Reframing the US Attendance Crisis: School Absences Send Powerful Signals about Children Nationally

Some believe that holding schools accountable for student attendance will lead schools to act to reduce student absences and by doing so will increase student achievement, particularly for historically underserved students. We question both the premise that reducing absence will lead to substantial improvements in student achievement and fairness of holding school accountable for increasing attendance. Using two cohorts of nationally-representative data on kindergarteners, we find that factors unrelated to missed instruction account for at least 77 percent of the association between attendance and test score achievement among US children with twenty or more absences. We argue the attendance crisis conceals more troubling crises that will produce inequalities even if every child attends school every day, and that schools are ill-suited to address all the underlying causes of student absence. Absence is a symptom of the myriad challenges students and their families face—challenges that need to be addressed at a larger systemic level.

How can psychotherapists improve their practice with service users from minoritised ethnicities? An application of the Declarative-Procedural-Reflective (DPR) model of clinical skill development

Many white psychotherapists may lack the skills required to work effectively with service users from minoritised ethnicities. This article proposes that the nature of this skills deficit can be understood through applying the Declarative-Procedural-Reflective (DPR) model of therapist skill development. The DPR model has been used in a range of psychotherapeutic contexts, and it provides a systematic account of how therapists from all modalities develop and can improve their skills. Adapting this model to white therapists’ skills in working with service users from minoritised ethnicities allows the identification of specific areas of skills deficit, and therefore clear recommendations as to how to address those deficits. The application of the DPR model to this context suggests that there are clear areas of skills deficit in terms of knowledge base, the practical skills of carrying out therapy, and the ability of therapists to reflect on their work with service users from minoritised ethnicities. I conclude by making a number of suggestions as to how those deficits could be addressed, both by individual therapists and at a systemic level. Key learning aims (1) To explore why some white psychotherapists find it more difficult to work effectively with service users from minoritised ethnicities. (2) To conceptualise difficulties in working with service users from minoritised ethnicities as an issue of clinical skill, knowledge and attitude development, where therapists’ skills can be improved if specific deficits are appropriately addressed. (3) To use the structure of the DPR model to better understand how deficits in therapists’ skills, knowledge and reflective ability may have an impact on their work with service users from minoritised ethnicities. This allows the identification of specific areas of deficit, and therefore clear recommendations as to how to address those deficits. (4) This is primarily addressed at CBT therapists, but the points raised in this article apply to all schools of therapy.

Seeking the Pressure Points: Catalysing Low Carbon Changes from the Middle-Out in Offices and Schools

Non-domestic buildings are frequently characterised as resistant to top-down low-carbon and energy-efficiency policy. Complex relationships amongst building stakeholders are often blamed. “Middle actors”—professionals situated between policymakers and building users—can use their agency and capacity to facilitate energy and carbon decision-making from the “middle-out”. We use semi-structured interviews with expert middle actors working with schools and commercial offices, firstly, to explore their experience of energy and low-carbon decision-making in buildings and, secondly, to reflect on the evolution of middle actors’ role within it. Our exploratory findings suggest that a situated sensitivity to organisational “pressure points” can enhance middle actors’ agency and capacity to catalyse change. We find shifts in the ecology of the “middle”, as the UK’s Net Zero and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agendas pull in new middle actors (such as the financial community) and issues (such as wellbeing and social value) to non-domestic buildings. These issues may work in reinforcing ways with organisational pressure points. Policy should capitalise on this impetus by looking beyond the physicality of individual buildings and engage with middle actors at a systemic level. This could create greater synergies with organisational concerns and strategies of building stakeholders.

Local and systemic oxidative stress in chronic suppurative otitis media

Introduction. According to the literature, oxidative stress is described as one of the main factors in the pathogenesis of chronic suppurative otitis media, supporting the inflammatory process at the local level. The transition of inflammatory mediators to the systemic level is associated with the risk of developing ear purulent-destructive complications. The study of the products of lipid peroxidation in comparison with morphological changes in the structures of the temporal bone will justify the tactics of the operation.Aim. Comparison of the levels of lipid peroxidation products at the local and systemic levels in chronic suppurative otitis media, depending on the nature of pathomorphological changes in the structures of the temporal bone.Materials and methods. A prospective study of 130 patients with chronic suppurative otitis media at the age of 20-62 years with a verified diagnosis of chronic suppurative otitis media, admitted for surgical treatment, was carried out. To study the indicators of oxidative stress at the systemic level, the blood serum of patients was used; at the local level, the bone biomaterial obtained from patients during the surgical treatment of chronic suppurative otitis media was used. The quantitative determination of the primary, secondary and final products of peroxidation was carried out in the groups of patients with separate registration of lipoperoxides in the heptane and isopropanol phases of the lipid extract by spectrophotometry.Results and discussion. In the observation of patients with morphological signs of purulent destruction of the temporal bone, not only a local level of inflammation activity, but also a systemic level of an unfavorable outcome was revealed in two variants: osteoproliferation or osteonecrosis of the bone tissue of the temporal bone in chronic purulent otitis media with a constant threat to the patient's life due to intracranial purulent complications.Conclusion. The appearance in low concentrations of lipid peroxidation products in serum in patients with chronic purulent otitis media substantiates the need for a behind-the-ear approach in reconstructive-sanitizing otosurgery even with minimal clinical manifestations and CT scan data, since at the preclinical level it confirms the osteonecrotic type of bone remodeling with the risk of delayed death.

