Building a More Effective, Equitable, and Compassionate Educational System: The Role of Direct Instruction.

In a recent book, Anthony Biglan describes how strong social research can be used to build a compassionate and more caring society that promotes the well-being of all. This article asserts that a strong educational system needs to be part of this transformation and that widespread use of Direct Instruction (DI) could be key in the process. Analysis of the underlying theory, development, and use of DI describes the way it is based on careful developmental research.

Equity for women and underrepresented minorities in STEM: Graduate experiences and career plans in chemistry.

Recent events prompted scientists in the United States and throughout the world to consider how systematic racism affects the scientific enterprise. This paper provides evidence of inequities related to race-ethnicity and gender in graduate school experiences and career plans of PhD students in the top 100 ranked departments in one science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) discipline, chemistry. Mixed-model regression analyses were used to examine factors that might moderate these differences.

Salad bar selection patterns of elementary school children.

From the perspective of child-focused nutrition research, the analysis of the school cafeteria culture and environment is critical. Most children eat at least one meal at school per school day, thus elementary schools are a good setting for influencing the early development of healthy eating habits. The salad bar in particular has gained attention as a means of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption.

Two Worlds of Obesity: Ethnic Differences in Child Overweight/Obesity Prevalence and Trajectories.

Objectives: Research on childhood obesity has examined the prevalence of overweight and obesity during childhood and developmental trajectories. This study focuses on the extent to which Hispanic and non-Hispanic white elementary students differ in prevalence of overweight and obesity by grade level, time, gender, and school setting. It also focuses on comparison of the trajectories in weight status for the Hispanic and non-Hispanic white students.

Continuity and change in values in midlife: testing the age stability hypothesis.

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The "age stability" hypothesis suggests that adults have significant continuities in values over time, whereas the "situational influence" hypothesis suggests that change continues, especially in response to new events and experiences. Deeply ingrained, terminal values may be more stable than other, more instrumental, values. Less research examines changing values than examines changing personality traits and attitudes.

Targeting childhood obesity in schools: an examination of the stability and utility of the value added index.

Background: High rates of childhood obesity and overweight have promoted interest in school-based interventions. As a way to identify schools with high unexpected prevalence of obesity and the greatest need, Procter and associates developed a 'Value Added Index' (VAI). It compares rates of obesity in entry level and advanced students in elementary schools, quantifying the extent to which rates for advanced students are higher than what would be expected given entry level rates and socio-demographic characteristics.

The rising share of nonmarital births: fertility choice or marriage behavior?

Much of the sharp rise in the share of nonmarital births in the United States has been attributed to changes in the fertility choices of unmarried and married women-in response, it is often argued, to public policy. In contrast, we develop and test a model that attributes the rise to changes in marriage behavior, with no necessary changes infertility. A variety of empirical tests strongly support this conclusion and invites focused attention to issues related to marriage behavior as well as to the interactions between marriage and fertility.

Development and testing of a short form of the patient activation measure.

Objective: The Patient Activation Measure (PAM) is a 22-item measure that assesses patient knowledge, skill, and confidence for self-management. The measure was developed using Rasch analyses and is an interval level, unidimensional, Guttman-like measure. The current analysis is aimed at reducing the number of items in the measure while maintaining adequate precision.

Hospital performance reports: impact on quality, market share, and reputation.

This study builds on earlier work by assessing the long-term impact of a public hospital performance report on both consumers and hospitals. In doing so, we shed light on the relative importance of alternative assumptions about what stimulates quality improvements. The findings indicate that making performance data public results in improvements in the clinical area reported upon.

It isn't just about choice: the potential of a public performance report to affect the public image of hospitals.

Can a well-designed public performance report affect the public image of hospitals? Using a pre/postdesign and telephone interviews, consumer views and reports of their use of public hospital report are examined. The findings show that the report did influence consumer views about the quality of individual hospitals in the community 2 to 4 months after the release of the report.

Development of the Patient Activation Measure (PAM): conceptualizing and measuring activation in patients and consumers.

Background: Controlling costs and achieving health care quality improvements require the participation of activated and informed consumers and patients.

Objectives: We describe a process for conceptualizing and operationalizing what it means to be "activated" and delineate the process we used to develop a measure for assessing "activation," and the psychometric properties of that measure.

Methods: We used the convergence of the findings from a national expert consensus panel and patient focus groups to define the concept and identify the domains of activation.

Does publicizing hospital performance stimulate quality improvement efforts?

This study evaluates the impact on quality improvement of reporting hospital performance publicly versus privately back to the hospital. Making performance information public appears to stimulate quality improvement activities in areas where performance is reported to be low. The findings from this Wisconsin-based study indicate that there is added value to making this information public.

Maternal dietary docosahexanoic acid content affects the rat pup auditory system.

Previous studies of the effects of dietary docosahexanoic acid (DHA), 22:6n3, on neurodevelopment have focused mainly on visual-evoked potentials and indices of visual activity, measures that may be confounded by effects on the retina rather than on neural pathways. We investigated the effect of pre- and postnatal maternal dietary DHA content on auditory brainstem conduction times (ABCTs), the appearance of the auditory startle reflex (ASR), and 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphodiesterase (CNPase) activity in brainstem homogenates. Timed pregnant dams were fed, beginning on day 2 of gestation and throughout lactation, a purified diet containing one of three levels of DHA (0, 1, or 3% of total fatty acids, or 0, 0.

