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Abstract Background Impaired ability to make inferences about what another person might think or feel (i.e., social cognition impairment) is recognised as a core feature of schizophrenia and a key determinant of the poor social functioning that characterizes this illness. The development of treatments to target social cognitive impairments as a causal factor of impaired functioning in schizophrenia is of high priority. In this study, we investigated the acceptability, feasibility, and limited efficacy of 2 programs targeted at specific domains of social cognition in schizophrenia: “SoCog” Mental-State Reasoning Training (SoCog-MSRT) and “SoCog” Emotion Recognition Training (SoCog-ERT). Method Thirty-one participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were allocated to either SoCog-MSRT (n = 19) or SoCog-ERT (n = 12). Treatment comprised 12 twice-weekly sessions for 6 weeks. Participants underwent assessments of social cognition, neurocognition and symptoms at baseline, post-training and 3-months after completing training. Results Attendance at training sessions was high with an average of 89.29 % attendance in the SoCog-MSRT groups and 85.42 % in the SoCog-ERT groups. Participants also reported the 2 programs as enjoyable and beneficial. Both SoCog-MSRT and SoCog-ERT groups showed increased scores on a false belief reasoning task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. The SoCog-MSRT group also showed reduced personalising attributional biases in a small number of participants, while the SoCog-ERT group showed improved emotion recognition. Conclusions The results are promising and support the feasibility and acceptability of the 2 SoCog programs as well as limited efficacy to improve social cognitive abilities in schizophrenia. There is also some evidence that skills for the recognition of basic facial expressions need specific training. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12613000978763 . Retrospectively registered 3/09/2013.

Recently, I had the privilege of hosting a session in honour of Dr. Warwick Bray at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The following is a forward to Pamela J. Smith’s interview which introduces the reader to this wonderfully modest and endearingly understated man. His modest nature is exemplified in the title for my introduction which comes from a letter Warwick sent me in response to my request for his curriculum vitae – a document he humourously paralleled to children’s book ‘The Life and Times of Uncle Wiggley’.

If honours and titles give measure of a man, then Professor Sir Grahame Clark was indeed important. Faculty Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University from 1935-46, University Lecturer 1946-52, Disney Professor of Archaeology 1952-74, Head of the Department of Archaeol­ogy and Anthropology 1956-61 and 1968-71, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge 1950-73, Master of Peterhouse 1973-80, he was a visiting lecturer at diverse universities; appointed CBE in 1971, he received many awards includ­ing the prestigious Erasmus Prize for 1990, presented by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, for his "long and inspiring devotion to prehistory" (Scarre 1991:10); and in June 1992, he was knighted. Yet well before fame and position were rewards, Clark made major contributions to the establishment of prehis­tory as an academic subject at Cambridge University. Cambridge was the first and, for many years, only British university granting an undergraduate degree which offered prehistory as a specialization. "The development of postgraduate research in prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge had to wait on the provision of undergraduate teaching;' Clark (1989b: 6) recently observed. The "faculty was the only one in Britain producing a flow of graduates in prehistoric archaeology" (Clark 1989a: 53).

Acclaimed archaeologist, Colin Renfrew, remembers the exciting and momentous academic changes which dominated archaeology in Britain and the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Describing his experiences as a student and young academic at the University of Cambridge, Renfrew argues that basic philosophical questions (What is the nature of explanation? What are we doing as archaeologists?) underlay the emergence of a ‘New Archaeology’ in the 1960s and that young ‘New Archaeologists’ successfully used scientific and computer research methods to answer innovative environmental and economic questions about prehistory. He feels that this new academic development went seriously wrong in the United States when archaeologists relied too heavily on Carl Hempel’s analysis of scientific explanation. Consequently, Renfrew suggests, the New Archaeology was already in decline by the early 1970s.

In 1939, Dorothy Garrod became the first woman Professor in either Cambridge or Oxford. Garrod at the time was Director of Studies at Newnham College, Cambridge University and had been in charge of excava­tions in Gibraltar, Western Judaea, Southern Kurdistan and Mount Carmel for which she is now renowned. Trained by Marett at Oxford and Abbe Henri Breuil in France, she was one of our finest archaeologists. By 1939, Garrod had unearthed the well-preserved skull of 'Abel', a Neanderthal child, in Gibraltar, discovered and named the Natufian culture while excavating Shukba near Jerusalem, directed the long term, large scale excavations at Mount Carmel and traveled with Bruce Howe as her assistant to explore Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria. Once elected Professor, she became instrumental in establishing Archaeology and Anthropology as a full degree course and influential in Cambridge's decision to admit women to full membership in 1948. After retirement, she continued excavating in Lebanon and France. Here, with her close friend Suzanen Cassou de Saint Mathurin, she discovered the superb Magdalenian sculptured frieze at Angles-sur-l'Anglin.

This article discusses the outcomes of a partnership between four high schools and one university to reduce the need for remediation in reading and writing. The purpose of the partnership was to build relationships between secondary and postsecondary faculty and to create a senior year English Transition course for students who did not meet ACT benchmarks for reading and/or writing. We discuss recommendations for school administrators and paired t-test results for assessments used in the English Transition course.

Background: In T2‐mediated severe asthma, biologic therapies, such as mepolizumab, are increasingly used to control disease. Current biomarkers can indicate adequate suppression of T2 inflammation, but it is unclear whether they provide information about airway microbial composition. We investigated the relationships between current T2 biomarkers and microbial profiles, characteristics associated with a ProteobacteriaHIGH microbial profile and the effects of mepolizumab on airway ecology. Methods: Microbiota sequencing was performed on sputum samples obtained at stable and exacerbation state from 140 subjects with severe asthma participating in two clinical trials. Inflammatory subgroups were compared on the basis of biomarkers, including FeNO and sputum and blood eosinophils. ProteobacteriaHIGH subjects were identified by Proteobacteria to Firmicutes ratio ≥0.485. Where paired sputum from stable visits was available, we compared microbial composition at baseline and following ≥12 weeks of mepolizumab. Results: Microbial composition was not related to inflammatory subgroup based on sputum or blood eosinophils. FeNO ≥50 ppb when stable and at exacerbation indicated a group with less dispersed microbial profiles characterised by high alpha‐diversity and low Proteobacteria. ProteobacteriaHIGH subjects were neutrophilic and had a longer time from asthma diagnosis than ProteobacteriaLOW subjects. In those studied, mepolizumab did not alter airway bacterial load or lead to increased Proteobacteria. Conclusion: High FeNO could indicate a subgroup of severe asthma less likely to benefit from antimicrobial strategies at exacerbation or in the context of poor control. Where FeNO is <50 ppb, biomarkers of microbial composition are required to identify those likely to respond to microbiome‐directed strategies. We found no evidence that mepolizumab alters airway microbial composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for accountability in U.S. schools is gaining intensity. The emergence of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the high dropout rate, and media reports of declining test scores fuel [...]

Although dehydration of ≥ 2% body weight (BW) loss significantly impairs endurance performance, dehydration remains prevalent among athletes and may be owing to a lack of knowledge in relation to fluid requirements. The aim of this study was to assess the hydration status of university/club level athletes (n = 430) from a range of sports/activities (army officer cadet training; bootcamp training; cycling; Gaelic Athletic Association camogie, football and hurling; golf; hockey; netball; rugby; running (sprinting and endurance); Shotokan karate and soccer) immediately before and after training/competition and to assess their nutritional knowledge. Urine specific gravity (USG) was measured immediately before and after exercise and BW loss during exercise was assessed. Nutritional knowledge was assessed using a validated questionnaire. 31.9% of athletes commenced exercise in a dehydrated state (USG >1.020) with 43.6% of participants dehydrated posttraining/competition. Dehydration was particularly prevalent (>40% of cohort) among karateka, female netball players, army offi- cer cadets, and golfers. Golfers that commenced a competitive 18 hole round dehydrated took a significantly higher number of strokes to complete the round in comparison with their euhydrated counterparts (79.5 ± 2.1 vs. 75.7 ± 3.9 strokes, p = .049). Nutritional knowledge was poor among participants (median total score [IQR]; 52.9% [46.0, 59.8]), albeit athletes who were euhydrated at the start of exercise had a higher overall score in comparison with dehydrated athletes (55.2% vs. 50.6%, p = .001). Findings from the current study, therefore, have significant implications for the education of athletes in relation to their individual fluid requirements around exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last year an archive has come to light which is of inestimable value to prehistorians: the unpublished papers of the late Disney Professor of Archaeology in the University [...]

