MS-226: Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania Trade Cards

This collection contains 80 nineteenth century trade cards from businesses primarily in Philadelphia (six are from other Pennsylvania location) as well as two decorative images and one three- dimensional square map of Central Europe in German. The cards advertise for a variety of goods and services, including clothing, groceries, beauty and health products, printers, plumbers, jewelers, florists, and more. Many of the cards depict cherubic children, fashionable men and women, prudent consumers using the products advertised, fine art, and include poems, promotions, and manufacturer guarantees. These cards may be of interest to anyone studying methods of advertisement and marketing, graphic design, business history, pharmaceutical history, consumer habits, 19th century fashion and customs, as well as other aspects of Pennsylvania or American social and cultural history. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1194/thumbnail.jp

MS – 198: Letters of Leonard G. Roberts

The letters from Leonard (Mike) Roberts to Geraldine Smith Roberts are very much the correspondence of a young, homesick husband in love. The first series of the collection includes five letters from Mike dated 1937 and two notes presumed to be circa the same time, marking the progress of their teenage courtship. The collection resumes in 1944 when Roberts begins his military service. Drafted late in the war, Roberts was not posted overseas until January, 1945. The letters detail his deployment and military life with a hiatus between February 3rd April 6th as Roberts is taken prisoner by the Germans. His letters continue after his release, detailing his mental, physical, and spiritual condition. With a keen awareness of the censors, Mike reports as much as he is able to on the conditions in camp, traveling through France, his desire for the Germans to surrender and the war to end, his treatment and daily life in a military hospital, and events back home in Coffeyville, Kansas. One letter in the collection, dated February 19th, 1945 was sent from Geraldine to Mike. It is as heartsick as Mike’s letters are to her, full of news from home and fantasies about their life after the war. Series 5 contains 3 newspaper clippings that offer information on Mike’s liberation from prison camp and post-war career. The Roberts’ letters offer an intimate look at one of many long distance relationships between deployed men and their wives during the Second World War. This collection has research potential for anyone interested in correspondence, the daily duties and lives of soldiers in WWII France, German prison camps, or recovery in a military hospital. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website https://www.gettysburg.edu/special-collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1207/thumbnail.jp

Next Steps for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Examines trends in the state programs' caseloads, eligibility rules, and characteristics of families receiving assistance. Presents experts' views on lessons from the recession and insights into funding, TANF's role in the safety net, and reauthorization

Living absence:the strange geographies of missing people

In this paper ‘missing people’ gain an unstable presence through their (restaged) testimonies recounting individual occupations of material urban public space during the lived practice of absence. We explore ‘missing experience’ with reference to homeless geographies, and as constituted by paradoxical spatialities in which people are both absent and present. We seek to understand such urban geographies of absence through diverse voices of missing people, who discuss their embodiment of unusual rhythmic occupations of the city. We conclude by considering how a new politics of missing people might take account of such voices in ways to think further about rights-to-be-absent in the city

Genetic Dissection of a QTL Affecting Bone Geometry.

Parameters of bone geometry such as width, length, and cross-sectional area are major determinants of bone strength. Although these traits are highly heritable, few genes influencing bone geometry have been identified. Here, we dissect a major quantitative trait locus (QTL) influencing femur size. This QTL was originally identified in an F2 cross between the C57BL/6J-hg/hg (HG) and CAST/EiJ strains and was referred to as femur length in high growth mice 2 (Feml2). Feml2 was located on chromosome (Chr.) 9 at ∼20 cM. Here, we show that the HG.CAST-(D9Mit249-D9Mit133)/Ucd congenic strain captures Feml2 In an F2 congenic cross, we fine-mapped the location of Feml2 to an ∼6 Mbp region extending from 57.3 to 63.3 Mbp on Chr. 9. We have identified candidates by mining the complete genome sequence of CAST/EiJ and through allele-specific expression (ASE) analysis of growth plates in C57BL/6J × CAST/EiJ F1 hybrids. Interestingly, we also find that the refined location of Feml2 overlaps a cluster of six independent genome-wide associations for human height. This work provides the foundation for the identification of novel genes affecting bone geometry

Retirement Responses to Early Social Security Benefit Reductions

This paper evaluates potential responses to reductions in early Social Security retirement benefits. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to administrative records, we find that Social Security coverage is quite uneven in the older population: one-quarter of respondents in their late 50’s lacks coverage under the Disability Insurance program, and one-fifth lacks coverage for old-age benefits. Among those eligible for benefits, respondents who subsequently retired early appear quite similar initially to those who later filed for normal retirement benefits, but both groups were healthier and better educated than those who later filed for disability benefits. Next we investigate the potential impact of curtailing, and then eliminating, early Social Security benefits. A life-cycle model of retirement behavior provides estimated parameters used to simulate the effects of cutting early Social Security benefits on retirement pathways. We find that cutting early Social Security benefits would boost the probability of normal retirement by twice as much as it would the probability of disability retirement.

Healthcare disparities and models for change.

With Healthy People 2010 making the goal of eliminating health disparities a national priority, policymakers, researchers, medical centers, managed care organizations (MCOs), and advocacy organizations have been called on to move beyond the historic documentation of health disparities and proceed with an agenda to translate policy recommendations into practice. Working models that have successfully reduced health disparities in managed care settings were presented at the National Managed Health Care Congress Inaugural Forum on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care on March 10-11, 2003, in Washington, DC. These models are being used by federal, state, and municipal governments, as well as private, commercial, and Medicaid MCOs. Successful models and programs at all levels reduce health disparities by forming partnerships based on common goals to provide care, to educate, and to rebuild healthcare systems. Municipal models work in collaboration with state and federal agencies to integrate patient care with technology. Several basic elements of MCOs help to reduce disparities through emphasis on preventive care, community and member health education, case management and disease management tracking, centralized data collection, and use of sophisticated technology to analyze data and coordinate services. At the community level, there are leveraged funds from the Health Resources and Services Administration's Bureau of Primary Health Care. Well-designed models provide seamless monitoring of patient care and outcomes by integrating human and information system resources