Variations in age-specific homicide death rates: a cohort explanation for charges in the age distribution of homicide deaths.

An age-period-cohort characteristic model previously used to explain age-period-specific rates of homicide arrests for those 15 to 49 from 1960 to 1995 is applied to measures of age-period-specific homicide deaths. The extension of this model to the examination of homicide victimization is significant because we are able to test the utility of the model across a longer time span (1930 to 1995) and a wider range of ages (10 to 79) and disaggregated by sex and race (Whites and non-Whites). Although the results indicate that past and recent shifts in age-period-specific rates of homicide deaths are associated with specific characteristics of cohorts, there are some important differences across race and sex groupings in the effects of these characteristics.

The enduring effects of cohort characteristics on age-specific homicide rates, 1960-1995.

In the past decade, young people in the United States have been two to three times more likely than in the two previous decades to commit homicides, while those 25 years and older have been less likely to commit homicides than were members of their age groups in the earlier time period. These changes in youth homicide rates are associated with two cohort characteristics that are theoretically linked to criminality: relative size of cohorts and the percentage of cohort member born to unwed mothers. These effects persist throughout the life span, are independent of age and historical period, and can explain fluctuations in homicide arrest rates before the recent upturn.

Effect of docosahexaenoic acid content of maternal diet on auditory brainstem conduction times in rat pups.

Previous studies of dietary docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6n-3) effects on neurodevelopment have focused mainly on effects on the visual system; these studies may be confounded by effects on the retina rather than on neural pathways. Auditory brainstem conduction times (ABCTs) provide an alternate measure of central neural development. We conducted a dose-response study in which ABCTs were measured in pups whose dams were fed diets containing one of three levels of DHA (2, 4 or 6% of total fatty acids) from a single cell oil.

Maternal diet fatty acid composition affects neurodevelopment in rat pups.

The effect of pre- and postnatal maternal dietary fatty acid composition on neurodevelopment in rat pups was studied. Timed pregnant dams were fed, beginning on d 2 of gestation and throughout lactation, either nonpurified diet (reference) or a purified diet whose fat source (22% of energy) was either corn oil or menhaden fish oil. On postnatal d 3, pups were randomly cross-fostered among dams of the same diet group and culled to 10 pups per dam.

Transient elevation of threshold of the neonatal auditory brain stem response.

Auditory brain stem responses (ABRs) of 33 high risk, full term or near term newborns with transient elevation of ABR threshold (transient group) were compared with those of normal infants (normal group) and high-risk infants with known conductive (conductive group) and known sensorineural hearing loss (sensorineural group). ABRs of infants in the transient group initially were not significantly different from those of the conductive group in terms of wave I latency, wave V latency, and the slope of the latency-intensity (L-l) function of wave V. In infants with transient unilateral threshold elevation, significantly shorter interpeak latencies were recorded in the affected ear than in the ear that passed.

Genetic control of capsid length in bacteriophage T4: DNA sequence analysis of petite and petite/giant mutants.

The T4 gene 23 product (gp23) encodes the major structural protein of the mature capsid. Mutations in this gene have been described which disrupt the normal length-determining mechanism (A.H.

Nucleotide sequence of bacteriophage T4 gene 23 and the amino acid sequence of its product.

We have determined the nucleotide sequence of gene 23 of bacteriophage T4 by the methods of Maxam and Gilbert and of Sanger. The identities of approximately 80% of the amino acid residues of the major capsid protein which is encoded by gene 23 were determined additionally by Edman degradation of the intact protein and its peptides. Fifteen gene 23 amber mutation sites have been located within the sequence, and the 3' transcription termination site for genes 21, 22 and 23 has been identified.

Clinically useful applications of evoked potentials in adult neurology.

Recent advances in the field of sensory evoked potentials (EPs) have allowed assessment of function in regions of the nervous system that were previously inaccessible to noninvasive electrophysiologic study. Pattern visual and brainstem auditory EPs, respectively, are more sensitive to certain optic nerve or posterior fossa lesions than either clinical or laboratory tests. Short-latency somatosensory EPs from the upper and lower extremities are sensitive to pathology at cervicomedullary and thoracolumbar levels of the neuraxis as well as to suprasegmental lesions.

Excretion of amines and their metabolites by two patients in hepatic coma treated with L-dopa.

Two patients in hepatic coma were treated with L-dopa. The first patient showed clear clinical improvement, but the second patient did not. Analyses of urinary metabolites indicated that L-dopa was not absorbed by the second patient.

Prognostic value of brainstem auditory evoked potentials in neonates.

The clinical outcome in 74 children at risk for audiologic or neurologic sequelae of a variety of perinatal insults was correlated with brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) in the newborn period. No constant relationship was found between BAEP findings and later hearing status in preterm infants or in infants with severe brain damage. However, persistent patterns of wave I abnormality correctly predicted the presence and type of hearing loss in other infants.

Ectopic internal carotid artery seen initially as middle ear tumor.

An ectopic carotid artery is rare. Its first symptoms may be neurological and could bring the patient to the neurologist during the initial evaluation. However, more often, the neurologist examines a patient in whom serious neurological deficit has occurred after transtympanic exploration of an undiagnosed vascular mass.