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Objective: We examined students’ perceptions and opinions regarding others’ COVID-19 mitigation behaviors and how these behaviors impacted feelings of safety and desire for on-campus engagement. Participants: Undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at a midsize regional state university during the Spring 2021 semester (n = 893). Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was utilized with an online and anonymous questionnaire. Scale means were calculated followed by ANOVAs to determine significance. Results: Two independent variables impacted students’ feelings of safety for on-ground courses and activities: living situation (on campus, with roommates) and school year (freshman/sophomores). Underclassmen were more likely to desire in-person campus engagement. Conclusions: Students showed a willingness to return to campus, but also concern over peer behaviors and remaining safe. Returning to a pre-pandemic social environment is critical for students’ mental health, and making students feel safe on campus is an important first step to return campuses to vibrant educational and social communities.

Many schools of social work around the United States of America wrote anti-racism statements because of the recent murders of Black and Brown people. In this contribution, the authors describe a challenging and tense discussion of racism and anti-racism leading to a group process about oppression and anti-oppression in the social work profession. For some, the urgency to address racism led to tactics and strategies that got in the way of social workers engaging in anti-oppressive practices. While the structure of higher education often reinforces traditional hierarchies of power, the profession of social work calls us to promote our core values of social justice, integrity, and the importance of human relationships as we strive for an anti-oppressive future. Consequently, social work faculty may experience role conflict as we navigate these tensions. We believe it is important to harness and process such discomfort as we critically examine the power dynamics within our own department, and our own profession. This voluntary, ad hoc group, composed of a diverse group of faculty members, provides space for ongoing mutual aid, consciousness raising, appropriate discomfort, and accountability. If anti-racism is the goal, then anti-oppression is how we get there.

INTRODUCTION: Adult sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) cease feeding and migrate to spawning streams where males build nests, undergo final sexual maturation, and subsequently produce and release large quantities of bile acid pheromones that attract mature females. These animals are predicted to rearrange their metabolic pathways drastically to support their reproductive strategies, presenting advantageous opportunities to examine how sex and the maturation processes affect metabolism. OBJECTIVES: The objective is to investigate the metabolic differences between sexes and maturation states in sea lamprey that support changes in physiological functions. METHODS: We compared plasma metabolomes of spawning and prespawning sea lamprey in both sexes using both non-targeted and targeted metabolomics approaches using UPLC/MS-MS with electrospray ionization in both positive and negative modes. The data were processed using Progenesis QI, Compound Discoverer and XCMS softwares for alignment, peak picking, and deconvolution of the peaks. Principle component analyses (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analyses (PLS-DA) were performed using SIMCA and Metaboanalyst softwares to identify discriminating features, followed by fragmentation matching with extensive database search and pathway mapping. RESULTS: The pheromonal bile acid biosynthesis was upregulated significantly in males compared to females. Spermiating males further upregulated bile acid biosynthesis by altering amino acid metabolisms, upregulating cofactors and nucleotide metabolisms, but downregulating carbohydrate and energy metabolisms. CONCLUSION: Plasma metabolomes are sex- and maturation-dependent and reflect the special metabolic demands at each life stage and reproductive strategy.

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a pervasive disorder with an incidence estimated at 5–14 percent among adults aged 30–70 years. It carries significant morbidity and mortality risk from cardiovascular disease, including ischemic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, and cerebrovascular disease, and risks related to excessive daytime sleepiness. The gold standard for diagnosis of OSAS is the polysomnography (PSG) test which requires overnight evaluation in a sleep laboratory and expensive infrastructure, which renders it unsuitable for mass screening and diagnosis. Alternatives such as home sleep testing need patients to wear diagnostic instruments overnight, but accuracy continues to be suboptimal while access continues to be a barrier for many. Hence, there is a continued significant underdiagnosis and under-recognition of sleep apnea in the community, with at least one study suggesting that 80–90% of middle-aged adults with moderate to severe sleep apnea remain undiagnosed. Recently, we have seen a surge in applications of artificial intelligence and neural networks in healthcare diagnostics. Several studies have attempted to examine its application in the diagnosis of OSAS. Signals included in data analytics include Electrocardiogram (ECG), photo-pletysmography (PPG), peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2), and audio signals. A different approach is to study the application of machine learning to use demographic and standard clinical variables and physical findings to try and synthesize predictive models with high accuracy in assisting in the triage of high-risk patients for sleep testing. The current paper will review this latter approach and identify knowledge gaps that may serve as potential avenues for future research.

Thousands of people living with HIV are incarcerated in the United States. Research about this vulnerable community has focused on access and adherence to medical care, including the impact of stigma on these treatment outcomes. This study presents qualitative data collected from 18 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women living with HIV to expand knowledge about how HIV stigma shapes the lived experience of incarceration. The HIV Stigma Framework, including theory about enacted, anticipated, and internalized stigma, was used to analyze participants’ narratives. Findings demonstrate an ongoing struggle with all three of these stigma mechanisms. Most participants deliberately concealed their HIV status and, therefore, experienced little enacted stigma. However, their narratives do describe anticipated stigma and, to a lesser extent, internalized stigma. There were gender differences in HIV disclosure and symbolic stigma and intersectionality are used to understand this variation. These findings illustrate the persistence of HIV stigma in correctional institutions and underscore the importance of fighting HIV stigma and homophobia within social work practice.

In addition to traumas that heterosexual and cisgender people experience, queer and transgender people face a heterosexist and cissexist culture, in which marginalization and trauma against them is normalized or minimized. In this chapter, the experience of hate crimes and violence, relational and interpersonal trauma, religious based-trauma, and sociocultural and political-based trauma are covered in relation to how it impacts Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) people. Clinical and counseling implications are discussed. The increase in mental health challenges is explained via the minority stress model. Implications for diagnosis and trauma-informed practices for queer and transgender people are discussed. Additionally, the role of the mental health professional as a social justice advocate is explored, including how social justice frameworks can be incorporated in the counseling environment. © 2023 Springer Publishing Company, LLC and 2012. All rights reserved.

Quark interactions with topological gluon configurations can induce local chirality imbalance and parity violation in quantum chromodynamics, which can lead to the chiral magnetic effect (CME)—an electric charge separation along the strong magnetic field in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The CME-sensitive azimuthal correlator observable (Δγ) is contaminated by background arising, in part, from resonance decays coupled with elliptic anisotropy (v2). We report here differential measurements of the correlator as a function of the pair invariant mass (minv) in 20–50% centrality Au+Au collisions at √sNN=200 GeV by the STAR experiment at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Strong resonance background contributions to Δγ are observed. At large minv where this background is significantly reduced, the Δγ value is found to be significantly smaller. An event-shape-engineering technique is deployed to determine the v2 background shape as a function of minv. We extract a v2-independent and minv-averaged signal Δγsig=(0.03±0.06±0.08)×10−4, or (2±4±5)% of the inclusive Δγ(minv>0.4 GeV/c2)=(1.58±0.02±0.02)×10−4, within pion pT=0.2–0.8 GeV/c and averaged over pseudorapidity ranges of −1<η<−0.05 and 0.05<η<1. This represents an upper limit of 0.23×10−4, or 15% of the inclusive result, at 95% confidence level for the minv-integrated CME contribution.

We report on the use of label-free, native fluorescence (NFL) spectroscopy and machine learning (ML) algorithms to study the correlation of relative tryptophan levels with prostate cancer aggressiveness. Three extensively studied prostate cancer cell lines were used; PC3, an aggressive, androgen-resistant line, with a high tendency to metastasize in vivo, DU-145, a less aggressive cancer cell line, also androgen-resistant, and LNCaP, an androgen sensitive line, which has a low tendency to metastasize. Using an excitation of 300nm, differences in the NFL spectral profiles from these cell lines were found to correlate with changes in the relative concentrations of tryptophan and reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH). The use of ML may present a powerful tool for the assessment of the likelihood of a cancer to metastasize. This technique could aid in the decision whether to use highly aggressive adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation therapy after surgical resection of a prostate cancer.

