Childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder has been associated with both childhood and adult obesity, whereas treatment with stimulants has been associated with delayed child growth. No longitudinal studies with details about dates of diagnosis, treatment, and duration of stimulant use have been published.

Using electronic health record data, this was the first study to evaluate the independent associations of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis, stimulant treatment, age at first stimulant use, and duration of stimulant use on longitudinal BMI trajectories throughout childhood and adolescence. (Read the full article)

Up to 50% of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) meet criteria for a comorbid anxiety disorder. Despite the high prevalence of anxiety in these children, the impact of anxiety on the lives of children with ADHD has been largely overlooked.

Presence of ≥2 anxiety comorbidities in children with ADHD was associated with poorer child quality of life, daily functioning, and behavior. Multiple anxiety comorbidities were associated with poorer functioning for children with both ADHD-Inattentive and ADHD-Combined presentation. (Read the full article)

Owing to genetic variability in its metabolism, codeine can lead to fatal toxicity or inadequate treatment in pediatric subpopulations and several guidelines have recommended against its use in children. Little is known about codeine prescribing for children in the United States.

There has been a small decline in pediatric codeine prescriptions overall in emergency departments, but no change in prescription for children who have cough or upper respiratory infection, despite professional recommendations against this practice. Substantial numbers of children are being prescribed codeine annually. (Read the full article)

Practice standards for managing adult cervical spine injuries (CSIs) are well established. However, pediatric CSIs are rare and different from those of adults, preventing extrapolation from adult practice and illustrating the need for larger multicenter investigations of CSIs in children.

This study comprehensively describes CSIs in a large multicenter pediatric cohort. The large number of young children included allowed us to comprehensively explore the relationship between CSI pattern and age, mechanism of injury, comorbid injuries, surgical interventions, and neurologic outcome. (Read the full article)

Central line–associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) are common types of hospital-acquired infections associated with high morbidity and cost. In recent years, quality improvement initiatives have demonstrated how to reduce the incidence of CLABSI.

This study presents nationally representative estimates of the cost and length of stay attributable to pediatric CLABSI. We make the business case to justify quality improvement prevention initiatives and the adoption of strategies for cost-effective management of CLABSI. (Read the full article)

Influenza leads to respiratory deteriorations in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. In children, live attenuated influenza virus vaccine (LAIV) is more efficacious than inactivated influenza vaccines, which could be beneficial for CF. Data on the safety of LAIV in this population are scarce.

This study assesses LAIV’s safety in patients with CF and is necessary to determine whether the anticipated benefits associated with LAIV will outweigh potential risks. This can potentially lead to a recommendation for preferential LAIV use in this population. (Read the full article)

Sleep disorders are common in children and adolescents and have a substantial negative impact on daily life and school performance. Long-term evaluations of the efficacy and safety of pharmacologic treatment options for sleep disorders are lacking in pediatric patients.

These 2 studies provide the first evaluation of the effectiveness and safety of eszopiclone in children and adolescents with insomnia associated with ADHD. Data presented here encompass longer-term (up to 1 year) pediatric exposure to eszopiclone. (Read the full article)

Despite breastfeeding recommendations by the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics, there is less agreement on appropriate use of infant solid foods. There are currently no well-established dietary guidelines for US infants that are similar to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (aged >2 years).

Distinct dietary patterns exist among US infants and have differential influences on growth. Use of "Infant guideline solids" (vegetables, fruits, baby cereal, and meat) with prolonged breastfeeding is a promising healthy dietary pattern for infants after age 6 months. (Read the full article)

Functional capabilities in patients with spina bifida depend on the spinal level of the lesion and its type. Sociodemographic characteristics have been shown in other conditions to be an important additional influence on outcomes, making them important for risk adjustment.

Males, non-Hispanic blacks, and patients without private insurance have less favorable functional outcomes in spina bifida, and age also has an impact. These attributes need to be considered by clinicians and researchers and used in comparing care outcomes across clinic settings. (Read the full article)

Suboptimal brain development and increased risk of cognitive deficits are well documented in very low birth weight children. Supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid and arachidonic acid has been associated with positive cognitive effects.

