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Physical Activity for Anxiety for Autistic People: A Systematic Review
Get PDFClinical anxiety is a common comorbidity in autistic people. Due to the prevalence of anxiety in the autism population and the adverse effects it causes, there is a critical need to develop effective interventions which address anxiety symptoms for autistic people. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review was to examine the effectiveness of the use of physical activity as an intervention to reduce anxiety in autistic people. Three databases PubMed, PsychInfo, and Cochrane RCTs, were searched utilizing key terms. PRISMA systematic search procedures identified 44 studies meeting predetermined inclusion criteria. Participant characteristics, the type of physical activity performed, the nature of the physical activity program/delivery, anxiety-related outcomes, and research methodology was evaluated for each study. Each paper included was appraised and scored for risk of bias using Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions risk of bias tool. Titles and abstracts of 44 articles were reviewed and 8 articles met inclusion criteria which evaluated interventions. Evidence from 8 studies suggests that yoga, a community-based football program, an app-assisted walking program, group exercise programs, and horseback riding interventions reduced anxiety for autistic people. The studies included in this systematic review provide strong-to-moderate evidence that physical activity can reduce anxiety for autistic children and adults. However, additional research is needed to identify which mode of physical activity is most beneficial for anxiety reduction. Further, future research should evaluate frequency, duration, and intensity and their effects on anxiety for autistic people
Managers\u27 Staging of Earnings Conference Calls Around Actual Share Repurchases
Get PDFWe use earnings call transcripts to examine whether managers strategically change their disclosure behaviors before an actual share repurchase. Our findings suggest that managers use tone management to strategically portray a more negative outlook for the firm in the earnings call before an actual repurchase. In addition, we find that managers of repurchasing firms “cast” the call with more unfavorable analysts even when more favorable analysts are available. These disclosure strategies aim to influence the information flows to the market and allow repurchasing firms to repurchase their shares at a discounted price. We further show that insiders of repurchasing firms adjust their subsequent stock trading accordingly. Following more negative conference calls, insiders exhibit a tendency to increase share repurchases or reduce sales of company shares. Our findings underscore the increasingly sophisticated disclosure strategies employed by managers to wield influence over information dynamics in the market leading up to share repurchases
Behavioral Health Training for Integrated Behavioral Health: A Delphi Study
Get PDFUsing a classical Delphi design, the authors used an interdisciplinary panel of behavioral health experts in integrated behavioral health (IBH) to identify foundational skills and knowledge counselor educators need to teach clinical mental health counselors for IBH practice. Eighty-eight statements were identified. Implications are provided for counseling and other behavioral health educators
Relationship Between Ureteral Stent Dwell Time And UTI
No full textPurpose
This study aimed to determine if there is a relationship between ureteral stent dwell time and the incidence of UTI prior to and after definitive stone surgery. We explored the optimal ureteral stent dwell time following initial placement for obstructing stones prior to definitive stone surgery in an effort to decrease the incidence of UTIs associated with ureteral stent placement.
Problem
Kidney stones are a common problem, with about 8.8% of the United States population affected, this often results in significant discomfort, multiple surgeries, and leads to billions of dollars spent annually.* Ureteral stents are often needed for renal drainage with an obstructed ureter, prior to stone surgery.* Ureteral stents are temporary treatment measures and require eventual removal or exchange, but they are not without risks and often cannot be avoided. There is currently no consensus on recommended ureteral stent length of stay or dwell time.
Methods
A non-experimental, retrospective, correlational design was used to study the effects of a possible cause without the intention of proving causation; there was not any interventions by the researcher. Patients have undergone surgery for both ureteral stent placement and stone surgery- either ureteroscopy (URS) with laser lithotripsy and/or percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL). Data was collected through chart reviews from patients who had undergone surgery in 2022 and pre-stent and pre-lithotripsy urine culture results were collected. Data was analyzed using the SPSS Statistics 28.0 software.
Results
101 adult male and female patients were studied and analyzed using the Pearson/ point-biserial correlation and Chi-Square test. There was a positive correlation between ureteral stent dwell time (stage 1), BMI and stone size when compared to post-stent UTI; this was statistically significant with a p value of 0.01. A Chi-Square test determined there was a positive correlation among patients with CKD as well as those having a pre-stent UTI when compared to post-stent UTI. One could conclude that the longer a ureteral stent remains in place, the higher the BMI, the larger the stone size, those with a diagnosis of CKD or those who had a pre-stent UTI, all have a higher likelihood of developing a UTI. There were no statistically significant association among age, gender, diagnosis of diabetes, surgery type or stone location when compared to post-stent UTI. We were unable to test ureteral stent dwell time (stage 2) and UTI as there were minimal urine cultures collected prior to ureteral stent removal.
Conclusion
The significance in this research highlighted the variables possibly contributing to UTIs related to ureteral stent placement. The knowledge obtained will allow prioritization among patients with ureteral stents requiring kidney stone surgery. Having a consensus with optimal stent dwell time, should improve efficiency and consistency within our practice, help to reduce the incidence of UTIs associated with ureteral stent placement, and possibly reduce hospital readmission for UTIs
Electrochemical Routes For Extraction Of Iron From Acid-Activated Red Mud: A Carbon-Free Iron-Making Process
Get PDFRed mud is an industrial waste material, which is generated by alumina refineries. For every ton of aluminum, 2-2.5 tons of red mud is produced. Presently, it is being utilized as a building material, such as dams, bridges, roads, and many more. However, due to its toxicity, this cannot be considered a portable solution. Red mud contains various compounds of alumina Al, Si, Na, Fe, and Ti as well as certain rare earth elements. This is polluting both the surface as well as the groundwater bodies. This is because of the leaching of red mud by the water bodies or the rainwater. Although, red mud is a waste as well as a source of pollutants, however, it contains a group of useful elements such as Fe, Al, Si, Na and Sc. These elements are present in the form of various crystalline phases such as quartz, hematite, hercynite, zeolite and many more. Therefore, we are aiming to build a three-electrode electrochemical cell to extract iron from red mud. The products of iron and its alloys such as steel are the needs of society. However, iron production releases a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Hence, the extraction of iron through an electrochemical route is a carbon-negative process, as well as the consumption of energy, is lesser. The process is carried out through several stages. The first stage requires the ball milling of the sample. Ball milling helps in the removal of unwanted phases. Then, the leaching of the red mud is done with 0.5M HCl solution, to intensify the hematite phase. Leaching helps in the dissolution of elements such as Al, Si and Na. Then, the leached residue along with NaOH is used as the electrolyte and TiO2-coated aluminum rod, graphite and Ag/AgCl is used as the anode, cathode and reference electrode respectively to build the electrochemical cell. This process for iron extraction can be used in industries to build materials for small-scale applications. The process can be considered to be as the most sustainable and cleaner way of iron production as well as the consumption of the red mud waste
ETDPC -- A Multimodality Framework for Classifying Pages in Electronic Theses and Dissertations
No full textElectronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) have been proposed, advocated, and generated for over 25 years. However, this dataset is understudied due to its unique characteristics, such as length and varied content, which differ from regular conference proceedings and journal papers. ETDs, typically 100-400 pages long, serve as partial requirements for academic degrees and are hosted by university libraries or centralized systems like ProQuest. Despite their significance, ETD repositories lack efficient tools for content discovery, requiring the need for segmentation to facilitate better knowledge extraction.
The segmentation is crucial as ETDs differ from traditional scholarly papers, presenting challenges such as varied scanned image resolutions, complex document structures, limitations of the existing framework, and a lack of training samples. Using a bottom-up approach, we previously contributed datasets and methods to segment ETDs [1]. The method automatically annotated major structural components but still does not perform well in detecting minority classes (e.g., date, degree, equation, algorithms) due to a lack of training samples. Moreover, fine-tuning state-of-the-art models [2] [3] on ETDs do not generalize well (e.g., achieving 9% accuracy), and retraining them is non-trivial because of the lack of data.