Connecticut’s Tony Award–winning Hartford Stage reopening with Eugene O’Neill’s only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, was a historic event. It marked Melia Bensussen’s debut as a director at Hartford Stage. Bensussen had already been in place as its first woman artistic director in October 2019, but began her tenure overseeing other directors’ work. The theater’s forced closing in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic delayed her joining the theater’s directing pool. Ah, Wilderness! had already been cast and was ready to begin rehearsals when the shutdown occurred.The fall 2021 opening for Bensussen’s directorial debut might have been guided by fate, as October 16 is Eugene O’Neill’s birthday. O’Neill had a fascination with fate and destiny stemming from his deep and tangled roots in Connecticut. Ah, Wilderness! is the comedic and fantastical version of the playwright’s youthful days in the Nutmeg State, while Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the tragic and more accurate version. What unites the two plays is that they both take place in the waterfront Monte Cristo Cottage, a historic landmark in New London.The choice to reopen Hartford Stage with Ah, Wilderness! was also historic because to attend the performance one had to present proof of a COVID vaccination or a recent negative test and wear protective facial masking—something that became a common practice nationally and internationally when COVID protocols were established. Once cleared, the audience was permitted to enter the auditorium, where they were treated to a more recognizable theatrical experience. Visible on the theater’s spacious thrust stage were portions of an abstract set designed by James Noone, hidden, for the most part, behind a white sheet-like curtain. On the stage’s foreground were furnishings draped with individual sheets. The abandoned and ghostly look was ably enhanced by lighting designer Wen-Ling Liao’s stark lighting, which signaled a death or an abandonment on the stage and in the entire theater facility itself.Also symbolic was the initial music selected to mark Hartford Stage’s reawakening. As the house lights were raised, individual singers could be heard repeatedly singing, two words and notes, a cappella. The words were “I am.” The unique arresting declaration was quickly followed by the proud entrance of the remaining cast and some crewmembers, joyfully marching though the auditorium. They headed toward the stage’s thrust, also singing “I am” until they all broke into a full rendition of the famous Americana song “Yankee Doodle Dandy” —an apt choice, the play occurs on the Fourth of July. But the melody and words “I am” signified even more because the music and lyrics were written by the iconic stage Irishman George M. Cohan, who portrayed Nat Miller in the original production of Ah, Wilderness!, which premiered on Broadway on October 2, 1933.As the actors entered, the white drop curtain rose to reveal a super-size—and not entirely historically accurate—skeletal set that served as a universal environment. Its main purpose was to represent the Miller family home, and its secondary purpose was to eventually represent the act 4, scene 2 lakeside woods where Richard Miller, the play’s central young lead (Michael Boatman), and his teenage love interest, Muriel McComber (Brittany Anikka Liu), meet under full moonlight to confess their undying love. The cast continued singing while they removed the white coverings from the furniture. Their actions were a reminder that the Monte Cristo Cottage was the O’Neill family’s summer home. In this way, the Miller family’s initial actions echoed the O’Neills’ annual return. Once the 1906 period furniture pieces were fully visible and lit with warm stage lighting, the delightful summertime period costumes designed by Olivera Gajic could be appreciated in their proper context.Throughout the production’s exposition and early conflicts, the audience was introduced to an American family and a New London community compatible with racial norms of the twenty-first century. Unlike the original Broadway production and many productions since, the cast was multiracial, an appropriate reflection of contemporary times. As Nat Miller, Boatman maintained a demeanor of gentle but firm moral force when addressing challenges to his integrity as a newspaper editor, familial rebellions against his patriarchal authority, and the antics of the none-too-skilled maid, Norah (Annie Jean Buckley). As the play unfolds, it becomes apparent that Nat and his devoted wife Essie (Antoinette LaVecchia) are raising four children: Arthur (Antonio Jose Jeffries), Richard (Jaevon Williams), Tommy (Miles Lowe), and Mildred (Katerina McCrimmon). Nat has also assumed the responsibility of caring for several relatives including his single sister, Lily (Natascia Diaz), and his wife’s hopelessly alcoholic brother, Sid Davis (McCaleb Burnett). Boatman wisely and lovingly guided his family and his rebellious teenage son, Richard, with a loving, measured pace. The actor shouldered his character’s purpose, leading to the climactic moments when O’Neill’s goal becomes apparent. As a playwright aiming to bring classical stature to American playwrighting, O’Neill intended to write a comedy of substance. He did not want to write his only comedy by ending it with a happy and sentimental resolution. Instead, O’Neill concludes Ah, Wilderness! with philosophical reflections on the importance of familial loyalty and everlasting love.A clear choice of director Bensussen was to craft her production as an ensemble piece rather than as a star vehicle for a leading role, as it has often been: Cohan (1933), Jason Robards (1988), Geraldine Fitzgerald (1969 and 1973), and Colleen Dewhurst (1988). As a result, there were numerous memorable performances by actors with secondary speaking roles: Tanner Jones as Wint Selby, Stuart Rider as the protective Bartender, Joseph Adams as Macomber and the Salesman, and Liu, doubling as Belle, all made brief but standout appearances at unexpected moments. Diaz in the principal role of spinster Lily Miller imbued her character with a poignant dignity, a feat made more impressive by the fact that, in some productions, this character can arc toward the melodramatic and comically belittling.An informative post-show talk-back took place on November 6, with Bensussen, Beth Wynstra, and Steven Bloom, the latter two representing the Eugene O’Neill Society’s board of directors. During the conversation, Bensussen noted pitfalls she found in the writing of Miller family matriarch Essie Miller and acknowledged cutting some of the character’s dialogue to make her seem less scatterbrained. The result was a less dominant but more mature rendering of the character.In choosing to direct Ah, Wilderness!, Bensussen demonstrated her prowess as a stage director and her appreciation for the home-grown legacy of America’s only Nobel Prize–winning playwright. She also lovingly reawakened the dormant Hartford Stage.

