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Professional Growth Plans (PGPs), a model of professional development for educators, were completed in the context of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) as part of a grant from a state Professional Educator Standards Board. Participants were in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and represented different educator roles in two urban elementary schools. The PGP process was introduced in PLCs and focused on the implementation of High Leverage Practices (HLPs) for inclusive classrooms (McLeskey et al., 2019). In a collaborative effort with university facilitators, educators engaged in tenets of Participatory Action Research (PAR) through the enactment of the PGP process to implement and reflect on outcomes related to their use of HLPs. Educators selected PGP goals focused on areas of instructional growth and improvement of student performance. PAR was enacted in the context of educators' individual instructional settings through the implementation of PGPs. The purpose of the grant was to familiarize and support educators in the PGP process. The purpose of the study was to identify educators' perceived benefits and challenges with the implementation of PGPs within the context of a collaborative PLC. Educators indicated that collaboration with educators across roles, including university partners, and the structure of the PGP process within the context of a PLC positively influenced their professional growth and student outcomes.

Abstract Optical materials play a key role in enabling modern optoelectronic technologies in a wide variety of domains such as the medical or the energy sector. Among them, nonlinear optical crystals are of primary importance to achieve a broader range of electromagnetic waves in the devices. However, numerous and contradicting requirements significantly limit the discovery of new potential candidates, which, in turn, hinders the technological development. In the present work, the static nonlinear susceptibility and dielectric tensor are computed via density-functional perturbation theory for a set of 579 inorganic semiconductors. The computational methodology is discussed and the provided database is described with respect to both its data distribution and its format. Several comparisons with both experimental and ab initio results from literature allow to confirm the reliability of our data. The aim of this work is to provide a relevant dataset to foster the identification of promising nonlinear optical crystals in order to motivate their subsequent experimental investigation.

A total of 209 events of quasi-monochromatic atmospheric gravity waves (QMGWs) were acquired over 5 years of gravity waves (GWs) observation in southern Brazil. The observations were made by measuring the OH (hydroxyl radical) emission using an all-sky imager hosted by the Southern Space Observatory (SSO) coordinated by the National Institute for Space Research at São Martinho da Serra (RS) (29.44° S, 53.82° W). Using a two-dimensional fast-Fourier-Transform-based spectral analysis, it has been shown that the QMGWs have horizontal wavelengths of 10–55 km, periods of 5–74 min, and phase speeds up to 100 m s−1. The waves exhibited clear seasonal dependence on the propagation direction with anisotropic behavior, propagating mainly toward the southeast during the summer and autumn seasons and mainly toward the northwest during the winter. On the other hand, the propagation directions in the spring season exhibited a wide range from northwest to south. A complementary backward ray-tracing result revealed that the significant factors contributing to the propagation direction of the QMGWs are their source locations and the dynamics of the background winds per season. Three case studies in winter were selected to investigate further the propagation dynamics of the waves and determine their possible source location. We found that the jet stream associated with the cold front and their interaction generated these three GW events.

Abstract Background Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA, liquid biopsy) is a powerful tool to detect molecular alterations. However, depending on tumor characteristics, biology and anatomic localization, cfDNA detection and analysis may be challenging. Gliomas are enclosed into an anatomic sanctuary, which obstacles the release of cfDNA into the peripheral blood. Therefore, the advantages of using liquid biopsy for brain tumors is still to be confirmed. The present study evaluates the ability of liquid biopsy to detect IDH1 mutations and its correlation with survival and clinical characteristics of glioma patients. Methods Blood samples obtained from glioma patients were collected after surgery prior to the adjuvant therapy. cfDNA was extracted from plasma and IDH1 p.R132H mutation analysis was performed on a digital droplet PCR. χ2-test and Cohen k were used to assess the correlation between plasma and tissue IDH1 status, while Kaplan Meier curve and Cox regression analysis were applied to survival analysis. Statistical calculations were performed by MedCalc and GraphPad Prism software. Results A total of 67 samples were collected. A concordance between IDH1 status in tissue and in plasma was found (p = 0.0024), and the presence of the IDH1 mutation both in tissue (138.8 months vs 24.4, p

