The Bluegrass Reentry Council Strategic Plan

The overcrowding of jails and prisons and high recidivism rates are issues America is facing nationwide. Successful reentry into society following incarceration is a solution to this crisis. In response, in 2011, the Kentucky legislature passed House Bill 463 which mandated reentry councils across the state. The purpose of the councils are to address the current issues facing citizens returning from the justice system, develop a network of resources and service providers within their home area, and communicate and advocate for returning citizens by communicating issues to the community and their leaders.1 This analysis will develop a strategic plan for the Bluegrass Reentry Council. Research Design/ Results: I conducted a full-day strategic planning workshop with the Bluegrass Reentry Council board at their annual meeting. As a result of the workshop, the Board identified its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The Board developed the following: Mission: The Bluegrass Reentry Council is a collaborative group dedicated to helping individuals affected by incarceration. It achieves this through advocacy, community outreach, education, and resource referrals. Vision: Our vision is supportive communities, reduced recidivism, and self-sufficiency for successful reentry. Values: Reduce Stigma, Remove Barriers, Reliable Resources, Respect and Recognize People\u27s Rights. Additionally, the Board set five main goals for the 1 “Our Groups.” Kentucky Department of Corrections 2 year including: Improve Social Media & Marketing, Increase Funding by $1,000, Engage with Youth Systems, Develop Structure of Meetings, and Data Tracking

Exploring the role of task performance and learning style on prefrontal hemodynamics during a working memory task.

Existing literature outlines the quality and location of activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during working memory (WM) tasks. However, the effects of individual differences on the underlying neural process of WM tasks are still unclear. In this functional near infrared spectroscopy study, we administered a visual and auditory n-back task to examine activation in the PFC while considering the influences of task performance, and preferred learning strategy (VARK score). While controlling for age, results indicated that high performance (HP) subjects (accuracy > 90%) showed task dependent lower activation compared to normal performance subjects in PFC region Specifically HP groups showed lower activation in left dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) region during performance of auditory task whereas during visual task they showed lower activation in the right DLPFC. After accounting for learning style, we found a correlation between visual and aural VARK score and level of activation in the PFC. Subjects with higher visual VARK scores displayed lower activation during auditory task in left DLPFC, while those with higher visual scores exhibited higher activation during visual task in bilateral DLPFC. During performance of auditory task, HP subjects had higher visual VARK scores compared to NP subjects indicating an effect of learning style on the task performance and activation. The results of this study show that learning style and task performance can influence PFC activation, with applications toward neurological implications of learning style and populations with deficits in auditory or visual processing

Sensor position on the prefrontal cortex region with respect to Fpz (International 10–20 system).

<p>Yellow dots: Sources, Blue dots: Detectors. Numbers indicate the loaction of the channels based on the source-detector pairs. The dotted squares indicate channel parinings.</p

Estimated marginal means of WM activation level across all tasks in different PFC regions.

<p>Estimated marginal means of WM activation level across all tasks in different PFC regions.</p

Differences in activation between high performance (HP) and normal performance (NP) groups.

<p>Both auditory and visual NP groups showed higher activation in PFC compared to their high-performance cohorts in right DLPFC during visual (a) and left DLPFC and MPFC during auditory (b) tasks.</p

Differences between high performance and normal performance groups in visual and aural VARK scores.

<p>(a) during performance of visual task and (b) during performance of auditory task.</p

Nanoscaffolds for neural regenerative medicine

The aim of this chapter is to expound on the methods for the development of a synthetic analog of the extracellular matrix (ECM) that, because of a careful choice of its characteristics, can regulate cell behavior and tissue progression for applications in neural regenerative medicine. Neural cells—neurons—are the smallest building blocks of the central and peripheral nervous systems. The function of neurons is to elaborate the information that a man receives from the environment, share it with other neurons, and use it to activate complex functions such as language, behavior and surviving, reasoning, and self-correction. In the body, neurons are linked to other neurons and are supported by the ECM. The scaffolds are an artificial analog of the ECM: they are designed and fabricated using a combination of chemical, physical, and engineering techniques. Thus the scope of tissue engineering and neural regenerative medicine is to optimize the characteristics of the scaffold to assure the best performance of the neurons cultivated in them. Performance is another word for efficiency: depending on the variables that one want to maximize, one can have different definitions of efficiency. Thus as for some examples, scaffolds can be designed to optimize cell adhesion, growth, proliferation, clustering, or activity. In this chapter, we will explain how one can use micro- and nanofabrication techniques to produce scaffolds with a tight control over its characteristics, including the physical, chemical, geometrical, and mechanical characteristics. Then, we will see how a combination of characteristics can influence cell behavior, and to what extent