Three issues for mental health nurse educators preparing new preregistration programmes

Universities across the UK must develop and have in place new preregistration programmes by 2020. Unlike in the rest of the world, where initial nurse preparation is generic, preregistration education in the UK allows students to specialize in one of four specific fields of practice - adult, mental health, child or learning disability. To the relief of many , the new standards confirmed the continued survival of the specialist fields at undergraduate level. Educators across the UK now have an opportunity to fully review existing provision and address areas of significance. This paper explores three such issues. These are: •How best to respond to adverse life experiences or trauma.•The ethical tension which we believe is inherent in the use of coercive practice.•The potential to make a difference to the appalling mortality statistics which indicate that people with long standing mental health problems die much younger than their contemporaries In each case we make tentative suggestions for how they might be approached

Development of the Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology Skills Assessment for Medical Residents

This study developed the Biostatics and Clinical Epidemiology Skills (BACES) assessment, and established its preliminary item characteristics and validity evidence. Unlike previous instruments, the BACES assessment was developed and tested using an item response theory (IRT) approach to measurement to create a new, adaptive biostatistics and clinical epidemiology knowledge assessment for graduate medical professionals. Thirty multiple-choice questions were written to focus on interpreting relevant examples of clinical epidemiology and statistical methods. A four person expert panel reviewed these items for content validity. After this review, the BACES assessment was administered to 147 medical residents across three academic medical centers. Results of the IRT analysis produced a final instrument of 26 items with 13 devoted to statistical methods and 13 to clinical epidemiology, which successfully fit a 2-parameter IRT model. In contrast to previous assessment research, an IRT approach allowed for each BACES item’s difficulty, discrimination, and reliability to be estimated separately from the sample on which it was tested. As a result, this preliminary study has paved the road for a flexible yet psychometrically rigorous instrument for measuring the biostatistical and clinical epidemiologic knowledge of graduate medical students

The measurement of optimism and hope in relation to college student retention and academic success

Consistent with research approaches in positive psychology, the variables of optimism and hope were investigated to determine what role these constructs had in the retention and academic success of college students. A sample of 282 students (172 women, 111 men) from a large midwestern university, supplemented by 82 collateral reporters (friends or relatives of the students), participated in the study. Each participant completed a questionnaire including Scheier and Carvers\u27 Life Orientation Test (LOT); Peterson, Semrnel, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky, and Seligmans\u27 Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), and C. R. Snyder\u27s Adult Trait Hope Scale (HOPE) along with measures of depression, anxiety, commitment to college, and academic motivation. Participants gave consent for the release of their college grade point average, ACT composite score, and high school class rank from the registrar\u27s office. In addition, the collateral reporters were asked to complete the LOT, ASQ, and HOPE according to their knowledge of the participants.;Analyses including linear and logistic regression and Pearson correlations provided evidence for a significant relationship between hope and grade point average, but not optimism. Additionally, no significant relationships were found between optimism, hope, and continued enrollment from the fall to spring semester. Data from the collateral reporters demonstrated a similar pattern with hope significantly related to grade point average as indicated by correlation and regression analyses. The need for further clarification of the relationship between hope, academic success, and retention was discussed along with the limitations of the current study and suggestions for additional research

Interviews with Philip Barlow and Patrick Q. Mason

Editor\u27s interview with Philip Barlow and Patrick Q. Mason

Power of Produce: Farmers\u27 Market Incentive Program Targeting Eating Behaviors of Children

The Power of Produce (PoP) Club is a farmers\u27 market incentive program for children aged 5–12. The purpose of the summative evaluation described in this article was to determine the impact of the PoP Club on improving family and child behavior at a Minnesota farmers\u27 market as well as child fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption. Results from a self-reported retrospective survey completed by parents suggest that the PoP Club is a valuable program, with participating parents reporting increased family attendance and child engagement at the farmers\u27 market and increased F&V consumption by children at home

η\eta Carinae's Dusty Homunculus Nebula from Near-Infrared to Submillimeter Wavelengths: Mass, Composition, and Evidence for Fading Opacity

