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Research on disproportionate representation in special education has potential to influence policy in ways that rectify educational inequities. In this study, we investigated how disproportionality researchers have operationalized dis-ability, identified key themes and theories used in disproportionality research, and evaluated the coherence between this research and related policy. We found that studies using medical/rehabilitative frameworks to define disability tended to offer policy recommendations focused on preventing inappropriate identification and enhancing access to early interventions. In contrast, studies situated in social models of dis-ability tended to offer policy recommendations for holistic improvement of educational systems. Finally, disproportionality studies applying legal frameworks tended to advocate for explicit policies regarding race and racism without attending to ableism. Given that federal policy continues to operate from a deficit perspective regarding student variability, we contend that deficit-oriented recommendations for change are unlikely to improve students' experiences in schools and related outcomes. We discuss the need for disproportionality research to inform policy through frameshifting.

Long-term studies are critical for ecological understanding, but they are underutilized as inclusive opportunities for training ecologists. We use our perspective from the Año Nuevo elephant seal programme along with surveys from community members to propose that long-term studies could be better leveraged to promote inclusive education and professional development in ecology. Drawing on our experiences as mentors and mentees, we demonstrate how long-term studies can use their resources, including rich data, robust logistics and extensive professional networks, to improve recruitment and retention of diverse groups of trainees. However, practices such as unpaid labour and unclear expectations limit the utility of these resources for diversifying ecology. We discuss how we have structured our long-term study to create more inclusive and equitable training opportunities. Acknowledging these transformations required substantial resources, we highlight funding sources and organizational partnerships that can promote investment in long-term studies for broadening participation.

PurposeTo describe progression of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), full-field stimulus thresholds (FST), and electroretinography (ERG) over 4 years in the USH2A-related Retinal Degeneration study and to assess their suitability as clinical trial endpoints.DesignProspective natural history study.ParticipantsParticipants (n = 105) with biallelic disease-causing sequence variants in USH2A and BCVA letter scores of ≥54 were included.MethodsBCVA, FST, fundus-guided microperimetry, static perimetry, and spectral domain OCT were performed annually and ERG at baseline and 4 years only. Mixed effects models were used to estimate annual rates of change with 95% confidence intervals. Associations of change from baseline to 4 years between BCVA, FST, ERG, and other metrics were assessed with Spearman correlation coefficients (rs).Main outcome measuresBest-corrected visual acuity, FST, and ERG.ResultsThe annual rate of decline in BCVA was 0.83 (95% confidence interval: 0.65-1.02) letters/year. For FST, the change was 0.09 (0.07-0.11) log cd.s/m2/year for white threshold, 0.10 (0.08-0.12) log cd.s/m2/year for blue threshold, and 0.05 (0.04-0.06) log cd.s/m2/year for red threshold. Changes were 22.6 (17.4-28.2)%/year for white threshold, 26.0 (20.3-32.1)%/year for blue threshold, and 12.3 (8.7-16.0)%/year for red threshold. The high percentage of eyes with undetectable ERGs at baseline limited assessment of change.ConclusionsBest-corrected visual acuity was not a sensitive measure of progression over 4 years. Full-field stimulus threshold was a more sensitive measure; however, additional information on the clinical relevance of changes in FST is needed before this test can be adopted as an endpoint for clinical trials.Financial disclosuresProprietary or commercial disclosure may be found in the Footnotes and Disclosures at the end of this article.

Maternal age can influence reproductive success and offspring fitness, but the timing, magnitude and direction of those impacts are not well understood. Evolutionary theory predicts that selection on fertility senescence is stronger than maternal effect senescence, and therefore, the rate of maternal effect senescence will be faster than fertility senescence. We used a 36-year study of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) to investigate reproductive senescence. Our dataset included 103,746 sightings of 1203 known-age female northern elephant seals. We hypothesized that fertility (maternal reproductive success), offspring survival and recruitment into the breeding population, and male offspring production would decline with advanced maternal age. Furthermore, we hypothesized that older females would shorten their moulting haul out to allow for more time spent foraging. We found evidence for both fertility and maternal effect senescence, but no evidence for senescence impacting offspring recruitment or sex ratio. Breeding probability declined from 96.4% (95% CI: 94.8%-97.5%) at 11 years old to 89.7% (81.9%-94.3%) at 19 years old, and the probability of offspring survival declined from 30.3% (23.6%-38.0%) at 11 years old to 9.1% (3.2%-22.9%) at 19 years old. The rates of decline for fertility and maternal effect senescence were not different from each other. However, maternal effect senescence had a substantially greater impact on the number of offspring surviving to age 1 compared to fertility senescence. Compared to a hypothetical non-senescent population, maternal effect senescence resulted in 5.3% fewer surviving pups, whereas fertility senescence resulted in only 0.3% fewer pups produced per year. These results are consistent with evolutionary theory predicting weaker selection on maternal effect than fertility senescence. Maternal effect senescence may therefore be more influential on population dynamics than fertility senescence in some systems.

