The “Golden Girls”: A Sociological Analysis Of One Model Of Communal Living For The 21st Century

Does art imitate life? Is that an important explanation for why certain television shows have developed a following, even years after the show moved from prime time to syndication? Beside their entertainment value, what else do we find in the episodes? This paper offers a sociological analysis of a shared housing arrangement as modeled in the popular sitcom, The Golden Girls. The author addresses the question of what it takes sociologically to build a successful, liveable community on the micro level of a single household comprised of four older very different women who decide to share a house by pooling financial and other resources. Through laughs, disagreements, late-night talks over cheese cake, and sometimes tears, Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sofia become like family and discover a much more meaningful and sustaining life together than they had imagined

Adopting Children from U. S. Public Foster Care: A Sociological Analysis with Practical Implications

Adoption has increased in importance as both an exit goal and exit outcome for 20-25% of children in public foster care. Although reunification with parents or another biological relative retains primacy as the first option for permanency planning, the percentage of children actually reunified with a biological family member has decreased by nine percent from 60% to 51%. The author uses data collected by the federal government and reported in AFCARS Reports collected over 16 fiscal years to analyze the principal demographic characteristics of children in U. S. public foster care; examine adoption and reunification as exit goals and outcomes for children in foster care; and link patterns and trends in the data with innovative strategies aimed at improving the effectiveness of the public foster care system in regard to permanency planning and post-placement family wellbeing. Although the AFCARS data analyzed indicate that the U. S. public foster care system has improved in a number of areas, the author takes the position that more can be done both to prevent family disruptions and to support positive permanency planning outcomes. She also advocates improving some existing policies along with developing new proactive strategies

The DaVinci Center For Community Progress: Making The Community More Liveable

There are many innovations, projects, and programs which can make a community more liveable. The elements that they have in common are 1) the vision of the founder (or co-founders), 2) a dedicated connection to the community and populations in which the innovation or project is located, 3) the necessary social skills and contacts of the founder(s) and other key people involved in the innovation, 4) hard work, and 5) funding sources that continue over time to keep the services (or project) going, as well as to add services as needs change. The DaVinci Center for Community Progress, in Providence, RI, is an excellent example of how to make a community more liveable for diverse populations for whom it has provided services since it opened its doors in 1972. The DaVinci Center is a multi-purpose facility based on the settlement house model in regard to many of the services it offers. It differs from the settlement house model in that the DaVinci Center staff does not live at the Center. The Center was co-founded by John DeLuca who has also served as its longtime Executive Director. The content for this article was gathered, in part, through a lengthy, structured interview both authors conducted with John at the Center, a review of written materials produced by the Center, and information provided on the Center’s website

Results of a Practitioner Survey and Comparison with the Themes of Articles Published in the ASA Footnotes: Major Issues Facing the Discipline of Sociology

This article reports on the results of a recent practitioner survey in which respondents were asked to identify the three most important issues facing the discipline of sociology at that time and five years into the future. Respondents were drawn primarily from the Sociological Practice Association and the Sociological Practice section of the American Sociological Association. Responses are discussed both within and across membership affiliations. The authors also compare practitioners\u27 responses to the content of articles published in the ASA Footnotes during a comparable period of time. Implications are drawn for the discipline of sociology and for practitioners\u27 involvement in the American Sociological Association as a vehicle for making contributions to the future directions of the discipline

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms