LLMHS Elderly Services Outreach Program: Lincoln, Lyon & Murray Human Services

Right now there is a lack of professional and community knowledge regarding the services LLMHS provides to those over age 65. Thus, there are elderly who are in need of help who are not getting connected to a county long term care social worker. The elderly may need help to simply get connected to resources, have questions answered, correct misconceptions about long term care, get recommendations, or assistance paying for home and community based services. There are also many providers and professionals with questions about what LLMHS does and does not do as well as what the assistance programs can provide. Since professionals, elderly, families of elderly, and the general community lack knowledge of what LLMHS can offer and how they can get connected to the county, there is a social problem that exists in this area. Currently there is no program through the county which addresses that lack of cohesiveness between providers, elderly, and LLMHS. By creating an evidence-based educational outreach program, LLMHS will receive more referrals and will receive the referrals sooner

Rooted Cosmopolitanism in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and Joseph Brodsky.

This study focuses on three contemporary poets —- an Irishman, a West Indian, and a Russian -— who shared an ethical and aesthetic outlook, became close friends, wrote poems for one another, and occasionally worked together, notably on Homage to Robert Frost (1996), which contains an essay by each poet on their modernist predecessor. Their poetry, like that of many poets whose work develops out of the experience of hybridity, ought to be understood as an expression of rooted cosmopolitanism, a term that retains the sense of tension in their writing between home and abroad. Poets such as Heaney, Walcott, and Brodsky remain rooted in particular places while entering into conversation with cultures elsewhere, not to mention with each other, and that conversation becomes essential to their art. Critics typically contend with their work by placing it within a specific geopolitical context -— Northern Ireland amid the Troubles, the Caribbean at the end of European imperialism, Russia during the decline of Soviet Communism -— but this study offers a unified approach to poems by all three of them. In each chapter, I trace one poet’s career through key texts, often incorporating archival materials and my own translations, in order to determine what distinguishes his cosmopolitan poetics from the poetics of his contemporaries. Heaney’s oeuvre describes a journey that widens outward from an omphalos in the rural North, engaging ever more frequently with foreign cultures and forging a pluralist model of Irishness that contrasts with the rustic national image that most critics attribute to him. Walcott’s poetry, on the other hand, has been cosmopolitan in nature from the beginning, owing in part to the cultural and linguistic pluralism of his native St. Lucia. His work is characterized by multivocality, which shows up in his poems both as multilingualism and as dialogue. Finally, Brodsky’s cosmopolitanism, which began to appear early in his career, was transformed, after his exile from the Soviet Union, by his double-rootedness in two literary cultures: Russian and Anglo-American. Each of these three poets established roots in multiple places, which strengthened their cosmopolitanism, widening the scope of their empathy.Ph.D.English Language & LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60800/1/olsonjl_1.pd

A cognitive-mediated model of child social anxiety and depression: examining children's relationships with parents and teachers.

Social relationships are posited to contribute to child social anxiety (e.g., Rapee & Spence, 2004) and depression (e.g., Kaufman, 1991). What social relationships are important and in what ways do they affect specific child outcomes? Research suggests that parents and teachers influence children in many ways, but the specific relations of parental behaviors and teacher-child relationships to child social anxiety and depression have not been examined thoroughly. The current study, therefore, used structural equation modeling to test a cognitive-mediated model that investigates the contributions of parental warmth, parental control, and teacher-child relationships to both child social anxiety and depression. A multi-rater (parent, child, teacher) multi-method (interview, questionnaire, observation) design was used with 76 4th graders who are part of an ongoing longitudinal study (Gazelle, 2006). Participants also included each child’s teacher and parent. The final model included pathways indicating that maternal overcontrol directly predicts child social anxiety, and maternal rejection and the closeness of teacher-child relationships directly predict child depression. In contrast, the associations of maternal rejection and teacher-child closeness to child social anxiety were mediated by children’s interpretations. This overall model demonstrates good fit to the data. These results support the “affectionless control theory” (Parker, 1984) and suggest that maternal overcontrol and rejection are both related to child social anxiety. These results also add greatly to the literature by suggesting that teacher-child relationships are important for children’s internalizing disorders even when including parental relationships in the model, and this association may be similar to the relationships between child internalizing and parental behaviors. Overall, this model represents an extension of the literature on parental behaviors and a novel contribution to our understanding of teacher-child relationships

A Leptin-regulated Circuit Controls Glucose Mobilization During Noxious Stimuli

Adipocytes secrete the hormone leptin to signal the sufficiency of energy stores. Reductions in circulating leptin concentrations reflect a negative energy balance, which augments sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation in response to metabolically demanding emergencies. This process ensures adequate glucose mobilization despite low energy stores. We report that leptin receptor–expressing neurons (LepRb neurons) in the periaqueductal gray (PAG), the largest population of LepRb neurons in the brain stem, mediate this process. Application of noxious stimuli, which often signal the need to mobilize glucose to support an appropriate response, activated PAG LepRb neurons, which project to and activate parabrachial nucleus (PBN) neurons that control SNS activation and glucose mobilization. Furthermore, activating PAG LepRb neurons increased SNS activity and blood glucose concentrations, while ablating LepRb in PAG neurons augmented glucose mobilization in response to noxious stimuli. Thus, decreased leptin action on PAG LepRb neurons augments the autonomic response to noxious stimuli, ensuring sufficient glucose mobilization during periods of acute demand in the face of diminished energy stores

DNA repair and resistence to UV-B radiation in western spotted frogs

assessed DNA repair and resistance to solar radiation in eggs of members of the western spotted frog complex (Rana pretiosa and R. luteiventris), species whose populations are suffering severe range reductions and declines. Specifically, we measured the activity of photoreactivating enzyme (photolyase) in oocytes of spotted frogs. In some species, photoreactivation is the most important mechanism for repair of UV-damaged DNA. Using field experiments, we also compared the hatching success of spotted frog embr yos at natural oviposition sites at three elevations, where some embr yos were subjected to ambient levels of UV-B radiation and others were shielded from UV-B radiation. Compared with other amphibians, photolyase activities in spotted frogs were relatively high. At all sites, hatching success was unaffected by UV-B. Our data support the interpretation that amphibian embr yos with relatively high levels of photolyase are more resistant to UV-B radiation than those with lower levels of photolyase. At the embr yonic stage, UV-B radiation does not presently seem to be contributing to the population declines of spotted frogs.Peer reviewe

Parenting-related stress and psychological distress in mothers of toddlers with autism spectrum disorders

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are at risk for higher stress levels than parents of children with other developmental disabilities and typical development. Recent advances in early diagnosis have resulted in younger children being diagnosed with ASDs but factors associated with parent stress in this age group are not well understood

Liberal market economies, business, and political finance: Britain under New Labour

The extent and nature of business financing of parties is an important feature of political finance. Britain’s transparent and permissive regulatory system provides an excellent opportunity to study business financing of parties. Business donations have been very important to the Conservative party over the last decade, and of only marginal importance to Labour. Unlike other Conservative contributors, business donors are more likely to contribute when the party is popular. In contrast to the previous period of Conservative government, the biggest British businesses tended to abstain from political finance under New Labour. However, their bias towards the Conservatives is affected by the party’s popularity and the closeness of an election. Britain shares the political importance of business financing of parties and its mixture of ideological and pragmatic motivations with other liberal market economies. However, in Britain the bias towards the right is much stronger and the role of big business more marginal