Keeping It Safe: Aging in Place Among Rural Older Adults

The purpose of the study addressed in this article was to identify ways to reduce risk and improve safe aging in place among rural older adults. Resident and Extension faculty and county educators visited study participants at home to assess functional capacity and the home environment. Extension professionals may be uniquely positioned to provide programming to help older adults age in place. Aging in place programming may help improve quality of life for older adults and their family members and caregivers

Missing Voices and Aging in Prison: Religiosity’s Influence on Positive Aging through Forgiveness

This article was originally published by OBM GeriatricsBackground: This study investigated the influence of positive psychological predictors, religiosity and forgiveness, on subjective and objective successful aging outcomes among incarcerated males. Methods: Male prison inmates (N=261), aged 45 to 82 and incarcerated in eight state-managed correctional facilities, were sampled from the prison census database (Oklahoma Department of Corrections or DOC). Exclusion criteria, per the Oklahoma DOC, were those housed in medical or psychiatric units, currently in solitary confinement, or sentenced to death row. Results: The final mediation model fit the data well: MLR χ2 (df = 101, N = 256) = 7.40, p = .014, CFI = .98; RMSEA = .04 and SRMR = .03. With the exception of two direct effects, forgiveness mediated the relationship between religiosity and seven successful aging outcomes. Significant tests of total indirect effects through the three latent variable forgiveness mediators on each outcome were found; no specific indirect effects were significant. Analyses controlled for age, race, education, and crime type. Conclusions: Findings encourage continued investigations into the religiosity—forgiveness—health connection and specifically recommend forgiveness promoting interventions for all. For those incarcerated, interventions should include focus on forgiveness relative to earlier life trauma and abuse

Age Differences and Changes in Resources Essential to Aging Well: A Comparison of Sexagenarians, Octogenarians, and Centenarians

This study examined change over time in five resources assessed by the Duke OARS Multidisciplinary Functional Assessment Questionnaire: social, economic, mental, physical, and functional resources. Two hundred and one participants in the Georgia Centenarian Study provided data for this longitudinal study: 70 sexagenarians, 63 octogenarians, and 68 centenarians. Those in their 60s and 80s were followed up within 60 months; due to mortality attrition, centenarians were followed up within 20 months. Centenarians experienced the lowest levels of resources relative to those in their 80s and 60s. Over time they primarily experienced loss in activities of daily living, highlighting that the ability to maximize gains and mitigate losses over time for older adults is highly associated with various resources essential to well-being. Findings suggest that older adults\u27—especially the very old—resources should be concurrently assessed in a multidimensional analysis by researchers and practitioners who work with older adults in various settings

Comparing the Support-Efficacy Model among Centenarians Living in Private Homes, Assisted Living Facilities, and Nursing Homes

We investigated the influence of social relations on health outcomes in very late life by examining the support-efficacy convoy model among older adults who resided in three different residential environments (centenarians in private homes, n = 126; centenarians in assisted living facilities, n = 55; centenarians in nursing homes, n = 105). For each group, path analytic models were employed to test our hypotheses; analyses controlled for sex, mental status, education, perceived economic sufficiency, and activities of daily living. The hypothesized relationships among the models' variables were unique to each of the three groups; three different models fit the data depending upon residential environment. The direct and indirect effects of social relations assessments were positive for the mental and physical health of very old adults, suggesting that participants welcomed the support. However, residential status moderated the associations between the assessments of social relations, self-efficacy, and both outcomes, physical and mental health

Wellness and Multiple Sclerosis: The National MS Society Establishes a Wellness Research Working Group and Research Priorities

Background: People with multiple sclerosis (MS) have identified “wellness” and associated behaviors as a high priority based on “social media listening” undertaken by the National MS Society (i.e. the Society). Objective: The Society recently convened a group that consisted of researchers with experience in MS and wellness-related research, Society staff members, and an individual with MS for developing recommendations regarding a wellness research agenda. Method: The members of the group engaged in focal reviews and discussions involving the state of science within three approaches for promoting wellness in MS, namely diet, exercise, and emotional wellness. Results: That process informed a group-mediated activity for developing and prioritizing research goals for wellness in MS. This served as a background for articulating the mission and objectives of the Society’s Wellness Research Working Group. Conclusion: The primary mission of the Wellness Research Working Group is the provision of scientific evidence supporting the application of lifestyle, behavioral, and psychosocial approaches for promoting optimal health of mind, body, and spirit (i.e. wellness) in people with MS as well as managing the disease and its consequences

Theory of Dynamic Stripe Induced Superconductivity

Since the recently reported giant isotope effect on T* [1] could be consistently explained within an anharmonic spin-charge-phonon interaction model, we consider here the role played by stripe formation on the superconducting properties within the same model. This is a two-component scenario and we recast its basic elements into a BCS effective Hamiltonian. We find that the stripe formation is vital to high-Tc superconductivity since it provides the glue between the two components to enhance Tc to the unexpectedly large values observed experimentally.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Understanding Centenarians' Psychosocial Dynamics and Their Contributions to Health and Quality of Life

While it is understood that longevity and health are influenced by complex interactions among biological, psychological, and sociological factors, there is a general lack of understanding on how psychosocial factors impact longevity, health, and quality of life among the oldest old. One of the reasons for this paradox is that the amount of funded research on aging in the US is significantly larger in the biomedical compared to psychosocial domains. The goals of this paper are to highlight recent data to demonstrate the impact of four pertinent psychosocial domains on health and quality of life of the oldest old and supplement recommendations of the 2001 NIA Panel on Longevity for future research. The four domains highlighted in this paper are (1) demographics, life events, and personal history, (2) personality, (3) cognition, and (4) socioeconomic resources and support systems

Continuous and Long-Term Volume Measurements with a Commercial Coulter Counter

We demonstrate a method to enhance the time resolution of a commercial Coulter counter and enable continuous and long-term cell size measurements for growth rate analyses essential to understanding basic cellular processes, such as cell size regulation and cell cycle progression. Our simple modifications to a commercial Coulter counter create controllable cell culture conditions within the sample compartment and combine temperature control with necessary adaptations to achieve measurement stability over several hours. We also wrote custom software, detailed here, to analyze instrument data files collected by either this continuous method or standard, periodic sampling. We use the continuous method to measure the growth rate of yeast in G1 during a prolonged arrest and, in different samples, the dependency of growth rate on cell size and cell cycle position in arrested and proliferating cells. We also quantify with high time resolution the response of mouse lymphoblast cell culture to drug treatment. This method provides a technique for continuous measurement of cell size that is applicable to a large variety of cell types and greatly expands the set of analysis tools available for the Coulter counter.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (EUREKA Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (R01GM085457))National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (contract R21CA137695)National Cancer Institute (U.S.). Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (U54CA143874

Understanding Centenarians' Psychosocial Dynamics and Their Contributions to Health and Quality of Life

While it is understood that longevity and health are influenced by complex interactions among biological, psychological, and sociological factors, there is a general lack of understanding on how psychosocial factors impact longevity, health, and quality of life among the oldest old. One of the reasons for this paradox is that the amount of funded research on aging in the US is significantly larger in the biomedical compared to psychosocial domains. The goals of this paper are to highlight recent data to demonstrate the impact of four pertinent psychosocial domains on health and quality of life of the oldest old and supplement recommendations of the 2001 NIA Panel on Longevity for future research. The four domains highlighted in this paper are (1) demographics, life events, and personal history, (2) personality, (3) cognition, and (4) socioeconomic resources and support systems