This follow-up study of a randomized controlled trial of supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid and arachidonic acid to very low birth weight infants is the first report on both cognition and brain macrostructure measured with MRI. No cognitive or neuroanatomical effects were detected at 8 years. (Read the full article)

Street youth demonstrate elevated mortality compared with the general adolescent and young adult population. Suicide is a leading cause of death among street youth. Many street youth have experienced childhood maltreatment, including abuse and neglect.

In this prospective cohort of street youth, self-reported attempted suicide and history of childhood maltreatment were common. Individuals who experienced childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, or emotional neglect were at highest risk of attempting suicide. (Read the full article)

Attention is a prerequisite for neurocognitive and behavioral functioning, having a crucial role in academic and social child development. Children with traumatic brain injury have pronounced deficits in attention, but the nature and consequences of these deficits remain unclear.

Lapses of attention represent a core attention deficit after pediatric mild traumatic brain injury with risk factors for complicated traumatic brain injury, or moderate/severe traumatic brain injury. Importantly, lapses of attention explain the relation between intelligence and parent-rated attention problems. (Read the full article)

Infants born very prematurely or with a very low birth weight are known to have an increased risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Results concerning late preterm children are controversial and studies examining fetal growth represented by weight for gestational age are scarce.

We demonstrate that each declining week of gestation increases the risk of ADHD. Also, late preterm infants have an increased risk. Furthermore, as weight for gestational age becomes smaller than 1 SD below the mean, the risk of ADHD increases. (Read the full article)

Many studies have suggested that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are commonly co-occuring neurodevelopmental conditions.

In children with co-occurring ASD and ADHD, an initial ADHD diagnosis may be associated with delayed ASD diagnosis and a higher likelihood of ASD diagnosis older than 6 years of age. Clinicians should consider ASD when evaluating young children presenting with ADHD symptoms. (Read the full article)

Premature infants are at risk for medical and neurodevelopmental sequelae. Close monitoring is an important role for primary care providers. Premature infants have high use of health care services; however, little is known about the role of health supervision visits.

This study explores the utilization and value of health supervision visits for premature infants. Fewer than half were found to be fully adherent to the health supervision visit schedule, resulting in preventive care gaps and immunization delays. (Read the full article)

A group of Bulgarian teenagers and leaders took part in this year’s TeenStreet Europe for the first time and experienced God in new ways.

Equipping teachers to help transgender students feel safe and included requires special training, advocates say.

How the UEFA HatTrick scheme has helped build new stadia and training facilities in Sweden.

Catch your opponents cold by improving your team's counterattack with this training exercise.

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Argentina is a case study in what happens when an economy already on its knees implements an aggressive lockdown, says Mac Margolis.

L’indifférence internationale est un facteur aggravant pour les conflits dans les petits pays. Cependant, en ce qui concerne la République centrafricaine (RCA), le contexte est paradoxalement différent.

Pharmacokinetic changes are often seen in patients with severe infections. Administration by continuous infusion has been suggested to optimize antibiotic exposure and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) target attainment for β-lactams. In an observational study, unbound piperacillin concentrations (n=196) were assessed in 78 critically ill patients following continuous infusion of piperacillin/tazobactam (ratio 8:1). The initial dose of 8, 12 or 16 g (piperacillin component) was determined by individual creatinine clearance (CRCL). Piperacillin concentrations were compared to the EUCAST clinical breakpoint MIC for Pseudomonas aeruginosa (16 mg/L), and the following PK/PD targets were evaluated: 100% fT>1xMIC and 100% fT>4xMIC. A population pharmacokinetic model was developed using NONMEM 7.4.3 consisting of a one-compartment disposition model with linear elimination separated into non-renal and renal (linearly increasing with patient CRCL) clearances. Target attainment was predicted and visualized for all individuals based on the utilized CRCL dosing algorithm. The target of 100% fT>1xMIC was achieved for all patients based on the administered dose, but few patients achieved the target of 100% fT>4xMIC. Probability of target attainment for a simulated cohort of patients showed, that increasing the daily dose by 4 g increments (piperacillin component) did not result in substantially improved target attainment for the 100% fT>4xMIC target. To conclude, in patients with high CRCL combined with high-MIC bacterial infections, even a CI regimen with a daily dose of 24 g may be insufficient to achieve therapeutic concentrations.

