Search

Families who care for children in the foster care system often experience challenges related to the system, accessing services and supports, and managing relationships. Despite these challenges, many families thrive because of unique attributes and strengths that contribute to experiences of resilience. Using an ecological framework, this study examined social support among resilient foster families to better understand how foster caregivers experienced positive reciprocal transactions across systems. As part of a larger study, in-depth narrative interviews were conducted to examine the process of resilience for families who foster. Findings revealed that families accessed and benefited from social support on micro-level, meso-level and macro-level. Understanding how families cultivated social support across multiple levels offers implications for practice and policy when considering how best to retain and support families who care for vulnerable children.

Families who foster offer essential care for children and youth when their own parents are unable to provide for their safety and well-being. Foster caregivers face many challenges including increased workload, emotional distress, and the difficulties associated with health and mental health problems that are more common in children in foster care. Despite these stressors, many families are able to sustain fostering while maintaining or enhancing functioning of their unit. This qualitative study applied an adaptational process model of family resilience that emerged in previous studies to examine narratives of persistent, long-term, and multiple fostering experiences. Data corroborated previous research in two ways. Family resilience was again described as a transactional process of coping and adaptation that evolves over time. This process was cultivated through the activation of 10 family strengths that are important in different ways, during varied phases.

Peer instruction has been recognized as an instructional method having a positive impact on learning compared to traditional lectures in science. This method has been widely supported by the socio-constructivist approach to learning giving a positive role to interaction between peers in the construction of knowledge. As far as we know, no study has been conducted from the socio-cognitive approach which suggests that individuals working alone perform better than those interacting with others in groups. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine whether peer instruction improves learning when compared with an individual learning method that does not require any interaction with peers. After being randomly divided into either a peer instruction or an individual learning condition in a chromatography course, students had to answer to a series of multiple-choice questions using clickers at the beginning (pre-test) and end of (post-test) the session. Results revealed that the percentage of correct answers increased similarly from the pre- to the post-test in both conditions. Nevertheless, students perceived the peer instruction method as being more satisfying, engaging and useful than the individual learning method. The findings revealed that peer instruction provides subjective benefits, but failed to demonstrate a greater learning gain. 31;6

Involvement of respiratory muscles is unusual in dystonia, but its occurrence may be underestimated either because it is not conspicuous or because it is improperly imputed to another cause. Three patients who had adult-onset dystonia and who were exhibiting respiratory problems were examined clinically and electrophysiologically. In the three patients the onset was focal-cervical in two and blepharospasm in one. The respiratory problems appeared later. The first patient had involuntary deep and loud inspirations combined with spasms of axial dystonia, the second complained of breathing arrests, and the third had deep inspirations mainly on speaking or reading aloud, thus causing broken speech. Electromyographic findings, including of the diaphragm, were quite consistent with a respiratory involvement in these three cases of dystonia. Assuming that respiratory troubles could be in the first sign of a focal dystonia, electrophysiological studies of respiratory muscles could be used to confirm this.

We evaluated the ability and safety of a laser fiber placed percutaneously into a pig's lobar pulmonary artery to lyse pulmonary artery blood clots that were created in situ. We developed a model to create blood clots in situ that could be placed in any desired location with a radio-opaque marker at the clot position. An excimer laser delivered energy to a flexible 600 μm fiber in three experiments and a coaxial 1.6 mm multifiber catheter in the last experiment Pre- and postprocedure angiograms obtained from each experiment demonstrated that partial laser dissolution of central pulmonary emboli in four pigs was accomplished successfully. To avoid perforation, it is imperative that the laser fiber remain coaxial during the entire lasing process. These results suggest that laser dissolution may become an adjunctive procedure for the treatment of central pulmonary emboli in those patients who cannot be treated medically. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The regio- and stereoselective synthesis of the title compounds 3 and 4 has been accomplished starting with deoxynojirimycin. The factors affecting the stereochemical outcome of Grignard addition to the key carbonyl intermediate are discussed.

This report describes a case of central pontine myelinolysis occurring after a rapid correction of profound hyponatremia. Delayed-onset generalized dystonia and choreoathetosis then appeared. A small pontine myelinolysis was demonstrated by magnetic resonance images, but striatal myelinolysis could not be established. Aspects of movement disorders associated with the osmotic demyelination syndrome are briefly reviewed and discussed.

We report an unusual case of eating dystonia induced by attempts to bite into hard food and resulting in prolonged jaw opening spasms. Mastication was severely impeded. Simultaneous bilateral electromyogram (EMG) of the masticatory muscles during mastication of hard food showed an abnormal prolonged activity in the anterior digastrics with an abnormal cocontraction of these muscles during contraction of the jaw-closers and a prolonged inhibition of the jaw-closers until the hard bolus was softened. This action dystonia seems to be triggered when more than a certain pressure is exerted on the peridontal mechanoreceptors and could result from a defective central command control of their sensory inputs. Local injections of botulinum toxin had little effect.