Southern Grotesque

The scenes I paint are submerged in specific landscapes I have encountered in Georgia. Honoring my experiences from this vantage point, I depict the rough and tumble attitude of my upbringing that is at odds with a rarefied New York art world I currently live in

Sole and Separate : The Progression of Married Women\u27s Property Rights in the State of Mississippi

While Not known for progressive politics, Mississippi was a leader in Married Women’s Property Rights, passing the first law of the same title in 1839. Mississippi Women were then able to retain their own property after marriage. Prior to this law, the United States utilized a common law system that relegated women to a state of Coverture, which rendered women civilly dead. While there is debate about the extent to which this law should be understood to be a Women’s Rights initiative, it set the stage for an interesting series of events in Columbus. Laura Young Whitfield, an heir-at-law of a wealthy plantation owner, sought to sue her husband over her right to own and control her sole and separate property, the house now known as Baskerville Manor, after he sold it without her permission to cover the debt he incurred over the first decade of their marriage. Laura’s story details one way that the Married Women’s Property Rights Act was utilized by Mississippi Women in an attempt to retain their wealth in a system which upon birth gave them an inherent disadvantage

Using Adaptive Interaction to simplify caregiver's communication with people with dementia who cannot speak

Caregivers find it difficult to interact with people with dementia who have lost the capacity for speech. Adaptive Interaction is a simplified approach that uses the nonverbal fundamentals of communication to connect with people who can no longer speak. Here we present Adaptive Interaction as a method for equipping caregivers with these nonverbal skills to increase communication with the people they care for. Six caregivers were each paired with one individual with dementia and trained in Adaptive Interaction. After receiving training in Adaptive Interaction, caregivers identified more communicative behaviours in their interactions partners and engaged in more frequent positive social behaviours and meaningful actions during interactions. These findings suggest that it is possible to equip staff to use simplified communication based on nonverbal fundamentals to connect with people with dementia who can no longer speak.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Communicating without speech

Adaptive Interaction (AI) is a non-verbal communication tool for people with dementia who can no longer speak. In this article, Maggie Ellis and Arlene Astell briefly describe the genesis of AI, its development over a number of years and how they see its future.Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe

Increasing Student Access to Mental Health Services in Virginia Through Staffing and Structures

This dissertation in practice is a response to a request for assistance (RFA) submitted by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) Office of Student Services (OoSS). To help school divisions meet Standards of Quality (SOQs) and serve student needs, the VDOE OoSS aims to increase the pipeline of licensed school-based mental health professionals (SMHPs). This Capstone examines staffing and service models that create equitable access to student mental health supports using problem and context analysis, a review of literature, and a three-phased mixed methods data collection. Focus group participants consisted of students and practitioners in the fields of school psychology, counseling, and social work. Document analysis of mental health practice integration was conducted for schools implementing advanced tier models in Virginia Tiered Systems of Support (VTSS) and schools implementing VTSS in conjunction with Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP) certification. Additionally, a survey was administered to division-level leadership and SMHPs to examine their understanding of the roles and everyday responsibilities of SMHPs in schools across the state of Virginia

High-throughput retrotransposon-based fluorescent markers: improved information content and allele discrimination

BACKGROUND: Dense genetic maps, together with the efficiency and accuracy of their construction, are integral to genetic studies and marker assisted selection for plant breeding. High-throughput multiplex markers that are robust and reproducible can contribute to both efficiency and accuracy. Multiplex markers are often dominant and so have low information content, this coupled with the pressure to find alternatives to radio-labelling, has led us to adapt the SSAP (sequence specific amplified polymorphism) marker method from a (33)P labelling procedure to fluorescently tagged markers analysed from an automated ABI 3730 xl platform. This method is illustrated for multiplexed SSAP markers based on retrotransposon insertions of pea and is applicable for the rapid and efficient generation of markers from genomes where repetitive element sequence information is available for primer design. We cross-reference SSAP markers previously generated using the (33)P manual PAGE system to fluorescent peaks, and use these high-throughput fluorescent SSAP markers for further genetic studies in Pisum. RESULTS: The optimal conditions for the fluorescent-labelling method used a triplex set of primers in the PCR. These included a fluorescently labelled specific primer together with its unlabelled counterpart, plus an adapter-based primer with two bases of selection on the 3' end. The introduction of the unlabelled specific primer helped to optimise the fluorescent signal across the range of fragment sizes expected, and eliminated the need for extensive dilutions of PCR amplicons. The software (GeneMarker Version 1.6) used for the high-throughput data analysis provided an assessment of amplicon size in nucleotides, peak areas and fluorescence intensity in a table format, so providing additional information content for each marker. The method has been tested in a small-scale study with 12 pea accessions resulting in 467 polymorphic fluorescent SSAP markers of which 260 were identified as having been mapped previously using the radio-labelling technique. Heterozygous individuals from pea cultivar crosses were identifiable after peak area data analysis using the fluorescent SSAP method. CONCLUSION: As well as developing a rapid, and high-throughput marker method for genetic studies, the fluorescent SSAP system improved the accuracy of amplicon scoring, increased the available marker number, improved allele discrimination, and was sensitive enough to identify heterozygous loci in F(1 )and F(2 )progeny, indicating the potential to develop high-throughput codominant SSAPs

Scaffolding for artistic success : comparing structured and unstructured art activity for people with dementia

PostprintNon peer reviewe

Scaffolding to facilitate artistic success

Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe