Moving from Jobs to Careers: Engaging Low-Wage Workers in Career Advancement

The Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration offers a new approach to helping low-wage and dislocated workers advance by increasing their wages or work hours, upgrading their skills, or finding better jobs. At the same time, these workers are encouraged to augment and stabilize their income by making the most of available work supports, such as food stamps, public health insurance, subsidized child care, and tax credits. This report presents preliminary information on the effectiveness of strategies that were used to attract people to the WASC program and engage them in services

Toward Growth and Equality: A Framework for Monitoring Outcomes for Residents and Housing Markets in Camden and the South Jersey Region

This paper offers a framework for tracking the extent to which demographic, labor, and housing market conditions are moving in or out of alignment with a range of goals for redevelopment in Camden, New Jersey

"I Came in Unsure of Everything": Community College Students' Shifts in Confidence

To improve low rates of credential attainment in community colleges, individual schools as well as a number of national organizations have developed a range of initiatives focused on increasing rates of college completion and student success. Although the importance of non-academic factors in college completion and student success has been well established, questions remain about the best ways to structure the community college environment to foster students' sense of belonging and promote behaviors that are associated with success. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by focusing on the academic confidence of students at the outset of their community college careers, the ways in which their confidence may impact student behaviors and persistence, and how student confidence is affected by students' experiences in college. Using data from nearly 100 community college student interviews, this paper examines students' descriptions of their confidence upon entering college and of the shifts in confidence they experienced early in their college careers. Our findings suggest that student confidence is shaped in part by past academic experiences and expectations of college upon entry. Using student descriptions of their perceptions of college and of themselves, we describe the characteristics of students who describe themselves as self-assured and those who identify as apprehensive. The interview data reveal that student confidence is continually shifting as a result of interactions with peers, faculty, and others. Our analysis also indicates that academic confidence can impact student motivation and academic behaviors that are associated with success. Importantly, this paper identifies the nature of those experiences that positively reinforce student confidence, events that we term experiences of earned success. Finally, we describe ways to structure classroom and other on-campus environments to create opportunities for students to experience earned success and ultimately enhance their commitment to academic pursuits

Toward Reduced Poverty Across Generations: Early Findings from New York City's Conditional Cash Transfer Program

In 2007, New York City launched Opportunity NYC -- Family Rewards, an experimental, privately funded, conditional cash transfer (CCT) program to help families break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. CCT programs offer cash assistance to reduce immediate hardship and poverty but condition this assistance -- or cash transfers -- on families' efforts to improve their "human capital" (typically, children's educational achievement and family health) in the hope of reducing their poverty over the longer term. Such programs have grown rapidly across lower- and middle-income countries, and evaluations have found some important successes. Family Rewards is the first comprehensive CCT program in a developed country.Aimed at low-income families in six of New York City's highest-poverty communities, Family Rewards ties cash rewards to a pre-specified set of activities and outcomes in the areas of children's education, family preventive health care, and parents' employment. The program is available to 2,400 families for three years. Inspired by Mexico's pioneering Oportunidades program, Family Rewards' program effects are being measured via a randomized control trial.The Family Rewards demonstration is one of 40 initiatives sponsored by New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), a unit within the Office of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that is responsible for testing innovative strategies to reduce the number of New Yorkers who are living in poverty. Two national, New York-based nonprofit organizations -- MDRC, a nonpartisan social policy research firm, and Seedco, a workforce and economic development organization -- worked in close partnership with CEO to design the demonstration. Seedco, together with a small network of local community-based organizations, is operating Family Rewards, and MDRC is conducting the evaluation and managing the overall demonstration. A consortium of private funders is supporting the project.1This report presents the initial findings from an ongoing and comprehensive evaluation of Family Rewards. It examines the program's implementation in the field and families' responses to it during the first two of its three years of operations. This evaluation period, beginning in September 2007 and ending in August 2009, encompasses a start-up phase as well as a stage when the program was beginning to mature. The report also presents early findings on the program's effects, or "impacts," on a wide range of outcome measures. For some measures, the results cover only the first program year, while for others they also cover part or all of the second year. No data are available yet on the third year. The evaluation findings are based on analyses of a wide variety of administrative records data, responses to a survey of parents that was administered about 18 months after random assignment, and qualitative in-depth interviews with program staff and families.Overall, this study shows that, despite an extraordinarily rapid start-up and early challenges, the program was operating largely as intended by its second year. Although many families struggled with the complexity of the program, most were substantially engaged with it and received a large amount of money for meeting the conditions it established. During the period covered by the report, Family Rewards reduced current poverty (its main short-term goal) and produced a range of effects on a variety of outcomes across all three program domains (children's education, family health care, and parents' work and training)

