SERVE Model: A Hands-On Approach to Volunteer Administration

There is an increasing need for Extension professionals to understand the needs and expectations of present and future volunteers. The SERVE Model for Volunteer Administration represents a good starting point to begin to understand the purposes, needs, and positions of volunteers. The model has seven stages that allow volunteers and volunteer administrators to move freely from stage to stage according to the needs of the organization. SERVE, an acronym for strategize/search, educate/energize, recruit/resource, volunteer/volunteer administrator, and evaluate, is designed to help volunteers and volunteer administrators work hand-in-hand on various projects to fulfill one another\u27s needs

Relating Sensory, Cognitive, and Neural Factors to Older Persons’ Perceptions about Happiness: An Exploratory Study

Despite increased rates of disease, disability, and social losses with aging, seniors consistently report higher levels of subjective well-being (SWB), a construct closely related to happiness, than younger adults. In this exploratory study, we utilized an available dataset to investigate how aspects of health commonly deteriorating with age, including sensory (i.e., vision and hearing) and cognitive status, relate to variability in self-described contributors to happiness. Community-dwelling seniors (n = 114) responded to a single-item prompt: “name things that make people happy.” 1731 responses were categorized into 13 domains of SWB via structured content analysis. Sensory health and cognition were assessed by Snellen visual acuity, pure-tone audiometry, and in-person administration of the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT) battery. A subset of eligible participants (n = 57) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess resting state functional connectivity (FC) within a previously described dopaminergic network associated with reward processing. SWB response patterns were relatively stable across gender, sensory status, and cognitive performance with few exceptions. For example, hearing-impaired participants listed fewer determinants of SWB (13.59 vs. 17.16; p<0.001) and were less likely to name things in the “special events” category. Participants with a higher proportion of responses in the “accomplishments” domain (e.g., winning, getting good grades) demonstrated increased FC between the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, regions implicated in reward and motivated behavior. While the framework for determinants of happiness among seniors was largely stable across the factors assessed here, our findings suggest that subtle changes in this construct may be linked to sensory loss. The possibility that perceptions about determinants of happiness might relate to differences in intrinsic connectivity within reward-related brain networks also warrants further investigation

RAS/MAPK Activation Drives Resistance to Smo Inhibition, Metastasis, and Tumor Evolution in Shh Pathway–Dependent Tumors

Aberrant Shh signaling promotes tumor growth in diverse cancers. The importance of Shh signaling is particularly evident in medulloblastoma and basal cell carcinoma (BCC), where inhibitors targeting the Shh pathway component Smoothened (Smo) show great therapeutic promise. However, the emergence of drug resistance limits long-term efficacy and the mechanisms of resistance remain poorly understood. Using new medulloblastoma models, we identify two distinct paradigms of resistance to Smo inhibition. Sufu mutations lead to maintenance of the Shh pathway in the presence of Smo inhibitors. Alternatively activation of the RAS/MAPK pathway circumvents Shh pathway-dependency, drives tumor growth and enhances metastatic behavior. Strikingly, in BCC patients treated with Smo inhibitor, squamous cell cancers with RAS/MAPK activation emerged from the antecedent BCC tumors. Together these findings reveal a critical role of RAS/MAPK pathway in drug resistance and tumor evolution of Shh pathway-dependent tumors