Northern Arizona University

Research on the health literacy of parents with children with intellectual disability is limited. Understanding parents' healthcare skills and needs is essential for improving children's health and developing effective support. In this study we aimed to (1) explore the health literacy skills of parents that enabled them to support the health needs of their child with intellectual disability and the factors influencing these skills, and (2) identify opportunities to support parent health literacy. A qualitative study was carried out using interviews with 24 parents of children and young people with intellectual disability. A directed content analysis was completed, guided by the nine domains included in the Health Literacy Questionnaire. Participants demonstrated strong health literacy skills; however, there was diversity in their strengths and needs across different domains of health literacy. Navigating healthcare systems was the key area where participants faced challenges and required further support. Participants described factors including educational levels, professional expertise, experiences over time, and relationships with healthcare professionals which influenced their health literacy. Opportunities to improve health literacy were identified, addressing parents, healthcare professionals, and healthcare and disability services. Developing and maintaining health literacy is critical to parents supporting the health of children with intellectual disability. These results provide insight into how health literacy interventions can be designed to support parent health literacy. The study provides participants' recommendations for how healthcare professionals can support parent health literacy. These recommendations relate to the health literacy responsiveness of the professional and service.

The northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii, NHNW) is critically endangered following major range and population declines during the 20th century, resulting in a population bottleneck of ~30 individuals in the 1980s. Understanding the population history, impact of extirpations, range contraction and the bottleneck in this species is critical to contextualising ongoing efforts to understand and manage surviving genetic diversity. We generated mtDNA genomes from contemporary and historical samples of the NHNW from the extant and two extirpated populations and compared mtDNA diversity and phylogeography to the closely related southern hairy-nosed wombat (L. latifrons, SHNW) from southern Australia. The NHNW had very low mtDNA diversity, with shallow phylogeographic structure across its former range. A single mtDNA haplotype has been present in the extant population since at least 1937, suggesting a small long-term female effective population size and a possible pre-1937 bottleneck. In contrast SHNWs show four to five times higher mtDNA diversity and evidence of phylogeographic divergence across the Pleistocene Eyrean Barrier. Our results highlighted the need for further genomic analyses of the extant NHNW population, to estimate the extent of inbreeding and inbreeding depression and to help minimise loss of functional genetic diversity in this species.

Background Use of prescribed fire as a tool for reducing risk in wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas produces short-term effects such as reduced air quality for adjacent neighborhoods while simultaneously aiding long-term ecological and safety benefits. Aims This study sought to determine whether small-scale, time-sensitive surveying techniques are a suitable methodological approach for capturing public responses to individual prescribed fires in the WUI and informing local prescribed fire management activities. Methods We co-produced and administered rapid surveys via mail to households adjacent to two prescribed fires in the greater Flagstaff, Arizona, US area. Key results Rapid surveying provided nuanced, event-based insights into how households perceived individual prescribed fires, particularly related to air quality, risk, and access to information sources. Conclusions We found that the success of these pilot efforts lay in co-production of survey content and administration with partners responsible for each prescribed fire, allowing administrative flexibility, additional social and planning context, and improved applicability of resultant recommendations. Implications This article provides a template for other researcher-practitioner teams interested in developing social science research focused on rapid surveying, studying individual prescribed fires, or investigating other fire- or forest-related management activities internationally.

Efficient conversion of mid-infrared (MIR) radiation into electricity remains a challenge for thermoelectric devices. We present multiresonant Ag–Si:B–Ni bowtie cross nanoantenna (BCN) arrays that exploit plasmon-enhanced photothermal effects to achieve broadband MIR absorption and voltage generation via the Seebeck effect. The 9×9 BCN arrays, fabricated by electron beam lithography, exhibit multiple plasmonic resonances from 18 to 48 THz with a ∼30 THz bandwidth. COMSOL simulations reveal strong field confinement and open-circuit voltages up to 11.19 μV under 1000 W·m2 illumination, which are experimentally validated by Fourier Transform Infrared measurements. The broadband response, geometry-dependent tunability, and efficient heat-to-electric conversion establish BCNs as promising candidates for waste-heat harvesting, MIR sensing, and plasmonic metasurface thermoelectrics.