Role of the host cell in the type III translocation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa exoenzyme S

Exoenzyme S (ExoS) is a bifunctional toxin that is directly translocated into eukaryotic cells by the Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Pa) type III secretory (T3S) process. The N-terminal region of ExoS includes a GTPase activating protein (GAP) activity and the C-terminal region includes an ADP-ribosyltransferase (ADPRT) activity. The T3S-translocation (T3S-T) of ExoS allows the bacteria to directly manipulate host cell function, thereby contributing the virulence of Pa. A cell culture model of infection was developed to study the effects of ExoS on cell function, which differentiates the effects of ExoS expression from other bacterial effects. Previous studies found that ExoS inactivates cell function, and this inactivation was largely attributed to the ADPRT activity. Bacterially translocated ExoS (T3S-T-ExoS) was also found to ADP-ribosylate a number of low molecular weight G-proteins (LMWG-proteins) within the cell. While the effects of T3S-T-ExoS on cell function were characterized, the role of the host cell in the T3S process remained unknown. Studies described in this dissertation characterize host cell influences in the targeting of ExoS ADPRT activity to specific eukaryotic substrates, characterize host cell mechanism of resistance to ExoS, and examine mechanisms associated with differences in host cell influence on T3S-T-ExoS ADPRT activity. Results from these studies identified two main patterns of T3S-T ExoS ADP-ribosylation of eukaryotic proteins, a model system to examine the host cell influence on the Pa T3S-T process, and a method of tracking intracellular ExoS by examining ExoS-eukaryotic protein interactions. Combined, these studies expand previous knowledge about the host cell influence on the Pa T3S-T process and provide methods to understand host cell mechanisms targeting T3S effector activity

The effects of Bios Life and exercise on total cholesterol, serum low-density lipoprotein, and high-density lipoproteins

The present study was designed to determine the effects of Bios Life, a non-prescription dietary fiber supplement, on serum lipoproteins and determine whether exercise accentuates this effect. Fifty male and female subjects (ages 30--60) participated in the study. Twenty-five subjects were exercising regularly in a supervised exercise program and the other twenty-five were sedentary. All participants where required to have a LDL-C of 130 mg/dl or higher and none were on any cholesterol lowering medications. Blood was drawn three times at baseline, before the study started, 45 days into the program and at 90 days which was the end of the study. Total cholesterol, HDL and LDL\u27s were analyzed by the Cholestech L.D.X. system A mixed model ANOVA was used to analyze the data. The results indicated significant decreases in total cholesterol from baseline to 45 to 90 days (F = 18.29, p 0.05). The results also indicated significant decreases in LDL\u27s from baseline to 45 to 90 days (F = 21.60, p 0.05). The analysis of the HDL\u27s yielded no significant difference between exercise and non-exercise groups (F = 1.07, p \u3e 0.05) nor was there a significant difference from baseline to 45 to 90 days (F = 1.67, p \u3e 0.05). These results suggest that whether or not one participates in an exercise program Bios Life will decrease total cholesterol and LDL\u27s equally without changing HDL\u27s, which may help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease

Minoritized Students’ Internship Experiences in World Languages: A Call for Research

Higher education has undergone important shifts over the past two decades, with U.S. universities placing more emphasis on career readiness and internships becoming an integral part of academia (National Association of Colleges and Employers [NACE], 2021). Moreover, the student population in U.S. universities has become more diverse (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2023), which has drawn more attention to issues of equity and access to career readiness initiatives such as internships (Greenman et al., 2022). Disparities exist for students from historically marginalized racial and ethnic communities, such as Black, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx students, from their White peers not only in internships participation but also in world language courses particularly at upper levels of study (Glenn & Wassell, 2018). Furthermore, little is known about internship experiences that require target language use for world language students, notably about minoritized students’ experiences. This position paper summarizes key findings from the literature on internships and career readiness, reports on the disproportionately low number of minoritized students participating in internships and advanced world language study alike and calls for research to be conducted on students’ internship experiences in world language programs, especially for minoritized students

An unexpected cause of severe and refractory PTH-independent hypercalcemia : case report and literature review

