Converting Family Into Fans: How the Comtemporary Jewish Museum Expanded Its Reach

The last in a series of 10 case studies explores how The Contemporary Jewish Museum in SanFrancisco worked to attract families of all backgrounds and build the next generation of museum supporters. It describes how the museum convened focus groups to better understand the needs of families with young children, designed programs and exhibitions to meet those needs, offered family discounts and entered into community partnerships to build awareness of the museum's offerings.Although The Contemporary Jewish Museum sought to attract families, it did not want to become a children's museum. It therefore took extra efforts to balance the needs of children and adults. It worked to manage parents' expectations, created spaces for children to work on activities and trained its staff to draw families to areas most appropriate for children.These efforts resulted in a nearly nine-fold increase in family visitors over seven years, the report finds. Authors suggest that the museum's successes relied in part on a nuanced understanding of its target audiences, mutually beneficial partnerships with schools and libraries and careful evaluation and refinement of engagement strategies.

Someone Who Speaks Their Language: How a Nontraditional Partner Brought New Audiences to Minnesota Opera

Arts organizations of all kinds recognize that their futures depend on cultivating new audiences who will form long-lasting relationships with them. Perhaps no art form faces a bigger challenge in doing so than opera. Many people who've never been to the opera believe it's stuffy and elitist, and certainly not a place they'd like to spend a Saturday night. They think they'll feel like ignorant outsiders who can't possibly understand, let alone appreciate, what's happening on stage. Minnesota Opera set out to dispel those preconceived notions among women ages 35 to 60 through an unlikely partnership with a local talk-radio host who had a knack for relating to this demographic. An opera buff himself, he made the art form relatable and exciting to women who had never been to a performance, so much so that they jammed the phone lines when he announced ticket giveaways to Minnesota Opera on his radio show. After four seasons of the partnership, 1,114 households new to Minnesota Opera had redeemed their free tickets to attend a performance, and 18 percent had paid to come back. The company found that perceptions of opera as elitist were not insurmountable, but also discovered that one or two positive experiences were not necessarily enough to turn most of these new audience members into frequent attendees. Follow-up research identified barriers to that elusive return purchase, and the company has used these insights to adjust its marketing strategy to bring a number of those new audience members back

The possible induction of diabetes insipidus in chicks by regulated light regimes

Diabetes insipidus is caused by the lack of water reabsorption in the kidneys. Water reabsorption is regulated by the antidiuretic hormone. Experimentation has resulted in the concept that the production of the avian antidiuretic hormone (arginine vasotocin) occurs in the neurosecretory nuclei of the hypothalamus. This hormone is stored in the posterior pituitary until its release is stimulated by light. The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of three light regimes (i.e., (1) 24-hours light, (2) 12~hours light: 12-hours darkness, and (3) 24-hours darkness) upon the production of diabetes insipidus in cockerels measured by water consumption. The results of the experiment indicated that there was a significantly greater water consumption in the constant light and constant darkness regimes. The production of an extremely watery diarrhea coupled with the differences in water consumption in these two regimes led to the conclusion that diabetes insipidus can be produced by altering the light regime of birds

Are patients with Parkinson’s disease who have either mild to moderate microsmia, severe microsmia or anosmia clinically different?

