Archive for February, 2009
In Order to Ensure Permanency: Hiking Trails and Grassroots Conservation in Early Twentieth-Century Pennsylvania
Members of Pennsylvania’s first hiking clubs, founded as early as 1916, crafted ideologies to justify outdoor recreation and preserve hiking opportunities that drew from conservationism, health, religion, and patriotism. This process resulted not only in the growing popularity of hiking throughout the twentieth century but also activities resembling and, in some cases, fostering the modern environmental movement. Central to the formation of this ideology was the construction, maintenance, and protection of hiking trails. Pennsylvania’s 229 miles of the Appalachian Trail demanded the most attention, but the 116-mile long Horse Shoe Trail and other shorter trails also required years of volunteer construction work followed by constant maintenance. Even as hiking clubs blazed and cleared trails, they realized that shifting ownership of the land and subsequent development would threaten the permanency of their efforts. In response, individuals and clubs waged aggressive public relations campaigns, secured easements, bought and managed land, and lobbied government for funding and protection. These tactics—some effective, others less so—anticipated the corridor protection, greenway, and conservation easement policies and rhetorical strategies of the modern environmental movement but also struck a balance between pragmatic conservationism and the deeper patriotic and spiritual meaning hikers drew from the act of nature walking. These clubs have left a rich, if widely dispersed, historical record in the form of meeting minutes, hike schedules, financial documents, and newspaper clippings that serve to resurrect a dynamic form of grassroots conservation that has escaped previous studies of the modern environmental movement.
Improving Outcomes for Students with Diabetes: The Role of the School Psychologist
Pediatric Type 1 diabetes is one of the most common chronic childhood illnesses and affects approximately 1 of every 550-600 school-aged children. Schools are increasingly identified as logical and practical sites for public health promotion, and school psychologists are ideally situated to advocate for students with chronic health issues that are at-risk for academic or behavioral difficulties. The purpose of this poster is to present information on pediatric diabetes, address findings from the current literature on diabetes and school outcomes, and review the literature on school-based efforts to address health- and school-related outcomes for this at-risk population. Session participants will gain knowledge and skills to effectively support and advocate for the educational success of students with diabetes.
Taking Strides in Family Involvement: Directions for Measurement and Intervention
Influenced by a multidimensional conceptualization, family involvement measurement and intervention is addressing an array of involvement behaviors that cross home, school, and community contexts in addition to examining the distinctions in involvement behaviors among mothers and fathers. This symposium will present an integrated discussion of three contemporary research endeavors, investigating the development of a family involvement measure for toddlers, father involvement, and home visiting as an intervention for promoting involvement. All three presentations share a focus on low-income and ethnic minority urban families. Implications for practice and future research will be discussed.
The Macroeconomic Environment, Financial Development, Technology and Growth: Evidence from the Accession to the EU
This paper finds that macroeconomic structural reforms have significant positive impacts on economic growth through financial development and information and communications technology (ICT). We investigate eight Central and Eastern European countries that recently joined the EU. To secure macroeconomic stabilization, the countries have gone through privatization, harmonization, and adjustments of convergence criteria, such as price stability, credible interest rates, stable exchange rates, and sustainable public finances. This unique experience eliminates endogeneity problems. We estimate a system of simultaneous equations for GDP growth, financial development, and investment in telecommunications technology (TT) by using a panel GMM estimation technique. We also find that financial development has significant positive impact on TT, and that, surprisingly, TT indirectly contributes to financial development through economic growth. As general policy implications, emerging countries should promote financial development, support TT, improve their legal systems and transparency, and implement proper monetary and fiscal policies.
Response characteristics of the avian Superior Olivary Nucleus
The processing of acoustic cues relies on the integration of both ascending and descending neural activity. One of the most well understood auditory circuits is the pathway devoted to processing interaural time disparities, the primary cue for low frequency sound localization. While the ascending ITD circuitry is well characterized both anatomically and physiologically, descending components of the circuit have received much less attention. The superior olivary nucleus in birds (SON) provides the major descending and inhibitory input to all major nuclei in the avian ITD pathway. Despite its central role in avian ITD processing, little is known about the SON’s physiology. We have begun to investigate the cellular and acoustic properties of SON neurons. Our in vivo studies have confirmed previous reports that identified two general classes of SON neuron, phasic and sustained, that are distinguishable on the basis of responses to tones. In addition, we have identified two classes of SON neuron in response to current injection using whole cell current clamp. The first type fires one or two spikes at the beginning of depolarizing current steps, and shows a rectified membrane response for the remainder of the pulse. These properties are common among auditory neurons specialized to process timing information and may correspond to the phasic cells observed in vivo. The second and more common type fires multiple action potentials with depolarizing current steps. This type may correspond to the sustained neurons observed in vivo. These data represent the initial studies toward our goal to build a comprehensive understanding of the SON, and its role in ITD processing.
Supported by the Deafness Research Foundation.