Katie Marshall, Penn State World Campus mental health case manager, connects students learning online to resources in their own communities.

If your battery capacity ever drops below 80 percent when you have AppleCare+, you're in luck!

A ballot measure to expand the state's eligibility for so-called education savings account is contentious and confusing.

Jeffrey B. Schwimmer
Oct 1, 2006; 118:1388-1393
ARTICLES

Zoom-bombings have been making headlines across the country this spring, and Penn State is no exception to the increase in security threats and breaches. To address these recent incidents in Zoom meetings, University-wide Zoom default setting changes will be implemented on May 11.

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In this first extract from the new UEFA EURO 2016 technical report, the expert panel reflect on the decreasing proportion of goals scored from counterattacks.

In the last extract from the new UEFA EURO 2016 technical report, the expert panel examine whether having the majority of possession was really much use at all.

Connected storage is more versatile storage, but that's just one of the many benefits of buying a NAS device. We've tested the top models to tell you which one will work best for your home or small business.

Source: www.youtube.com - Thursday, May 07, 2020

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

Matteo Ricci College (MRC) is one of eight schools and colleges that form part of Seattle University, a Catholic institution conducted by the Society of Jesus. 

With the Humanities as its core, MRC offers three degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (BAH), a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Leadership (BAHL), and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Teaching (BAHT). 

Mission of MRC

MRC educates teachers and leaders for a just and humane world. The study of Western culture is the surest place to begin. Pseudo-educators claim it’s a waste of time.   Yet, the facts don’t lie.  We are the beneficiaries of Greco-Roman culture preserved, reinterpreted, and handed down through the Catholic Church’s medieval monastic tradition and continued through the Italian Renaissance. To be human is to be in a story, and to forget one's story leaves a person without a present identity, without a past and without a future.  At MRC, cultural history is taught so that students can draw moral lessons from it.  Those who don’t learn from these lessons are condemned to repeat and relive them.    

With the small class size at MRC, professors can take a personal interest in each student.  In this environment conducive to learning, a close collaboration between student and professor is pursued.   This encourages greater participation in class. Shouldn’t MRC be the envy of most serious students?  You would think so. 

What’s in a Name? 

MRC is named after the 16th - century Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) who spent his adult life as an educator and missionary in China.  At that time, the doors of the Chinese empire were closed to foreigners from the West.   It was Ricci who brought Western civilization to China, and Chinese literati reciprocated by sharing with him their ancient and venerable culture.  For him, inculturation was a reality centuries before the term was invented. He founded the modern Chinese Catholic Church.  

Ricci astonished the Chinese because he loved them. An authority on so many subjects and disciplines—mathematics, astronomy, apologetics, literature, popular catechesis, poetry, art and music—he brought this treasury of gifts to his mission. His intellectual gifts were prodigious: a photographic memory, linguistic ability to speak flawless Chinese, ingenuity to write maps, assemble clocks, read the stars.  As if this weren’t enough, Ricci had a keen ear for music and reportedly sang with great sweetness.   This “wise man from the west” is recognized as “the most cultivated man of his time and one of the most remarkable and brilliant men of history.”  

Known throughout the realm as Li-Ma-T’ou, this missionary scholar remains the most respected and beloved foreign figure in Chinese culture. Some in the Chinese government view him as the “Second Founder of Modern China.”  

This is the man after whom MRC is named.  He is its model of a complete liberal arts education cast in the Jesuit mold.

Student Protest against the Curriculum of MRC

In May, some two hundred enrolled students at (MRC) staged a week-long sit-in objecting to the core curriculum: The focus on Western culture and values was declared irrelevant. Studies in Western Civilization had failed to serve the academic interests of these students. 

