Environmental Activists Share Knowledge and Experiences: Description and Evaluation of STP Schools at the Highlander Research and Education Center

Also PCMA Working Paper #29.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51208/1/441.pd

Empowerment as a Multi-Level Construct: Perceived Control at the Individual, Organizational and Community Levels

Also PCMA Working Paper #40.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51261/1/495.pd

Health implications of an immigration raid: findings from a Latino community in the midwestern United States.

Immigration raids exemplify the reach of immigration law enforcement into the lives of Latino community members, yet little research characterizes the health effects of these raids. We examined the health implications of an immigration raid that resulted in multiple arrests and deportations and occurred midway through a community survey of a Latino population. We used linear regression following principal axis factoring to examine the influence of raid timing on immigration enforcement stress and self-rated health. We controlled for age, sex, relationship status, years in the county in which the raid occurred, children in the home, and nativity. 325 participants completed the survey before the raid and 151 after. Completing the survey after the raid was associated with higher levels of immigration enforcement stress and lower self-rated health scores. Findings indicate the negative impact of immigration raids on Latino communities. Immigration discussions should include holistic assessments of health.UL1 TR000433 - NCATS NIH HH

Electroporation-Mediated Gene Transfer Directly to the Swine Heart

In vivo gene transfer to the ischemic heart via electroporation holds promise as a potential therapeutic approach for the treatment of heart disease. In the current study, we investigated the use of in vivo electroporation for gene transfer using three different penetrating electrodes and one non-penetrating electrode. The hearts of adult male swine were exposed through a sternotomy. Eight electric pulses synchronized to the rising phase of the R wave of the electrocardiogram were administered at varying pulse widths and field strengths following an injection of either a plasmid encoding luciferase or one encoding green fluorescent protein. Four sites on the anterior wall of the left ventricle were treated. Animals were killed 48 h after injection and electroporation and gene expression was determined. Results were compared with sites in the heart that received plasmid injection but no electric pulses or were not treated. Gene expression was higher in all electroporated sites when compared with injection only sites demonstrating the robustness of this approach. Our results provide evidence that in vivo electroporation can be a safe and effective non-viral method for delivering genes to the heart, in vivo

Adaptation in Pronoun Resolution: Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese

Previous research accounting for pronoun resolution as a problem of probabilistic inference has not explored the phenomenon of adaptation, whereby the processor constantly tracks and adapts, rationally, to changes in a statistical environment. We investigate whether Brazilian (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) speakers adapt to variations in the probability of occurrence of ambiguous overt and null pronouns, in two experiments assessing resolution towards subject and object referents. For each variety (BP, EP), participants were faced with either the same number of null and overt pronouns (equal distribution), or with an environment with fewer overt (than null) pronouns (unequal distribution). We find that the preference for interpreting overt pronouns as referring back to an object referent (objectbiased interpretation) is higher when there are fewer overt pronouns (i.e., in the unequal, relative to the equal distribution condition). This is especially the case for BP, a variety with higher prior frequency and smaller object-biased interpretation of overt pronouns, suggesting that participants adapted incrementally and integrated prior statistical knowledge with the knowledge obtained in the experiment. We hypothesize that comprehenders adapted rationally, with the goal of maintaining, across variations in pronoun probability, the likelihood of subject and object referents. Our findings unify insights from research in pronoun resolution and in adaptation, and add to previous studies in both topics: They provide evidence for the influence of pronoun probability in pronoun resolution, and for an adaptation process whereby the language processor not only tracks statistical information, but uses it to make interpretational inferences.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Social networks and social support: living with chronic renal disease

Individuals with chronic renal disease who receive dialysis treatment are continually faced with major adjustments. These may include dealing with changes in work and economic status, social roles, activity levels, self-image, health status, and normal routines, as well as learning to live with uncertainty and loss. The individual's social network plays a key role as the individual experiences and moves through various stages of adjustment. Networks with certain characteristics (e.g. provision of affective support, reciprocal ties) may be more effective than others lacking these characteristics in meeting the individual's changing needs during the process of adjusting to chronic renal disease. This paper examines this relationship between the characteristics of an individual's social network and adjustment to chronic renal illness. The discussion focuses on the impact of chronic renal disease on the individual, the composition and characteristics of the social network, and on the relationships between network members. How the social network affects a person's adjustment to stages of adaptation to chronic renal disease is also addressed. Finally, suggestions are presented for how health care professionals can intervene at the individual, network, and organizational level to strengthen and enlarge social networks in order to enhance social support.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25581/1/0000125.pd