Hypercalcemia is a common condition in the internal medicine practice. Sometimes its cause is not readily apparent, so extensive investigation is appropriate. Here we report an unexpected cause for hypercalcemia in an elderly woman. The case of an 82-years old woman with PTH-independent hypercalcemia, lymphocytosis, normal serum 1,25 (OH)vitamin D levels, and low serum PTHrp levels, is described. Medical history and complementary investigation were unremarkable, except for increased metabolic activity in the glutei regions, as measured by whole body 18F-FDG PET-CT. Reviewing her medical history, her sister recalled that she had been submitted to intramuscular methylmethacrylate injections, for cosmetic purposes, five years before presentation, which was confirmed by muscle biopsy. Low calcium intake, parenteral bisphosphonates, calcitonin, and glucocorticoids were used to control serum calcium levels. Methylmethacrylate injections, used cosmetically, are a new cause for hypercalcemia, even after many years. Hypercalcemia was probably due to calcitriol overproduction in foreign body granulomas. Persistent reactive lymphocytosis could be a clue for this inflammatory cause of hypercalcemia

Avaliação da força de preensão manual e perfil nutricional de pacientes em tratamento de hemodiálise

O tratamento hemodialítico submete os pacientes a múltiplas alterações como a desnutrição, atingindo cerca de 75% desta população. O Diabetes Mellitus é uma das comorbidades mais comuns, afetando em média 45% dos hemodialíticos. Um dos métodos para avaliar a desnutrição e a perda de força muscular é a força de preensão manual uma ferramenta simples, rápida e de baixo custo. O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a força de preensão manual e o perfil nutricional dos pacientes em hemodiálise. Trata-se de uma pesquisa quantitativa, do tipo estudo de coorte prospectivo que contou com 65 pacientes, de ambos os sexos, maiores de 21 anos que realizavam sessão de hemodiálise três vezes na semana durante o ano de 2016. Foram avaliados a força do aperto da mão, o percentual de gordura corporal e a circunferência muscular do braço. O Índice de Massa Corporal (IMC) foi calculado através do peso pré dialise e do peso seco. Dados relacionados a presença de Diabetes Mellitus foram coletados dos prontuários. A amostra contou com 64,6% do sexo masculino. O IMC pós dialise apresentou 4,6% dos pacientes com desnutrição, a circunferência muscular do braço (CMB) mostrou 40% com desnutrição, a massa muscular do braço classificou 41,5% abaixo da normalidade. Sobre a classificação da força de preensão palmar, 55,4% da amostra estava abaixo da normalidade. A análise dos dados permite identificar o grau de desnutrição e mostrar a importância de detectar essa condição afim de melhorar e conhecer as condições físicas dos pacientes. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]The hemodialytic treatment subjects patients to multiple alterations such as malnutrition, reaching about 75% of this population. Diabetes Mellitus is one of the most common comorbidities affecting on average 45% of hemodialytics. One of the methods to assess malnutrition and loss of muscle strength is the handgrip force a simple, fast and low-cost tool. The aim of this study is to evaluate the handgrip strength and nutritional profile of patients hemodialytic treatment. This is a quantitative research, of the type of prospective cohort, with 65 patients, of both sexes, older than 21 years who underwent hemodialysis session 3 times a week during the year 2016. The strength of the hand grip, body fat percentage and muscle circumference of the arm were evaluated. The Body Mass Index (BMI) was calculated through pre-dialysis weight and dry weight. Data related to the presence of Diabetes Mellitus were collected from medical records. The sample included 64.6% males. The BMI after dialysis presented 4.6% of the patients with malnutrition, mid-arm muscle circumference (MAMC) showed 40% with malnutrition, the muscular mass of the arm classified 41.5% below normal. Regarding the classification of handgrip streght, 55,4% of the sample was below normal. The analysis of the data allows to identify the degree of malnutrition and to show the importance of detecting this condition in order to improve and to know the physical conditions of the patients. [resumo fornecido pelo autor

Los catálogos en línea de acceso público (OPACs) : un estado de la cuestión

Fil: Rucks, C. Nicolás. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Departamento de Bibliotecología y Documentación; Argentina.Revisión bibliográfica sobre los catálogos en línea de acceso público, más conocido por su sigla en inglés, OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogs). Se plantean las principales dificultades que tienen sus usuarios. Se hace un diagnóstico de la situación basado en la literatura especializada, concluyendo que se está todavía lejos de lo deseable. La revisión cubre bibliografía, principalmente de los Estados Unidos de América, desde 1994 hasta 1998