The students demanded of the administration that the classic core curriculum in the Humanities be discarded in favor of a new program of studies to reflect special interest groups of race, class, gender, and disability.  Additionally, they demanded that only qualified faculty be hired to teach courses that reflected their interest in identity group studies of race, class, gender, and disability. The Dean of the MRC was to be fired.

Student demands focused on “dissatisfaction, traumatization, and boredom,” that is, “the Humanities program as it exists today” which “ignores and erases the humanity of its students and of peoples around the globe.”  . . . “We are diverse, with many different life experiences, also shaped by colonization, U.S., and Western imperialist, neo-politics, and oppression under racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative and homophobic, transphobic, queerphobic, ableist, nationalistic, xenophobic systems which perpetuate conquest, genocide of indigenous peoples, and pervasive systemic inequities.”

Students spoke of oppression perpetrated by the Administration:  “The first manifest demand is a complete change in the curriculum from a Whiteness-dominated curriculum to a non-Eurocentric interdisciplinary curriculum.  If the (MRC) is unable to tackle these requirements, we demand that it be converted into a department so as to be accountable to another college.”   

What Students at MRC Seek

If MRC students are seeking social justice and equality for all, if they are to make sense of this complex world, they ought to study the Humanities. If they are curious about how other cultures have learned to develop feelings of compassion, tolerance, respect, empathy, they ought to study the Humanities. If they are curious about how creative other people can be, if students are determined to live in a democracy of free citizens, the Humanities should be studied. Without the Humanities, democracy would not exist.  

The Crisis of Higher Education

In this country, we are experiencing an intellectual crisis that has already affected our work force, our politics, and our culture.  Western civilization, the human culmination of centuries of learning is under attack by an identity-driven student population exemplified by the protesters at MRC.  Whereas many academic leaders fail to uphold the purpose of teaching Western civilization, the faculty at MRC values it.  Whereas academic leaders don’t believe that the Humanities have any fundamental influence on their students, the faculty at MRC is invested in it.  Shared values—this is what brings the world together.  

MRC is not alone in promoting a Humanities core curriculum. Many non-sectarian and private colleges proudly offer a core curriculum around which other subjects are framed. At least twenty-five colleges and universities in the United States offer the Great Books tradition to their undergraduates. These books are part of the great conversation about the universal ideas of cultures and civilizations, always related to ethical and religious values. 

Many educators believe that nearly half of college graduates show no measurable improvement in knowledge or critical thinking. They speak and write incorrectly; they do not read.  Their constant companions? Electronic devices with accompanying head sets. Weaker academic requirements, greater specialization in the departments, a rigid orthodoxy and doctrinaire views on liberalism are now part of the university’s politics and cultural life.  

Clash of Goals

If the demands of these special interest groups—race, class, gender, and disability, were met, MRC would cease to exist. A program of identity studies clashes with the raison d’être of a college named after Matteo Ricci, a name synonymous with the richest of classic studies.   

The student protesters are demanding to be extricated from the program that distinguishes itself in the pantheon of Catholic higher education.  

Who would be so foolish as to look down on, much less protest, such a rich curriculum that prompts the most influential employers to hire MRC’s crême de la crème? 

Let the disgruntled students go elsewhere with their partisan interests and narrow viewpoint.  They lose.

Ricci Speaks to College Students

Matteo Ricci has left us several proverbs that can inspire college students.  But not just college students:  

 “Man is a stranger in this world.”

 “The virtuous person speaks little.”

“Time past must be thought of as gone forever.  Don’t waste time.”

“True longevity is reckoned not by number of years but according to progress in virtue.  If the Lord of Heaven grants me one day more of life, He does so that I may correct yesterday’s faults; failures to do this would be a sign of great ingratitude.”

The canonization of Father Matteo Ricci, S.J. ranks high on the ‘to-do list’ of Pope Francis whose high regard and love for him are well known.  This is the Servant of God, Matteo Ricci, S.J.

The new 50-state report from the Rural School and Community Trust, emphasizes early childhood education and college-and-career readiness.

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