Choral singing and dementia: Exploring musicality as embodied and relational accomplishment.

This study explored the impact of participation in Voices in Motion (ViM), an intergenerational community choir program that involved persons with dementia, care partners, and high school students in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Data came from interviews with 23 duets, each consisting of a person with dementia and their care partner; additionally, five focus groups with 29 students across two ViM choirs were conducted. Choir rehearsals and concerts were also observed. The analysis revealed that those with dementia have an embodied ability to fully participate in the choir and perform songs despite cognitive decline and memory loss. Involvement in the choirs also facilitated the emergence of strong social relationships among participants while students reported gaining a deeper understanding of the everyday experiences of living with dementia. Through well-attended concerts and performances at public events, ViM also helped re-humanize persons living with dementia by challenging the narrative of decline and its associated stigma.

Drought timing and species growth phenology determine intra-annual recovery of tree height and diameter growth.

Droughts interact with tree phenology to drive declines in growth. As climate change makes drought more likely in the Northeastern USA, it is important to understand how droughts at different times of year will lead to reduced height and diameter growth of trees. To determine how seasonal drought may reduce intra-annual growth, we implemented spring, summer or fall droughts on 288 containerized saplings of six tree species (Acer rubrum, Betula papyrifera, Prunus serotina, Juniperus virginiana, Pinus strobus and Thuja occidentalis). We tracked weekly soil moisture, leaf water potential, height, diameter and survival of all trees before, during and after each 6-week drought. We found that the tree species that conducted the majority of their height or diameter growth in the spring were most sensitive to spring droughts (B. papyrifera and Pi. strobus). Thuja occidentalis also experienced significantly reduced growth from the spring drought but increased growth after the drought ended and achieved total height and diameter growth similar to controls. In contrast, summer droughts halted growth in most species for the remainder of the growing season even after the drought had ended. Fall droughts never impacted growth in the current year. These fine temporal-scale measurements of height and diameter growth suggest that tree response varies among species and is dynamic at intra-annual scales. These relatively rare data on intra-annual height growth sensitivity are important for canopy recruitment of saplings in forest ecosystems. Species-specific sensitivities of intra-annual growth to drought can inform models of forest competition in a changing climate.

A Tale of Two Sites: Lessons on Leadership from the Implementation of a Long-term Care Delivery Model (CDM) in Western Canada.

Residential, long-term care serves vulnerable older adults in a facility-based environment. A new care delivery model (CDM) designed to promote more equitable care for residents was implemented in a health region in Western Canada. Leaders and managers faced challenges in implementing this model alongside other concurrent changes. This paper explores the question: How did leadership style influence team functioning with the implementation of the CDM? Qualitative data from interviews with leadership personnel (directors and managers, residential care coordinators and clinical nurse educators), and direct care staff (registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, health care aides, and allied health therapists), working in two different facilities comprise the main sources of data for this study. The findings reveal that leaders with a servant leadership style were better able to create and sustain the conditions to support successful model implementation and higher team functioning, compared to a facility in which the leadership style was less inclusive and proactive, and more resistant to the change. Consequently, staff at the second facility experienced a greater sense of overload with the implementation of the CDM. This study concludes that strong leadership is key to facilitating team work and job satisfaction in a context of change.