Introduction: Olfactory loss is a common non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which has the potential to have a negative effect on quality of life. However, research examining PD patients with varying degrees of loss of sense of smell and whether they are clinically distinct and the implications of the loss of sense of smell when nursing a patient with PD appears to be poorly explained. Objective: To investigate whether patients with PD who have either mild/moderate microsmia, severe microsmia or anosmia (as measured by the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT)) were clinically different when compared across a range of motor, non-motor and quality of life domains. Methodology: This is an open cross-sectional observational study, involving 112 patients (of both genders) who have a diagnosis of PD. Tools and scales used include the motor rating subscales in the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), the Non-motor Symptoms Questionnaire (NMSQ), the PDQ39 Quality of Life Questionnaire (PDQ39), the Hoehn and Yahr scale (H&Y), the Rapid Eye Movement Behaviour Disorder Screening Questionnaire, (RBD) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Results: Seventy-two males and forty females have been recruited for this study. Age ranged from 49 - 89 years (mean age 71 years). Eight-five (77%) of the PD patients were at stage 1 or 2 Hoehn and Yahr staging highlighting the study sample mainly consisted of PD patients with minimal or no functional impairment, without impairment of balance. Disease duration ranged from 6 months to 19 years (mean duration 5.5 years). All PD patients (except two) were considered to have either normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment, defined by the MoCA (mean MoCA 26.1). All the PD patients recruited for this study had loss of sense of smell and 91% had -in fact- severe microsmia or anosmia. Seventy-nine (70.5%) PD patients correctly detected a reduced sense of smell. Twenty-nine out of the 33 PD patients (97%) (self-reporting a normal sense of smell) had, in fact, a severe degree of loss of sense of smell (Mean UPSIT 16) without realising it. Overall loss of sense of smell was not correlated with severity or stage of PD, duration of disease, medication, smoking, the environment in which the PD patient was tested, whether they had phantosmia (persistent pleasant or disgusting smell) or taste problems. There was also no correlation between the motor, non-motor, rapid eye movement disorder and quality of life themes during whole group analysis. However, on sub-group analysis, a positive correlation was noted between sense of smell score and PD patients with normal cognition compared to those with mild cognitive impairment using MoCA ( =0.213, p=0.024) and non-motor symptom dribbling of saliva during the day (p=0.003), There was also a negative correlation in PDQ39 cognition theme (score =-0.012 p=0.036), minutes since last PD medication taken ( =-0.2634, p=0.008), timing of levodopa dose ( =-0.1875, p=0.015), and individual domains of the UPDRS motor scores, including posture ( = -.231 p=0.014) facial expression ( =-0.207 p=0.029) and arising from a chair ( =-0.190 p=0.045)

Gender and social targeting in plant breeding

Gender and social targeting can improve the relevance and effectiveness of plant-breeding programs serving resource-poor farmers, traders, processors, and consumers. Generally, these breeding programs have limited information about their clients, which makes it difficult to prioritize breeding objectives. As a result, products from these breeding programs may not meet the needs of their intended users. We argue that plant breeding for resource-poor farmers, sellers, and processors requires a marketing approach. We show how the Segmenting-Targeting-Positioning (STP) framework from consumer marketing can be adapted for gender and social targeting in these programs. First, Segment the market, or identify groups of consumers with homogeneous preferences (“market segments”). Second, Target those market segments that meet the programs’ equity objectives, are big enough to justify the investment, and whose preferences match physical traits. Third, Position new products in the market by showing how these new products meet the preferences of their intended users. The STP framework is broken down into eight logical steps which provide a checklist for gender and social targeting. The result is a “customer profile” (just like a breeders’ “product profile”), which combines demographic, behavioral, and geographic variables with a set of trait preferences to describe a market segment. A customer profile gives the program a clear picture of whom the program is breeding for, the expected number of customers, and why they prefer specific traits. To prioritize breeding objectives, breeders must have an accurate picture of the relative size and social character of different client groups. Currently, information about these clients and their trait preferences is based on small-scale studies, which makes it difficult to set breeding priorities at the national or regional level. But the growing number and availability of large datasets make it possible to define growers and crop utilization on a much bigger scale. We inventory large datasets, identify a minimum dataset of biophysical and socioeconomic variables, and show how these variables can be layered for gender and social targeting at the national level. Datasets include the Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS–ISA), the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), and the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program. We use the example of cassava in Nigeria to illustrate how these datasets can help breeding programs incorporate gender into their customer profiles

What do older people do when sitting and why? Implications for decreasing sedentary behaviour

Background and Objectives: Sitting less can reduce older adults’ risk of ill health and disability. Effective sedentary behavior interventions require greater understanding of what older adults do when sitting (and not sitting), and why. This study compares the types, context, and role of sitting activities in the daily lives of older men and women who sit more or less than average. Research Design and Methods: Semistructured interviews with 44 older men and women of different ages, socioeconomic status, and objectively measured sedentary behavior were analyzed using social practice theory to explore the multifactorial, inter-relational influences on their sedentary behavior. Thematic frameworks facilitated between-group comparisons. Results: Older adults described many different leisure time, household, transport, and occupational sitting and non-sitting activities. Leisure-time sitting in the home (e.g., watching TV) was most common, but many non-sitting activities, including “pottering” doing household chores, also took place at home. Other people and access to leisure facilities were associated with lower sedentary behavior. The distinction between being busy/not busy was more important to most participants than sitting/not sitting, and informed their judgments about high-value “purposeful” (social, cognitively active, restorative) sitting and low-value “passive” sitting. Declining physical function contributed to temporal sitting patterns that did not vary much from day-to-day. Discussion and Implications: Sitting is associated with cognitive, social, and/or restorative benefits, embedded within older adults’ daily routines, and therefore difficult to change. Useful strategies include supporting older adults to engage with other people and local facilities outside the home, and break up periods of passive sitting at home