Caregiver relations among African American children: a before and after picture of changes in caregiver

In the event of family breakdown, removing the child from the home is one of the most common forms of state intervention, and is one of the primary interventions provided when a parent experiences severe problems related to caring for their children. This investigation examined predictors and consequences of the transition from one primary caregiver to another among African American youth. The sample consisted of African American children being raised by various members of their families including biological parents, relatives, and non-relatives. Respondents were participants in a large-scale study of African American children and their families, the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS). Children\u27s level of depression and conduct disorder symptoms and school performance were assessed in order to compare the adjustment of children who reside with a biological parent compared to that of children who live with various other family members and non-relatives. Secondary data analysis revealed relatively few differences among children raised by various caregivers. Regardless of the caregiver relation to target, this study highlights the importance of a home environment that encourages a child\u27s healthy behavioral and psychological development

The role of professional urban planners in understanding and managing the dynamism of informal settlements

Informal settlements pose a major developmental challenge for professional urban planners and urban managers and are predicted to continue to do so in years to come. At the heart of this challenge lies the complex relationship between the nature of informality and that of urban planning as a profession and discipline. The greater part of research on informal settlements has focused, and continues to focus, on bottomup approaches. While these approaches are central to global South oriented research, I argue for more focus on what appears to be the overlooked role of the global South planner. Whereas my approach delves into the intersection between managing informal settlements, utopian ideals of urban planning, and a radical push for decolonial thinking, urban planning in both the global North and global South has long been critiqued for its persistent rigid, colonial-modernist approach to the managing and assessment of urban development. The specific emphasis of my approach is on the mindset and sensibility necessary for built environment professionals to adopt when undertaking processes of urban development, a focus which seems so far to have been missing in planning debates. I argue that change cannot fully start from the bottom, that, for several reasons, it needs to start from the top. The modernist colonial origins, influence, and culture of urban planning is critiqued by scholars, particularly in the global South planning field, for ‘saving', ‘hiding', or ‘eradicating', rather than liberating and empowering the ‘other' in urban development processes. Central to this liberation, I argue, is a radical reorientation of planners' consciousness toward the kind of mindset and sensibility necessary when managing ‘the other', i.e. the urban poor, the marginalised, and those living in informal settlements. Any acknowledgement of the importance of both social organisation and identity in informal place-making lies in the shift in urban planning practitioners' mindsets. The focus of my case study is an exploration of the specific ways in which planning practitioners collaborated with each other, and with informal settlement communities. This included the power relations at play within this collaborative process, and the potential this process has to harness and invigorate the informal upgrading process. I explore these by looking at a pilot (Phase 1) Upgrading of an Informal Settlement Programme (UISP) project in Thembalethu, municipality of George, Western Cape Province. Even though the UISP is a housing policy rather than a planning tool, the UISP is actively designed to address and upgrade informal settlements by following a four-phased approach to address broader socio-economic challenges. By exploring the Thembalethu UISP, I explore the degree to which planners are able to intervene and manage the complexities and contradictions inherent in informal settlement upgrading processes such as those in Thembalethu, and the specific factors limiting their role in this process. My study adopted a qualitative case study research design approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the professionals who administered, and were responsible for, the upgrading project, together with field observation. Data were analysed using a system change lens, adjacent to using a deductive thematic analysis technique. The planners were found to have played a marginal role in the upgrading process, and their agency to have been restricted, both by their employers and by the UISP budget, as their role was limited to technical layouts. Even though planning in this case remained ‘powerless' and tended to fall prey to ‘institutional victimisation', the role of the planner as revealed by the interviews was seen as imperative in providing spatial direction and balance in upgrading projects. Nevertheless, the interviews revealed that, in spite of their lack of agency and power in upgrading processes in the Thembalethu UISP, the planners were starting to reimagine informal spaces and the function of these, and, in so doing, challenging conventional ideas of design and layout, as well as the role of the planner, and their participation with communities in the planning process. This was all in addition, and at times in resistance to, policy considerations. While this process of incipient reimagining may have been the case in this study, the collaboration of built environment practitioners continues to mirror a disproportion of responsiveness between the state and the UISP implementing agent, and, in so doing, exposes the strength of governance systems continuing to remain in place. The current study is expected to hold significance both at empirical and theoretical levels. Some of the theoretical significance resides in the move towards an African or de-colonial turn in planning, as well as towards a grounded learning-driven planning approach. While there is a body of research which shows how planning need not overlook power, I suggest specific ways in which ideas of decentralisation have exposed the strength (i.e., distribution of power) of existing urban governance systems and community participation. The empirical significance of the study calls for a greater emphasis on how the role of the implementing agent has been discounted in the literature. The findings also suggest the necessity for neighbourhood design and scale of intervention in upgrading projects, and for these projects to be more appropriate to the specific needs of informal communities than are large-scale one-size-fits-all state funded projects. Even though there has been a shift in scale and exploration in layout design, there remains a need for a holistic approach to urban development. On a policy level, the findings point to both a gap in, and a need for, greater alignment between housing and planning legislation and policies. Thus, the study offers a deeper knowledge and understanding of policy considerations, and of how custodianship of policies can become a major stronghold, if not a greater power contender, in the urban development spectrum. Furthermore, existing ideas of ‘community empowerment' language in policy documents are interrogated. In the process of understanding the workings of this, I look in detail at management styles and at the kind of leadership necessary for implementing upgrading programmes. Based on the findings, I put forward the importance of ambivalence in any upgrading project. Thus, in the context of urban development as a dynamic ‘collective', I consider the inability of planners to hold ambivalence to be a significant hindrance to their ability to envision, or to re-imagine, informal settlements. I argue that this in turn implicates the way planners think and manage the collective needs, together with the dynamism of informal settlements

