Cuyahoga Community College

Relations between parents' discipline, children's empathic responses, and children's prosocial behavior were examined in order to evaluate Martin Hoffman's claim that children's empathy and empathy-based guilt mediate the socialization of children's prosocial behavior. 78 sixth and seventh graders (138-172 months in age), their mothers, and teachers completed multiple measures of Hoffman's constructs. Results were largely consistent with theory. Parents' use of inductive as opposed to power-assertive discipline was related to children's prosocial behavior. Children of inductive parents were more empathic; and more empathic children were more prosocial. Moreover, children's empathy was found to mediate the relation between parents' discipline and children's prosocial behavior. Few relations were obtained for children's guilt indices, but post hoc analyses yielded theoretically consistent results. Contrary to expectations, parents' use of statements of disappointment was the component of the inductive discipline score which was most strongly related to children's prosocial behavior.

Comfort is a term that has a significant historical and contemporary association with nursing. Since the time of Nightingale, it is cited as designating a desirable outcome of nursing care. Comfort is found in nursing science, for example in diagnostic taxonomies, and in references to the art of nursing, as when practice is described. Roy, Orlando, Watson, Paterson and others use comfort in major nursing theories. The term can signify both physical and mental phenomena and it can be used as a verb and a noun. However, because comfort has many different meanings, the reader has had the burden of deciding if the term is meant in one of its ordinary language senses or if its context reveals some special nursing sense. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the semantics and extension of the term 'comfort' in order to clarify its use in nursing practice, theory and research. The semantic analysis begins with ordinary language because the common meanings of the term are the primary ones used in nursing practice and are the origin of technical nursing usages. Comfort is discussed as the term is found in nursing, including texts, standards of care, diagnoses and theory. An account of patient needs assessment is used to cull three technical senses of the term from its ordinary language meanings. After contrasting these senses in order to justify their separateness, they are shown to reflect differing aspects of therapeutic contexts. Defining attributes of the three senses are then explicated and presented in table format. The last section of the paper addresses some of the ways that the extensions of the senses can be measured.

For students to thrive in the U.S. educational system, they must successfully cope with omnipresent demands of exams. Nearly all students experience testing situations as stressful, and signs of stress (e.g., racing heart) are typically perceived negatively. This research tested the efficacy of a psychosituational intervention targeting cognitive appraisals of stress to improve classroom exam performance. Ninety-three students (across five semesters) enrolled in a community college developmental mathematics course were randomly assigned to stress reappraisal or placebo control conditions. Reappraisal instructions educated students about the adaptive benefits of stress arousal, whereas placebo materials instructed students to ignore stress. Reappraisal students reported less math evaluation anxiety and exhibited improved math exam performance relative to controls. Mediation analysis indicated reappraisal improved performance by increasing students’ perceptions of their ability to cope with the stressful testing situation (resource appraisals). Implications for theory development and policy are discussed.

Abstract Aims: This study aimed to determine the effects of earplug use on the subjective experience of sleep for patients in critical care. Background: The negative effects of noise in critical care include sleep disturbances, increased stress response, and reduced patient satisfaction. The nature of critical care often precludes quiet time protocols. Previous studies indicated that earplugs can improve REM sleep and sleep efficiency. This study examined the effects of earplugs as a non‐invasive method for improving the subjective sleep experience and increasing patient satisfaction. Design: Quasi‐experimental intervention study with random assignment of subjects. Method: Subjects were non‐ventilated, non‐sedated adults admitted to critical care. The intervention group used earplugs during nighttime sleep hours allowing short term removal during patient care. Participants completed the Verran‐Snyder‐Halpern Sleep Scale, an 8‐question visual analogue scale, to describe their subjective response to sleep. Two sample T‐tests were used to detect differences between the group scores. Results: 88 participants (49 intervention/39 control) completed the study. Mean age 63, 56% males, 93% Caucasian. Total sleep satisfaction scores were significantly better for the intervention group (p = .002). Seven of the subjective categories were independently significant (p = .005‐.044). One category, satisfaction with the amount of time needed to fall asleep, was not significant (p = .111). Conclusions: Earplug use improved the subjective experience of sleep for un‐medicated critical care patients without interfering with care delivery. Relevance to Practice: The negligible cost and low level of invasiveness of earplugs makes this preferable as a primary intervention to promote sleep while avoiding unnecessary sedating medications.

