Review of \u3ci\u3eHigh Plains Farm\u3c/i\u3e Photographs and text by Paula Chamlee

The Great Plains is a unique, difficult landscape, and those who live here have to learn to adapt to it. Paula Chamlee grew up on a farm on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle near Adrian. She left less than a month after high school graduation and became a fine art photographer. Three decades later, she returned to photograph the farm while my parents are still active. What she has produced is a beautiful book that quietly tells the story of lives lived on the edge of possibility. Yet, for me, the story is incomplete. If you have traveled at all on the High Plains, you know this farmstead. Chamlee\u27s parents grew up during the Great Depression and have faced almost perennial droughts since. Since the Ogalalla aquifer is too deep to irrigate from, their farm is a menagerie of almost- worn-out equipment and out buildings that haven\u27t known paint for a decade. As Chamlee says, the credo has always been: \u27Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.\u27\u27\u27 To survive by farming dry land on the High Plains is no small feat. Chamlee says it was important to photograph her home place while the extraordinary energy and spirit of their [her parents\u27] presence fills this home place, but you couldn\u27t tell that from the selection of photographs she presents. Only three of the eighty photos show her parents\u27 faces, two their backs at work, two more their hands. The rest are walls, lumber, rusting equipment, caps hanging on hooks rather than worn on heads. Eight photographs are of old vehicles, and at least ten are of weathered wood. The people-her parents, for heaven\u27s sake-are absolutely silent in the book, almost as if they have moved on already, leaving only relics and heirlooms. The viewer is forced to become an archeologist, to divine the meanings of these people\u27s lives through artifacts alone

Autistic trait interactions underlie sex-dependent facial recognition abilities in the normal population

Autistic face processing difficulties are either uniquely social or due to a piecemeal cognitive "style". Co-morbidity of social deficits and piecemeal cognition in autism makes teasing apart these accounts difficult. These traits vary normally, and are more separable in the general population, suggesting another way to compare accounts. Participants completed the Autism Quotient survey of autistic traits, and one of three face recognition tests: full-face, eyes-only, or mouth-only. Social traits predicted performance in the full-face condition in both sexes. Eyes-only males’ performance was predicted by a social × cognitive trait interaction: attention to detail boosted face recognition in males with few social traits, but hindered performance in those reporting many social traits. This suggests social/non-social Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) trait interactions at the behavioral level. In the presence of few ASC-like difficulties in social reciprocity, an ASC-like attention to detail may confer advantages on typical males’ face recognition skills. On the other hand, when attention to detail co-occurs with difficulties in social reciprocity, a detailed focus may exacerbate such already present social difficulties, as is thought to occur in autism

Advanced software techniques for space shuttle data management systems Final report

Airborne/spaceborn computer design and techniques for space shuttle data management system

Chronic Alcoholism Project, Spring 1990. Final Report

Sponsored by AFSCME Council 6, Elliot Park Neighborhood, Inc., and Alliance of the Streets Project. Project funded by a CURA Communiversity Personnel Grant

The Lives and Afterlives of the Arenberg Gospels: Materializing Medieval Oaths

The “social life” of the Arenberg Gospels, a gospel book later used as an oath book in ecclesiastical officiation ceremonies, illuminates the impact and meaning of oath books in medieval Europe. This thesis traces the manuscript’s materiality throughout its life, showing why both words and flesh mattered to oath rituals

Recognition, Internalization, Growth: Intuitive Design for Archival Representation

Although there is a pressing need for archival description and access systems to be more intuitive and user-friendly, the uniqueness of archival records presents significant barriers to establishing simplistic and standardized conventions for the representation of archival materials. Indecipherable finding aids and access tools prevent new and inexperienced researchers from accessing the unique information and documentation held in archives. This article aims to help open the archival record to new and non-traditional archival users, support individual development of archival literacy skills, and cultivate a greater level of archival awareness in our society by developing a usable model for archivists to evaluate and improve the intuitiveness of their repository’s online access tools. This work presents a definition of ‘intuitive’ archival representation which delineates an archival description and access system that is easily navigable and presents information in a way which users can comprehend and internalize. Importantly, under this new definition, an \u27intuitive\u27 system includes scaffolded functionality which supports users’ development of archival literacy skills as opposed to simply accommodating users at varying skill levels. The interdisciplinary research presented in this work borrows from research in human-computer interaction and web design, constructivist learning theory, and language acquisition theory to construct a set of criteria for evaluating intuitiveness. The article concludes with an appraisal of the representation methods predominantly employed by current archival institutions and uses the criteria described above to evaluate the intuitiveness of each method