Therefore, we take a top-down approach by designing a new framework called ETDPC (Electronic Theses and Dissertation Page Classifier), employing a two-stream multimodal model with a cross-attention network to classify ETD pages into 13 categories. ETDPC outperforms existing models, achieving an F1 score of 0.84 – 0.96 for 9 out of 13 categories. In addition, the paper’s contribution includes introducing methods for augmentation to generate pseudo-training samples for minority classes, contributing the ETD500 dataset with annotations, PNGs, text, and bounding boxes, and demonstrating the system’s robustness through quantitative analysis
Liberatory Motherhood: A Framework & Praxis for Caring and Scholaring Otherwise in the Neoliberal Academy
Get PDFThis article contributes to the emergent literature on motherhood in neoliberal higher education by proposing liberatory motherhood as a theoretical framework and praxis to deconstruct and reconstruct motherhood in the neoliberal academy. The author, an early-career immigrant woman scholar of color, uses feminist autoethnography to critically examine the disempowering, disembodying, and departicularizing effects of neoliberal subjectivation on motheracademics, foregrounding her lived experiences of caregiving in her analysis. She approaches academic motherhood through a prismatic lens of a pluralistic feminist rhetorical analysis that emphasizes interrelationality, tracing her experiences of caring and producing otherwise as a way to signal opportunities to reembody motherhood in the academy. She finds mothering and othering to be mutually reinforcing in the academy and argues for rehumanizing care through alternative (re)productivity. She offers liberatory motherhood as an emancipated and emancipatory motherhood that draws from queer, decolonial, and other motherhoods, reflecting on its potential to further scholarship and practices geared toward reformulating academic subjectivities and emancipating the academy from coercions set by the market
Effect of Activation Temperature on Quantum Efficiency and Lifetime of NEA Truncated Nanocone Array GaAs Photocathode
No full textThis study investigates the quantum efficiency (QE) and operational lifetime of a negative electron affinity GaAs truncated nanocone array (TNCA) photocathode benchmarked against a conventional flat GaAs photocathode under varying activation temperatures. The TNCA structure demonstrated a QE of up to 13.6% at 590 nm with room temperature (RT) activation—approximately 1.5 times higher than its flat counterpart. This enhancement is due to Mie resonance effects within the nanostructure, as confirmed by finite-difference time-domain simulations. Moreover, the TNCA photocathode exhibits significantly extended charge lifetime, with enhancement factors of ∼6.1 and ∼19.8 under RT and 50 °C activations, respectively. These gains are primarily attributed to increased effective surface area and optimized dipole layer formation at elevated temperatures. In addition, shorter excitation wavelengths further contribute to lifetime improvements. These findings underscore the TNCA GaAs photocathode’s potential as a high QE, long lifetime electron source for many large-scale electron accelerators
Tracing The Journey of Dissolved Organic Matter: From Leaf Litter Photodegradation to Microbial Processing in Tropical Streams
No full textDissolved organic matter (DOM) is a major reservoir of organic carbon in aquatic ecosystems and plays a central role in global carbon cycling through its transformation and remineralization to carbon dioxide (CO₂). As DOM moves from terrestrial environments into streams and rivers, its chemical composition is altered by a combination of microbial and photochemical oxidation processes that regulate both its reactivity and its persistence during transport. However, the molecular mechanisms governing these oxidative transitions, particularly in tropical ecosystems characterized by strong hydrologic seasonality and substantial inputs of plant-derived material, remain insufficiently resolved. This dissertation integrates ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry, optical characterization, and controlled experimental approaches to investigate how oxidative pathways influence the molecular composition, lability, and persistence of DOM from source to downstream environments.
Across tropical headwater streams in the Río Tempisquito watershed of Costa Rica, DOM composition reflects the interplay between seasonal litter inputs, rainfall-driven transport, and in-stream oxidation processes. Molecular signatures reveal that reduced, bioavailable compounds introduced during dry-season litterfall and wet-season runoff undergo measurable oxidative modification even when bulk carbon concentrations remain relatively constant. Controlled microbial experiments demonstrate that lipid- and protein-like molecules are rapidly consumed and transformed into more oxidized metabolites, some of which persist as newly formed components of the downstream DOM pool. Complementary photochemical analyses of leaf litter leachates show that exposure to simulated solar irradiation produces extensive structural rearrangement and oxygenation, yielding thousands of new molecular formulas and contributing to the generation of partially recalcitrant compounds prior to their entry into stream systems.
Overall, these findings establish that oxidative pathways, rather than simply degrading organic matter, also produce recalcitrant molecular structures that enhance the persistence of terrestrial carbon in aquatic networks. By identifying the molecular features that govern DOM oxidation, persistence, and downstream transport, this dissertation advances understanding of carbon processing in tropical watersheds and highlights the importance of early-stage oxidative transformations in shaping the fate of terrestrial organic matter within the global carbon cycle