PurposeTo evaluate functional and structural assessments as endpoints for clinical trials for USH2A-related retinal degeneration.MethodsPeople with biallelic disease-causing variants in USH2A, visual acuity ≥ 20/80, and visual field ≥ 10° diameter were enrolled in a 4-year, natural history study. Participants underwent static perimetry, microperimetry, visual acuity, fullfield stimulus testing (FST), and optical coherence tomography annually. Rates of change estimated from mixed-effects linear models and percentages of eyes with changes exceeding the coefficient of repeatability (CoR) or thresholds conforming with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines were evaluated.ResultsRates of change were generally more sensitive to change than proportions of eyes exceeding a threshold such as the CoR. Baseline ellipsoid zone area ≥ 3 mm2 was necessary to detect change. Mean sensitivity and volumetric hill of vision measures on static perimetry had similar properties and were the most sensitive to changes of the continuous measures. The highest 4-year proportions of eyes exceeding the CoR were from FST testing (47%) and microperimetry (32%). Specification of loci as functional transition points (FTPs) resulted in 45% (static perimetry) and 46% (microperimetry) at 4 years, meeting FDA guidelines for progression.ConclusionsRate of change of mean sensitivity on static perimetry was a sensitive perimetric continuous measure. Percentages of within-eye change were largest with FST testing and microperimetry. FTPs appear to be particularly sensitive to change. These results affect clinical trial design for USH2A-related retinal degeneration.Translational relevanceAnalyses of natural history data from the Rate of Progression in USH2A-Related Retinal Degeneration (RUSH2A) study can inform eligibility criteria and endpoints for clinical trials.

The Alaskan Layered Pollution And Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) field experiment was a collaborative study designed to improve understanding of pollution sources and chemical processes during winter (cold climate and low-photochemical activity), to investigate indoor pollution, and to study dispersion of pollution as affected by frequent temperature inversions. A number of the research goals were motivated by questions raised by residents of Fairbanks, Alaska, where the study was held. This paper describes the measurement strategies and the conditions encountered during the January and February 2022 field experiment, and reports early examples of how the measurements addressed research goals, particularly those of interest to the residents. Outdoor air measurements showed high concentrations of particulate matter and pollutant gases including volatile organic carbon species. During pollution events, low winds and extremely stable atmospheric conditions trapped pollution below 73 m, an extremely shallow vertical scale. Tethered-balloon-based measurements intercepted plumes aloft, which were associated with power plant point sources through transport modeling. Because cold climate residents spend much of their time indoors, the study included an indoor air quality component, where measurements were made inside and outside a house to study infiltration and indoor sources. In the absence of indoor activities such as cooking and/or heating with a pellet stove, indoor particulate matter concentrations were lower than outdoors; however, cooking and pellet stove burns often caused higher indoor particulate matter concentrations than outdoors. The mass-normalized particulate matter oxidative potential, a health-relevant property measured here by the reactivity with dithiothreiol, of indoor particles varied by source, with cooking particles having less oxidative potential per mass than pellet stove particles.

Abstract Recent advances in cytometry have enabled high-throughput data collection with multiple single-cell protein expression measurements. The significant biological and technical variance in cytometry has posed a formidable challenge during the gating process, especially for the initial pre-gates which deal with unpredictable events, such as debris and technical artifacts. To mitigate the labor-intensive manual gating process, we propose UNITO, a framework to rigorously identify the hierarchical cytometric subpopulations. UNITO transforms a cell-level classification task into an image-based segmentation problem. The framework is validated on three independent cohorts (two mass cytometry and one flow cytometry datasets). We compare its results with previous automated methods using the consensus of at least four experienced immunologists. UNITO outperforms existing methods and deviates from human consensus by no more than any individual does. UNITO can reproduce a similar contour compared to manual gating for post-hoc inspection, and it also allows parallelization of samples for faster processing.