Diffusion-based generative models have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in image synthesis, yet realistic hand generation remains a persistent challenge due to complex articulations, self-occlusion, and the lack of explicit structural guidance. To address these issues, we present SGMHand, a novel structure-guided hand inpainting framework that explicitly injects topological priors to enhance structural fidelity and spatial precision. Specifically, we present a structure-guided modulation (SGM) module that synergistically combines structure spatial attention with global feature calibration, enabling fine-grained geometric control over the generative process. Then, we devise a keypoint-aware (KA) loss that enforces topological coherence by aligning attention activations with structures, thereby bridging the gap between high-level semantics and low-level geometry. By jointly optimizing over structural constraints in both representation and learning objectives, SGMHand achieves semantically consistent and geometrically plausible hand synthesis, even under severe occlusion. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and strong generalization ability of SGMHand across various foundation models, significantly enhancing the quality and realism of human image synthesis in diverse scenarios.

Around the world, and for the past ~2 billion years, surfaces of many soils have a “living skin” made by tiny plants and microbes called a biological soil crust (biocrust). Biocrusts are crucially important for helping to support the ecosystems they inhabit, for example making soil fertile, storing or redirecting water and stopping erosion. Biocrusts also boost the variety of living things present in an area (biodiversity). The CrustNet project will determine what controls the biodiversity of biocrusts globally for the first time, and its outcomes. CrustNet is a networked, distributed study of biocrust ecology, with participants around the world. Participants conduct the same set of studies and collect the same types of data to be pooled together to create an unprecedented global database about biocrusts. CrustNet addresses: (1) The determinants of the global scale functional biodiversity of biocrusts (2) determinants of the variability and shape of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function across ecosystems, (3) effects of biocrust functional biodiversity on ecosystem resistance and resilience to physical disturbance and climate change, and (4) determinants of plant-biocrust co-occurrence patterns. CrustNet uses a tiered research protocol, including low-cost observational studies and manipulative experiments. Tier 1 includes mandatory detailed surveys of the composition of biocrusts, measurement of ecosystem functions along a biocrust development gradient, and contribution of samples to a trait database. Tier 2 includes low-cost experimentally-applied physical disturbance of the soil and subsequent tracking of the response of biocrusts. Tier 3 includes experimental climate manipulations using reciprocal transplantations and rainfall reduction using passive shelters. These studies will be foundational to our understanding of determinants of biocrust diversity, function and response to disturbance. To date, 14 sites in 5 nations have already been established and sampled, and pledged sites are ever increasing (23 additional sites have been proposed by international sampler-partners). In the process of conducting this research, a world-wide collaboration is being established, leading to greater participation of researchers from diverse backgrounds, and unparalleled training opportunities.

In global drylands, apparently bare soil between plants is frequently covered by biological soil crusts (biocrusts). Biocrusts are poikilohydric communities that play key ecosystem roles in drylands, as they regulate infiltration, evaporation and water retention, provide soil biodiversity, and control biogeochemical cycling of nutrients. Moreover, biocrusts form a rough, cohesive surface layer that prevents soil particle detachment and nutrient mobilization and lost by wind and water erosion.Approximately 12% of the Earth surface, corresponding to 40% of the global drylands, are currently covered by biocrusts, and it has been estimated that they prevent approximately 700 Tg of dust per year from being emitted into the atmosphere. However, these estimates are based on very few available measurements and do not represent the large variability in biocrust community composition and underlying soil properties.Within the framework of the CRUST-R forze project, we have developed a global dataset to quantify the effects of biocrusts on potential dust emission. To this end, we measured the threshold friction velocity (TFV), representing the minimum wind velocity at which the soil starts being blown away, and sediment delivery under controlled wind tunnel conditions. We investigated 177 samples representing a wide range of biocrust communities and reference soils from biocrust-dominated habitats worldwide. In addition to TFV and sediment delivery measurements, our dataset also includes functional traits related to biocrust resistance to wind erosion, such as organic matter content, aggregate stability, surface roughness, and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) content. This database is relevant to understand the underlying mechanisms of an increase in TFV upon biocrust colonization. Our preliminary results show the high relevance of biocrusts in soil stabilization and dust prevention, supporting the explicit inclusion of biocrusts in dust emission parameterizations of Earth system models.