Are Older Adults Prepared to Ensure Food Safety During Extended Power Outages and Other Emergencies?: Findings from a National Survey

Natural disasters and other emergencies can cause an increased risk of foodborne illness. We conducted a nationally representative survey to understand consumers’ knowledge and use of recommended practices during/after extended power outages and other emergencies. Because older adults are at an increased risk for foodborne illness, this paper presents findings from a sample of older adults (n = 290). Only 17% of respondents reported they are fully prepared to keep food safe during an extended power outage. Respondents identified lack of cogitation (42%), storage space (19%), and concern (27%) as barriers to not being fully prepared. Of those who had experienced a recent power outage, less than 40% followed the recommended practices of discarding frozen foods that had thawed and discarding refrigerated, perishable foods. Additionally, 21% to 36% of respondents reported they tasted food to determine whether it was safe to eat. Awareness and likelihood of following recommended practices were higher among women than men. Many older adults are not following recommended practices to ensure food safety during/after extended power outages and other emergencies. Educational materials need to address barriers and be tailored to specific locations and subpopulations of older adults. Educators and public health officials can use the survey findings to address gaps in older adults’ knowledge and practices and to help reduce the risk of foodborne illness among older adults.     

The Role of Healthcare Providers and Caregivers in Educating Older Adults about Foodborne Illness Prevention

Adults aged 60 or older are more likely than younger adults to experience severe complications or even death as a result of foodborne infections. This study investigated which specific groups of healthcare providers or other caregivers are most receptive to providing food safety information to older adults. Telephone-based focus groups were conducted with health care providers and caregivers to determine their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding foodborne illness prevention for older adults. Focus groups identified a gap between older adults’ trust in healthcare providers as a credible source of food safety information and healthcare providers’ lack of training, knowledge, and willingness to provide food safety information to older adults.     

A good education: girls' extracurricular pursuits and school choice

This paper draws on the case studies of six girls between the ages of 10 and 13 and considers their transition to secondary school and involvement in extracurricular sports. Within it, I explore how the girls' understandings of ‘a good education’ affects both their academic and extracurricular/sporting choices. Despite government educational targets which seem to value ‘performative’ academic results, I argue that ideas about a ‘well‐rounded student’ continue to hold particular resonance for middle‐class parents and students. Conversely, I suggest that models of excellence and achievement within education are increasingly echoed in students' sporting participation and that this has specific consequences for working‐class and middle‐class students. I draw particular attention to the girls' experiences of these systems with a view to their ability to convert physical capital accrued in physical activity into other forms of social or cultural capital.     

Fitness,fatness and healthism discourse: girls constructing ‘healthy’ identities in school

Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative research into girls’ participation in physical activity and sport in the UK, this article will explore girls’ embodied constructions of ‘healthy’ identities. My research with girls (aged 10–13) found that over the transition to secondary school, classed and gendered healthism discourses had come to powerfully frame girls’ sports participation by condoning the achievement of slender embodied femininities through physical activity. The findings suggest that while neoliberal indictments of self-care through physical activity can usefully frame girls’ individual ‘body projects’, these discourses also contribute to a hierarchisation of bodies within physical activity settings and to increasingly narrow standards of acceptable bodies able to take part in physical activity. Within the article, I consider how healthism discourses both regulate and are resisted by the girls as they work to construct physical identities within their school settings.     

The Spatial Coding Strategies of One-Year-Old Infants in a Locomotor Search Task

The ability of 1-year-old infants to remember the location of a nonvisible target was investigated in 3 experiments. Infants searched for a toy hidden in one of many possible locations within a circular bounded space. The presence, number, and spatial arrangement of local cues or "landmarks" within this space were varied. The results of Experiment 1 showed that search performance was highly successful when a landmark was coincident with the location of the toy ("direct"), but less successful when a landmark was adjacent to the target location ("indirect"). The results of Experiment 2 suggested that search with an indirect landmark may be more fragile than search with no landmarks at all. In Experiments 3a and 3b, 2 different configurations of indirect landmarks were employed; search performance was equally poor with both of these and was inferior to search with no landmarks. It is concluded that infants of this age are able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and are able to code the distance and direction of a target with respect to themselves or with respect to the larger framework. However, there was no evidence that they can code the distance and direction of a target relative to another object. The difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks is interpreted in terms of cognitive complexity and conflict between spatial strategies.     

Curriculum Alignment with a Mission of Social Change in Higher Education

Institutions of higher education frequently acknowledge their role in contributing to the common good through their mission statements. The current literature suggests that in order to be effective mission statements must be clearly articulated and reflected in all the activities of the institution including its curriculum. Faculty members at Walden University developed a Curriculum Guide for Social Change that could serve as a tool for reviewing current course offerings and developing new courses to reflect its mission of “creating positive social change.” Those involved in piloting the Guide report on the process in this article. The general consensus is that it was time-consuming and frequently subjective; but the Guide gave substance to the institution’s mission, opening the way for its fuller implementation.     

Longitudinal study of the impact of requiring training for students with initially weak spatial skills

ABSTRACT

Three-dimensional spatial skills are a cognitive ability that have been shown to predict success in engineering. Michigan Tech has been offering a course to help students improve their 3-D spatial skills for more than two decades. In previous studies, students who failed a rotations test and enrolled in the course performed better on a number of measures when compared to those who failed the rotations test and did not enrol in the course. A valid criticism of these studies was that the two groups were self-selected. Beginning in 2009, the spatial skills course became a requirement for students who initially failed the rotations test. This paper reports on the results from a longitudinal study conducted to determine the impact of the spatial skills course when no self-selection is involved.     

An examination of the research and training needs in the field of deaf education

THE NATIONAL CENTER on Low-Incidence Disabilities conducted a needs assessment of the research and training needs in the field of deaf education. A total of 331 professionals, parents, administrators, and university faculty responded to the survey. Overall, respondents indicated that the number-one priority was to educate administrators about services that are appropriate for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The second most important concern was how to work within the education system to change it. The third priority was teaching reading strategies. Additional priorities are reported for all respondents, as well as comparisons among the different respondent groups. Implications of the results are presented.     

Effortful Control Moderates Bidirectional Effects Between Children's Externalizing Behavior and Their Mothers' Depressive Symptoms

This study examined bidirectional associations between mothers' depressive symptoms and children's externalizing behavior and whether they were moderated by preschool‐age effortful control and gender. Mothers and teachers reported on 224 primarily White, middle‐class children at ages 3, 5, and 10. Effortful control was assessed via behavioral battery and mother ratings. Structural equation modeling indicated that maternal depressive symptoms at child age 3 predicted more externalizing behavior at age 10 among children with low effortful control and among boys. Externalizing behavior at age 3 predicted fewer depressive symptoms at the age 10 assessments among mothers of children with high effortful control. Boys with suboptimal self‐regulation exposed to high levels of maternal depressive symptoms were at greatest risk for school‐age behavioral problems.