Organizations Focused On Immigrant Civic Participation Encourage Immigrants To Be Part of the Broader Community

The first year evaluation report on the Immigrant Participation & Immigration Reform (IPIR) initiative tells a story of human and social development -- newcomers joining and strengthening the democracy-among immigrants whose institutions engage them in organizational self-governance, leadership opportunities, and democratic civic activity. Indeed, evidence suggests that it is the quality of these organizations that draws immigrants into participation: Sixty-three percent of respondents said that one of their major motivations to be active in the community was that "I like being a part of an organization that does good work.

Creative Aging in America's Libraries: Year Two Evaluation Report

Creative Aging in America's Libraries is a three-year national leadership initiative to improve, expand and sustain Creative Aging programming in public libraries. It was designed and is led by Lifetime Arts, Inc., in partnership with Westchester Library System. Major support is provided by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Twenty library systems across the country (listed in Appendix A) are participating in this initiative. The initiative began in the spring of 2014 with a preparation phase, equipping participating libraries to plan and conduct instructional arts programs for older adults according to the model developed by Lifetime Arts. Activities included a series of webinars; a pair of three-day regional training institutes (one in the east, one in the west) to which each library system sent a team of up to five librarians and administrators; launch of a Wikispace where participants can raise questions, exchange information and engage in peer learning and mutual support; access to Lifetime Arts' online resources; and customized assistance from Lifetime Arts staff. The second phase, implementation, began in late 2014 and runs through mid-2016. During this phase, each system is conducting between two and five Creative Aging programs, with support from Lifetime Arts. Goals are to demonstrate and evaluate the model including testing any local variations, build capacity, and begin building sustainability for this kind of programming. Altogether, 67 Creative Aging programs are planned across the 20 systems (plus additional programs in several systems conducted with funding from other sources). A final phase, from July through December 2016, will analyze final results and lessons from all sites, and do further exploration and planning to sustain and expand libraries' Creative Aging activities into the future

Faith, Community and Civic Action: Reflections on the Organized Religion Initiative

Evaluates how well six California faith-based institutions used community organizing to pull immigrant and low-income communities into more active involvement with political and civic leadership and participation activities, between 1996-2005

Strengthening Grassroots Community Leadership in Detroit

Community Connections is a resident-centered grant program working to strengthen civic engagement and grassroots leadership in six Detroit neighborhoods: Brightmoor, Chadsey Condon, Cody Rouge, North End, Osborn, and Southwest. It awards grants of $500 to$5,000 to local projects that mobilize residents' energies to improve opportunities and conditions for youth. Community Connections was launched by the Skillman Foundation in 2006 as part of the Foundation's Good Neighborhoods initiative, and is operated by Prevention Network, a statewide organization experienced in running resident-focused small grants programs. Since 2012 it has also received major support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.Rooted in the conviction that local groups and leaders are essential if neighborhoods are to create safe environments where children and youth can grow up successfully, the program is guided by a four-fold impact framework. At its heart is a commitment to expand residents' civic engagement. Through its project support and related learning opportunities, Community Connections helps strengthen community leadership in these neighborhoods. Projects offer positive youth development opportunities to children and teens in these neighborhoods. And some projects contribute to systems change by connecting with kids in ways that larger institutional systems currently miss, by helping to create alternatives to those established institutional systems, and by engaging in neighborhood planning, policy advocacy and other efforts to reform those systems

Specific quorum sensing-disrupting activity (A(QSI)) of thiophenones and their therapeutic potential

Disease caused by antibiotic resistant pathogens is becoming a serious problem, both in human and veterinary medicine. The inhibition of quorum sensing, bacterial cell-to-cell communication, is a promising alternative strategy to control disease. In this study, we determined the quorum sensing-disrupting activity of 20 thiophenones towards the quorum sensing model bacterium V. harveyi. In order to exclude false positives, we propose a new parameter (A(QSI)) to describe specific quorum sensing activity. A(QSI) is defined as the ratio between inhibition of quorum sensing-regulated activity in a reporter strain and inhibition of the same activity when it is independent of quorum sensing. Calculation of A(QSI) allowed to exclude five false positives, whereas the six most active thiophenones (TF203, TF307, TF319, TF339, TF342 and TF403) inhibited quorum sensing at 0.25 mu M, with A(QSI) higher than 10. Further, we determined the protective effect and toxicity of the thiophenones in a highly controlled gnotobiotic model system with brine shrimp larvae. There was a strong positive correlation between the specific quorum sensing-disrupting activity of the thiophenones and the protection of brine shrimp larvae against pathogenic V. harveyi. Four of the most active quorum sensing-disrupting thiophenones (TF 203, TF319, TF339 and TF342) were considered to be promising since they have a therapeutic potential of at least 10

An Experimental Analysis of the Lateral Distribution of Cores of Extensive Air Showers

It is the purpose of this thesis to investigate the lateral distribution of cores of EAS from a central detector. If the experimental results agree with those predicted theoretically, it can be assumed that the method of locating cores is reliable, thus making it possible to study the energy transfer in EAS