Lessons from Yellow Medicine County: Work and Custodial Service at the County Poor Farm, 1889-1935

Poor farms, which spread to the Midwestern United States in the nineteenth century, were intended to provide work for their residents. Existing literature indicates that the need for work and the ability of residents to work was limited on Midwestern poor farms and that it decreased with time. In the historical case study of a rural Minnesota poor farm presented here, data support contentions of the literature. Between 1889 and 1935, the Yellow Medicine County Poor Farm expanded and modernized the house, while allowing an originally modern farming operation to stagnate. Residents who accounted for most of the occupancy were old, disabled immigrant males, and became more so with time. Thus, the Poor Farm adapted to the problems these residents presented, and moved from a work-providing operation to a custodial facility

Community Work Practice and Client Empowerment Under Conservative Conditions: From Observed Practice to a Theory of Societal Context

The thesis of this paper is that community work can be understood in relation to the larger structure of society. Community work is seen in terms of observations on cases previously reported. These observations suggest a political model of community work. In that model, goals are short term task goals of program development aimed at social problem or disadvantaged groups. The model assumes conflict among groups which can be dealt with politically. Client systems are different than constituent systems in that model, and clients are weak participants in community work. Non-client voluntary associations can nonetheless influence program decisions. These model elements are explained in terms of pluralism and the dominance of business and big government in American society. Pluralism creates the potential for conflict, thus creating a need for political strategy and tactics in community work. Dominance of business and government in program decisions gives programs and their clients relatively low status. This low status makes empowerment of clients unlikely

United They’re Cited: Impact of a Social Work Coauthor Network

Social work has emphasized the importance of the social environment, and social networks are an important means of understanding the social environment. The scholarship of a journal coauthor network provided important findings and an example. Prior theory and research suggested there are more citations from the center of coauthor networks than at the periphery. Using abductive logic, complexity theory, social network analysis, and tabular analysis of a social work coauthor network, the center of the network was found to produce more citations than the periphery. Both the prestige of coauthors’ setting and position were modestly associated with network centrality and citations. The functionality of citations, which includes the contribution to good scholarship, is questioned. Areas of further research and issues of evaluating coauthored scholarship are discussed. Placing greater value on coauthoring and publishing with less prominent coauthors for tenure and similar decisions is recommended

Red and Problematic Green Phylogenetic Signals among Thousands of Nuclear Genes from the Photosynthetic and Apicomplexa-Related Chromera velia

The photosynthetic and basal apicomplexan Chromera velia was recently described, expanding the membership of this otherwise nonphotosynthetic group of parasite protists. Apicomplexans are alveolates with secondary plastids of red algal origin, but the evolutionary history of their nuclear genes is still actively discussed. Using deep sequencing of expressed genes, we investigated the phylogenetic affinities of a stringent filtered set of 3,151 expressed sequence tag-contigs by generating clusters with eukaryotic homologs and constructing phylogenetic trees and networks. The phylogenetic positioning of this alveolate alga was determined and sets of phyla-specific proteins extracted. Phylogenetic trees provided conflicting signals, with 444 trees grouping C. velia with the apicomplexans but 354 trees grouping C. velia with the alveolate oyster pathogen Perkinsus marinus, the latter signal being reinforced from the analysis of shared genes and overall sequence similarity. Among the 513 C. velia nuclear genes that reflect a photosynthetic ancestry and for which nuclear homologs were available both from red and green lineages, 263 indicated a red photosynthetic ancestry, whereas 250 indicated a green photosynthetic ancestry. The same 1:1 signal ratio was found among the putative 255 nuclear-encoded plastid proteins identified. This finding of red and green signals for the alveolate mirrors the result observed in the heterokont lineage and supports a common but not necessarily single origin for the plastid in heterokonts and alveolates. The inference of green endosymbiosis preceding red plastid acquisition in these lineages leads to worryingly complicated evolutionary scenarios, prompting the search for other explanations for the green phylogenetic signal and the amount of hosts involved

Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamics, and Change: Augmenting Systems Theory

Social work change processes are addressed in terms of complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics, adding the edge-of-chaos, as well as chaos to the entropy and homeostasis of ecosystems theory. Complexity theory sees the edge-of-chaos as valuable to living systems.A logistic difference equation is utilized to model the nonlinear dynamics of the hypothetical contentment of an individual. The modeling suggests that substantial input would be required to move an individual from homeostasis to the beneficial stage at the edge-of-chaos, but that too much input might result in chaos.With good measurement and data observed over time, social work might benefit from complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics, which are already advancing in related disciplines

Chromera velia, Endosymbioses and the Rhodoplex Hypothesis - Plastid Evolution in Cryptophytes, Alveolates, Stramenopiles and Haptophytes (CASH Lineages)

The discovery of Chromera velia, a free-living photosynthetic relative of apicomplexan pathogens, has provided an unexpected opportunity to study the algal ancestry of malaria parasites. In this work we compared the molecular footprints of a eukaryote-to-eukaryote endosymbiosis in C. velia to their equivalents in peridinin-containing dinoflagellates (PCD) to re- evaluate recent claims in favor of a common ancestry of their plastids. To this end, we established the draft genome and a set of full-length cDNA sequences from C. velia via next- generation sequencing. We documented the presence of a single coxI gene in the mitochondrial genome, which thus represents the genetically most reduced aerobic organelle identified so far, but focused our analyses on five “lucky genes” of the Calvin cycle. These were selected because of their known support for a common origin of complex plastids from cryptophytes, alveolates (represented by PCDs), stramenopiles and haptophytes (CASH) via a single secondary endosymbiosis with a red alga. As expected, our broadly sampled phylogenies of the nuclear- encoded Calvin cycle markers support a rhodophycean origin for the complex plastid of Chromera. However, they also suggest an independent origin of apicomplexan and dinophycean (PCD) plastids via two eukaryote-to-eukaryote endosymbioses. Although at odds with the current view of a common photosynthetic ancestry for alveolates, this conclusion is nonetheless in line with the deviant plastome architecture in dinoflagellates and the morphological paradox of four versus three plastid membranes in the respective lineages. Further support for independent endosymbioses is provided by analysis of five additional markers, four of them involved in the plastid protein import machinery. Finally, we introduce the “rhodoplex hypothesis” as a convenient way to designate evolutionary scenarios where CASH plastids are ultimately the product of a single secondary endosymbiosis with a red alga, but were subsequently horizontally spread via higher-order eukaryote-to-eukaryote endosymbioses