Innovative Medicaid Initiatives to Improve Service Delivery and Quality of Care: A Look at Five State Initiatives

Outlines initiatives in Alabama, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington to implement patient-centered medical home models designed to coordinate and improve quality of care; strategies; key lessons; and new opportunities under healthcare reform

Roundtable on teaching Work as an interdisciplinary first-year college seminar

This past year’s theme, “Work,” (2009-2010) asked students to interrogate the cultural construction of work from the early industrial revolution to our current economic moment, and to question how the new economy, as it develops, shapes the future conditions of work. Over the course of the year, we considered a number of overarching themes as we attempted to theorize “work” and its place in culture. For instance, we looked at terms we use to describe work (labor, career, job), personal and collective identities associated with work (unions; corporate culture; social and economic class positions; race, gender and ethnic identities), representations of work (photography, film, maps, music, literature), and theoretical interpretations of work (alienation from systems of production, gift economies)

Feeding muscles scale differently from swimming muscles in sunfish (Centrarchidae)

The physiological properties of vertebrate skeletal muscle typically show a scaling pattern of slower contractile properties with size. In fishes, the myotomal or swimming muscle reportedly follows this pattern, showing slower muscle activation, relaxation and maximum shortening velocity (Vmax) with an increase in body size. We asked if the muscles involved in suction feeding by fishes would follow the same pattern. We hypothesized that feeding muscles in fishes that feed on evasive prey are under selection to maintain high power output and therefore would not show slower contractile properties with size. To test this, we compared contractile properties in feeding muscles (epaxial and sternohyoideus) and swimming muscle (myotomal) for two members of the family Centrarchidae (sunfish): the bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) and the largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). Consistent with our predictions, the Vmax of myotomal muscle in both species slowed with size, while the epaxials showed no significant change in Vmax with size. In the sternohyoideus, Vmax slowed with size in the bluegill but increased with size in the bass. The results indicate that scaling patterns of contractile properties appear to be more closely tied to muscle function (i.e. locomotion versus feeding) than overall patterns of size