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A significant number of individuals in the United States use assistive devices to enhance their mobility, and a considerable portion of those who depend on such aids require assistance from another individual in performing daily living activities. The introduction of robotic grippers has emerged as a transformative intervention, significantly contributing to the cultivation of independence. However, there are few grippers in the fields, which help with mimicking human hand-like movements (mostly grasping and pinching, with adoptive force control) to grasp and carry objects. Additionally, the data are not available even on how many Activities of Daily Living (ADL) objects they can handle. The goal of the research is to offer a new three-fingered gripper for daily living assistance, which can both grasp and pinch with adaptive force, enabling the capabilities of handling wide-ranging ADL objects with a minimal footprint. It is designed to handle 90 selective essential ADL objects of different shapes (cylindrical, irregular, rectangular, and round), sizes, weights, and textures (smooth, rough, bumpy, and rubbery). The gripper boasts a meticulously engineered yet simple design, facilitating seamless manufacturing through 3D printing technology without compromising its operational efficacy. The gripper extends its functionality beyond conventional grasping, featuring the capability to pinch (such as holding a credit card) and securely hold lightweight objects. Moreover, the gripper is adaptable to grasping various objects with different shapes and weights with controlled forces. In evaluation, the developed gripper went through rigorous load tests and usability tests. The results demonstrated that the users picked and placed 75 objects out of 90 daily objects. The gripper held and manipulated objects with dimensions from 25 mm to 80 mm and up to 2.9 kg. For heavy-weight objects (like books) where the centroid is far apart from the grasping areas, it is difficult to hold them due to high torque. However, objects' textures have no significant effect on grasping performance. Users perceived the simplicity of the gripper. Further investigation is required to assess the utility and longevity of grippers. This study contributes to developing assistive robots designed to enhance object manipulation, thereby improving individuals' independence and overall quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral readiness can take the form of communication and self‐control skills during challenging situations that are correlated with the development of problem behavior. A skill‐based approach can teach behavioral readiness using procedures that involve synthesized reinforcement, probabilistic reinforcement, and contingency‐based delays; however, this approach is commonly used to address severe behavior under specific situations. There is limited research evaluating a skill‐based approach to teaching behavioral readiness and addressing emerging problem behavior. Also, it is unclear whether teaching effects under specific situations transfer across other, functionally distinct, situations. We evaluated the generality of a skill‐based approach by teaching skills systematically across primary challenging situations involving the interruption of play, presentation of instructions, and removal of reinforcers. Teaching increased communication and self‐control skills, and most skills transferred to secondary challenging situations (treatment extension probes) and caregiver‐implemented sessions. We discuss challenging situations that required teaching, the generality of teaching, and procedural considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Fifty percent of women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) may progress to type 2 diabetes with highest risk among black women. This study aims to characterize postpartum diabetes screening rates among U.S. women with GDM by racial and ethnic group to characterize potential disparities. Materials and Methods: A standardized search of Ovid-Medline, Embase, Scopus, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane, ProQuest, and Clinicaltrials.gov was conducted through October 12, 2018. Of 1,555 titles reviewed, 27 studies met inclusion criteria. Meta-proportion routines with random-effects models estimated pooled postpartum screening proportion effect size (ES) with 95% confidence interval (CI) by racial and ethnic group. Heterogeneity was measured using Cochrane’s Q and Higgins I2 tests. Data were stratified by intervention and data source. Results: There were 96,439 women, of whom 81,930 had race/ethnicity recorded. Heterogeneity was high (I²=99.7%). Postpartum screening rates were low (pooled ES 42% [95% CI 35%–48%]). Point estimates for pooled screening proportions were lower among white (pooled ES 35% [95% CI 28%–42%]) and black (pooled ES 33% [95% CI 24%–42%]) women than among Hispanic (pooled ES 45% [95% CI 37%–53%]) and Asian (pooled ES 50% [95% CI 41%–58%]) women. Interventions to improve screening were most common and effective among Hispanic women. Discussion: Postpartum screening for diabetes after GDM remains low, and black women have among the lowest postpartum screening rates despite highest risk for type 2 diabetes progression. Reporting of race/ethnicity, screening methods, and screening time frames varied across studies. Conclusion: Future studies must standardize racial/ethnic data reporting and examine interventions that address postpartum diabetes screening and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt has been made to explore all the facets of Evaporation-Precipitation (E-P) distribution and variability over the Indian Ocean (IO) basin using Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) data and subsequently a thorough assessment of the latest version of National Centers for Environment Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System (CFS) version-2 is done. This study primarily focuses on two fundamental issues, first, the core issue of pervasive cold SST bias in the CFS simulation in the context of moisture flux exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean and second, the fidelity of the model in simulating mean and variability of E-P and its elemental components associated with the climatic anomalies occurring over the Indian and the Pacific ocean basin. Valuation of evaporation and precipitation, the two integral component of E-P, along with the similar details of wind speed, air-sea humidity difference ( $$\Updelta Q$$) and Sea Surface Temperature (SST) are performed. CFS simulation is vitiated by the presence of basin wide systematic positive