This paper reports a two-part study examining the relationship between fear of missing out (FoMO) and maladaptive behaviors in college students. This project used a cross-sectional study to examine whether college student FoMO predicts maladaptive behaviors across a range of domains (e.g., alcohol and drug use, academic misconduct, illegal behavior). Participants (N = 472) completed hard copy questionnaire packets assessing trait FoMO levels and questions pertaining to unethical and illegal behavior while in college. Part 1 utilized traditional statistical analyses (i.e., hierarchical regression modeling) to identify any relationships between FoMO, demographic variables (socioeconomic status, living situation, and gender) and the behavioral outcomes of interest. Part 2 looked to quantify the predictive power of FoMO, and demographic variables used in Part 1 through the convergent approach of supervised machine learning. Results from Part 1 indicate that college student FoMO is indeed related to many diverse maladaptive behaviors spanning the legal and illegal spectrum. Part 2, using various techniques such as recursive feature elimination (RFE) and principal component analysis (PCA) and models such as logistic regression, random forest, and Support Vector Machine (SVM), showcased the predictive power of implementing machine learning. Class membership for these behaviors (offender vs. non-offender) was predicted at rates well above baseline (e.g., 50% at baseline vs 87% accuracy for academic misconduct with just three input variables). This study demonstrated FoMO’s relationships with these behaviors as well as how machine learning can provide additional predictive insights that would not be possible through inferential statistical modeling approaches typically employed in psychology, and more broadly, the social sciences. Research in the social sciences stands to gain from regularly utilizing the more traditional statistical approaches in tandem with machine learning.

