Tributes to Peter Homans

Peter Homans, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, died on Saturday, May 30, 2009, in Evanston, Illinois. The cause of death was complications from a recent stroke. Professor of Psychology and Religious Studies in the Divinity School, Professor Homans also held appointments in the Committee on Human Development and on the Committee on the History of Culture, as well as in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division. He joined the Divinity School faculty in 1965

Making Men: Race, Class, and Gender Projects Among Parents of Youth Football Players

Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews and three years of ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation examines the experiences and sense-making of parents of youth football players. This work focuses primarily on how parents use narratives to construct their moral identities, as well as the masculine identities of their sons. With an intersectional, constructionist approach, findings show that broader cultural conceptions of masculinity are uniquely transported into local raced and classed community cultures, where parents make sense of raising boys into men. This analysis includes a comparison of two neighboring communities, one significantly more white and affluent, and the other with more race and class diversity. Findings demonstrate that the meaning of good manhood differs across the two spaces, with independence and individualism the focus of the parents in the more affluent community and shared bonds and mutual care more salient among parents in the more diverse community. Parents are faced with different challenges. In the privileged community, football is understood as deviant, and parents must account for their decision to allow their boys to play the game. In the more diverse community, football is celebrated as a community bonding activity and as a route to dignified manhood. Parents are also required to manage the day to day reality of football parenthood, and findings show that this is especially difficult for mothers. Gender structures parenting work, with mothers bearing the lion&rsquo;s share of emotion work and loss of parental power. Interviews reveal that fear and worry are projected onto mothers who are required to demonstrate their ability to both deeply feel and discipline deep emotions in service of their sons&rsquo; well-being. Mothers also struggle to claim parental decision-making power, as the context of football privileges men and marginalizes women. Some mothers attempt to re-empower themselves, with varying degrees of success. Findings show that it is single mothers who are best able to claim parental power, despite being largely marginalized in their communities. This dissertation explores contemporary parenthood and the construction of masculinity within national and local contexts, contributing to scholarship on families, children and youth, gender, culture, identity, emotions, and inequalities.</p

Evaluation of the Induction of Immune Memory following Infant Immunisation with Serogroup C Neisseria meningitidis Conjugate Vaccines - Exploratory Analyses within a Randomised Controlled Trial

Aim: We measured meningococcal serogroup C (MenC)-specific memory B-cell responses in infants by Enzyme-Linked Immunospot (ELISpot) following different MenC conjugate vaccine schedules to investigate the impact of priming on immune memory. Methods: Infants aged 2 months were randomised to receive 1 or 2 doses of MenC-CRM197 at 3 or 3 and 4 months, 1 dose of MenC-TT at 3 months, or no primary MenC doses. All children received a Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib)-MenC booster at 12 months. Blood was drawn at 5, 12, 12 months +6 days and 13 months of age. Results: Results were available for 110, 103, 76 and 44 children from each group respectively. Following primary immunisations, and prior to the 12-month booster, there were no significant differences between 1- or 2-dose primed children in the number of MenC memory B-cells detected. One month following the booster, children primed with 1 dose MenC-TT had more memory B-cells than children primed with either 1-dose (p = 0.001) or 2-dose (p<0.0001) MenC-CRM197. There were no differences in MenC memory B-cells detected in children who received 1 or 2 doses of MenC-CRM197 in infancy and un-primed children. Conclusions: MenC-specific memory B-cell production may be more dependent on the type of primary vaccine used than the number of doses administered. Although the mechanistic differences between MenC-CRM197 and MenC-TT priming are unclear, it is possible that structural differences, including the carrier proteins, may underlie differential interactions with B- and T-cell populations, and thus different effects on various memory B-cell subsets. A MenC-TT/Hib-MenC-TT combination for priming/boosting may offer an advantage in inducing more persistent antibody.peer-reviewe

1997 Convocation

Prelude: Mr. Brad Friedman, 1996 IMSA Graduate Welcome: Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall, President; Dr. Gregg Sinner, Principal; Ms. Jennifer Wang, Student Council President Musical Selection: Mr. Brad Friedman Keynote Speaker: Mr. Michael Peil, 1990 IMSA Graduat

Creative processes in policy making : a case for context in foresight

As with all fields of application, policy-making can frequently fall into the trap of not questioning whether the regular, oft-used solutions are the only way to solve a new problem. Far too frequently, it happens that, not only is a particular policy instrument not the best answer, but it is not even a valid answer to the problem in the first place! Systematic approaches to policy formulation, such as foresight, may appear at the outset as presenting a toolkit of routinised methodologies to be followed religiously by the newly initiated. Yet foresight practice itself shows that not only do foresight experiences generated in one country or region defy close emulation, but that foresight as a phenomenon is undergoing constant change in response to the evolving socio-economic context.peer-reviewe

Robust velocity dispersion and binary population modeling of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II

We apply a Bayesian method to model multi-epoch radial velocity measurements in the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II, fully accounting for the effects of binary orbital motion and systematic offsets between different spectroscopic datasets. We find that the binary fraction of Ret II is higher than 0.5 at the 90% confidence level, if the mean orbital period is assumed to be 30 years or longer. Despite this high binary fraction, we infer a best-fit intrinsic dispersion of 2.8$_{-1.2}^{+0.7}$ km/s, which is smaller than previous estimates, but still indicates Ret II is a dark-matter dominated galaxy. We likewise infer a $\lesssim$ 1% probability that Ret II's dispersion is due to binaries rather than dark matter, corresponding to the regime $M_{\odot}/L_{\odot} \lesssim$ 2. Our inference of a high close binary fraction in Ret II echoes previous results for the Segue 1 ultra-faint dwarf and is consistent with studies of Milky Way halo stars that indicate a high close binary fraction tends to exist in metal-poor environments.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, to be submitted to MNRA

2002 Convocation

Prelude: Minji Ro, 2002 IMSA Graduate Pledge of Allegiance: Urvi Purohit, Student Council President Welcome: Urvi Purohit, Student Council President; Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall, President; Eric McLaren, Principal Musical Selection: Minji Ro, 2002 IMSA Graduate Keynote Speaker: Jennifer Nesbitt Styrsky, Charter Class Graduat

International cooperation for Mars exploration and sample return

The National Research Council's Space Studies Board has previously recommended that the next major phase of Mars exploration for the United States involve detailed in situ investigations of the surface of Mars and the return to earth for laboratory analysis of selected Martian surface samples. More recently, the European space science community has expressed general interest in the concept of cooperative Mars exploration and sample return. The USSR has now announced plans for a program of Mars exploration incorporating international cooperation. If the opportunity becomes available to participate in Mars exploration, interest is likely to emerge on the part of a number of other countries, such as Japan and Canada. The Space Studies Board's Committee on Cooperative Mars Exploration and Sample Return was asked by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to examine and report on the question of how Mars sample return missions might best be structured for effective implementation by NASA along with international partners. The committee examined alternatives ranging from scientific missions in which the United States would take a substantial lead, with international participation playing only an ancillary role, to missions in which international cooperation would be a basic part of the approach, with the international partners taking on comparably large mission responsibilities. On the basis of scientific strategies developed earlier by the Space Studies Board, the committee considered the scientific and technical basis of such collaboration and the most mutually beneficial arrangements for constructing successful cooperative missions, particularly with the USSR