Activating Worksites to Implement Policy, Systems, and Environmental Changes: Outcomes and Overcoming Challenges.

PURPOSE: Although workplaces are prime settings for health promotion, little is known about the implementation of policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes focused on chronic disease. PSEs have broader reach and are more sustainable than individual level strategies. DESIGN: non-experimental, one group design with no control.Setting: West Virginia, a state with significant chronic disease-related health disparities. SUBJECTS: Convenience sample of 27 workplaces, representing 6 industry types. INTERVENTION: $1000 in micro funding awarded to workplaces to participate in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Work@Health®/ScoreCard, and implement PSEs. MEASURES: ScoreCard baseline results; post project survey results. ANALYSIS: Descriptive analysis of ScoreCard; survey responses coded into PSE and I (individual level strategies) categories; frequencies were calculated. RESULTS: 63% of the workplaces were very small (1-100 employees). Chronic disease-related organizational practices (ScoreCard) were minimal: nutrition (5/24), physical activity (7/22), diabetes (5/15), cholesterol (4/13), and high blood pressure (6/16). Workplaces reported a total of 95 PSEs: P-8, S-55, and E-32. CONCLUSION: Policy change was the least frequently attempted and reported PSE strategy. More research with a stronger study design is needed to determine if (1) baseline organizational practices (Scorecard scores) improve, (2) PSEs (especially P) can be implemented without micro funding/TA, (3) workplace-type is related to use of the funds/TA, and (4) enacting PSE changes leads to healthier employees.

Maximizing the Potential of Mini-Grants to Promote Policy, Systems, and Environmental Changes: Outcomes and Challenges.

PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES: This article describes the implementation and evaluation of a chronic disease mini-grant initiative, coordinated by a state health department in collaboration with multiple stakeholders. Braided funding from federal and state sources was used to build and implement the initiative. INTERVENTION APPROACH: Mini-grants, facilitated by five different facilitating organizations, were funded to promote implementation of policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes at the local level. Grant recipients represented a variety of sectors, including education, government, and nonprofit organizations. EVALUATION METHODS: Primary (surveys) and secondary (final reports) data documented achievement of PSE changes. RESULTS: A total of $196,369 was dispersed to 65 organizations; 126 PSE changes in the areas of physical activity, nutrition, and tobacco were reported. Challenges in implementing and evaluating mini-grants were identified, including the heterogeneity of the sectors/settings involved and associated variability of proposed activities, time lines, measurement, and evaluation activities. COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) also disrupted the plans for many projects. IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH: The success of this initiative can be attributed to four main elements: (1) the use of intermediary organizations to facilitate the mini-grants; (2) a participatory evaluation process, combined with early and ongoing communication among all stakeholders; (3) a braided funding strategy; and (4) a multisector approach that engaged both traditional and nontraditional public health organizations. The processes and outcomes, including challenges, can inform other state health departments' efforts in braiding funding and engaging intermediary organizations to expand the reach of PSE changes at the local level.

Explaining the implicit negations effect in conditional inference: Experience, probabilities, and contrast sets.

Psychologists are beginning to uncover the rational basis for many of the biases revealed over the last 50 years in deductive and causal reasoning, judgment, and decision making. In this article, it is argued that a manipulation, experiential learning, shown to be effective in judgment and decision making, may elucidate the rational underpinning of the implicit negation effect in conditional inference. In three experiments, this effect was created and removed by using probabilistically structured contrast sets acquired during a brief learning phase. No other theory of the implicit negations effect predicts these results, which can be modeled using Bayes nets as in causal approaches to category structure. It is also shown how these results relate to a recent development in the psychology of reasoning called "inferentialism." It is concluded that many of the same cognitive mechanisms that underpin causal reasoning, judgment and decision making may be common to logical reasoning, which may require no special purpose machinery or module. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Iron-catalyzed dehydropolymerization: a convenient route to poly(phosphinoboranes) with molecular-weight control.

The catalyst loading is the key to control the molecular weight of the polymer in the iron-catalyzed dehydropolymerization of phosphine-borane adducts. Studies showed that the reaction proceeds through a chain-growth coordination-insertion mechanism.

Bike and run pacing on downhill segments predict Ironman triathlon relative success.

OBJECTIVES: Determine if performance and physiological based pacing characteristics over the varied terrain of a triathlon predicted relative bike, run, and/or overall success. Poor self-regulation of intensity during long distance (Full Iron) triathlon can manifest in adverse discontinuities in performance. DESIGN: Observational study of a random sample of Ironman World Championship athletes. High performing and low performing groups were established upon race completion. METHODS: Participants wore global positioning system and heart rate enabled watches during the race. Percentage difference from pre-race disclosed goal pace (%off) and mean HR were calculated for nine segments of the bike and 11 segments of the run. Normalized graded running pace (accounting for changes in elevation) was computed via analysis software. Step-wise regression analyses identified segments predictive of relative success and HP and LP were compared at these segments to confirm importance. RESULTS: %Off of goal velocity during two downhill segments of the bike (HP: -6.8±3.2%, -14.2±2.6% versus LP: -1.2±4.2%, -5.1±11.5%; p<0.020) and %off from NGP during one downhill segment of the run (HP: 4.8±5.2% versus LP: 33.3±38.7%; p=0.033) significantly predicted relative performance. Also, HP displayed more consistency in mean HR (141±12 to 138±11 bpm) compared to LP (139±17 to 131±16 bpm; p=0.019) over the climb and descent from the turn-around point during the bike component. CONCLUSIONS: Athletes who maintained faster relative speeds on downhill segments, and who had smaller changes in HR between consecutive up and downhill segments were more successful relative to their goal times.

