Eastern Michigan University

Negative aspects of caregiving, including stress and burden, have dominated research. However, there has been a growing awareness of the need to examine the positive and rewarding aspects of caregiving for older adults. This paper will describe the development and pilot testing of a measure that examines the Positive and Enjoyable Aspects of the Caregiving Experience (PEACE). Forty-five caregivers of older adults were recruited from two hospitals within a large regional health system and studied at three points in time. Data were examined only at the second phase of data collection within this study (n = 29). Correlations were used to examine the relationship between positive and enjoyable aspects of caregiving constructs and validated tools. Analysis found high internal reliability (α = 0.82) for a novel measure developed and tested in this study, entitled, the PEACE. Convergent validity was demonstrated by significant positive correlations between the PEACE and quality of life and social support. Divergent validity was found between the PEACE and caregiver burden. This novel measure has the potential for a more holistic assessment of the caregivers' experiences, which offers implications for service provision and program development.

As global temperatures rise, improving crop yields will require enhancing the thermotolerance of crops. One approach for improving thermotolerance is using bioengineering to increase the thermostability of enzymes catalysing essential biological processes. Photorespiration is an essential recycling process in plants that is integral to photosynthesis and crop growth. The enzymes of photorespiration are targets for enhancing plant thermotolerance as this pathway limits carbon fixation at elevated temperatures. We explored the effects of temperature on the activity of the photorespiratory enzyme glycerate kinase (GLYK) from various organisms and the homologue from the thermophilic alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae was more thermotolerant than those from mesophilic plants, including Arabidopsis thaliana. To understand enzyme features underlying the thermotolerance of C. merolae GLYK (CmGLYK), we performed molecular dynamics simulations using AlphaFold‐predicted structures, which revealed greater movement of loop regions of mesophilic plant GLYKs at higher temperatures compared to CmGLYK. Based on these simulations, hybrid proteins were produced and analysed. These hybrid enzymes contained loop regions from CmGLYK replacing the most mobile corresponding loops of AtGLYK. Two of these hybrid enzymes had enhanced thermostability, with melting temperatures increased by 6 °C. One hybrid with three grafted loops maintained higher activity at elevated temperatures. Whilst this hybrid enzyme exhibited enhanced thermostability and a similar Km for ATP compared to AtGLYK, its Km for glycerate increased threefold. This study demonstrates that molecular dynamics simulation‐guided structure‐based recombination offers a promising strategy for enhancing the thermostability of other plant enzymes with possible application to increasing the thermotolerance of plants under warming climates.

Neighborhood assets, such as access to recreational facilities, density of residence, and safety, were examined in relation to parenting and disruptive behavior in early childhood. Examining data from a low-income Black preschool sample, this study investigated how self-reported neighborhood assets and observed parenting behaviors interactively predict observed disruptive behavior in children. Findings revealed a significant relationship between parenting and child behavior, where parenting with high sensitivity and engagement and parenting with less verbal and physical interference and intrusiveness predicted fewer child disruptive behaviors. There was also a significant interaction between neighborhood assets and parenting behaviors on child disruptive behavior, in which nonoptimal parenting behaviors predicted child disruptive behaviors to a greater degree in neighborhoods with fewer assets. On the other hand, optimal parenting was protective of child outcomes under conditions of fewer assets, above and beyond parenting in neighborhoods with greater assets. Few studies have examined this complex relationship between the neighborhood, parenting, and child disruptive behavior with the use of self-report and observational measures utilized in this study. Furthermore, few studies have examined this relationship within such a high-risk preschool sample. Given these findings, there is a need to improve neighborhoods to better support families. Additionally, clinicians may need to be more attentive to the effects of parenting and neighborhood assets on disruptive behavior in early childhood.

Restorative justice has become a widely used intervention in urban schools to address the ways that students of color and students with disabilities disproportionately face punitive disciplinary action. As such, understanding the perspectives of teachers of these students is of the utmost importance. Using Dis/ability Critical Race Studies as a theoretical framework, this interpretivist interview study centers the perspectives of three special education teachers as restorative justice is implemented at a predominantly Black urban school. This work has implications for more culturally relevant implementation of restorative justice. It also highlights the ways that race and disability impact school culture.

This article draws on Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, and Christina Sharpe’s writings on ‘optimism,’ ‘wake work,’ and ‘fugitivity’ to present a reading of Lauren Blackwood’s 2021 rewriting of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre as a metafiction of Black literary adaptation as survival. In rejecting the overdetermined stereotype of the mad subaltern woman as the localised focus of the novel’s commentary on racial violence, Within These Wicked Walls departs from twentieth-century, postcolonial responses to Jane Eyre exemplified by Gayatri Spivak’s reading of Wide Sargasso Sea to offer an explicitly Black and anti-racist rewriting of the Victorian novel. I show how Blackwood draws on the diasporic discourse of “Ethiopianism” and American genres of multiethnic and Black Gothic storytelling to explore the trauma of racialised violence (including its imperialist literature) as a cultural and intergenerational curse that must be faced, exorcised, and grieved by a younger generation. This analysis highlights the contributions Blackwood’s novel makes to the Black radical tradition, underscores the need for more Critical Race Theory in the study of Victorian literature, and reminds scholars of the vital role literary adaptation once played – and should still play – in criticism of race and imperialism in Victorian literature.