Abstract Chromosome instability is a prevalent vulnerability of cancer cells that has yet to be fully exploited therapeutically. To identify genes uniquely essential to chromosomally unstable cells, we mined the Cancer Dependency Map for genes essential in tumor cells with high levels of copy number aberrations. We identify and validate KIF18A, a mitotic kinesin, as a vulnerability of chromosomally unstable cancer cells. Knockdown of KIF18A leads to mitotic defects and reduction of tumor growth. Screening of a chemical library for inhibitors of KIF18A enzymatic activity identified a hit that was optimized to yield VLS-1272, which is orally bioavailable, potent, ATP non-competitive, microtubule-dependent, and highly selective for KIF18A versus other kinesins. Inhibition of KIF18A’s ATPase activity prevents KIF18A translocation across the mitotic spindle, resulting in chromosome congression defects, mitotic cell accumulation, and cell death. Profiling VLS-1272 across >100 cancer cell lines demonstrates that the specificity towards cancer cells with chromosome instability differentiates KIF18A inhibition from other clinically tested anti-mitotic drugs. Treatment of tumor xenografts with VLS-1272 results in mitotic defects leading to substantial, dose-dependent inhibition of tumor growth. The strong biological rationale, robust preclinical data, and optimized compound properties enable the clinical development of a KIF18A inhibitor in cancers with high chromosomal instability.

Abstract Biomass estimates are crucial for modeling and understanding energy flow through ecosystems. Many modeling frameworks rely on published body weights of organisms to convert density estimates to biomass. However, published body weight data are limited to few taxa in a limited number of systems. Here we present mean individual weights for common benthic macroinvertebrates of the Laurentian Great Lakes from over 2000 benthic samples and 8 yr of data collection. We also compiled wet to dry weight conversions to facilitate data reuse for researchers interested in dry weight. We compared our benthic invertebrate weights to other lakes, demonstrating when weight measurements may be applied outside the Great Lakes. Sensitivity analyses supported the robustness of our calculations. Our dataset is applicable to food web energy flow models, calculation of secondary production, interpretation of trophic markers, and for understanding how biomass distribution varies by benthic invertebrate species in the Great Lakes.

In this study, we examined college and career readiness (CCR) support for students with and without disabilities using data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012. We selected variables relevant to CCR and focused on the interaction of disability, race and ethnicity, and household income across a range of disability categories, including those on individualized education programs and 504 plans, as well as for those without disabilities. Overall, we analyzed 19 groups of students representing these intersectional characteristics. Our findings show significant differences among the groups with regard to receiving the CCR supports: help with college applications, course-taking advice, interpretation of college admissions exam scores, and arranging college visits. Results show students of color without disabilities from low-income households were 2 times more likely to receive certain CCR supports. In contrast, across all study outcomes, students with disabilities showed different patterns than their counterparts without disabilities and were at a clear disadvantage with regard to access to CCR supports. Findings suggest disparities in schoolwide CCR supports for those with disabilities, which are more pronounced for students of color with disabilities. Implications for secondary transition educators and school counselors are discussed.

Abstract: In life sciences graduate programs in the United States, efforts are underway to address barriers to academic success—namely, using interventions targeted at addressing inclusivity and diversity concerns. However, graduate students are typically simultaneously workers for their institutions, where they face workplace challenges such as low wages, inadequate benefits, and vulnerability to harassment and abuse. These challenges may disproportionately affect workers with excluded identities and are thereby barriers to diversity and equity. In recent years, graduate student unionization has expanded. The outcomes of these movements may improve pay, benefits, and working conditions for graduate workers; however, labor organizing presents numerous challenges in academic environments. We reflect on our experiences in a life sciences department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2022 during the largest graduate labor strike to date. We summarize the challenges and discuss successful interventions, including communication strategies for cross-stage coalition building at the departmental level.