In the Urban Arena

In bringing a new equestrian facility to the inner-city high school where she teaches, Maggie Kendall\u27s lifelong love of horses gallops full circle

Neural differentiation is moderated by age in scene- but not face-selective cortical regions

The aging brain is characterized by neural dedifferentiation, an apparent decrease in the functional selectivity of category-selective cortical regions. Age-related reductions in neural differentiation have been proposed to play a causal role in cognitive aging. Recent findings suggest, however, that age-related dedifferentiation is not equally evident for all stimulus categories and, additionally, that the relationship between neural differentiation and cognitive performance is not moderated by age. In light of these findings, in the present experiment, younger and older human adults (males and females) underwent fMRI as they studied words paired with images of scenes or faces before a subsequent memory task. Neural selectivity was measured in two scene-selective (parahippocampal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC)] and two face-selective [fusiform face area (FFA) and occipital face area (OFA)] regions using both a univariate differentiation index and multivoxel pattern similarity analysis. Both methods provided highly convergent results, which revealed evidence of age-related reductions in neural dedifferentiation in scene-selective but not face-selective cortical regions. Additionally, neural differentiation in the PPA demonstrated a positive, age-invariant relationship with subsequent source memory performance (recall of the image category paired with each recognized test word). These findings extend prior findings suggesting that age-related neural dedifferentiation is not a ubiquitous phenomenon, and that the specificity of neural responses to scenes is predictive of subsequent memory performance independently of age