Screening potential anticancer agents to find ones promising enough to make human clinical trials worthwhile has not been as straightforward as researchers would like. Not only have very few of the drugs that showed anticancer activity in animals carrying transplanted human tumors--known as xenografts--made it into the clinic, but a recent study conducted at the National Cancer Institute suggests that the tests are also missing drugs that do work in humans, possibly because animals and humans do not handle the drugs exactly the same way. And attempts to use human cells in culture don9t seem to be faring any better, partly because cell culture provides no information about whether a drug will make it to the tumor site. To create better models of cancer development in humans, investigators are now drawing on knowledge of human cancer-related gene mutations to genetically alter mice so that they carry the same kinds of changes that lead to cancer in humans. The hope is that the mice will develop tumors that behave the same way the human tumors do.

ST. LOUIS-- The latest high-tech version of rice, described here last week at the 16th International Botanical Congress, has been genetically engineered to contain b-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, as well as a healthy dose of iron. This achievement is a Herculean feat of gene transfer. Unlike other genetically engineered crops, which contain only one or two foreign genes, the new rice strain carries a total of seven foreign genes from two separate pathways. But beyond that, it9s also a major leap on a more humanitarian front: It may offer improved nutrition for the billions of people in developing nations who depend on rice as a staple food.

INNATE IMMUNITYUnlike the so-called acquired immune system, with its disease-fighting cells and antibodies, innate immunity depends on peptides and small proteins to fight off dangerous microbes. As genomic information has flooded out of sequencing labs within the last few years, researchers have identified hundreds of these peptides from a broad range of species. They are also now working out exactly what trips these defenses and how they specialize to fight off the pathogens that attack each kind of organism--information that may make peptides a new source of antibiotics.

This article presents a conceptual model, the Urban Ecological Model of Aging, to be used by researchers to assess the impact of living in neighborhoods of concentrated and prolonged poverty on elderly residential satisfaction and subjective well-being. Specifically, the suprapersonal environment characteristics, or aggregated people characteristics, of impoverished urban neighborhoods are explicated and included in a predictive model of community-dwelling elders' affective state, i.e., positive and negative affect. Demographic and personal characteristics are also included in the model as predictors.

The field experiment presented here applied a stress regulation technique to optimize affective and neuroendocrine responses and improve academic and psychological outcomes in an evaluative academic context. Community college students (N = 339) were randomly assigned to stress reappraisal or active control conditions immediately before taking their second in-class exam. Whereas stress is typically perceived as having negative effects, stress reappraisal informs individuals about the functional benefits of stress and is hypothesized to reduce threat appraisals, and subsequently, improve downstream outcomes. Multilevel models indicated that compared with controls, reappraising stress led to less math evaluation anxiety, lower threat appraisals, more adaptive neuroendocrine responses (lower cortisol and higher testosterone levels on testing days relative to baseline), and higher scores on Exam 2 and on a subsequent Exam 3. Reappraisal students also persisted in their courses at a higher rate than controls. Targeted mediation models suggested stress appraisals partially mediated effects of reappraisal. Notably, procrastination and performance approach goals (measured between exams) partially mediated lagged effects of reappraisal on subsequent performance. Implications for the stress, emotion regulation, and mindsets literatures are discussed. Moreover, alleviating negative effects of acute stress in community college students, a substantial but understudied population, has potentially important applied implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite an increase in the use of technology in undergraduate anatomy education, and the rising popularity of online anatomy courses at community colleges in the United States, there have been no reports on the efficacy of augmented reality on anatomy education in this population. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that augmented reality is an effective and engaging tool for learning anatomy in community college students. Participants recruited from Cuyahoga Community College (Cleveland, OH) studied skull anatomy using either traditional tools (i.e., textbook and plastic skull model) or an augmented reality head‐mounted display with an interactive virtual skull application. Comparison of knowledge before and following the study period revealed that augmented reality was an effective tool for learning skull anatomy: pre‐quiz = 32.7% (± 25.2); mean (± SD), post‐quiz = 61.8% (± 19.5); n = 15; t (28) = 3.53; P = 0.001. The traditional tools were equally effective: pre‐quiz = 44.9 % (± 18.6), post‐quiz = 67.9 % (± 17.3); n = 17; t (32) = 3.73; P = 0.0007. Students rated the augmented reality device as 9.6 (± 1.0); mean (± SD) when asked if it fit the statement “fun to use” on a semantic differential scale from 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent). In conclusion, this study found that augmented reality is an effective and engaging tool for the instruction of skull anatomy at a community college.

