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Mental health is a significant concern among young people, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, mental health problems can significantly reduce student performance in school, including both engagement and achievement. Both mental health problems and reduced student performance often arise due to "peer victimization," which can include teasing, racial- or gender-based discrimination, and/or physical assault. Stress has been proposed as one mechanism through which victimization influences mental health, and stress can also interfere with academic performance at school, including engagement and achievement. To date, however, no research has evaluated longitudinal associations between victimization and stress, and how these longitudinal patterns may impact adolescent behavior and mental health. In this study, we used data from a 2-year cluster randomized trial of cooperative learning to evaluate an etiological process model that includes (1) longitudinal reciprocal effects between victimization and stress, and (2) the effects of both victimization and stress on student mental health and academic engagement. We hypothesized that victimization and stress would have significant reciprocal effects, and that both would predict greater mental health problems and lower academic engagement. We further hypothesized that cooperative learning would have significant effects on all constructs. We found partial support for this model, whereby stress predicted greater victimization, but victimization did not predict increased stress. While both factors were linked to student outcomes, stress was a more powerful predictor. We also found significant salutary effects of cooperative learning on all constructs. The implications of these results for student behavioral and mental health are discussed.

Electron beam quality is paramount for X-ray pulse production in free-electron-lasers (FELs). State-of-the-art linear accelerators (linacs) can deliver multi-GeV electron beams with sufficient quality for hard X-ray-FELs, albeit requiring km-scale setups, whereas plasma-based accelerators can produce multi-GeV electron beams on metre-scale distances, and begin to reach beam qualities sufficient for EUV FELs. Here we show, that electron beams from plasma photocathodes many orders of magnitude brighter than state-of-the-art can be generated in plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFAs), and then extracted, captured, transported and injected into undulators without significant quality loss. These ultrabright, sub-femtosecond electron beams can drive hard X-FELs near the cold beam limit to generate coherent X-ray pulses of attosecond-Angstrom class, reaching saturation after only 10 metres of undulator. This plasma-X-FEL opens pathways for advanced photon science capabilities, such as unperturbed observation of electronic motion inside atoms at their natural time and length scale, and towards higher photon energies.

As the largest youth development organization in the United States, 4-H may be uniquely positioned to meet the needs of rural LGBTQ youth. 4-H has undergone a significant shift towards increasing access, equity, and belonging for youth over the last ten years. However, there is a specific need for research that considers the unique experiences of LGBTQ youth in accessing 4-H in their home communities, and a need for theory to guide research and policy-making decisions in 4-H among other generalized youth development organizations. This qualitative research study proposes a theoretical model of the affordances and constraints rural LGBTQ youth encounter in accessing 4-H. Interviews were conducted with former 4-H members and analysis was informed by grounded theory. Findings suggest that rural LGBTQ youth are influenced by cultures of place, family, community, and rurality. These cultures give rise to certain agricultural traditions and values, youths' personal interests, a gendered and sexualized coding of interests, low tolerance for difference, and a lack of queer community. The resulting tensions between affordances and constraints shape youth involvement patterns, and give rise to unique cultures around queerness in 4-H. The theoretical model developed from this research provides a novel way of considering how rural LGBTQ youth access generalized youth development programs, and the factors that inform decisions to be involved in out-of-school programs such as 4-H.

For more than 30 years, the field of agricultural education has grappled with complex questions of how to recruit, support, retain, and teach diverse youth. Yet the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community is rarely included in published agricultural education research. This philosophical paper addresses the immediate need for understanding more about LGBTQ youth in agricultural education, while identifying opportunities and specific strategies to shift the culture of agricultural education research towards inclusion. Queer theory is leveraged to reveal a nascent body of literature related to sexuality in 4-H and school-based agricultural education. LGBTQ youth in agricultural education face significant challenges: educators ill prepared to meet their needs, a lack of policies to inform decision making, active homophobia from teachers and peers, among others. Agricultural education researchers face methodological and disciplinary barriers to conducting LGBTQ research. Authors employ unique tactics to conduct and disseminate their work. Understanding these strategies and analyzing the conditions that necessitate their use contributes to the disciplinary knowledge of how to conduct inclusive research -- not just for LGBTQ youth -- but for the profession writ large.

The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a proof-of-concept open-source individualized Patient Decision Aid (iPDA) with a group of patients, physicians, and computer scientists. The iPDA was developed based on the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS). A previously published questionnaire was adapted and used to test the user-friendliness and content of the iPDA. The questionnaire contained 40 multiple-choice questions, and answers were given on a 5-point Likert Scale (1–5) ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” In addition to the questionnaire, semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients. We performed a descriptive analysis of the responses. The iPDA was evaluated by 28 computer scientists, 21 physicians, and 13 patients. The results demonstrate that the iPDA was found valuable by 92% (patients), 96% (computer scientists), and 86% (physicians), while the treatment information was judged useful by 92%, 96%, and 95%, respectively. Additionally, the tool was thought to be motivating for patients to actively engage in their treatment by 92%, 93%, and 91% of the above respondents groups. More multimedia components and less text were suggested by the respondents as ways to improve the tool and user interface. In conclusion, we successfully developed and tested an iPDA for patients with stage I–II Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC).

Peer victimization represents a pervasive problem, particularly for students in middle school. Although curriculum-based prevention programs have generated small to moderate effects on victimization, these effects tend to weaken beginning with the transition to middle school. In this study, we evaluated cooperative learning (CL) as a mechanism to prevent victimization, and evaluated reciprocated friendships as a mediator of these effects. Using four waves of data from a cluster randomized trial of CL (7 intervention and 8 control middle schools; N = 1,890 students, 47.1% female, 75.2% White), we found that CL significantly reduced victimization after two years, and these effects were mediated by growth in the ratio of reciprocated friendship in the first year. We conclude that CL can reduce victimization by providing a means for students to engage in extended social interactions with a wider range of peers and thus creating opportunities for students to forge stronger (i.e., reciprocated) friendships.

