Model of Inspiring Media

Scholars have increasingly explored the ways that media content can touch, move, and inspire audiences, leading to numerous beneficial outcomes including increased feelings of connectedness to and heightened motivations for doing good for others. Although this line of inquiry is relatively new, sufficient evidence and patterns of results have emerged such that a clearer picture of the inspiring media experience is coming into focus. This article has two primary goals. First, we seek to synthesize the existing research into a working and evolving model of inspiring media experiences reflecting five interrelated and symbiotic elements: exposure, message factors, responses, outcomes, and personal/situational factors. The model also identifies theoretical mechanisms underlying the previously observed positive effects. Secondly, the article explores situations in which, and precipitating factors present, when these hoped-for outcomes either fail to materialize or result in negative or maladaptive responses and outcomes. Ultimately, the model is proposed as a heuristic roadmap for future scholarship and as an invitation for critique and collaboration in the emerging field of positive media psychology.

A distinct core regulatory module enforces oncogene expression in KMT2A-rearranged leukemia

A small set of lineage-restricted transcription factors (TFs), termed core regulatory circuitry (CRC), control cell identity and malignant transformation. Here, we integrated gene dependency, chromatin architecture and TF perturbation datasets to characterize 31 core TFs in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Contrary to a widely accepted model, we detected a modular CRC structure with hierarchically organized, partially redundant and only sparsely interconnected modules of core TFs controlling distinct genetic programs. Rapid TF degradation followed by measurement of genome-wide transcription rates revealed that core TFs directly regulate dramatically fewer genes than previously assumed. Leukemias carrying KMT2A (MLL) rearrangements depend on the IRF8/MEF2 axis to directly enforce expression of the key oncogenes MYC, HOXA9 and BCL2. Our datasets provide an evolving model of CRC organization in human cells, and a resource for further inquiries into and therapeutic targeting of aberrant transcriptional circuits in cancer.

The effects of storms and a transient sandy veneer on the interannual planform evolution a low-relief coastal cliff and wave-cut platform at Sargent Beach, Texas, USA

Coastal cliff erosion is alongshore-variable and episodic, with retreat rates that depend upon sediment as either tools of abrasion or protective cover. However, the feedbacks between coastal cliff planform morphology, retreat rate, and sediment cover are poorly quantified. This study investigates Sargent Beach, Texas, USA at the annual to interannual scale to explore (1) the relationship between temporal and spatial variability in both cliff retreat rate and roughness and (2) the response of retreat rate and roughness to changes in sediment cover of the underlying mud substrate and the impact of major storms, using the low-lying mudstone cliff as a rapidly evolving model of a larger cliff system. A storm event in 2009 increased the planform roughness and sinuosity of the coastal cliff at Sargent Beach, TX. Following the storm, satellite image-derived shorelines with annual resolution show a decrease in average alongshore erosion rates from 4 to 12 m yr−1, coincident with a decrease in shoreline roughness and sinuosity (smoothing). A storm event in 2017 again increased the planform roughness and sinuosity of the cliff. The occurrence of storms and the presence of sediment to laterally erode the cliff influence the planform morphology and subsequent retreat. Over shorter timescales, monthly retreat of the sea cliff occurred only when the platform was sparsely covered with sediment cover on the wave cut platform, indicating that the tools and cover effects can significantly affect short-term erosion rates. The timescale to return to a smooth shoreline with a long-term steady-state erosion rate following a storm or roughening event is approximately five years, with the long-term rate suggesting a minimum of ~38 years until Sargent Beach breaches, compromising the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) under current conditions and assuming no future storms or intervention. The observed retreat rate varies, both spatially and temporally, with cliff face morphology, demonstrating the importance of multi-scale measurements and analysis for interpretation of coastal processes and patterns of cliff retreat.