Hypertension: Development of a prediction model to adjust self-reported hypertension prevalence at the community level

Abstract Background Accurate estimates of hypertension prevalence are critical for assessment of population health and for planning and implementing prevention and health care programs. While self-reported data is often more economically feasible and readily available compared to clinically measured HBP, these reports may underestimate clinical prevalence to varying degrees. Understanding the accuracy of self-reported data and developing prediction models that correct for underreporting of hypertension in self-reported data can be critical tools in the development of more accurate population level estimates, and in planning population-based interventions to reduce the risk of, or more effectively treat, hypertension. This study examines the accuracy of self-reported survey data in describing prevalence of clinically measured hypertension in two racially and ethnically diverse urban samples, and evaluates a mechanism to correct self-reported data in order to more accurately reflect clinical hypertension prevalence. Methods We analyze data from the Detroit Healthy Environments Partnership (HEP) Survey conducted in 2002 and the National Health and Nutrition Examination (NHANES) 2001–2002 restricted to urban areas and participants 25 years and older. We re-calibrate measures of agreement within the HEP sample drawing upon parameter estimates derived from the NHANES urban sample, and assess the quality of the adjustment proposed within the HEP sample. Results Both self-reported and clinically assessed prevalence of hypertension were higher in the HEP sample (29.7 and 40.1, respectively) compared to the NHANES urban sample (25.7 and 33.8, respectively). In both urban samples, self-reported and clinically assessed prevalence is higher than that reported in the full NHANES sample in the same year (22.9 and 30.4, respectively). Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy between clinical and self-reported hypertension prevalence were ‘moderate to good’ within the HEP sample and ‘good to excellent’ within the NHANES sample. Agreement between clinical and self-reported hypertension prevalence was ‘moderate to good’ within the HEP sample (kappa =0.65; 95% CI = 0.63-0.67), and ‘good to excellent’ within the NHANES sample (kappa = 0.75; 95%CI = 0.73-0.80). Application of a ‘correction’ rule based on prediction models for clinical hypertension using the national sample (NHANES) allowed us to re-calibrate sensitivity and specificity estimates for the HEP sample. The adjusted estimates of hypertension in the HEP sample based on two different correction models, 38.1% and 40.5%, were much closer to the observed hypertension prevalence of 40.1%. Conclusions Application of a simple prediction model derived from national NHANES data to self-reported data from the HEP (Detroit based) sample resulted in estimates that more closely approximated clinically measured hypertension prevalence in this urban community. Similar correction models may be useful in obtaining more accurate estimates of hypertension prevalence in other studies that rely on self-reported hypertension.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112834/1/12913_2011_Article_2187.pd

SOCIOECONOMIC INDICATORS OF DESERTIFICATION: ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL AND ANIMAL PRODUCTION IN THE REGIONAL POLE OF JEREMOABO - BAHIA

The relationship between society and nature in arid areas denotes the environmental unsustainability of human practices, techniques and technologies. The materialization of desertification exceeds the capacity of maintenance of the dynamic balance of environments and of environmental resilience, evidenced in different world and Brazilian spaces. Through this research, we investigated the environmental vulnerability to desertification in the context of Bahia state’s the regional pole of Jeremoabo based on the application of agricultural and animal productions indicators. The area studied belongs to those susceptible to desertification and was selected by the government of Bahia’s state for the conduction of an environmental diagnosis that will serve as basis for that State’s Plan to Combat Desertification and Mitigate the Effects of Drought. The indicators were related to agricultural and animal production so that data from bovine, goat and sheep production and from both production and productivity of beans and corn were evaluated over the period from 2001 to 2011. When connecting the agricultural and animal production information data with that about the regional weather, there was an evidence of the effects of temporal climate oscillations on agricultural and animal production. For instance, in drought years there is a high loss of production and a socioeconomic disruption. Therefore, our results indicate that there is a high environmental vulnerability because of incompatibility of socio-productive techniques and practices in an environment predominated by a semiarid tropical climate and susceptible to desertification