Background: Transition from education to the workforce has been recognised as difficult and linked to ‘reality shock.’ Due to the unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, many student nurses opted in for NHS emergency placements and prematurely transitioned to the workplace, which calls for an in-depth investigation of the work readiness and transition experiences of this cohort.Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate self-perceived work readiness, the effectiveness of support provided by the universities and the NHS as well as explore the experiences of student nurses who responded to the COVID-19 crisis to understand the impact of this early transition to the clinical workforce.Design: A mixed methods study was conducted. It included two stages: (1) an online survey consisting of a work readiness questionnaire and close- and open-ended questions about received support; and (2) online semi-structured interviews that were thematically analysed.Methods: Participants were nursing students from Scottish universities who took on emergency NHS placements. Thirty-three (30 females and 3 males) participants completed the survey and 8 of them (all female) participated in semi-structured interviews. The Work Readiness Scale for graduate nurses along with questions about the support received were completed in the first stage of the study.Results: Organisational acumen was perceived by participants as higher than social intelligence, work competence and personal work characteristics. Three superordinate themes emerged: (1) participants expressed appreciation of and need for coordination of support from the university and the NHS as a key factor in easing into their role; (2) they indicated the sense of obligation as the key driver for taking up this placement; (3) placement was seen as an opportunity to understand their role and develop their professional identity.Conclusions: The findings found the importance of support from the clinical placement and academic teams to help with the integration and application of theory into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature review identified needed competencies for teachers of the learning disabled commonly identified by researchers and professional groups or arising from empirical studies. Sixteen competency statements in five areas (general and special knowledge, planning and evaluation, curriculum content, clinical teaching strategies, and behavior management) resulted. (Author/DB)

Key-words: Dorothy Garrod, women, Cambridge, archaeology, universities In May 1939, the accomplished Palaeolithic archaeologist, Dorothy Garrod, was elected Cambridge's Professor of Archaeology -- the first woman to hold a Chair [...]

Background: Most secure psychiatric hospital patients are of childbearing age, but their parental status is minimally researched.Aim: The aim of the study is to describe the parent patients in one regional secure hospital and explore post-admission child-parent contact.Methods: A 9-year records survey of a complete secure hospital admissions cohort was conducted.Results: Nearly half of the cohort of 165 patients (46%) were parents. Parent patients were less likely than childless patients to have diagnostic co-morbidity or to have received childhood mental health care but were more likely to have committed a homicide/life-threatening index offence with family or friend victims. Men, whether fathers or not, and childless women were unlikely ever to have harmed a child, but it was more likely than not that mother patients had. Records indicated minimal discussion about childlessness. Ninety-four (60%) of the 157 children involved were under 18 years on parental admission. Adult children who had been living with the parent patient before the parent's admission invariably maintained contact with them afterwards, but nearly half (48%) of such under 18-year-olds lost all contact. The only characteristic related to such loss was the index offence victim having been a nuclear family member.Conclusions: As the discrepancy in whether or not parent patients and their children continued contact with each other after the parent's admission seemed to depend mainly on the child's age and his or her resultant freedom to choose, acquisition of accurate data about affected children's perspective on visiting seems essential. Given that parent patients had experienced relative stability in interpersonal relationships and had rarely had childhood disorders, parenting support in conjunction with treatment seems appropriate. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KITTY HAUSER. Shadow Sites: Photography, Archaeology, & the British Landscape 1927-1955. xii+314 pages, 120 illustrations. 2007. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-920632-2 hardback 65 £. In a letter preserved in the [...]

Este estudo teve por objetivo analisar o desempenho de médicos atuantes na atenção primária frente ao reconhecimento de lesões suspeitas de câncer de pele. Trata-se de um estudo de campo exploratório descritivo com abordagem quantitativa. Médicos generalistas, médicos de família e residentes em Medicina de Família e Comunidade atuantes nas 66 unidades de saúde de Curitiba-PR foram entrevistados. O conhecimento em dermatologia foi considerado mínimo para 61,5% dos participantes. A sensibilidade média (S) no reconhecimento das lesões suspeitas foi de 63,92% (IC95% 60,5-67,34). O desempenho foi considerado satisfatório na identificação do melanoma cutâneo (S=83%) e do carcinoma espinocelular (S=97%) e insatisfatório nos casos de ceratose actínica (S=54%), nevo melanocítico displásico (S=51%) e carcinoma basocelular (S=32%). Lesões de pele prevalentes podem estar sendo diagnosticadas tardiamente ou subdiagnosticadas. Salienta-se a importância de atualizações e treinamentos profissionais para aprimoramento da percepção e capacidade de reconhecimento precoce na atenção primária.

