Project description:We examined the role of educator perceptions of school leader emotion regulation (ER) and emotional support (ES) in educator well-being during a typical year and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on emotion contagion theory, leaders' (in)ability to regulate their own emotions may trigger ripple effects of positive or negative emotions throughout their organizations, impacting staff well-being. Additionally, based on conservation of resources theory, when experiencing psychologically taxing events, skillful emotional support provided by leaders may help to replenish staff's depleted psychological resources, promoting staff well-being. In two national studies, a cross-sectional (NStudy 1 = 4,847) and a two-wave study (NStudy 2 = 2,749), we tested the association between United States preK-12 educator perceptions of school leaders' ER and ES with educator well-being before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, employing structural equation modeling and multilevel modeling. In Studies 1 and 2, educator reports of their leaders' ER and ES skills predicted greater educator well-being, including higher positive affect and job satisfaction and lower emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions. In moderation analyses, perceived leader ER predicted well-being about equally among educators facing severe versus mild health impacts from COVID-19. In contrast, perceived leader ES was more strongly associated with educator well-being for some outcomes in those severely versus mildly impacted by COVID-19 illness and death. Leader ER played a role in the well-being of everyone, whereas leader ES was more predictive of well-being for those severely impacted by a crisis. Regarding implications for policy and practice, efforts to promote well-being among educators may be enhanced when combined with efforts to develop school leaders' ER and ES skills, especially in times of crisis. Accordingly, school districts should consider the value of investing in systematic, evidence-based emotion skills training for their leaders.

Project description:Proliferation of the term "emotion dysregulation" in child psychopathology parallels the growing interest in processes that influence negative emotional reactivity. While it commonly refers to a clinical phenotype where intense anger leads to behavioral dyscontrol, the term implies etiology because anything that is dysregulated requires an impaired regulatory mechanism. Many cognitive, affective, behavioral, neural, and social processes have been studied to improve understanding of emotion dysregulation. Nevertheless, the defective regulatory mechanism that might underlie it remains unclear. This systematic review of research on processes that affect emotion dysregulation endeavors to develop an integrative framework for the wide variety of factors investigated. It seeks to ascertain which, if any, constitutes an impaired regulatory mechanism. Based on this review, we propose a framework organizing emotion-relevant processes into categories pertaining to stimulus processing, response selection and control, emotion generation, closed- or open-loop feedback-based regulation, and experiential influences. Our review finds scant evidence for closed-loop (automatic) mechanisms to downregulate anger arousal rapidly. Open-loop (deliberate) regulatory strategies seem effective for low-to-moderate arousal. More extensive evidence supports roles for aspects of stimulus processing (sensory sensitivity, salience, appraisal, threat processing, and reward expectancy). Response control functions, such as inhibitory control, show robust associations with emotion dysregulation. Processes relating to emotion generation highlight aberrant features in autonomic, endocrine, reward functioning, and tonic mood states. A large literature on adverse childhood experiences and family interactions shows the unique and joint effects of interpersonal with child-level risks. We conclude that the defective closed-loop regulatory mechanisms that emotion dysregulation implies require further specification. Integrating research on emotion-relevant mechanisms along an axis from input factors through emotion generation to corrective feedback may promote research on (a) heterogeneity in pathogenesis, (b) interrelationships between these factors, and (c) the derivation of better-targeted treatments that address specific pathogenic processes of affected youth.

Project description:European freshwater habitats have experienced a severe loss of plant diversity, regionally and locally, over the last century or more. One important and well-established driver of change is eutrophication, which has increased with rising population density and agricultural intensification. However, reduced disturbance of lake margins may have played an additional key role. The geographical variation in water chemistry, which has set the scene for - and interacted with - anthropogenic impact, is much less well understood. We took advantage of some recently completed regional plant distribution surveys, relying on hundreds of skilled citizen scientists, and analyzed the hydrophyte richness to environment relations in five contiguous South-Scandinavian regions. For three of the regions, we also assessed changes to the freshwater flora over the latest 50-80 years. We found a considerable variation in background total phosphorus concentrations and alkalinity, both within and between regions. The prevalence of functional groups differed between regions in accordance with the environmental conditions and the species' tolerance to turbid waters. Similarly, the historical changes within regions followed the same trend in correspondence to the altered environmental conditions over time. Small submerged species decreased relative to tall submerged and floating-leaved species along the regional and historical eutrophication gradients. These changes were accompanied by systematically greater relative abundance of species of higher phosphorus prevalence. We conclude that species traits in close correspondence with anthropogenic impacts are the main determinants of local, regional and historical changes of species distribution and occupancy, while pure biogeography plays a minor role. Conservation measures, such as re-oligotrophication and re-established disturbance regimes through grazing and water level fluctuations, may help reduce the tall reed vegetation, restore the former richness of the freshwater flora and safeguard red-listed species, although extended time delays are anticipated in nutrient-rich regions, in which species only survive at minute abundance in isolated refugia.

Project description:Background: Emerging data from Africa indicates remarkably low numbers of reported COVID-19 deaths despite high levels of disease transmission. However, evolution of these trends as the pandemic progresses remains unknown. More certain are the devastating long-term impacts of the pandemic on health and development evident globally. Research tailored to the unique needs of African countries is crucial. UKCDR and GloPID-R have launched a tracker of funded COVID-19 projects mapped to the WHO research priorities and research priorities of Africa and less-resourced countries and published a baseline analysis of a living systematic review (LSR) of these projects. Methods: In-depth analyses of the baseline LSR for COVID-19 funded research projects in Africa (as of 15th July 2020) to determine the funding landscape and alignment of the projects to research priorities of relevance to Africa. Results: The limited COVID-19 related research across Africa appears to be supported mainly by international funding, especially from Europe, although with notably limited funding from United States-based funders. At the time of this analysis no research projects funded by an African-based funder were identified in the tracker although there are several active funding calls geared at research in Africa and there may be funding data that has not been made publicly available. Many projects mapped to the WHO research priorities and five particular gaps in research funding were identified, namely: investigating the role of children in COVID-19 transmission; effective modes of community engagement; health systems research; communication of uncertainties surrounding mother-to-child transmission of COVID-19; and identifying ways to promote international cooperation. Capacity strengthening was identified as a dominant theme in funded research project plans. Conclusions: We found significantly lower funding investments in COVID-19 research in Africa compared to high-income countries, seven months into the pandemic, indicating a paucity of research targeting the research priorities of relevance to Africa.

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