT protein was detected in 3 of the 4 mammalian cell lines incubated with VLPs. Incubation with heated VLPs resulted in BHK-21 and HeLa cell lysates showing reduced CAT protein levels compared with unheated VLPs and HEK-293 cells. Mice inoculated with a DNA prime VLP boost regimen developed Gag CD8 and CD4 T cell responses to GagCAT VLPs which also boosted a primary DNA response. Heating VLPs did not abrogate these immune responses but enhanced the Gag CD4 T cell responses by two-fold. Conclusions: Baculovirus-produced HIV-1 Gag VLPs encapsidating CAT RNA were taken up by selected mammalian cell lines. The presence of CAT protein indicates that encapsidated RNA was expressed in the mammalian cells. Heat-treatment of the VLPs altered the ability of protein to be expressed in some cell lines tested but did not affect the ability of the VLPs to stimulate an immune response when inoculated into mice. © 2011 Valley-Omar et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Expression of HIV-1 antigens in plants as potential subunit vaccines

Background Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) has infected more than 40 million people worldwide, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. The high prevalence of HIV-1 subtype C in southern Africa necessitates the development of cheap, effective vaccines. One means of production is the use of plants, for which a number of different techniques have been successfully developed. HIV-1 Pr55Gag is a promising HIV-1 vaccine candidate: we compared the expression of this and a truncated Gag (p17/p24) and the p24 capsid subunit in Nicotiana spp. using transgenic plants and transient expression via Agrobacterium tumefaciens and recombinant tobamovirus vectors. We also investigated the influence of subcellular localisation of recombinant protein to the chloroplast and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) on protein yield. We partially purified a selected vaccine candidate and tested its stimulation of a humoral and cellular immune response in mice. Results Both transient and transgenic expression of the HIV antigens were successful, although expression of Pr55Gag was low in all systems; however, the Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression of p24 and p17/p24 yielded best, to more than 1 mg p24/kg fresh weight. Chloroplast targeted protein levels were highest in transient and transgenic expression of p24 and p17/p24. The transiently-expressed p17/p24 was not immunogenic in mice as a homologous vaccine, but it significantly boosted a humoral and T cell immune response primed by a gag DNA vaccine, pTHGagC. Conclusion Transient agroinfiltration was best for expression of all of the recombinant proteins tested, and p24 and p17/p24 were expressed at much higher levels than Pr55Gag. Our results highlight the usefulness of plastid signal peptides in enhancing the production of recombinant proteins meant for use as vaccines. The p17/p24 protein effectively boosted T cell and humoral responses in mice primed by the DNA vaccine pTHGagC, showing that this plant-produced protein has potential for use as a vaccine

Development of plant-produced protein body vaccine candidates for bluetongue virus

Background: Bluetongue is a disease of domestic and wild ruminants caused by bluetongue virus serotypes (BTV), which have caused serious outbreaks worldwide. Commercially available vaccines are live-attenuated or inactivated virus strains: these are effective, but there is the risk of reversion to virulence or reassortment with circulating strains for live virus, and residual live virus for the inactivated vaccines. The live-attenuated virus vaccines are not able to distinguish naturally infected animals from vaccinated animals (DIVA compliant). Recombinant vaccines are preferable to minimize the risks associated with these vaccines, and would also enable the development of candidate vaccines that are DIVA-compliant. Results: In this study, two novel protein body (PB) plant-produced vaccines were developed, Zera®-VP2ep and Zera®-VP2. Zera®-VP2ep contained B-cell epitope sequences of multiple BTV serotypes and Zera®-VP2 contained the full-length BTV-8 VP2 codon-optimised sequence. In addition to fulfilling the DIVA requirement, Zera®-VP2ep was aimed at being multivalent with the ability to stimulate an immune response to several BTV serotypes. Both these candidate vaccines were successfully made in N. benthamiana via transient Agrobacterium-mediated expression, and in situ TEM analysis showed that the expressed proteins accumulated within the cytoplasm of plant cells in dense membrane-defined PBs. The peptide sequences included in Zera®-VP2ep contained epitopes that bound antibodies produced against native VP2. Preliminary murine immunogenicity studies showed that the PB vaccine candidates elicited anti-VP2 immune responses in mice without the use of adjuvant. Conclusions: These proof of concept results demonstrate that Zera®-VP2ep and Zera®-VP2 have potential as BTV vaccines and their development should be further investigated