Despite significant advancements in science and technology, religion continues to influence human lives. The twentieth-century perspectives from social sciences, influenced by the secular hypothesis, mainly highlight the negative influence of religion on human progress and practically ignore its influential and positive impact on various fields of knowledge/disciplines. In this paper, we have examined literature from politics, economics, and psychology to understand religion’s impact on these disciplines and vice versa. We find that religion’s contribution to human society in the 20th and 21st centuries has been mostly positive, especially in education, healthcare, social justice, economic growth, ethics, and initiatives for eradicating inequality and injustice. For instance, religion provides effective coping measures and strategies when humans face uncertainties and catastrophes and facilitate comfort, confidence, and emotional wellness. Further, we realised that (i) the contemporary research literature in social sciences generally highlights the interaction between religion and various fields of knowledge in a unidirectional way —i.e., religion influencing disciplines and not how disciplines influence religion, and (ii) that it fails to reveal a more complex multidirectional and circular relationship between religion and social sciences. This paper proposes ways to bring together social scientists and religious scholars to facilitate the much-needed discussion on the multidirectional relationship between religion and social sciences, thereby paving the way toward the well-being of individuals and social transformation. © 2022 Journal of Dharma: Dharmaram Journal of Religions and Philosophies (DVK, Bangalore),.

Significant evolutionary shifts in locomotor behaviour often involve comparatively subtle anatomical transitions. For dinosaurian and avian evolution, medial overhang of the proximal femur has been central to discussions. However, there is an apparent conflict with regard to the evolutionary origin of the dinosaurian femoral head, with neontological and palaeontological data suggesting seemingly incongruent hypotheses. To reconcile this, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of morphogenesis of the proximal end of the femur from early archosaurs to crown birds. Embryological comparison of living archosaurs (crocodylians and birds) suggests the acquisition of the greater overhang of the femoral head in dinosaurs results from additional growth of the proximal end in the medial-ward direction. On the other hand, the fossil record suggests that this overhang was acquired by torsion of the proximal end, which projected in a more rostral direction ancestrally. We reconcile this apparent conflict by inferring that the medial overhang of the dinosaur femoral head was initially acquired by torsion, which was then superseded by mediad growth. Details of anatomical shifts in fossil forms support this hypothesis, and their biomechanical implications are congruent with the general consensus regarding broader morpho-functional evolution on the avian stem.

As part of a comprehensive effort to characterize the nearest stars, the CHIRON echelle spectrograph on the CTIO/SMARTS 1.5 m telescope is being used to acquire high-resolution (R = 80,000) spectra of K dwarfs within 50 pc. This paper provides spectral details about 35 K dwarfs from five benchmark sets with estimated ages spanning 20 Myr–5.7 Gyr. Four spectral age and activity indicators are tested, three of which aligned with the estimated ages of the benchmark groups—the Na i doublet (5889.95 and 5895.92 Å), the Hα line (6562.8 Å), and the Li i resonance line (6707.8 Å). The benchmark stars are then used to evaluate seven field K dwarfs exhibiting variable radial velocities for which initial CHIRON data did not show obvious companions. Two of these stars are estimated to be younger than 700 Myr, while one exhibits stellar activity unusual for older K-dwarf field stars and is possibly young. The four remaining stars turn out to be spectroscopic binaries, two of which are being reported here for the first time with orbital periods found using CHIRON data. Spectral analysis of the combined sample of 42 benchmark and variable radial velocity stars indicates temperatures ranging from 3900 to 5300 K and metallicities from −0.4 < [Fe/H] < +0.2. We also determine for main-sequence K dwarfs. Ultimately, this study will target several thousand of the nearest K dwarfs and provide results that will serve present and future studies of stellar astrophysics and exoplanet habitability.