BACKGROUND: Follistatin (FST) is an intrinsic inhibitor of activin, a member of the transforming growth factor-β superfamily of ligands. The prognostic value of FST and its family members, the follistatin-like (FSTL) proteins, have been studied in various cancers. However, these studies, as well as limited functional analyses of the FSTL proteins, have yielded conflicting results on the role of these proteins in disease progression. Furthermore, very few have been focused on FST itself. We assessed whether FST may be a suppressor of tumorigenesis and/or metastatic progression in breast cancer. METHODS: Using publicly available gene expression data, we examined the expression patterns of FST and INHBA, a subunit of activin, in normal and cancerous breast tissue and the prognostic value of FST in breast cancer metastases, recurrence-free survival, and overall survival. The functional effects of activin and FST on in vitro proliferation, migration, and invasion of breast cancer cells were also examined. FST overexpression in an autochthonous mouse model of breast cancer was then used to assess the in vivo impact of FST on metastatic progression. RESULTS: Examination of multiple breast cancer datasets revealed that FST expression is reduced in breast cancers compared with normal tissue and that low FST expression predicts increased metastasis and reduced overall survival. FST expression was also reduced in a mouse model of HER2/Neu-induced metastatic breast cancer. We found that FST blocks activin-induced breast epithelial cell migration in vitro, suggesting that its loss may promote breast cancer aggressiveness. To directly determine if FST restoration could inhibit metastatic progression, we transgenically expressed FST in the HER2/Neu model. Although FST had no impact on tumor initiation or growth, it completely blocked the formation of lung metastases. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that FST is a bona fide metastasis suppressor in this mouse model and support future efforts to develop an FST mimetic to suppress metastatic progression.

Do people sometimes eat in order to keep others comfortable? When people outperform others, they may experience concern or distress if they believe that their performance poses an interpersonal threat (Exline & Lobel, 1999). Two studies extend these outperformance ideas to eating situations among undergraduates. Our main hypothesis focused on the role of sociotropy, which involves preoccupation with pleasing others and maintaining social harmony. Sociotropy was associated with eating more candy, but only when participants believed that a peer wanted them to eat (Study 1). Under these conditions, sociotropy also predicted greater reports of trying to match the peer's eating and eating to make the peer feel comfortable (Study 1). Sociotropy also predicted more interpersonal concern and/or distress in these situations (Studies 1 and 2), which in turn predicted reports of giving in to social pressure by eating more (Study 2).