Liver dysfunction in children with community-acquired pneumonia: the role of infectious and inflammatory markers

Markers of infectious-inflammatory process were studied by determining the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines - interleukin (IL) 1 and IL-6 and proteins of the acute phase of inflammation - C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen in the serum of children with community-acquired pneumonia. It was found that the course of community-acquired pneumonia is accompanied by an increase in serum concentrations of IL-1 and IL-6 in children in parallel with the disease severity. The synthesis of pro-inflammatory cytokines stimulates the production of acute CRP, but reduces the concentration of fibrinogen in the serum of sick children. The revealed connections between the content of the studied cytokines at the systemic level and multidirectional changes in the indicators of the acute phase of inflammation indicate a violation of the liver, where proteins are synthesized in the study. It is shown that with increasing severity of pneumonia, the enzyme activity of aminotransferases - alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) in the serum of children increases with a simultaneous decrease in the de Ritis coefficient, indicating "hepatic" genesis. High levels of aminotransferase is closely correlated with the activity of the infectious-inflammatory process, as indicated by the positive correlation between the level of IL-1 and ALT (r = 0.047) and AST (r = 0.111). At the same time, there is a negative correlation between the levels of IL-1, CRP and the activity of aminotransferases in blood serum.

Platinum (II) Nanofibers as Assembly-driven Inhibitors of Metabolic Adaptation in Cancer Cells

Nanostructure-based functions are omnipresent in biology and essential for the diversity of life. Despite their importance, it is difficult to establish mechanisms that define their bioactivity and rationalize them through synthetic designs. As such, strategies that connect bioactive functions through structure formation are scarce. Herein, we design a near-infrared emitting platinum (II)-tripeptide that undergoes a rearrangement using endogenous H2O2 to rapidly assemble into fibrillar superstructures. The resultant assembly inhibits the metabolism of aggressive metastatic MDA-MB-231 cells and A549 cells at the systemic level by blocking aerobic glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation, thereby shutting down ATP production. Hence, ATP-dependent actin formation and glucose metabolite-dependent histone deacetylase activity are downregulated, leading to apoptosis. By demonstrating that assembly-driven functions can inhibit broad biological pathways, supramolecular nanostructures could offer the next generation biomedical solutions beyond conventional applications.

“The Pandemic is Galvanizing Change”: Anti-Racism in Human Rights Education With Youth

This article discusses how the heightened visibility of racial discrimination coupled with the repression of young people’s civil and political rights during the COVID-19 pandemic is surfacing the need for human rights education (HRE) to evolve to address anti-racism more intentionally. With youth’s amplified awareness of racism and their call for change, HRE practitioners reflect on the use of language, the limitations of “celebrating diversity” and the ways spaces are held for youth engagement as a means of building inclusion given the lived injustices across communities. As children’s rights researchers and practitioners, we consider how our focus on age has resulted in the inadvertent neglect of the interdependence of the rights to participation and to non-discrimination. Shifting to a more critical HRE includes embracing intersectionality and reflexivity, actively bringing BIPOC youth to the centre of sharing and informing, and cultivating youth engagement on racial justice to catalyze systemic-level change.

SARS-CoV2 Infection and the Importance of Potassium Balance

SARS-CoV2 infection results in a range of symptoms from mild pneumonia to cardiac arrhythmias, hyperactivation of the immune response, systemic organ failure and death. However, the mechanism of action has been hard to establish. Analysis of symptoms associated with COVID-19, the activity of repurposed drugs associated with lower death rates or antiviral activity in vitro and a small number of studies describing interventions, point to the importance of electrolyte, and particularly potassium, homeostasis at both the cellular, and systemic level. Elevated urinary loss of potassium is associated with disease severity, and the response to electrolyte replenishment correlates with progression toward recovery. These findings suggest possible diagnostic opportunities and therapeutic interventions. They provide insights into comorbidities and mechanisms associated with infection by SARS-CoV2 and other RNA viruses that target the ACE2 receptor, and/or activate cytokine-mediated immune responses in a potassium-dependent manner.

Using Subsystems beyond Oil

Chapter 6 moves beyond oil. It starts by showing how the subsystems framework lends itself to a particular method or approach to research. That method encourages analysts to really get to know the empirics of their subject before jumping to causal analysis. The chapter then addresses some additional theoretical questions not covered in chapter 2. For example, it identifies the standards of quality by which we can assess competing subsystems analyses from different analysts, and considers how changes at the subsystem level aggregate up to affect an ordering theme at the systemic level (e.g., the liberal order). The goal is to show how scholars can apply the subsystems framework in an analytically fertile way.