bias in evaporation, $$\Updelta Q$$ and similar negative bias in wind speed and SST. Bifurcation of the evaporation bias into its components reveals that bias in air humidity ( $$\hbox{Q}_{a}$$) is basically responsible for the presence of pervasive positive evaporation bias. The regions where CFS does not adhere to the observed wind-evaporation and $$\hbox{Q}_{a}$$-evaporation relation was found to lie over the northern Arabian Sea (AS), the western Bay of Bengal (BoB) and the western Equatorial IO. Evaporation bias is found to control a significant quantum of cold SST bias over most of the basin owing to its intimate association with SST in a coupled feedback system. This area is stretched over the almost entire north IO, north of $$15^{\circ}\hbox{S}$$ excluding a small equatorial strip, where the evaporation bias may essentially explain 20-100 % of cold SST bias. This percentage is maximum over the western IO, central AS and BoB. The CFS simulation comply the distinct feature of the observed mean annual cycle of evaporation and precipitation, but with the additive systematic bias over most of the region. El Niño and negative Indian Ocean Dipole (NIOD) seems to have much better control over the interannual variability of evaporation in the CFS simulation, contrary to the observation where El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole (PIOD) has the larger say. Both El Niño and PIOD (La Niña and NIOD) have the negative (positive) influence on the basin wide evaporation with the exception over a limited region and this relation holds for the twain. The seasonal (JJA and SON) locking of El Niño and PIOD to evaporation and precipitation is displayed by the north-south and east-west asymmetric correlation pattern respectively and this is much perspicuous in the observation as compared to the CFS. The conjoined influence of El Niño and PIOD on evaporation (precipitation) reveals the dominance of PIOD (PIOD + El Niño) response in case of both the observation as well as the CFS. This study will lead a way forward to rectify the ubiquitous cold SST bias in the CFS simulation and help in establishing the credibility of the CFS in terms of seasonal predictability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute chest syndrome is a major cause of death and hospitalisation in children with sickle cell anaemia. It is often initiated by an infection, particularly pneumonia. Microbial agents previously not associated with acute chest syndrome are becoming increasingly important. Group A β-haemolytic Streptococcus (GABHS) is thought to be an uncommon cause of pneumonia in children with sickle cell anaemia. We report a 15-year-old African-American girl who presented with an acute chest event characterised by fever, cough, chest pain, shortness of breath, right upper abdominal quadrant pain, jaundice and otitis media. Chest radiograph showed multi-lobar pneumonia with left pleural effusion. Group A β-haemolytic Streptococcus was isolated from culture of pleural and middle ear fluids. She responded to therapy that included antibiotics, exchange blood transfusion, oxygen, thoracotomy chest tube drainage and decortication. In a child with sickle cell anaemia presenting with fever and an acute chest event, pneumonia should be considered and GABHS recognised as a possible aetiological agent. In addition, a chest X-ray should be obtained and antibiotics against agents causing community-acquired pneumonia instituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Genotyping of the largest collection of mango accessions from around the world. • Estimating the genetic diversity and mislabeling/misidentification within the germplasm collections. • Confirmation of self-pollination, self-compatibility, and pedigree as available. • Genotyping of other accessions from genera related to mango. • A method to simply interrogate the SNP database to facilitate future use of this resource. Abstract Mango is a globally important tropical fruit but lacks genomic tools to support cultivar identification and to enable breeding efforts. Assessing the genetic diversity and relatedness of mango germplasm is essential for identifying genetically distant parents with favorable agronomic traits to produce hybrid populations enabling selection of improved cultivars. We thus genotyped 1915 mango accessions from the United States, Senegal, Thailand, and Australia with 272 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers identifying over 520,000 genotypes. These accessions represent the available diversity from both public and private germplasm collections in these countries, as well as accessions from smaller international collections. The study included M angifera indica , other Mangifera species, and accessions from half sibling populations. Genotype data were analyzed using an affinity propagation method to define 258 groups. Using a simple visual method, no more than 30 SNPs are needed to distinguish a single cultivar of interest from all other cultivars in the dataset enabling the accurate identification of important commercial cultivars. As these SNP markers provided accurate genotype data for accessions from different genera as well as half siblings, the majority of the genetic diversity of the mango germplasm and related species that were genotyped has been captured. The dataset contains a large collection of open-pollinated half siblings from known maternal parents. A simple visual method can also be used to identify self-pollinated individuals among the half siblings of known maternal parents and, in some cases, to infer likely candidates for the paternal parent. Identification of self-pollinated individuals is particularly important in terms of selection of improved cultivars, as due to high levels of heterozygosity, self-pollinated progeny are likely to uncover deleterious recessive alleles. Genotyping of progeny at the seedling stage and removal of self-pollinated progeny can increase the efficiency and decrease the costs of selection of improved cultivars from open-pollinated populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 10 years of followership instruction, this chapter explores the authors' methodology for immersing federal employees and graduate students in discussions about followership and the follower role as a means of enhancing workplace engagement and furthering mission objectives. Our practice has found that when participants explore the tenets of followership from an engagement perspective, perceptions of followers being in subservient obedience to leader authority transition into conceptualizations of a mission-focused partnership with the leader., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)