Harnessing Repetitive Behaviours to Engage Attention and Learning in a Novel Therapy for Autism: An Exploratory Analysis

Rigorous, quantitative examination of therapeutic techniques anecdotally reported to have been successful in people with autism who lack communicative speech will help guide basic science toward a more complete characterisation of the cognitive profile in this underserved subpopulation, and show the extent to which theories and results developed with the high-functioning subpopulation may apply. This study examines a novel therapy, the “Rapid Prompting Method” (RPM). RPM is a parent-developed communicative and educational therapy for persons with autism who do not speak or who have difficulty using speech communicatively. The technique aims to develop a means of interactive learning by pointing amongst multiple-choice options presented at different locations in space, with the aid of sensory “prompts” which evoke a response without cueing any specific response option. The prompts are meant to draw and to maintain attention to the communicative task – making the communicative and educational content coincident with the most physically salient, attention-capturing stimulus – and to extinguish the sensory–motor preoccupations with which the prompts compete. Video-recorded RPM sessions with nine autistic children ages 8–14 years who lacked functional communicative speech were coded for behaviours of interest. An analysis controlled for age indicates that exposure to the claimed therapy appears to support a decrease in repetitive behaviours and an increase in the number of multiple-choice response options without any decrease in successful responding. Direct gaze is not related to successful responding, suggesting that direct gaze might not be any advantage for this population and need not in all cases be a precondition to communication therapies

Clinical considerations and key issues in the management of patients with Erdheim-Chester Disease: A seven case series

Background: Erdheim-Chester Disease (ECD), a non Langerhans' cell histiocytosis of orphan nature and propensity for multi-systemic presentations, comprises an intricate medical challenge in terms of diagnosis, treatment and complication management. Objectives: The objectives are to report the clinical, radiological and pathological characteristics, as well as cardinal therapeutic approaches to ECD patients and to provide clinical analyses of the medical chronicles of these complex patients. Methods: Patients with biopsy proven ECD were audited by a multi-disciplinary team of specialists who formed a coherent timeline of all the substantial clinical events in the evolution of their patients' illness. Results: Seven patients (five men, two women) were recruited to the study. The median age at presentation was 53 years (range: 39 to 62 years). The median follow-up time was 36 months (range: 1 to 72 months). Notable ECD involvement sites included the skeleton (seven), pituitary gland (seven), retroperitoneum (five), central nervous system (four), skin (four), lungs and pleura (four), orbits (three), heart and great vessels (three) and retinae (one). Prominent signs and symptoms were fever (seven), polyuria and polydipsia (six), ataxia and dysarthria (four), bone pain (four), exophthalmos (three), renovascular hypertension (one) and dyspnea (one). The V600E BRAF mutation was verified in three of six patients tested. Interferon-α treatment was beneficial in three of six patients treated. Vemurafenib yielded dramatic neurological improvement in a BRAF mutated patient. Infliximab facilitated pericardial effusion volume reduction. Cladribine improved cerebral blood flow originally compromised by perivenous lesions. Conclusions: ECD is a complex, multi-systemic, clonal entity coalescing both neoplastic and inflammatory elements and strongly dependent on impaired RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK signaling

“At ‘Amen Meals’ It’s Me and God” Religion and Gender: A New Jewish Women’s Ritual

New ritual practices performed by Jewish women can serve as test cases for an examination of the phenomenon of the creation of religious rituals by women. These food-related rituals, which have been termed ‘‘amen meals’’ were developed in Israel beginning in the year 2000 and subsequently spread to Jewish women in Europe and the United States. This study employs a qualitative-ethnographic methodology grounded in participant-observation and in-depth interviews to describe these nonobligatory, extra-halakhic rituals. What makes these rituals stand out is the women’s sense that through these rituals they experience a direct con- nection to God and, thus, can change reality, i.e., bring about jobs, marriages, children, health, and salvation for friends and loved ones. The ‘‘amen’’ rituals also create an open, inclusive woman’s space imbued with strong spiritual–emotional energies that counter the women’s religious marginality. Finally, the purposes and functions of these rituals, including identity building and displays of cultural capital, are considered within a theoretical framework that views ‘‘doing gender’’ and ‘‘doing religion’’ as an integrated experience