Educational agencies with inequities in special education or exclusionary discipline are required to review local policies, practices, and procedures as potential drivers of disproportionality. Indeed, disparities manifest in both locally and through broad, historical narratives; solutions must thus address both local context and histories of power and privilege. However -- despite racial and ethnic disparities defining inequities, school-wide approaches enacted for addressing drivers (e.g. multi-tiered systems of support) rarely center culturally sustaining, anti-racist, and anti-ableist lenses that consider the sociohistorical contexts of an educational space. Further, there is little practical guidance regarding how to implement these frameworks through such a lens, leaving school stakeholders with scant guidance for understanding and addressing inequities via school-level, institutional practices. We outline practical implementation ideas that practitioners might use when selecting school-wide programs meant to shift inequitable systems and provide meaningful access to learning for all students.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model of contextual influences on musical engagement in a person's life. I developed this domain-specific conceptual model based on Bronfenbrenner's (2001) bioecological theory of human development. The model accounts for multiple, interacting contexts that may influence an adolescent's musical development. In this model, I consider one's musical life as an acknowledgment of the multitude of ways that music is a part of their daily life. A musical life encompasses more than a formal music education, and as Abeles (2010) posits, "Music education does not exist isolated in the music classroom. It is influenced by trends in general education, society, culture, and politics" (p.1). In this proposed contextual model, a person's musical life can be seen as being influenced by three systems with dynamic interactions. While extant music education research seems to suggest certain factors are associated with the likelihood of a particular student enrolling in school music programs, such as race and socioeconomic status, many other contexts are interacting upon those decisions (Elpus, 2022). Thus, when we look at students who are enrolled in school music programs, it can be easy to focus on a singular aspect, such as race, socioeconomic status, or prior experience. However, to fully understand who is in the music classroom, it is important to consider an array of factors holistically.

Demand exists for a workforce with graduate degrees in agricultural and environmental sciences. However, research on effective graduate student recruitment into colleges of agricultural and environmental sciences (CAES) is limited. Prospective graduate students consider distinctive factors when selecting an institution, necessitating further examination of their communication channel use. Media richness theory posits communication media are on a continuum of leanness to richness, and agricultural communicators can select the proper medium for an audience based on the message and its richness. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of media richness during the recruitment of prospective graduate students. Nineteen graduate students representing 10 departments within a CAES participated in semi-structured interviews. Qualitative inductive coding revealed three prominent communication channel themes: online, indirect, and direct. Findings indicated participants began their journey using indirect and online channels with less personalization and moved into richer media with the capacity for immediate feedback as their interest increased. Participants expressed disappointment at online channels with outdated information because they felt impersonal. Participants preferred phone or zoom calls as rich media to understand institutional culture, valuing personalization and immediate feedback from current students.

Objectives: Describe the emotional support animal (ESA) experience of college students detailing the process of obtaining an ESA, as well as the benefits and obstacles. Participants: Nine students who had an ESA at college provided preliminary information while an additional four offered insights into their COVID experience with their ESA. Archived records from the Accessibility Resource Center added detail on the ESA process. Methods: This mixed-method study included qualitative interviews (9 students prior to COVID and 4 during COVID) as well as a quantitative analysis of archived data. Thematic analysis was used to extract themes from the interviews. Archived data were analyzed for frequency of select topics. Results: Four positive themes (presence of animal, empowerment, symptom alleviation, and social catalyst) and three negative themes (housing accommodations, lack of ESA education on campus, and social consequences) were extracted from initial interview responses. Analysis of COVID interviews also revealed positive and negative themes with many similar to the pre-COVID responses but also included unique themes reflective of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Archived data revealed a substantial increase in the number of ESAs on campus, a wide range of species, and an array of complaints such as safety concerns, ESA behavior, ESA cleanliness, and ESA in unauthorized areas. Conclusions: Overall, the college ESA experience appears beneficial, facilitating the adjustment to college for students with mental health concerns. However, there are drawbacks. Knowledge of obstacles and concerns will help ease the ESA process for all constituents.