Iron-catalyzed dehydrocoupling/dehydrogenation of amine-boranes.

The readily available iron carbonyl complexes, [CpFe(CO)2]2 (1) and CpFe(CO)2I (2) (Cp = η-C5H5), were found to be efficient precatalysts for the dehydrocoupling/dehydrogenation of the amine-borane Me2NH·BH3 (3) to afford the cyclodiborazane [Me2N-BH2]2 (4), upon UV photoirradiation at ambient temperature. In situ analysis of the reaction mixtures by (11)B NMR spectroscopy indicated that different two-step mechanisms operate in each case. Thus, precatalyst 1 dehydrocoupled 3 via the aminoborane Me2N═BH2 (5) which then cyclodimerized to give 4 via an off-metal process. In contrast, the reaction with precatalyst 2 proceeded via Me2NH-BH2-NMe2-BH3 (6) as the key intermediate, affording 4 as the final product after a second metal-mediated step. The related complex Cp2Fe2(CO)3(MeCN) (7), formed by photoirradiation of 1 in MeCN, was found to be a substantially more active dehydrocoupling catalyst and not to require photoactivation, but otherwise operated via a two-step mechanism analogous to that for 1. Significantly, detailed mechanistic studies indicated that the active catalyst generated from precatalyst 7 was heterogeneous in nature and consisted of small iron nanoparticles (≤10 nm). Although more difficult to study, a similar process is highly likely to operate for precatalyst 1 under photoirradiation conditions. In contrast to the cases of 7 and 1, analogous experimental studies for the case of photoactivated Fe precatalyst 2 suggested that the active catalyst formed in this case was homogeneous. Experimental and computational DFT studies were used to explore the catalytic cycle which appears to involve amine-borane ligated [CpFe(CO)](+) as a key intermediate.

Paramagnetic titanium(III) and zirconium(III) metallocene complexes as precatalysts for the dehydrocoupling/dehydrogenation of amine-boranes.

Complexes of Group 4 metallocenes in the +3 oxidation state and amidoborane or phosphidoborane function as efficient precatalysts for the dehydrocoupling/dehydrogenation of amine-boranes, such as Me(2) NH⋅BH(3). Such Ti(III) -amidoborane complexes are generated in [Cp(2)Ti]-catalyzed amine-borane dehydrocoupling reactions, for which diamagnetic M(II) and M(IV) species have been previously postulated as precatalysts and intermediates.

"Spontaneous" ambient temperature dehydrocoupling of aromatic amine-boranes.

The dehydrocoupling/dehydrogenation behavior of primary arylamine-borane adducts ArNH(2)⋅BH(3) (3 a-c; Ar = a: Ph, b: p-MeOC(6)H(4), c: p-CF(3)C(6)H(4)) has been studied in detail both in solution at ambient temperature as well as in the solid state at ambient or elevated temperatures. The presence of a metal catalyst was found to be unnecessary for the release of H(2). From reactions of 3 a,b in concentrated solutions in THF at 22 °C over 24 h cyclotriborazanes (ArNH-BH(2))(3) (7 a,b) were isolated as THF adducts, 7 a,b⋅THF, or solvent-free 7 a, which could not be obtained via heating of 3 a-c in the melt. The µ-(anilino)diborane [H(2)B(µ-PhNH)(µ-H)BH(2)] (4 a) was observed in the reaction of 3 a with BH(3)⋅THF and was characterized in situ. The reaction of 3 a with PhNH(2) (2 a) was found to provide a new, convenient method for the preparation of dianilinoborane (PhNH)(2)BH (5 a), which has potential generality. This observation, together with further studies of reactions of 4 a, 5 a, and 7 a,b, provided insight into the mechanism of the catalyst-free ambient temperature dehydrocoupling of 3 a-c in solution. For example, the reaction of 4 a with 5 a yields 6 a and 7 a. It was found that borazines (ArN-BH)(3) (6 a-c) are not simply formed via dehydrogenation of cyclotriborazanes 7 a-c in solution. The transformation of 7 a to 6 a is slowly induced by 5 a and proceeds via regeneration of 3 a. The adducts 3 a-c also underwent rapid dehydrocoupling in the solid state at elevated temperatures and even very slowly at ambient temperature. From aniline-borane derivative 3 c, the linear iminoborane oligomer (p-CF(3)C(6)H(4))N[BH-NH(p-CF(3)C(6)H(4))](2) (11) was obtained. The single-crystal X-ray structures of 3 a-c, 5 a, 7 a, 7 b⋅THF, and 11 are discussed.