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Television is a widely adopted source for viewing educational information. Unfortunately, producing a television show on network television can be costly and time consuming. Internet TV offers Extension video content producers the opportunity to create a niche topic channel quickly and at low cost. Internet TV offers viewers a low-cost and comfortable way to watch educational Extension programming on their home television. As of March 2014, there have been a total of 72,063 video views on the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service's sub-channel within the AgSmart Roku Channel.

Research on incarcerated offenders trained to help prisoners change is rare because programs that equip inmates with practical capacities for helping others rehabilitate in prison hardly exist. An exception is the Field Ministry program in Texas, which enlists inmates who have graduated from a prison-based seminary to work as "Field Ministers" and serve other inmates in various capacities. We hypothesize that inmate exposure to Field Ministers is inversely related to antisocial factors and positively to prosocial ones. We applied manifest-variable structural equation modeling to analyze data from a survey of a random sample of male inmates at three maximum-security prisons where the Field Ministry program operated. We found that inmates exposed more frequently to the Field Ministry and for a longer time period tended to report lower levels of criminological risk factors and aggressiveness and higher levels of virtues and predictors of human agency as well as religiosity and spirituality.

Prior research has shown that the predictive power of a stress-health model can be improved by the addition of sleep as a predictor variable. However, negative affect (NA) may act as a confounding variable in stress-health relationships: a source of bias that potentially inflates the observed relationship between stress and health. The current study examines whether stress and sleep remain significant predictors of health after controlling for trait NA. An online survey containing well-established measures of stress, sleep, health, and NA was completed by 460 undergraduates. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that stress and sleep remained significant predictors of self-reported health after controlling for the effects of NA. Our findings support the notion that stress-health models can be improved by the integration of sleep as an additional predictor variable and demonstrate that the stress/sleep-health relationships are not fully explained by dispositional NA. From a theoretical perspective, the inclusion of NA measures allows researchers to tease apart the unique contributions of predictor variables. This knowledge can subsequently be put to the test with greater confidence in the design of interventions that seek to improve health through stress reduction and improved sleep., (© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Introduction: Our aim was to evaluate the minor criteria recommended by the 2007 Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)/American Thoracic Society (ATS) as predictors of 30-day mortality, the need for invasive mechanical ventilation, and/or the need for vasopressor support as markers of severity in patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP)., Methods: Patients admitted to 2 academic teaching hospitals over a 4-year period (January 1, 1999 to December 1, 2002) were identified as having CAP. We used modified minor criteria established by the 2007 IDSA/ATS guidelines. The primary outcome measure was 30-day mortality, and the secondary outcome measures were need for invasive mechanical ventilation and/or need for vasopressor support., Results: About half of the patients in the cohort (n = 352/787 [46%]) had ≥ 1 minor criterion, but only 128 (16.3%) had ≥ 3 minor criteria present at hospital admission. In the multivariable analysis, hypoxemia, multilobar infiltrates, and leukopenia were associated with 30-day mortality (P < 0.05). In addition, hypoxemia and confusion/disorientation were associated with the need for invasive mechanical ventilation and/or vasopressor support (P < 0.05). The presence of ≥ 3 minor criteria was associated with 30-day mortality (odds ratio, 4.82), and the need for invasive mechanical ventilation and/or vasopressor support (odds ratio, 2.59)., Conclusion: Our results show that hypoxemia, multilobar infiltrates, and leukopenia were the most predictive minor criteria for 30-day mortality. In contrast, hypoxemia and confusion/disorientation were the 2 individual minor severe criteria that were more likely to require invasive mechanical ventilation and/or vasopressor support. At least 3 2007 IDSA/ATS minor severe criteria were associated with 30-day mortality and need for invasive mechanical ventilation and/or vasopressor support.