Lorenzo Viselli,1,* Fabiana Festucci,1,* Maria Chiara Pino,1 Aurora D’Atri,1 Federico Salfi,1 Giulia Amicucci,1,2 Domenico Corigliano,1,2 Federica Naccarato,1 Michele Ferrara,1 Daniela Tempesta1 1Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy; 2Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Michele Ferrara, Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy, Email michele.ferrara@univaq.itPurpose: The present study aimed to validate the Italian version of the Iowa Resistance to Sleeplessness Test (iREST), a 16-item self-report assessing resilience to sleep debt in the affective, cognitive, and somatic domains.Participants and Methods: We examined its factor structure, assessed internal consistency and criterion validity, and established test-retest reliability on 768 Italian native speakers (65.8% of women) with a mean age of 25.98 years old.Results: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed a new 13-item structure for the Italian iREST (iREST-13), demonstrating more satisfactory goodness-of-fit values, and exhibiting good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α ranging from 0.73 to 0.89), relative to the 16-item original version. Results supported the iREST convergent validity, showing significant independence from established measures of sleep; low correlations with conceptually unrelated measures supported divergent validity, indicating that the iREST effectively measures resistance to sleeplessness without confounding with other constructs. Lastly, test-retest reliability was evaluated by administering the iREST to the same sample with a 2-week interval: the significant correlations supported its temporal stability.Conclusion: Further studies are needed to evaluate the applicability of the iREST in diverse populations and explore its relationship with objective sleep measures. Nevertheless, the Italian iREST provides a valuable tool for assessing resistance to sleep loss, offering insights into individual differences in resilience. Additionally, the iREST can assist in identifying individuals who require interventions to enhance resilience to sleep debt, as well as help clinicians evaluate the impact of chronic sleep disruption and deliver targeted interventions.Keywords: sleeplessness, resilience, sleep loss, vulnerability, individual differences, Italian validation

This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language acquisition, processing, typology, language contact, language evolution and change, and formal approaches. Gradient approaches have been very fruitful in some domains, such as language processing, but their potential is not fully realized yet. This may be due to practical reasons. We discuss the most pressing methodological challenges in corpus-based and experimental research of word order and propose some practical solutions.

This essay combines the notions of creative paratopy and discursive ethos in order to shed light on aspects of the work of Benjamin Fondane, a Jewish writer of Romanian origin who chose French as his language of writing. Le Mal des fantômes, a collection of poems written in his adopted language, integrates the various dimensions of creative paratopy : in addition to the paratopy of identity, which in some cases becomes “maximal”, there is a spatial paratopy, a temporal paratopy and a linguistic paratopy. The analysis focuses on his poem Ulysse, which representatively includes most of his typologies, and shows that this unstable and erratic “localisation” is involved in the emergence of a “physicality” and a “character” which belong to a specific “ethical world” and point to “a dynamic of positioning” which is spread over several planes at the same time.

Purpose: Clinical evidence suggests an association between comorbidities and outcome in patients with glioblastoma (GBM). We hypothesised that the internal carotid artery (ICA) calcium score could represent a promising prognostic biomarker in a competing risk analysis in patients diagnosed with GBM. Methods: We validated the use of the ICA calcium score as a surrogate marker of the coronary calcium score in 32 patients with lung cancer. Subsequently, we assessed the impact of the ICA calcium score on overall survival in GBM patients treated with radio-chemotherapy. Results: We analysed 50 GBM patients. At the univariate analysis, methyl-guanine-methyltransferase gene (MGMT) promoter methylation (p = 0.048), gross total tumour resection (p = 0.017), and calcium score (p = 0.011) were significant prognostic predictors in patients with GBM. These three variables also maintained statistical significance in the multivariate analysis. Conclusions: the ICA calcium score could be a promising prognostic biomarker in GBM patients.

