Leadership Development for Community Action: An Ethnographic Inquiry: Northwest Federation of Community Organizations

LeeAnn Hall directs the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations (NWFCO), a collaboration of four state-based community organizations engaged in the fight for social and economic justice. Leadership development is at the heart of the NWFCO mission and central to LeeAnn's own leadership style. Through training and issue-specific campaigns, NWFCO and its affiliated organizations build grassroots capacity to effect social change. This ethnography focuses on the very personal process by which people begin to self-identify and act as leaders. It explores what enables people to envision a different future, both in terms of what they can do and to what end. The results of this research illuminate what it takes to foster and sustain a sense of efficacy and a commitment to action

The Effects of Handedness and Bilateral Saccadic Eye Movements on False Alarms in Recognition Memory

Handedness can be used as a marker for interhemispheric interaction, which can produce memory benefits. Bilateral saccadic eye movements can be used to manipulate levels of interhemispheric interaction. This study measured the effects of handedness and bilateral saccadic eye movement on memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. This study predicted a memory advantage for left-handers and mixed-handers without eye movements and an advantage for right-handers with the eye movements. The results do not support these predictions but do suggest that handedness is a factor in episodic memory performance. The analyses for this study were run using A’ to compare false alarm rates for critical lures and for unrelated new items. Mixed-handers were less susceptible to the DRM paradigm, as the made fewer critical false alarms than both left-handers and right-handers. The bilateral saccadic eye movements increased the number of critical false alarms for left-handers but did not affect right-handers or mixed-handers. Reaction times data indicated that participants treated critical lures like old items

Common Statistical Pitfalls in Basic Science Research

In this review, we focused on common sources of confusion and errors in the analysis and interpretation of basic science studies. The issues addressed are seen repeatedly in the authors\u27 editorial experience, and we hope this article will serve as a guide for those who may submit their basic science studies to journals that publish both clinical and basic science research. We have discussed issues related to sample size and power, study design, data analysis, and presentation of results. We then illustrated these issues using a set of examples from basic science research studies

Prenatal Exposure to Tetrachloroethylene-Contaminated Drinking Water and the Risk of Congenital Anomalies: A Retrospective Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: Prior animal and human studies of prenatal exposure to solvents including tetrachloroethylene (PCE) have shown increases in the risk of certain congenital anomalies among exposed offspring. OBJECTIVES: This retrospective cohort study examined whether PCE contamination of public drinking water supplies in Massachusetts influenced the occurrence of congenital anomalies among children whose mothers were exposed around the time of conception. METHODS: The study included 1,658 children whose mothers were exposed to PCE-contaminated drinking water and a comparable group of 2,999 children of unexposed mothers. Mothers completed a self-administered questionnaire to gather information on all of their prior births, including the presence of anomalies, residential histories and confounding variables. PCE exposure was estimated using EPANET water distribution system modeling software that incorporated a fate and transport model. RESULTS: Children whose mothers had high exposure levels around the time of conception had an increased risk of congenital anomalies. The adjusted odds ratio of all anomalies combined among children with prenatal exposure in the uppermost quartile was 1.5 (95% CI: 0.9, 2.5). No meaningful increases in the risk were seen for lower exposure levels. Increases were also observed in the risk of neural tube defects (OR: 3.5, 95% CI: 0.8, 14.0) and oral clefts (OR 3.2, 95% CI: 0.7, 15.0) among offspring with any prenatal exposure. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that the risk of certain congenital anomalies is increased among the offspring of women who were exposed to PCE-contaminated drinking water around the time of conception. Because these results are limited by the small number of children with congenital anomalies that were based on maternal reports, a follow-up investigation should be conducted with a larger number of affected children who are identified by independent records.National Institute of Environmental Health (5 P42 ES007381); National Institutes of Healt

Wino Cold Dark Matter from Anomaly-Mediated SUSY Breaking

The cosmological moduli problem is discussed in the framework of sequestered sector/anomaly-mediated supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking. In this scheme, the gravitino mass (corresponding to the moduli masses) is naturally 10 - 100 TeV, and hence the lifetime of the moduli fields can be shorter than $\sim 1 sec$. As a result, the cosmological moduli fields should decay before big-bang nucleosynthesis starts. Furthermore, in the anomaly-mediated scenario, the lightest superparticle (LSP) is the Wino-like neutralino. Although the large annihilation cross section means the thermal relic density of the Wino LSP is too small to be the dominant component of cold dark matter (CDM), moduli decays can produce Winos in sufficient abundance to constitute CDM. If Winos are indeed the dark matter, it will be highly advantageous from the point of view of detection. If the halo density is dominated by the Wino-like LSP, the detection rate of Wino CDM in Ge detectors can be as large as $0.1 - 0.01$ event/kg/day, which is within the reach of the future CDM detection with Ge detector. Furthermore, there is a significant positron signal from pair annihilation of Winos in our galaxy which should give a spectacular signal at AMS.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Accurate light-time correction due to a gravitating mass

This work arose as an aftermath of Cassini's 2002 experiment \cite{bblipt03}, in which the PPN parameter $\gamma$ was measured with an accuracy $\sigma_\gamma = 2.3\times 10^{-5}$ and found consistent with the prediction $\gamma =1$ of general relativity. The Orbit Determination Program (ODP) of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was used in the data analysis, is based on an expression for the gravitational delay which differs from the standard formula; this difference is of second order in powers of $m$ -- the sun's gravitational radius -- but in Cassini's case it was much larger than the expected order of magnitude $m^2/b$, where $b$ is the ray's closest approach distance. Since the ODP does not account for any other second-order terms, it is necessary, also in view of future more accurate experiments, to systematically evaluate higher order corrections and to determine which terms are significant. Light propagation in a static spacetime is equivalent to a problem in ordinary geometrical optics; Fermat's action functional at its minimum is just the light-time between the two end points A and B. A new and powerful formulation is thus obtained. Asymptotic power series are necessary to provide a safe and automatic way of selecting which terms to keep at each order. Higher order approximations to the delay and the deflection are obtained. We also show that in a close superior conjunction, when $b$ is much smaller than the distances of A and B from the Sun, of order $R$, say, the second-order correction has an \emph{enhanced} part of order $m^2R/b^2$, which corresponds just to the second-order terms introduced in the ODP. Gravitational deflection of the image of a far away source, observed from a finite distance from the mass, is obtained to $O(m^2)$.Comment: 4 figure