Measurements of mass and Λ binding energy of Λ4H and Λ4He in Au+Au collisions at sNN=3 GeV are presented, with an aim to address the charge symmetry breaking (CSB) problem in hypernuclei systems with atomic number A = 4. The Λ binding energies are measured to be 2.22±0.06(stat.)±0.14(syst.) MeV and 2.38±0.13(stat.)±0.12(syst.) MeV for Λ4H and Λ4He, respectively. The measured Λ binding-energy difference is 0.16±0.14(stat.)±0.10(syst.) MeV for ground states. Combined with the γ-ray transition energies, the binding-energy difference for excited states is −0.16±0.14(stat.)±0.10(syst.) MeV, which is negative and comparable to the value of the ground states within uncertainties. These new measurements on the Λ binding-energy difference in A = 4 hypernuclei systems are consistent with the theoretical calculations that result in ΔBΛ4(1exc+)≈−ΔBΛ4(0g.s.+)<0 and present a new method for the study of CSB effect using relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe the prevalence of food insecurity among college students and its relationship to on-campus food purchasing patterns and barriers to eating a healthy and sufficient diet, including the relative cost of food items on campus compared to national chain grocery stores. Design: A campus-wide survey using stratified sampling among undergraduates and food audit. Setting: An urban public university in New England. Subjects: A total of 951 surveys completed by undergraduates. Measures: Demographic characteristics, behavioral factors and food security status (measured using the USDA 6-item short form) were collected. Method: Descriptive and multivariable analyses were conducted to describe differences between food insecure and food secure undergraduates. Results: Overall, 35% of undergraduates experienced food insecurity in the past year (response rate = 92%). Food insecure undergraduates had different on-campus purchasing patterns than their food secure counterparts. Food insecure students were more likely to report barriers to healthy eating on all measures, including prices (AOR= 8.12, P <.0001), to experience housing insecurity (AOR= 2.64, P =.001) and to report that transportation is a barrier to buying groceries (AOR= 1.63, P =.01). After multivariable adjustment, food insecure undergraduates had higher odds of being African American (AOR= 1.57, P =.031) or other races (more than 1 race) (AOR= 3.35, P =.002) compared to white undergraduates. Conclusions: Food insecure college students face a variety of barriers to healthy eating on campus, including high food pricing on campus and limited transportation options. Further research is needed to inform campus resource development, policies and programming focused on food insecurity prevention for college students. © The Author(s) 2022.

To move from the gap between industry and academia, educators must review and change instructional content to meet industry demands. By addressing the industry imperative for leadership skills, this exploratory study evaluates the most prominent leadership style among faculty who implement leadership pedagogy in the classroom. The researchers surveyed hospitality management faculty through an online survey. The majority of respondents identified as transformational leaders, indicating leadership integration as highly important. The two most frequently integrated instruction methods were student-led discussions and delegation of group tasks. No significant relationship existed between methods of leadership integration and leadership style. Findings from this research contribute how educational leaders influence leadership skills and competency integration in classroom instruction. Recommendations included conducting further studies of hospitality management educators’ leadership styles, enhanced statistical tests to build significant results to methods of transformation leadership in classroom instruction, and effective leadership training for hospitality management educators and administrators. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions of higher learning locked down their campuses and altered their ways of teaching. This article discusses changes made to courses at five highly varied public universities in New England participating in the multiyear Campuses for Environmental Stewardship (CES) program. The primary aim of the CES program is to integrate environmental service-learning (SL) into college curricula through workshops, faculty fellowships, and mentoring. We detail how teaching strategies were altered in fall 2020 to accommodate the threat of COVID-19 in the classroom. The authors transitioned significant portions of their instruction to online formats or outdoor classrooms. Specifics about the impacts of the shift to virtual teaching–learning are discussed, with particular focus on the impacts to the service-learning components of each of the courses. © 2022 by the University of Georgia