Behavioral health problems in children interact bidirectionally with academic and social functioning, which uniquely positions schools to provide wide-reaching behavioral health services. Within the Multi-Tier Systems of Support (MTSS) Model, schools provide services to children at various levels, including preventative interventions for all students to enhance socio-emotional well-being, targeted interventions for students with emerging mental health concerns or vulnerabilities, and intensive treatments for students with severe problems. Many models of school behavioral health interventions currently exist, such as Positive Behavior Interventions Support, Behavioral Health Team, Community and School-Based Behavioral Health Service, and the Mokihana program, which focus on reducing externalizing behavior, increasing positive behavior, and enhancing community collaborations. While there are many benefits to school-based behavioral health interventions, including multidisciplinary treatment, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness, there are special challenges associated with school-based interventions including limitations on intervention targets and logistical constraints. Interventions in school settings also need to be implemented with sensitivity to prevent stigmatization of students receiving care, improve parental buy-in, and increase teachers’ understanding of mental health. More resources are required to train professionals specifically in the school-based setting, enhance supervision, and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of school-based interventions. Moreover, there is a need for more interventions targeted at preschool-aged children and internalizing issues such as anxiety and depression, and more attention and sensitivity to issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity. Recommendations and future directions are discussed.

In behavioral health, weekly 50-minute individual therapy is considered the standard. However, there is a large and growing unmet need for mental health services, and increasing the number of providers is not likely to offset this gap. Therefore, stepped-care models aim to more efficiently distribute health care resources by matching individuals to a level of care that is the least intensive while still likely to provide clinical benefit. Lower-intensity treatments include self-help methods such as bibliotherapy or computer-assisted therapy, group therapy, and brief or short-term individual therapy. After monitoring response to treatment, patients may be subsequently “stepped up” to more intense treatments only as needed. This chapter provides an overview of stepped-care models of pediatric behavioral health care, including the benefits and risks of this model. Empirical support related to stepped-care approaches for assessment and treatment of common pediatric conditions, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, depression, and anxiety, are presented. Finally, issues related to translating stepped care into practice and recommendations for supervision within pediatric stepped-care models are discussed.

One of the most common treatments for severe challenging behavior involves placing the challenging behavior on extinction and differentially reinforcing an alternative response (DRA). However, extinction is not always feasible and may be unsafe or impractical to implement in some circumstances. Thus, implementing a DRA without extinction intervention may be necessary for some cases. Currently, the extent to which DRA without extinction produces durable treatment outcomes, particularly as it relates to the resurgence of challenging behavior, is unclear. The present study investigated resurgence following DRA with and without extinction using a three-phase resurgence evaluation in a translational human operant model with college students as participants. All participants demonstrated resurgence across both experimental groups. Although there were no statistically significant differences in the prevalence, magnitude, or persistence of resurgence between groups, levels of resurgence magnitude were relatively higher in the DRA-without-extinction group than in the DRA-with-extinction group. Clinical implications of these findings and directions for future human operant investigations of resurgence are discussed.

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, a decrease in physical activity (PA) has been reported in the United States and worldwide. Post-COVID-19, there is thus an urgent need for public health initiatives to revive individuals’ interest and support for regular PA. The academic-community partnership between the EMU REACH team and community stakeholders co-designed and implemented an actionable alley activation. The objectives were to (1) Apply a community-based participatory approach for conducting walk audits, and (2) Evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the alley activation. Materials and Methods: The intervention took place in Hamtramck, Michigan and the project team engaged the stakeholders, performed environmental scans, assessed the setting, developed and implemented alley activation, and evaluated the process and outcomes of the intervention. The pilot was assessed using evaluation surveys in multiple languages and speed studies with traffic data. Results: Seventy-two residents and business owners helped implement the alley activation; 54 completed surveys offering feedback about the design and their experiences; and 1,669 residents saw immediate improvements in non-motorized connectivity. The evaluation surveys showed that respondents were positive about the project. For the traffic studies, vehicle speeds were reduced from an average of 28.3 MPH during conflicts with pedestrians to 23 MPH, and total conflicts were also reduced. Conclusion: This quick-build project served as an initial effort for the future implementation of other place-making strategies. The bottom-up community-engaged process has the potential to create a safe, appropriately scaled space that will promote increased walkability in an inner city.