An Evolving Model of Knowledge Management in Education and the South African Reality

Concepts of Knowledge Management struck three educators in Gauteng, South Africa, and inspired them to devise a Knowledge Management model for education and schools. The model is focused on how Knowledge Management is sandwiched between the country’s educational policies and the bedrock of literacy and reading. It encompasses the Constitution, common value systems, common leadership/management skills and professional values, inherited language skills and cultural knowledge and lifestyles, general knowledge, information/literacy/digital/IT skills, Intellectual Capital and collaboration between educational entities, school librarians and colleagues, communities and stakeholders. The model highlights the many challenges existing in South African education and further inspired the three educators to consider their own achievements as School Librarians – one at a Public/Government High School and the other at a Public/Government Primary School. The High School Librarian has used IT to promote reading to great effect, while the Primary School Librarian has made important strides in helping her subject/learning area colleagues to teach Information Literacy.

Adaptive Rewiring in Weighted Networks Shows Specificity, Robustness, and Flexibility

Brain network connections rewire adaptively in response to neural activity. Adaptive rewiring may be understood as a process which, at its every step, is aimed at optimizing the efficiency of signal diffusion. In evolving model networks, this amounts to creating shortcut connections in regions with high diffusion and pruning where diffusion is low. Adaptive rewiring leads over time to topologies akin to brain anatomy: small worlds with rich club and modular or centralized structures. We continue our investigation of adaptive rewiring by focusing on three desiderata: specificity of evolving model network architectures, robustness of dynamically maintained architectures, and flexibility of network evolution to stochastically deviate from specificity and robustness. Our adaptive rewiring model simulations show that specificity and robustness characterize alternative modes of network operation, controlled by a single parameter, the rewiring interval. Small control parameter shifts across a critical transition zone allow switching between the two modes. Adaptive rewiring exhibits greater flexibility for skewed, lognormal connection weight distributions than for normally distributed ones. The results qualify adaptive rewiring as a key principle of self-organized complexity in network architectures, in particular of those that characterize the variety of functional architectures in the brain.

Controls on Greenland moulin geometry and evolution from the Moulin Shape model

Nearly all meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets is routed englacially through moulins, which collectively comprise approximately 10–14 % of the efficient englacial–subglacial hydrologic system. Therefore, the geometry and evolution of moulins has the potential to influence subglacial water pressure variations, ice motion, and the runoff hydrograph delivered to the ocean. We develop the Moulin Shape (MouSh) model, a time-evolving model of moulin geometry. MouSh models ice deformation around a moulin using both viscous and elastic rheologies and models melting within the moulin through heat dissipation from turbulent water flow, both above and below the water line. We force MouSh with idealized and realistic surface melt inputs. Our results show that variations in surface melt change the geometry of a moulin by approximately 30 % daily and by over 100 % seasonally. These size variations cause observable differences in moulin water storage capacity, moulin water levels, and subglacial channel size compared to a static, cylindrical moulin. Our results suggest that moulins are significant storage reservoirs for meltwater, with storage capacity and water levels varying over multiple timescales. Representing moulin geometry within subglacial hydrologic models would therefore improve their accuracy, especially over seasonal periods or in regions where overburden pressures are high.

The evolving use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Sars-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in significant and unprecedented shifts in the delivery of health care services in the United States. Although wound care remains an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial consequences and infectious disease ramifications of the pandemic have resulted in closure or limitation of hours in many outpatient wound and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) centers. As HBOT patients often require daily treatment sessions for a period of months, it is necessary for facilities providing HBOT services to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic while still maintaining availability of this important service. Modification of HBOT session timing and chamber decontamination procedures, utilisation of telehealth services for initial patient evaluations, and acceptance of novel patient populations and diagnoses are mechanisms by which HBOT centers can adapt to the evolving model of health care delivery throughout a pandemic. While COVID-19 is not a currently accepted indication for HBOT, patients may be referred for HBOT consultation due to the post-infectious sequelae of the virus, and thus HBOT facilities must be aware of the potential uses of this treatment for post-viral complications. By redefining paradigms for health care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, HBOT and wound centers can continue to provide high-quality and uninterrupted care to vulnerable patient populations.