Abstract The COVID-19 global pandemic has changed considerably the way time-sensitive disorders are treated. Home isolation, people’s fear of contracting the virus and hospital reorganisation have led to a significant decrease in contacts between citizens and the healthcare system, with an expected decrease in calls to the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia (FVG) region. However, mortality in clinical emergencies like acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), stroke and out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest (OHCA) remained high. An observational retrospective cross-sectional study was carried out in FVG, taking into account the period between March 1, 2020, and May 31, 2020, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and comparing it with the same period in 2019. The flow of calls to the EMS was analysed and COVID-19 impact on time-sensitive disorders (STEMIs, ischemic strokes and OHCPAs) was measured in terms of hospitalisation, treatment and mortality. Despite a −8.01% decrease (p value ˂0.001) in emergency response, a 10.89% increase in calls to the EMS was observed. A lower number of advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitations (CPR) (75.8 vs 45.2%, p=0.000021 in April) and ROSC (39.1 vs 11.6%, p=0.0001 in April) was remarked, and survival rate dropped from 8.5 to 5%. There were less strokes (−27.5%, p value=0.002) despite a more severe onset of symptoms at hospitalisation with NHISS˃10 in 38.47% of cases. Acute myocardial infarctions decreased as well (−20%, p value=0.05), but statistical significances were not determined in the variables considered and in mortality. Despite a lower number of emergency responses, the number of calls to the EMS was considerably higher. The number of cardiac arrests treated with advanced CPR (ALS) was lower, but mortality was higher. The number of strokes decreased as well, but at the time of hospitalisation the clinical picture of the patient was more severe, thus affecting the outcome when the patient was discharged. Finally, STEMI patients decreased; however, no critical issues were observed in the variables taken into account, neither in terms of response times nor in terms of treatment times.

The studies on the sources of three concentric gravity waves (CGWs) excited by a moving mesoscale convective system (MCS) on the night of 1–2 October 2019 are investigated. These CGWs were observed using a hydroxyl (OH) all-sky imager, whereas the MCS was observed by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES). Using 2D spectral analysis, we observed that the three CGWs have horizontal wavelength λH between ∼30–55 km, phase speed cH∼70–90 m s−1, and period τ∼7–12 min. Using backward ray tracing, we found that two of the CGWs were excited from convective cores within the MCS. We also found that the epicenters of the two waves were close to the tropopause positions of the ray-traced paths and nearby convective cores. Regarding the source, we verified that on this night the tropopause was ∼-80 ∘C, which was ∼10 ∘C colder than the days preceding and after the MCS and also colder than usually observed. Since the tropopause height and temperature are fundamental parameters underlying the analysis of the overshooting extent, we developed our own methodology to establish a reference tropopause that would enable a quantitative estimate of this parameter. Since the MCS (CGWs source) was moving, the overshooting convective cores were tracked in space and time. Using the tracking of the overshooting tops (OTs) in space and time with the aid of reverse ray tracing, we found that two out of the three CGWs were excited by the MCS, whereas the source of the remaining one was not directly associated with the MCS.

Implication Statement We developed a pharmacist-led one-month teaching rotation for medical residents to learn HIV pharmacotherapy. This interprofessional education (IPE) was deemed extremely valuable by postgraduate-year-3 residents who intended to have a future practice in HIV care. The overarching concept of this rotation was for the medical trainee to “become-the-pharmacist”, learning to recognize, prevent, and manage drug-related issues in HIV patients. Pharmacist-led IPE should be considered to support medical training in other highly specialized pharmacotherapeutic areas.

Cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) is a rare cause of stroke, particularly in young adults. Several known thrombophilic conditions may lead to an increased CVT risk. Interestingly, few cases in the literature have reported an association between CVT and thyrotoxicosis. Here, we describe the case of a young woman with CVT and concomitant thyrotoxicosis, without any other known prothrombotic conditions. We also performed a literature review of CVT cases and hyperthyroidism, searching for all articles published in peer-reviewed journals. We identified 39 case reports/case series concerning patients with CVT associated with thyrotoxicosis, highlighting, in most cases, the association with additional known prothrombotic factors. We then discussed the possible mechanisms by which hyperthyroidism could underlie a pro-coagulative state resulting in CVT. Thyroid disease might be a more common prothrombotic risk factor than expected in determining CVT. However, in most cases, a coexistence of multiple risk factors was observed, suggesting a multifactorial genesis of the disorder. We hope that this work may alert clinicians to consider thyrotoxicosis as a potential risk factor for CVT, even in patients who apparently have no other pro-coagulative conditions.

Mercury (Hg) fate and transport research requires more effort to obtain a deep knowledge of its biogeochemical cycle, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere and Tropics that are still missing of distributed monitoring sites.Continuous monitoring of atmospheric Hg concentrations and trend worldwide is relevant for the effectiveness evaluation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury (MCM) actions. In this context, Gaseous Elemental Mercury (GEM) and total mercury (THg) in precipitations were monitored from 2013 to 2019 at the Amsterdam Island Observatory (AMS - 37°48′S, 77°34′E) to provide insights into the Hg pathway in the remote southern Indian Ocean, also considering ancillary dataset of Rn-222, CO2, CO, and CH4. GEM average concentration was 1.06 ± 0.07 ng m−3, with a slight increase during the austral winter due to both higher wind speed over the surface ocean and contributions from southern Africa. In wet depositions, THg average concentration was 2.39 ± 1.17 ng L−1, whereas the annual flux averaged 2.04 ± 0.80 μg m−2 year−1. In general, both GEM and Volume-Weighted Mean Concentration (VWMC) of THg did not show an increasing/decreasing trend over the seven-year period, suggesting a substantial lack of evolution about emission of Hg reaching AMS.Air masses Cluster Analysis and Potential Source Contribution Function showed that oceanic evasion was the main Hg contributor at AMS, while further contributions were attributable to long-range transport events from southern Africa, particularly when the occurrence of El Niño increased the frequency of wildfires.

Abstract Background Approximately one third of cancer patients will develop spinal metastases, that can be associated with back pain, neurological symptoms and deterioration in performance status. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) have been offered in clinical practice mainly for the management of oligometastatic and oligoprogressive patients, allowing the prescription of high total dose delivered in one or few sessions to small target volumes, minimizing the dose exposure of normal tissues. Due to the high delivered doses and the proximity of critical organs at risk (OAR) such as the spinal cord, the correct definition of the treatment volume becomes even more important in SBRT treatment, thus making it necessary to standardize the method of target definition and contouring, through the adoption of specific guidelines and specific automatic contouring tools. An automatic target contouring system for spine SBRT is useful to reduce inter-observer differences in target definition. In this study, an automatic contouring tool was evaluated. Methods Simulation CT scans and MRI data of 20 patients with spinal metastases were evaluated. To evaluate the advantage of the automatic target contouring tool (Elements SmartBrush Spine), which uses the identification of different densities within the target vertebra, we evaluated the agreement of the contours of 20 spinal target (2 cervical, 9 dorsal and 9 lumbar column), outlined by three independent observers using the automatic tool compared to the contours obtained manually, and measured by DICE similarity coefficient. Results The agreement of GTV contours outlined by independent operators was superior with the use of the automatic contour tool compared to manually outlined contours (mean DICE coefficient 0.75 vs 0.57, p = 0.048). Conclusions The dedicated contouring tool allows greater precision and reduction of inter-observer differences in the delineation of the target in SBRT spines. Thus, the evaluated system could be useful in the setting of spinal SBRT to reduce uncertainties of contouring increasing the level of precision on target delivered doses.