The outcomes of family and consumer leadership education: creating positive change in disability policy and practice

Background When individuals with disabilities are trained in evidenced based practices and how to advocate for themselves and their families, they are best able to ensure that services and supports meet their needs and create and realize a positive vision for their future. Participants and procedure In New Hampshire in the United States a Leadership Series provided seven weekend training sessions to an annual cohort of about 25 family members and 10 adults with disabilities about better practices in service provision, defining a vision for the future, and community organizing and advocacy strategies, using informational sessions and participation in small work groups. Results A total of 100 participants completing the Series over a six-year period completed pre and post surveys consisting of both closed-ended and open-ended questions. Respondents reported highly significant increases in their knowledge about service provision and advocacy strategies, significant increases in their clarity of vision for six out of seven life domains, and significant increases in their membership in community organizations and frequency of advocacy activities. Conclusions The Leadership Series fostered increased efforts to create positive change in the lives of the participants and their family members with disabilities and in the services and supports provided to family members with disabilities

Dynamic L-type CaV1.2 channel trafficking facilitates CaV1.2 clustering and cooperative gating.

L-type CaV1.2 channels are key regulators of gene expression, cell excitability and muscle contraction. CaV1.2 channels organize in clusters throughout the plasma membrane. This channel organization has been suggested to contribute to the concerted activation of adjacent CaV1.2 channels (e.g. cooperative gating). Here, we tested the hypothesis that dynamic intracellular and perimembrane trafficking of CaV1.2 channels is critical for formation and dissolution of functional channel clusters mediating cooperative gating. We found that CaV1.2 moves in vesicular structures of circular and tubular shape with diverse intracellular and submembrane trafficking patterns. Both microtubules and actin filaments are required for dynamic movement of CaV1.2 vesicles. These vesicles undergo constitutive homotypic fusion and fission events that sustain CaV1.2 clustering, channel activity and cooperative gating. Our study suggests that CaV1.2 clusters and activity can be modulated by diverse and unique intracellular and perimembrane vesicular dynamics to fine-tune Ca2+ signals

Using framework-based synthesis for conducting reviews of qualitative studies

Framework analysis is a technique used for data analysis in primary qualitative research. Recent years have seen its being adapted to conduct syntheses of qualitative studies. Framework-based synthesis shows considerable promise in addressing applied policy questions. An innovation in the approach, known as 'best fit' framework synthesis, has been published in BMC Medical Research Methodology this month. It involves reviewers in choosing a conceptual model likely to be suitable for the question of the review, and using it as the basis of their initial coding framework. This framework is then modified in response to the evidence reported in the studies in the reviews, so that the final product is a revised framework that may include both modified factors and new factors that were not anticipated in the original model. 'Best fit' framework-based synthesis may be especially suitable in addressing urgent policy questions where the need for a more fully developed synthesis is balanced by the need for a quick answer

"Boom" and "Bust" cycles in virus growth suggest multiple selective forces in influenza a evolution

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Influenza A virus evolution in humans is driven at least in part by mutations allowing the virus to escape antibody neutralization. Little is known about the evolution of influenza in birds, a major reservoir of influenza A.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Neutralizing polyclonal antiserum was raised in chicken against reassortant influenza virus, CalX, bearing the hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) of A/California/7/2004 [H3N2]. CalX was serially passaged in the presence of anti-CalX polyclonal IgY to derive viruses capable of growth in the presence of antibody.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Polyclonal chicken antibody neutralized both HA activity and infection by CalX, but had no effect on a strain bearing an earlier human H3 and an irrelevant neuraminidase (A/Memphis/71-Bellamy/42 [H3N1]). Surprisingly, most of the antibody-resistant viruses were still at least partially sensitive to neutralization of HA activity and viral infection. Although mutant HA genes bearing changes that might affect antibody neutralization were identified, the vast majority of HA sequences obtained were identical to wild type, and no individual mutant sequence was found in more than one passage, suggesting that those mutations that were observed did not confer sufficient selective advantage to come to dominate the population. Different passages yielded infectious foci of varying size and plaques of varying size and morphology. Yields of infectious virus and relative frequency of different morphologies changed markedly from passage to passage. Sequences of bulk, uncloned PCR products from antibody-resistant passages indicated changes in the PB2 and PA proteins with respect to the wild type virus.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Each antibody-selected passage consisted of a variety of different cocirculating populations, rather than pure populations of virus able to escape antibody by changes in antibody epitopes. The ability to escape antibody is apparently due to changes in genes encoding the viral polymerase complex, probably resulting in more robust viral replication, allowing the few virus particles not completely neutralized by antibody to rapidly produce large numbers of progeny. Our data suggest that the relative success of an individual variant may depend on both its own gain and loss of fitness, as well as that of its cocirculating variants.</p

Better reporting of interventions : template for intervention description and replication (TIDieR) checklist and guide

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Inflation and flat directions in modular invariant superstring effective theories

The potential during inflation must be very flat in, at least, the direction of the inflaton. In renormalizable global supersymmetry, flat directions are ubiquitous, but they are not preserved in a generic supergravity theory. It is known that at least some of them are preserved in no-scale supergravity, and simple generalizations of it. We here study a more realistic generalization, based on string-derived supergravity, using the linear supermultiplet formalism for the dilaton. We consider a general class of hybrid inflation models, where a Fayet-Illiopoulos $D$ term drives some fields to large values. The potential is dominated by the $F$ term, but flatness is preserved in some directions. This allows inflation, with the dilaton stabilized in its domain of attraction, and some moduli stabilized at their vacuum values. Another modulus may be the inflaton.Comment: 19 pages, REVTEX, further typos, refs fixe

One-loop Correction and the Dilaton Runaway Problem

We examine the one-loop vacuum structure of an effective theory of gaugino condensation coupled to the dilaton for string models in which the gauge coupling constant does not receive string threshold corrections. The new ingredients in our treatment are that we take into account the one-loop correction to the dilaton K\"ahler potential and we use a formulation which includes a chiral field $H$ corresponding to the gaugino bilinear. We find through explicit calculation that supersymmetry in the Yang-Mills sector is broken by gaugino condensation. The dilaton and $H$ field have masses on the order of the gaugino condensation scale independently of the dilaton VEV. Although the calculation performed here is at best a model of the full gaugino condensation dynamics, the result shows that the one-loop correction to the dilaton K\"ahler potential as well as the detailed dynamics at the gaugino condensation scale may play an important role in solving the dilaton runaway problem.Comment: 19 page