Interlocking mechanisms of exclusion function as gatekeepers to high-quality learning in schools, which perpetuate oppressive conceptions of ability, learning, and intelligence. Across educational ecosystems, these intersecting forms of oppression--including but not limited to racism, ableism, and colonialism--are reified through exclusionary practices that hoard learning opportunities. In this paper, we contend that learning-access disparities are at the crux of educational inequalities, and that theoretical fragmentation across educational disciplines has limited our understanding of entrenched patterns of exclusion and potential solutions. This fragmentation has led to siloed equity conversations and solutions; therefore, we articulate a conceptual framework for inclusive education: Critical Inclusion (InCrit). In doing so, we first engage in a critical-historical review of educational inclusion, including how it has been theorised and operationalised in both research and praxis. We next describe the cross-pollination of the foundational theories on which the conceptual framework stands to emphasise intersectionality and emancipatory education in relation to the vast scholarship on critical inclusion. We then present the framework's core components, which represent connectors between theory and practice, and illustrative examples. We conclude with a discussion of the cross-systems change required to make meaningful progress toward emancipatory education for all students and achieve critical inclusion in practice.

In this preregistered study, we confirmed a transition-planning construct and determined its relationship with an established economic-hardship construct using parent- and youth-reported data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012 and following established quality indicators of preregistered secondary data analyses studies. Transition planning was made up of seven items relevant to individualized education program (IEP) meeting participation. We examined measurement invariance on the basis of disability category and race/ethnicity as well as the intersection of these student characteristics in order to make unbiased group comparisons on key latent parameters. Contrary to our hypotheses, there was no meaningful correlation between transition planning and economic hardship. Moreover, we were unable to establish measurement invariance of transition planning because the item "youth's role in IEP meeting" functioned differently on the basis of disability category. Implications for practice are discussed regarding how decisions about IEP meeting participation are made, by whom and why, and whether evidence-based practices are effectively disseminated. Future research should ensure adequate sampling plans for national survey attempts in order to conduct an in-depth examination based on intersectional student characteristics.

Independent living skills (ILS) are crucial for the post-school success of students with disabilities. In this systematic literature review, we examined ILS interventions for secondary and postsecondary education students with intellectual disability or autism ranging from ages 13-24 years. Forty-two articles met the inclusion criteria and were examined. Findings indicated the most frequent intervention method used was prompting followed by video modeling/prompting. Technology was the most frequent modality used to deliver interventions. The most common types of ILS taught to students were cooking and cleaning. Implications for policy and practice include educators evaluating the range of ILS taught to students. Implications for future research include an emphasis on further developing technological interventions that expand to a wider variety of skills.

Theory-focused joint displays represent an innovative approach to data and results integration with potential to build understanding of complex constructs, including factors that influence change over time. However, the extant literature offers few examples for doing so, particularly in convergent research designs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide a replicable framework for developing and refining an emergent theoretical model in a convergent research design. Through an illustrative example of a study on preservice teachers' growth in practice, we detail a seven-step process in which a theoretical model served as the guide and culminating purpose of the research. In addition to this primary contribution, we also explore the role of visuals in joint display analyses to support meta-inference generation.

Root causes of disproportionality in exclusionary discipline are multiply determined. Teachers' perceptions and implicit biases, enacted within the contexts of schools as racialised organisations, shape how educators interpret and respond to student behaviour. Focusing on the referral phase of the disciplinary process, this systematic review of theoretical frameworks applied in studies on discipline-disparity reduction uncovers how scholars have theorised the impacts of school-based programmes seeking to diminish inequities. We analysed research published between 1990 and 2021 to examine how empirically evaluated programs and their theoretical underpinnings have approached discipline disparities and their alignment with root causes established in the broader literature base. Our findings indicated that studies' conceptual frameworks were commonly at odds with established theory regarding root causes, and we found a notable absence of frameworks related to schools as white, hegemonic spaces. We advocate that researchers apply conceptual frameworks that decentre whiteness, smartness, and goodness in schools.