Beta-lactamase-mediated antibiotic resistance continues to challenge the contemporary treatment of serious bacterial infections. The KPC-2 beta-lactamase, a rapidly emerging gram-negative resistance determinant, hydrolyzes all commercially available beta-lactams, including carbapenems and beta-lactamase inhibitors; the amino acid sequence requirements responsible for this versatility are not yet known. To explore the bases of beta-lactamase activity, we conducted site saturation mutagenesis at Ambler position 237. Only the T237S variant of the KPC-2 beta-lactamase expressed in Escherichia coli DH10B maintained MICs equivalent to those of the wild type (WT) against all of the beta-lactams tested, including carbapenems. In contrast, the T237A variant produced in E. coli DH10B exhibited elevated MICs for only ampicillin, piperacillin, and the beta-lactam-beta-lactamase inhibitor combinations. Residue 237 also plays a novel role in inhibitor discrimination, as 11 of 19 variants exhibit a clavulanate-resistant, sulfone-susceptible phenotype. We further showed that the T237S variant displayed substrate kinetics similar to those of the WT KPC-2 enzyme. Consistent with susceptibility testing, the T237A variant demonstrated a lower k(cat)/K(m) for imipenem, cephalothin, and cefotaxime; interestingly, the most dramatic reduction was with cefotaxime. The decreases in catalytic efficiency were driven by both elevated K(m) values and decreased k(cat) values compared to those of the WT enzyme. Moreover, the T237A variant manifested increased K(i)s for clavulanic acid, sulbactam, and tazobactam, while the T237S variant displayed K(i)s similar to those of the WT. To explain these findings, a molecular model of T237A was constructed and this model suggested that (i) the hydroxyl side chain of T237 plays an important role in defining the substrate profile of the KPC-2 beta-lactamase and (ii) hydrogen bonding between the hydroxyl side chain of T237 and the sp(2)-hybridized carboxylate of imipenem may not readily occur in the T237A variant. This stringent requirement for selected cephalosporinase and carbapenemase activity and the important role of T237 in inhibitor discrimination in KPC-2 are central considerations in the future design of beta-lactam antibiotics and inhibitors.

This investigation is a qualitative study of the views held by 36 licensed nurses (25 registered nurses and 11 licensed practical nurses) and 40 nursing assistants regarding caregiving in nursing homes. Because these care providers are most directly involved in the delivery of care, their views are important as determinants of quality of care. Study findings focus on the extent to which nurses and nursing assistants agree on what contributes to good care and how they perceive the work that each does. Also reported are their perceptions regarding factors that make care delivery easy or difficult. Results suggest that nurses and nursing assistants share selected perceptions about the division of labor in the nursing home. Also evident are areas of less agreement among these members of different status sets. A discussion of how these caregivers can work together as effective team members is presented.

CELL BIOLOGYJust over a year ago, researchers identified what appear to be the first human uncoupling (UCPs). Originally discovered in the brown fat cells of hibernating animals, UCPs dissociate the reactions that break down food from those that produce the body's chemical energy, thereby raising resting metabolic rate. Although people don't have brown fat, the new work shows that other human tissues, including ordinary fat and muscle, make proteins very similar to the animal UCPs. There's no proof yet that these human UCP relatives work the same way, but if they do, variations in production of activity of the proteins could help explain why some people have lower metabolic rates--and therefore a greater tendency to gain weight--than others. In addition, if drugs could be found that safely boost UCP activity, they could be used to treat obesity.

A distinction is commonly drawn between continuous sedation until death and physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Only the latter is found to involve killing, whereas the former eludes such characterization. I argue that continuous sedation until death is equivalent to physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia in that both involve killing. This is established by first defining and clarifying palliative sedation therapies in general and continuous sedation until death in particular. A case study analysis and a look at current practices are provided. This is followed by a defense of arguments in favor of definitions of death centering on higher brain (neocortical) functioning rather than on whole brain or cardiopulmonary functioning. It is then shown that continuous sedation until death simulates higher brain definitions of death by eliminating consciousness. Appeals to reversibility and double effect fail to establish any distinguishing characteristics between the simulation of death that occurs in continuous sedation until death and the death that occurs as a result of physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Concluding remarks clarify the moral ramifications of these findings.

