A Critical Scan of Four Key Topics for the Philanthropic Sector: A study by the Rockefeller Foundation and Accenture Development Partnerships

The study aims to identify problem areas in the developing and developed world, as well as areas of dynamism and convergence that will, over the next five to 10 years, present opportunities to make a greater impact in the development sector. The study, which made use of a consultative process, investigates four key topics central to human wellbeing. These are: natural ecosystems, health, livelihoods, and urban environments. In each of the four identified topic areas there is a greater need to foster innovation and shift paradigms in order to expand opportunity for the vulnerable and those living in poverty, and strengthen their resilience

Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under U.S. Law

"Family, Unvalued" documents the crippling barriers same-sex binational couples face in pursuing a goal enshrined in America's founding document -- happiness. One fact sets them apart from other binational families. A heterosexual couple where one partner is foreign, one a U.S. citizen, can claim the right to enter the U.S. with a few strokes of a pen. But a lesbian or gay couple's relationship -- even if they have lived together for decades, even if their commitment is incontrovertible--is irrelevant. Instead they face a long limbo of legal indifference, harassment, and fear. Delays, bureaucracy, inconsistency, and injustice make the U.S. immigration system a nightmare for millions. Debate over that system is intensifying. Family, Unvalued shows how its failures affect, and sometimes destroy, families which prejudice has deprived of any legal protection. This report reveals how today's discrimination grows from a long history of anti-immigrant campaigns. Most of all, Family, Unvalued lets the reader hear the sometimes horrifying, always enlightening testimony of lesbian and gay families: people simply seeking to build a better future ... together

CORRELATION BETWEEN EMISSION LINES AND RADIO LUMINOSITIES OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

Radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) are one class of objects associated with accretion activity onto supermassive black holes in centers of massive galaxies. They are believed to be in a radiatively-inefficient accretion mode with low accretion rate. To understand this accretion mode, it is important to measure its radiative output at high energies (\u3e 13.6eV), which can be traced through optical emission lines. However, little is known about their true radiative output. This is because no correlation between optical emission-line and radio luminosity has been found for the majority of low-luminosity radio AGN, which are often classified as low-excitation radio galaxies, or Fanaroff-Riley Class I (FR-I) radio galaxies. We demonstrate that most of the line emission found in these galaxies is not powered by the central AGN, but likely powered by some old stellar population. Only when this component is subtracted or otherwise taken into account can we estimate the true line emission associated with the AGN. These emissions may show interesting correlations with the radio luminosities in some cases

Paradoxical effects of shock: The role of shock intensity and interresponse times followed by shock

In operant conditioning experiments concerned with punishment, when electric shock is contingent on an animal\u27s response, response rates typically decrease. In some cases, however, response rates increase. Four experiments investigated these paradoxical effects of shock by manipulating shock intensity and the time between two consecutive responses (interresponse time) that produces shock. Lever pressing by rats was maintained by a variable-interval 40-s schedule of food reinforcement. Shock followed either relatively long (Experiments 1 and 2) or relatively short (Experiments 3 and 4) interresponse times. The range of interresponse times eligible for shock was raised by lowering or raising the interresponse times that produced shock. Shock intensity was raised from 0.05 mA to either 0.4 mA or 0.8mA. Shock contingent on long interresponse times punished long interresponse times, leading to increased response rates. Shock contingent on short interresponse times punished short interresponse times, leading to decreased response rates. In two experiments, raising the range of interresponse times that produced shock increased or decreased response rates depending on whether the interresponse times were long or short, respectively. In the other two experiments, there was an effect of shock intensity. When long interresponse times produced shock, low intensities punished long interresponse times and increased response rates. High intensities had the opposite effect. When short interresponse times produced shock, high shock intensities punished short interresponse times and decreased response rates more than low intensities. These results demonstrate that interresponse times may serve as functional units of behavior when the behavioral consequence is a punisher and may explain why punishment procedures occasionally increase responding. Moreover, they establish experimental parameters that may be useful for future studies of punishment

WooFood Cooks

As the obesity rates among children have increased examining the causes of this rise is imperative. One of the many reasons for the increase is the amount of meals eaten away from the home and even though young men of color may be less likely to be overweight or obese, chronic diseases associated with poor diets such as diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia still adversely affect them. Studies show that there is a connection between unhealthy eating and the development of the aforementioned chronic diseases. Therefore, the purpose of this Capstone Project, WooFood Cooks, is to bring high school-aged men of color into the kitchen, expose them to micronutrient rich foods, and teach them to cook healthy meals so that they can take these skills home to their families and employ these into adulthood. By having multiple opportunities to learn about, prepare, cook, and eat meals with fruits, vegetables, and lean meats, this program will hopefully have a long-term positive impact on the health of these young men. After the completion of the classes the young men enjoyed the time in the kitchen and learned new cooking skills that they could implement in their homes. However, this project demonstrated that there is more work to be done in the community with bringing families together into teaching kitchens to help them see a new way of cooking traditional meals. It will also impart the necessary knowledge to parents desiring to best serve the health outcomes and behaviors of their children.https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/capstones/1003/thumbnail.jp