Infrared observations of the dusty, massive Homunculus Nebula around the luminous blue variable $\eta$ Carinae are crucial to characterize the mass-loss history and help constrain the mechanisms leading to the Great Eruption. We present the 2.4 - 670 $\mu$m spectral energy distribution, constructed from legacy ISO observations and new spectroscopy obtained with the {\em{Herschel Space Observatory}}. Using radiative transfer modeling, we find that the two best-fit dust models yield compositions which are consistent with CNO-processed material, with iron, pyroxene and other metal-rich silicates, corundum, and magnesium-iron sulfide in common. Spherical corundum grains are supported by the good match to a narrow 20.2 $\mu$m feature. Our preferred model contains nitrides AlN and Si$_3$N$_4$ in low abundances. Dust masses range from 0.25 to 0.44 $M_\odot$ but $M_{\rm{tot}} \ge$ 45 $M_\odot$ in both cases due to an expected high Fe gas-to-dust ratio. The bulk of dust is within a 5$"$ $\times$ 7$"$ central region. An additional compact feature is detected at 390 $\mu$m. We obtain $L_{\rm{IR}}$ = 2.96 $\times$ 10$^6$ $L_\odot$, a 25\% decline from an average of mid-IR photometric levels observed in 1971-1977. This indicates a reduction in circumstellar extinction in conjunction with an increase in visual brightness, allowing 25-40\% of optical and UV radiation to escape from the central source. We also present an analysis of $^{12}$CO and $^{13}$CO $J = 5-4$ through $9-8$ lines, showing that the abundances are consistent with expectations for CNO-processed material. The [$^{12}$C~{\sc{ii}}] line is detected in absorption, which we suspect originates in foreground material at very low excitation temperatures.Comment: Accepted in Ap

The Extreme Hosts of Extreme Supernovae

We use GALEX ultraviolet (UV) and optical integrated photometry of the hosts of 17 luminous supernovae (LSNe, having peak M_V 100 M_☉), by appearing in low-SFR hosts, are potential tests for theories of the initial mass function that limit the maximum mass of a star based on the SFR

Effects of Dust Scattering in Expanding Spherical Nebulae

The mean intensity of planetary nebulae with an expanding atmosphere is modeled by considering dusty and dust-free atmospheres. The bulk matter density is determined from the adopted velocity field through the equation of continuity. The gas is assumed to consist of hydrogen and helium and the gas-to-dust mass ratio is taken to be $3\times10^{-4}$. The Rayleigh phase function is employed for atomic scattering while the full Mie theory of scattering is incorporated for determining the dust scattering and absorption cross-section as well as the phase function for the angular distribution of photons after scattering. It is shown that in a dust free atmosphere, the mean intensity increases with the increase in the expansion velocity that makes the medium diluted. The mean intensity profile changes significantly when dust scattering is incorporated. The increase in forward scattering of photons by the dust particles yields into an increase in the mean intensity as compared to that without dust. The mean intensity increases as the particle size is increased. Thus it is shown that both the expansion of the medium and the presence of dust play important role in determining the mean intensity of a planetary nebulae.Comment: 18 pages, Elseveir style (cls file included), 5 postscript figures, Accepted for publication in New Astronom

A Measurement of the Temperature-Density Relation in the Intergalactic Medium Using a New Lyman-alpha Absorption Line Fitting Method

The evolution of the temperature in the intergalactic medium is related to the reionization of hydrogen and helium, and has important consequences for our understanding of the Lya forest and of galaxy formation in gravitational models of large-scale structure. We measure the temperature-density relation of intergalactic gas from Lya forest observations of eight quasar spectra with high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, using a new line fitting technique to obtain a lower cutoff of the distribution of line widths from which the temperature is derived. We carefully test the accuracy of this technique to recover the gas temperature with a hydrodynamic simulation. The temperature at redshift z=(3.9, 3.0, 2.4) is best determined at densities slightly above the mean: T_star=(20200\pm2700, 20200\pm1300, 22600\pm1900)K (statistical error bars) for gas density (in units of the mean density) Delta_star=(1.42\pm0.08, 1.37\pm0.11, 1.66\pm0.11). The power-law index of the temperature-density relation, defined by T=T_star(Delta/Delta_star)^{gamma-1}, is gamma-1= (0.43\pm0.45, 0.29\pm0.30, 0.52\pm0.14) for the same three redshifts. The temperature at the fixed over-density Delta=1.4 is T_1.4=(20100\pm2800, 20300\pm1400, 20700\pm1900)K. These temperatures are higher than expected for photoionized gas in ionization equilibrium with a cosmic background, and can be explained by a gradual additional heating due to on-going HeII reionization. The measurement of the temperature reduces one source of uncertainty in the lower limit to the baryon density implied by the observed mean flux decrement. We find that the temperature cannot be reliably measured for under-dense gas, because the velocities due to expansion always dominate the widths of the corresponding weak lines.Comment: submitted to Ap