BackgroundDrinking water is a common source of exposure to inorganic arsenic. In the US, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was enacted to protect consumers from exposure to contaminants, including arsenic, in public water systems (PWS). The reproductive effects of preconception and prenatal arsenic exposure in regions with low to moderate arsenic concentrations are not well understood.ObjectivesThis study examined associations between preconception and prenatal exposure to arsenic violations in water, measured via residence in a county with an arsenic violation in a regulated PWS during pregnancy, and five birth outcomes: birth weight, gestational age at birth, preterm birth, small for gestational age (SGA), and large for gestational age (LGA).MethodsData for arsenic violations in PWS, defined as concentrations exceeding 10 parts per billion, were obtained from the Safe Drinking Water Information System. Participants of the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Cohort Study were matched to arsenic violations by time and location based on residential history data. Multivariable, mixed effects regression models were used to assess the relationship between preconception and prenatal exposure to arsenic violations in drinking water and birth outcomes.ResultsCompared to unexposed infants, continuous exposure to arsenic from three months prior to conception through birth was associated with 88.8 g higher mean birth weight (95% CI: 8.2, 169.5), after adjusting for individual-level confounders. No statistically significant associations were observed between any preconception or prenatal violations exposure and gestational age at birth, preterm birth, SGA, or LGA.ConclusionsOur study did not identify associations between preconception and prenatal arsenic exposure, defined by drinking water exceedances, and adverse birth outcomes. Exposure to arsenic violations in drinking water was associated with higher birth weight. Future studies would benefit from more precise geodata of water system service areas, direct household drinking water measurements, and exposure biomarkers.

Abstract Background Urocystolithiasis is a common problem in dogs; many canine uroliths are resistant to medical dissolution. Novel management options would expand, and in some cases improve, current urolith retrieval strategies. Hypothesis/Objectives To describe a previously unreported technique by the Ellik bladder evacuator (EE) to assist in minimally invasive, cystoscopic retrieval of canine cystoliths. Animals Twelve client‐owned dogs presented with urocystolithiasis. Methods In this retrospective study, dog demographics, procedure type and duration, and clinical outcomes of dogs undergoing cystoscopic cystolith retrieval utilizing the EE are described. Results Twelve dogs underwent 13 cystoscopic procedures utilizing EE for cystolith retrieval. The EE was used in accordance with previously described techniques via a custom‐made adaptor. Ten dogs were spayed females; 8 different breeds were represented. In 8 of 13 procedures, transurethral cystoscopy alone by EE with or without wire basket or grasping forceps was performed with a median procedure duration of 36 minutes (range, 16‐52). In the other 5 procedures, additional interventions (ie, laser lithotripsy, percutaneous perineal approach, urethral stricture ballooning, ethanol parathyroid ablation) were performed as indicated with a median procedure duration 110 minutes (range, 42‐144). No complications were noted in association with the use of the EE; retrieval of cystoliths was complete in 12 of 13 procedures. Conclusions and Clinical Importance Use of the EE during cystoscopy might aid in minimally‐invasive retrieval of cystoliths. This work provides a starting point for additional discussion regarding its benefit relative to current interventions.

Abstract Objective: To compare the recovery of yeast from hospital surfaces from two different collection methods: Eswab moistened with molecular water, and premoistened stick-mounted sponge. Design: Comparison of collection methods for the recovery of yeast in the hospital environment. Setting: This study took place at intensive care units of a large academic medical center.

We have generated single cell transcriptomic atlases of vomeronasal organs (VNO) from juvenile and adult mice. Combined with spatial molecular imaging, we uncover a distinct, previously unidentified class of cells that express the vomeronasal receptors (VRs) and a population of canonical olfactory sensory neurons in the VNO. High-resolution trajectory and cluster analyses reveal the lineage relationship, spatial distribution of cell types, and a putative cascade of molecular events that specify the V1r, V2r, and OR lineages from a common stem cell population. The expression of vomeronasal and olfactory receptors follow power law distributions, but there is high variability in average expression levels between individual receptor and cell types. Substantial co-expression is found between receptors across clades, from different classes, and between olfactory and VRs, with nearly half from pairs located on the same chromosome. Interestingly, the expression of V2r, but not V1r, genes is associated with various transcription factors, suggesting distinct mechanisms of receptor choice associated with the two cell types. We identify association between transcription factors, surface axon guidance molecules, and individual VRs, thereby uncovering a molecular code that guides the specification of the vomeronasal circuitry. Our study provides a wealth of data on the development and organization of the accessory olfactory system at both cellular and molecular levels to enable a deeper understanding of vomeronasal system function.