Background: Impaired ability to make inferences about what another person might think or feel (i.e., social cognition impairment) is recognised as a core feature of schizophrenia and a key determinant of the poor social functioning that characterizes this illness. The development of treatments to target social cognitive impairments as a causal factor of impaired functioning in schizophrenia is of high priority. In this study, we investigated the acceptability, feasibility, and limited efficacy of 2 programs targeted at specific domains of social cognition in schizophrenia: "SoCog" Mental-State Reasoning Training (SoCog-MSRT) and "SoCog" Emotion Recognition Training (SoCog-ERT). Method: Thirty-one participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were allocated to either SoCog-MSRT (n = 19) or SoCog-ERT (n = 12). Treatment comprised 12 twice-weekly sessions for 6 weeks. Participants underwent assessments of social cognition, neurocognition and symptoms at baseline, post-training and 3-months after completing training. Results: Attendance at training sessions was high with an average of 89.29% attendance in the SoCog-MSRT groups and 85.42% in the SoCog-ERT groups. Participants also reported the 2 programs as enjoyable and beneficial. Both SoCog-MSRT and SoCog-ERT groups showed increased scores on a false belief reasoning task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. The SoCog-MSRT group also showed reduced personalising attributional biases in a small number of participants, while the SoCog-ERT group showed improved emotion recognition. Conclusions: The results are promising and support the feasibility and acceptability of the 2 SoCog programs as well as limited efficacy to improve social cognitive abilities in schizophrenia. There is also some evidence that skills for the recognition of basic facial expressions need specific training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: There is considerable interest in the role that disturbance of body-perception may play in long standing pain problems such as chronic low back pain (CLBP), both as a contributor to the clinical condition and as a potential target for treatment. In some chronic pain conditions body-perception has been investigated using self-report questionnaires. There is currently no questionnaire for assessing body-perception in people with CLBP. OBJECTIVE: To describe the development of a back-specific body-perception questionnaire and examine the psychometrics of this new scale. METHODS: Based on available evidence a back-specific body-perception questionnaire was developed. Fifty-one people with CLBP and an equal number of healthy controls completed the questionnaire; a subset of the patient population completed the questionnaire again one-week later. Scale-consistency and test-retest reliability were investigated on the patient sample. Validity was investigated by comparing responses between patients and controls as well as exploring the relationship between the questionnaire and important clinical characteristics. RESULTS: All but one of the patients endorsed items on the questionnaire, which suggests that distorted body-perception may exist in this population. The internal-consistency and test-retest reliability of the scale appear acceptable. The discriminative validity of the questionnaire is supported by the marked differences in the questionnaire responses between patients and healthy controls and the construct validity by the significant association between the questionnaire score and important clinical variables. CONCLUSION: Symptoms of body-perception distortion were endorsed by most CLBP patients, while these symptoms are very infrequent amongst healthy controls. Our results suggest the questionnaire has reasonable psychometric properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Since July 2010, new reporting requirements have applied to registered Australian health practitioners who have a reasonable belief that a practitioner or student (of any registered discipline) is exhibiting "notifiable conduct". A study of healthcare complaints reported that a small number of practitioners are over-represented in the majority of formal complaints brought against doctors. The impetus for conducting this research was a recognition that identifying and responding to particular behaviours early may prevent issues requiring mandatory reporting later on. As a first step, a better understanding of how fitness-to-practice (FTP) concerns are viewed was sought from stakeholders in a rural medical school. Methods: This qualitative project used purposive and snowballing sampling. Thirteen participants from an Australian rural medical school were interviewed for the study about FTP concerns. Seven were university staff, including clinical educators, program co-ordinators and academic faculty. Six were medical students in the middle of their final year. Their de-identified interview transcripts were independently coded into themes and emergent data categories were refined through comparative analysis between the authors. Data collection ceased after theoretical saturation was achieved. Results: Although students and faculty staff responded similarly in their recognition of FTP concerns, they varied in their assessment of their frequency, with students indicating that concerns were rare. Students and staff expressed reluctance to formally report students or colleagues with FTP concerns because of the complexity and uncertainty of medical practice. Both groups considered early recognition of problems and implementation of supportive mechanisms as important, but students generally did not want to contact the university about concerns for fear of stigmatisation. Conclusion: Education providers need to have clear processes for identifying and responding to FTP concerns in the pre-service years of medical training. Importantly, students need to feel that they can seek help for their own concerns and not be stigmatised in doing so. This is a difficult challenge in a profession that has a perceived culture of strength and a traditional hierarchy. Rural medical schools, with their smaller student groups, are well positioned for early response to issues of concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes involves many genes, most of which are still unknown. The lipid phosphatase SHIP2 is a potent negative regulator of insulin signaling and sensitivity in vivo and is thus a good candidate gene. Here we report the presence of SHIP2 gene mutations associated with type 2 diabetes in rats and humans. The R1142C mutation specifically identified in Goto-Kakizaki (GK) and spontaneously hypertensive rat strains disrupts a potential class II ligand for Src homology (SH)-3 domain and slightly impairs insulin signaling in cell culture. In humans, a deletion identified in the SHIP2 3' untranslated region (UTR) of type 2 diabetic subjects includes a motif implicated in the control of protein synthesis. In cell culture, the deletion results in reporter messenger RNA and protein overexpression. Finally, genotyping of a cohort of type 2 diabetic and control subjects showed a significant association between the deletion and type 2 diabetes. Altogether, our results show that mutations in the SHIP2 gene contribute to the genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes in rats and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]