Nutrient and Food Group Intakes of Low-Income Pregnant Women by Race/Ethnicity

In an exploratory study, a convenience sample of 148 pregnant women was recruited from a WIC clinic in the southeast region of the U.S. to: 1) Examine and compare daily nutrient and food group intakes of WIC pregnant women to national guidelines, and; 2) Determine racial/ethnic differences in nutrient and food group intakes among WIC pregnant women. Women were selected for the study if they were: ≥ 18 y, in 2nd trimester of pregnancy, and if they spoke English or Spanish as a first language. Upon recruitment, participants were interviewed to collect information on their socio-demographics, including race/ethnicity. Additionally, 24-h diet recalls were conducted to collect information on average nutrient and food groups intakes of participants during pregnancy. Of the total participants, more than half self-identified as African American (59%), while the remaining reported being Hispanic (20%) and non-Hispanic White (22%). For nutrient intakes, women consumed folate, iron, and potassium below recommended amounts. In contrast, sodium was consumed above the recommendations for pregnancy. For food groups, intake of fruits and whole grains was limited. In comparison by race/ethnicity, specifically it was found that African American women were consuming higher amounts of carbohydrates, but lower amounts of potassium, vitamin A, and fiber in reference to non-minority group of non-Hispanic Whites. While, Hispanic women were consuming lower amounts of added sugar and animal protein than non-Hispanic Whites. Findings highlight the importance of prenatal nutrition education programs and interventions to improve dietary habits of low-income, racial/ethnic minority women. Inter-racial and ethnic differences exist in dietary intake patterns among low-income pregnant women, with African American women being at an increased risk for poor dietary habits and inability to meet nutrient requirements for pregnancy

The role of planners in public open space production in contemporary African cities : a reinjection of the social agenda in planning practice

African cities face challenges of delivering quality public open spaces within set time frames, under constrained budgets, varying levels of political will and professional capacity. These challenges in conjunction with the ‘emotional’ conundrum faced by planners, continue to define the roles of planners and prohibit them from confronting the status quo. This paper argues that the planning profession needs to acknowledge that; to respond to the challenges of contemporary African public open space, an intentional deliberate paradigm is required. This paradigm requires a spatial imagination to reconcile the disjuncture between the static place of planners and the active space of citizens.https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjud20hj2023Town and Regional Plannin

Advanced MR Imaging of the Pancreas

MR imaging can be optimized to evaluate a spectrum of pancreatic disorders with advanced sequences aimed to provide quantitative results and increase MR diagnostic capabilities. The pancreas remains a challenging organ to image because of its small size and location deep within the body. Besides its anatomic limitations, pancreatic pathology can be difficult to identify in the early stages. For example, subtle changes in ductal anatomy and parenchymal composition seen in early chronic pancreatitis are imperceptible with other modalities, such as computed tomography. This article reviews the application of MR imaging techniques and emerging MR sequences used in pancreas imaging

Development and validation of a pain monitoring app for patients with musculoskeletal conditions (The Keele pain recorder feasibility study).

BACKGROUND: Assessing daily change in pain and related symptoms help in diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring response to treatment. However, such changes are infrequently assessed, and usually reviewed weeks or months after the start of treatment. We therefore developed a smartphone application (Keele Pain Recorder) to record information on the severity and impact of pain on daily life. Specifically, the study goal was to assess face, content and construct validity of data collection using the Pain Recorder in primary care patients receiving new analgesic prescriptions for musculoskeletal pain, as well as to assess its acceptability and clinical utility. METHODS: The app was developed with Keele's Research User Group (RUG), a clinical advisory group (CAG) and software developer for use on Android devices. The app recorded pain levels, interference, sleep disturbance, analgesic use, mood and side effects. In a feasibility study, patients aged >?18 attending their general practitioner (GP) with a painful musculoskeletal condition were recruited to use the app twice per day for 28?days. Face and construct validity were assessed through baseline and post-study questionnaires (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient). Usability and acceptability were determined through post-study questionnaires, and patient, GP, RUG and CAG interviews. RESULTS: An app was developed which was liked by both patients and GPs. It was felt that it offered the opportunity for GPs to discuss pain control with their patients in a new way. All participants found the app easy to use (it did not interfere with their activities) and results easy to interpret. Strong associations existed between the first 3?days (Spearman r?=?0.79) and last 3?days (r?=?0.60) of pain levels and intensity scores on the app with the validated questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS: Collaborating with patient representatives and clinical stakeholders, we developed an app which can be used to help clinicians and patients monitor painful musculoskeletal conditions in response to analgesic prescribing. Recordings were accurate and valid, especially, for pain intensity ratings, and it was easy to use. Future work needs to examine how pain trajectories can help manage changes in a patient's condition, ultimately assisting in self-management