Indiana Nonprofits: A Portrait of Religious Nonprofits and Secular Charities

Compares sources of revenue, staffing, volunteers, services, governance, financial management, information technology, and other criteria for Indiana faith-based organizations and secular charities. Includes recommendations for policymakers

Shattered Mosaic: David Dinkins, Rudolph Giuliani, and Social and Electoral Polarization in Late-20th Century New York City

On Tuesday November 2, 1993, New Yorkers went to the polls to vote in the mayoral election between the incumbent Democratic candidate, David Dinkins, and the Republican-Liberal Party candidate, Rudolph Giuliani. As with most local New York elections, several additional candidates were on the ballot. Jimmy McMillan, known now as the “Rent is Too Damn High” candidate, made his first bid for public office that year. The clear frontrunners, Giuliani and Dinkins, would finish just percentage points apart, with Giuliani garnering 50.9% of the popular vote and Dinkins only 48%. This was a near mirror image of the previous election in 1989, when Giuliani lost to Dinkins with only 47.84% to Dinkins’ 50.42% of the vote.[1] The election not only ousted New York’s first, and thus far only, black mayor from office after just a single term, but also solidified a conservative, urban social movement in a city that had traditionally been overwhelmingly liberal. This movement’s roots could be found as early as William Buckley’s unsuccessful run for mayor in 1965 in the wake of the 1964 Harlem riots. It gained traction during the teachers strike in Ocean Hill-Brownsville in 1968 and the city’s fiscal crisis of 1975, when Mayor Abraham Beame was forced to decimate social welfare and city services in order to stave off citywide bankruptcy. It was not until 1993, though, that the movement was vindicated with a major electoral victory. Amidst the election of Mayor Giuliani, the city experienced a turbulent, anxious era in its social and political history. The late-1980s and early-1990s were marked by retrenchment, conflict, and polarization, often demonstrated in violence and confrontation, as David Dinkins’ “beautiful mosaic” nearly shattered. Under these circumstances, and riding a rising national sentiment of conservatism and a fierce local debate about the city’s “quality of life,” Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, seemingly of a New York that was by then long lost, became the city’s first Republican mayor in a generation. [1] Our Campaigns: New York City Mayoral Election, 1993

Panel 4: The Next Frontier: Space and Beyond

What does an international law of property portend for future extraterrestrial ambitions, such as moon and near asteroid mining? How does the Outer Space Treaty address the global commons of outer space? The law of outer space is “both unclear and incomplete” – what are the implications of an international law of property for the development of outer space law

Daily Interpersonal Stress and the Stressor–Vulnerability Model of Alcohol Use

We used an experience sampling design to examine the within–person, within–day associations among interpersonal stress, negative affect, and alcohol use, and how these associations varied as a function of alcohol–outcome expectancies (AOEs), avoidance coping style, sex, and neuroticism. Ninety–eight community adult drinkers who wanted to reduce their alcohol consumption (49 women) reported for 21 days on their interpersonal stress and affect (three times per day), and alcohol use (as it occurred) using hand–held computers. Several individual difference factors interacted with daytime interpersonal stress and afternoon negative affect in predicting nighttime alcohol use, with individuals high in careless unconcern AOEs or low in impairment AOEs demonstrating stronger positive associations between daytime stress and negative affect and nighttime drinking. Daytime drinking and individual difference factors also interacted in predicting nighttime interpersonal stress, with individuals high in careless unconcern AOEs or those low in impairment AOEs or avoidance coping style demonstrating the strongest positive associations between daytime drinking and nighttime stress. The interactive effects in predicting drinking outcomes were generally limited to days on which some interpersonal stress occurred

Beliefs about Racism and Health among African American Women with Diabetes: A Qualitative Study

Exposure to racism has been linked to poor health outcomes. Little is known about the impact of racism on diabetes outcomes. This study explored African American (AA) women’s beliefs about how racism interacts with their diabetes self-management and control. Four focus groups were conducted with a convenience sample of 28 adult AA women with type 2 diabetes who were recruited from a larger quantitative study on racism and diabetes. The focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by the authors. Women reported that exposure to racism was a common phenomenon, and their beliefs did in fact link racism to poor health. Specifically, women reported that exposure to racism caused physiological arousal including cardiovascular and metabolic perturbations. There was consensus that physiological arousal was generally detrimental to health. Women also described limited, and in some cases maladaptive, strategies to cope with racist events including eating unhealthy food choices and portions. There was consensus that the subjective nature of perceiving racism and accompanying social prohibitions often made it impossible to address racism directly. Many women described anger in such situations, and the tendency to internalize anger and other negative emotions, only to find that the negative emotions would be reactivated repeatedly with exposure to novel racial stressors, even long after the original racist event remitted. AA women in this study believed that racism affects their diabetes self-management and control. Health beliefs can exert powerful effects on health behaviors andmay provide an opportunity for health promotion interventions in diabetes

Personality science, resilience, and posttraumatic growth

PASTOR represents an innovative development in the study of resilience. This commentary highlights how PASTOR can help both clarify critical questions in and benefit from engaging with new research in personality science on behavioral flexibility across situations in addition to stability over time, and also clarify the relationship between resilience and posttraumatic growth

The relationship between indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase activity and post-stroke cognitive impairment

BACKGROUND: Activation of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) and higher concentrations of several kynurenine metabolites have been observed post-stroke, where they have been associated with increased mortality. While lower tryptophan or a higher ratio of kynurenine/tryptophan (K/T) in peripheral blood have been associated with dementia and the severity of cognitive symptoms in Alzheimer's disease, the association between K/T ratios and post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) has not been investigated. METHODS: Patients were recruited from the acute stroke unit of a general hospital within 1 month post-stroke. Assessments included the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination (sMMSE) for cognition, the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) for stroke severity, and the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D) for depressive symptoms. Tryptophan and kynurenine concentrations were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography. RESULTS: A total of 41 patients with ischemic stroke ([mean ± SD] age 72.3 ± 12.2 years, 53.7% male, sMMSE 25.6 ± 4.1, NIHSS 7.27 ± 5.55) were recruited. Higher K/T ratios were associated with lower post-stroke global cognition (i.e. sMMSE scores; β = -.327, P = .037). A backward stepwise elimination linear regression (F(1,40)=6.15, P=.005, adjusted R(2)=.205) showed that the highest K/T ratio tertile (β = -.412, P = .006) predicted lower sMMSE scores, controlling for age (β = -.253, p = .081), with NIHSS (β = -.027, P = 0.859), and lesion volume (β = -.066, P = 0.659) removed from the model. In receiver operating characteristic analysis, a K/T ratio of 78.3 μmol/mmol (top tertile) predicted significant cognitive impairment (sMMSE score ≤ 24) with 67% sensitivity and 86% specificity (area under the curve = 0.730, p = .022). CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest an inflammatory response characterized by IDO activation may be relevant to the development of PSCI. Since the neuroactivity of kynurenine metabolites may be amenable to pharmacotherapeutic intervention, the K/T ratio may be a clinically important biomarker