Scores from computer-based tests are increasingly used to inform a variety of school- and student-level decisions. An underlying assumption is that the associated scores represent effortful responding by each student with respect to the tasks presented. An innovative method for examining evidence for this assumption involves an examination of item response times to detect rapid guessing behavior. If such behavior is present for a particular student across many items, the score is considered invalid due to low test-taking effort (TTE). Drawing on Eccles' expectancy-value theory, this study explored the prevalence of low TTE among middle school students during a computer adaptive test in reading, as well as demographic and motivational correlates of low TTE. Results suggested a prevalence rate of low TTE of 7%. Low TTE was particularly common among males and those with high cost value perceptions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Adolescents, particularly early adolescents, are vulnerable to stress created by negative peer interactions. Stress, in turn, can lead to increased mental health problems and reduced academic engagement, in addition to negative long-term consequences for cognitive development and physical health. Using four waves (2 years) of data from a cluster randomized trial (N = 15 middle schools, 1,890 students, 47.1% female, 75.2% White), we evaluated whether enhancements to peer relations, brought about through carefully structured small-group learning activities (i.e., cooperative learning), could reduce stress and emotional problems and promote academic engagement. We hypothesized that the increased social contact created by cooperative learning would promote greater peer relatedness, reducing student stress and, in turn, reducing emotional problems and promoting academic engagement. Our results confirmed these hypotheses. We conclude that cooperative learning can provide social, behavioral, academic, and mental health benefits for students.

This small-scale field experiment tests whether an adapted values-affirmation intervention enhances youths' academic achievement and mitigates social identity threat while simultaneously raising capacity to promote social change via the development of "critical consciousness" (CC). CC is the critical analysis of inequitable social conditions, motivation to effect change, and the action taken to change perceived inequities. Participants included 53 ninth and tenth grade students from the Midwestern United States (M[subscript age] = 14.97). Results suggested that the intervention may bolster academic performance and raise critical motivation, a subcomponent of CC. Because CC has been thought to be slow to develop, this study provides new insight into how CC can be fostered to support the social mobility and inclusion of youth experiencing marginalization.

Despite "Brown vs. Board of Education," prejudice still exists in the American school system. These attitudes can give rise to negative social experiences for students of color (i.e., discrimination), negatively impacting their mental and physical health and creating disparities in educational outcomes. Rather than seeking to ameliorate these negative experiences, our approach attempts to address the underlying prejudices and, in so doing, reduce these disparities. Using 4 waves of data from a cluster randomized trial (N = 15 middle schools, 1,890 students, 47.1% female, 75.2% White), we hypothesized that cooperative learning, which has been shown to reduce prejudice in previous research, would create positive gains in peer relatedness, perceptions of academic support, and engagement in learning, and that gains would be larger for students of color; our results confirmed these hypotheses. Our findings highlight the potential role of cooperative learning in reducing disparities and creating greater equity in education.

This study explored the concept of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) in relation to undergraduate college students. The extensive research on OCB within traditional work environments indicates that while workers who demonstrate OCB usually receive more favorable performance evaluations, those behaviors also help build community and culture within the organization. This study expands the extant research by examining OCB of college students, where very few studies exist. For this research 490 undergraduate students completed an online survey, where we looked to identify correlations between OCB and four variables: gender, year in school, religious practice, and major. The statistically significant correlation between three of these variables and OCB will help faculty and student life staff identify and encourage OCB in their students. It will also help students be more successful in school, help prepare them for careers, while also enriching the college community.

Jigsaw is a peer learning procedure based on the assumption that making "children treat each other as resources" (Aronson & Patnoe, 2011, p. 8) stimulates cooperation among equals. Using a short-term, longitudinal experimental design in 14 sections of an undergraduate human anatomy laboratory, we contrasted this perspective with the idea that Jigsaw's two-group composition actually elicits a mix of opposing social-psychological processes and outcomes. Supporting this view, students' perceptions of social interdependence and sociocognitive conflict regulation covaried over time with each other and with motivation and achievement. Likewise, rather than solely elicit cooperation, Jigsaw students initially reported higher levels of competition and individualistic efforts than students in a business-as-usual (BAU) control, and lower levels of epistemic regulation. These trends then reversed over time, but the magnitude of increasing cooperation and decreasing competition and individualistic efforts among Jigsaw students never exceeded that of BAU students. In fact, at the end of the semester, the only significant differences between Jigsaw and BAU were for relational regulation and academic achievement. Overall, these findings provide a much more complete but complicated portrait of Jigsaw social psychology and its effects over time, and so doing indicate that theory development is needed to account for mixed-motive situations that simultaneously elicit cooperative, competitive, and individualistic goals and different forms of sociocognitive conflict regulation. For practice, findings also suggest that simply distributing resources among jigsaw group members does not result in optimal outcomes, and consequently Jigsaw must change in ways that strengthen positive interdependence and decrease social comparison.

Most accelerator-based space radiation experiments have been performed with single ion beams at fixed energies. However, the space radiation environment consists of a wide variety of ion species with a continuous range of energies. Due to recent developments in beam switching technology implemented at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), it is now possible to rapidly switch ion species and energies, allowing for the possibility to more realistically simulate the actual radiation environment found in space. The present paper discusses a variety of issues related to implementation of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) simulation at NSRL, especially for experiments in radiobiology. Advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to developing a GCR simulator are presented. In addition, issues common to both GCR simulation and single beam experiments are compared to issues unique to GCR simulation studies. A set of conclusions is presented as well as a discussion of the technical implementation of GCR simulation.