The need to develop beta-lactamase inhibitors against class C cephalosporinases of Gram-negative pathogens represents an urgent clinical priority. To respond to this challenge, five boronic acid derivatives, including a new cefoperazone analogue, were synthesized and tested against the class C cephalosporinase of Acinetobacter baumannii [Acinetobacter-derived cephalosporinase (ADC)]. The commercially available carbapenem antibiotics were also assayed. In the boronic acid series, a chiral cephalothin analogue with a meta-carboxyphenyl moiety corresponding to the C(3)/C(4) carboxylate of beta-lactams showed the lowest K(i) (11 +/- 1 nM). In antimicrobial susceptibility tests, this cephalothin analogue lowered the ceftazidime and cefotaxime minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of Escherichia coli DH10B cells carrying bla(ADC) from 16 to 4 microg/mL and from 8 to 1 microg/mL, respectively. On the other hand, each carbapenem exhibited a K(i) of <20 microM, and timed electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) demonstrated the formation of adducts corresponding to acyl-enzyme intermediates with both intact carbapenem and carbapenem lacking the C(6) hydroxyethyl group. To improve our understanding of the interactions between the beta-lactamase and the inhibitors, we constructed models of ADC as an acyl-enzyme intermediate with (i) the meta-carboxyphenyl cephalothin analogue and (ii) the carbapenems, imipenem and meropenem. Our first model suggests that this chiral cephalothin analogue adopts a novel conformation in the beta-lactamase active site. Further, the addition of the substituent mimicking the cephalosporin dihydrothiazine ring may significantly improve affinity for the ADC beta-lactamase. In contrast, the ADC-carbapenem models offer a novel role for the R(2) side group and also suggest that elimination of the C(6) hydroxyethyl group by retroaldolic reaction leads to a significant conformational change in the acyl-enzyme intermediate. Lessons from the diverse mechanisms and structures of the boronic acid derivatives and carbapenems provide insights for the development of new beta-lactamase inhibitors against these critical drug resistance targets.

Background: Although psychological distress among Asian immigrants adjusting to a Western society has been reported in the clinical literature, empirical research support for this phenomenon is lacking. This is particularly true regarding Korean immigrants, an Asian population that is currently immigrating to non-Asian countries in large numbers.Aims: This study investigated how degree of acculturation and adherence to Asian values correlate with psychological distress among Korean immigrants (N = 118) in the United States.Method: Participants from the Midwestern United States (N = 118) completed survey packets including a demographic questionnaire, the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale, the Asian Values Scale, and the Brief Symptom Inventory 18.Results: A multiple regression analysis revealed that less acculturation, stronger adherence to Asian values, and fewer years of living or being educated in the host country cumulatively predicted heightened psychological distress in this population. However, no single variable alone significantly predicted psychological distress, indicating that additional factors not studied here may influence distress symptoms among Korean immigrants.Conclusion: Psychological distress among Korean immigrants living in a Western culture can be identified, and it is associated with a combination of lifestyle factors that impact mental health.

OBJECTIVE: The authors' aim in this study was to determine, after adjustment for the effects of body mass index and sociodemographic measures, whether sex-specific weight control norms would have significant independent relationships with the weight control behavior of college women and men. PARTICIPANTS: The authors used an anonymous questionnaire to assess a sample of 470 college students, aged 18 to 26 years, attending either a 2- year community college or a 4-year public university. METHODS: To calculate body mass index, the authors objectively measured the height and weight of each participant. They conducted separate discriminant function analyses for women and men. RESULTS: The discriminant function analyses clearly indicated that weight control norms of same-sex, close friends were the best discriminators of involvement in weight control. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that perceived peer norms may be important but overlooked risk factors for engaging in unhealthy weight control practices. The authors discuss the implications of these findings in the context of student health promotion.

The relationship between brittle delayed failure under stress, hydrogen permeation, and applied potential, has been examined for a high strength steel in an aerated and deaerated 3N NaCl environment. In the presence of oxygen at low cathodic potentials, no hydrogen permeation was detected and the brittle delayed failure characteristics were minimized, thus exhibiting the usual behavior associated with cathodic protection. However in the absence of oxygen, substantial hydrogen permeation and brittle delayed failure were observed at precisely the same cathodic potentials as employed in the aerated solution. Thus, a definite one-to-one correlation exists between hydrogen availability for embrittlement and stress corrosion cracking (SCC). It is concluded that the phenomenon of cathodic protection does not rule out a hydrogen embrittlement mechanism for SCC. Under anodic potentials, the relation between hydrogen permeation with pitting and brittle delayed failure was confirmed.