Along the Mall citations: Spring 2017
Karyn Sporer, assistant professor of sociology, co-authored an article, “Mothers of Violent Children with Mental Illness: How They Perceive Barriers to Effective Help,” in the Journal of Family Violence, published online Aug. 16, 2017.
James McConnon, Extension specialist and professor of economics, presented a seminar, “Assessing the Economic Impact of Cruise Ship Passengers Visiting Destination Markets: The Case of Bar Harbor, Maine,” on Aug. 9 at the National Extension Tourism Conference in Princeton, New Jersey. McConnon’s presentation was based on 2016 research conducted with Todd Gabe, professor of economics.
The results of Kelley Strout’s feasibility study geared toward protecting older adults’ cognitive health were published in the Journal of Community Health Nursing. The project is titled “GROW: Green Organic Vegetable Gardens to Promote Older Adult Wellness.” GROW is an interprofessional research effort between the University of Maine School of Nursing, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and the Maine Center on Aging. Researchers engaged independent, community-dwelling older adults living in low-income senior housing with cultivating raised-bed gardens. Ten participants received ergonomic garden tools, seeds, waist-height garden beds and weekly garden education. They planted vegetables of their choosing and tended to their garden beds for 17 weeks. Cognition and nutrition outcomes were measured before and after the project. Adults successfully engaged throughout the project experienced improvement in cognitive and nutrition outcomes, said Strout, an assistant professor of nursing. Protecting older adults’ cognitive health is a public health priority, she said. Interventions targeted to low-income older adults are needed, said Strout, because these populations experience greater social and physical health disparities compared to adults in higher socioeconomic statuses.
“Heliotrope: French Heritage Women Create,” by Rhea Côté Robbins, was named a Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance 2017 Maine Literary Award Finalist in the Book Award for Anthology (Editors) category June 1 in Portland, Maine. Robbins is an academic and career explorations adviser at the University of Maine Advising and Academic Services Center. For the Franco-American Women’s Institute’s 20th anniversary, the anthology of written works and visual arts was published to mark the present, active, creative lives of the women of the French heritage culture. “Heliotrope: French Heritage Women Create” presents a snapshot of the French heritage women’s lives as they exist in the present. The anthology incorporates the lives of the women who make up this cultural heritage—in print, and it offers to the present and future generations a vivid compilation of voices and visuals to express modern-day, French heritage women and their creative works. The anthology builds bridges of insight and understanding for all who read and view the works. Annie Proulx is featured as well as 130 other women of French heritage.
Jonathan Borkum, adjunct associate professor of psychology, co-authored the chapter, “Psychosocial Assessment of Chronic Pain,” in the third edition of Principles and Practice of Pain Medicine (2017) by
Edward Grew, a research professor in the University of Maine School of Earth and Climate Sciences, is the guest editor of the August issue of “Elements,” an international magazine of mineralogy, geochemistry and petrology, published jointly by 17 societies. As guest editor, Grew wrote the lead paper to introduce the six peer-reviewed articles by researchers from England, Turkey, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. The theme issue focuses on boron, including how the fifth element in the periodic table evolved from extreme scarcity in the early solar system to its being concentrated in economic deposits in Earth’s continental crust. Boron provides insights into understanding Earth’s history, including paleoclimate, and has a possible role in stabilizing critical prebiotic compounds from which life originated.
In addition, Grew’s paper, “How many boron minerals occur in Earth’s upper crust?” appears in the August online issue of the “American Mineralogist.” It was selected as a Centennial Paper, celebrating the 100th year of the journal.
Amy Blackstone, sociology, journal article in Gender & Society, “The Economic and Career Effects of Sexual Harassment on Working Women,” co-authored with sociology alumna Heather McLaughlin.
Justin Wolff, associate professor of art history, authored the chapter A Strange Familiarity: Alexander Forbes and the Aesthetics of Amateur Film, in the book “Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960.” Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon edited the book, published in May by Indiana University Press. “Amateur Movie Making” is a regional and historical study that transforms readers’ understanding of film history. The book demonstrates how amateur films and home movies are testaments to the creative lives of ordinary people, enriching the experience of art and the everyday. These films produced in New England between 1915 and 1960 are held in the collections of Northeast Historic Film. More information is online.
Emily Haigh, assistant professor of psychology, is one of 53 participants selected to participate in the National Institute on Aging Butler-Williams Scholars Program, July 31–Aug. 4 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Haigh is a member of UMaine’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program. She directs the Maine Mood Disorders Lab, where her research focuses on the cognitive and biological risk factors for depression. Her research proposal for the Butler-Williams Scholars Program aims to deliver mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, an evidence-based treatment for the prevention of depression, to older adults in rural settings.
The Silver Duo, Phillip Silver and Noreen Silver, School of Performing Arts, gave a recital May 28 at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Information about the program is online.
Joshua Roiland, assistant professor and CLAS Honors preceptor of journalism, has an essay, “It Was Like Nothing Else In My Life Up to Now,” in the new book Haunted By Waters: The Future of Memory and the Red River Flood of 1997. The book was edited by David Haeselin and published by The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. In addition, the publication Longreads reprinted the essay on its site.
Todd Gabe, School of Economics, “The Pursuit of Economic Development: Growing Good Jobs in U.S. Cities and States,” Palgrave Macmillan (2017).
University of Maine 2017 nursing graduate Allison Scully and assistant professor of nursing Kelley Strout wrote a column in the ANA-Maine Journal that promotes patient-centered care and support of opiate prevention and treatment.
The first semester of Scully’s senior year, she completed a community health clinical rotation at Health Equity Alliance in the syringe exchange program. She helped clients in need of a place to stay, assessed injection sites for infection and helped obtain donated items for those in need.
“Supporting harm reduction programs as nurses means that we are meeting patients where they are and are fighting the stigma associated with addiction,” they wrote.
“By listening, educating, speaking out, and advocating, we are creating a shift in the mindset of the greater community to include empathy and compassion, which ultimately empowers the vulnerable to utilize the resources they need to become healthier, more productive members of society.”
A paper authored by Douglas Gardner and Mehdi Tajvidi, Advanced Structures and Composites Center, was selected for the first place George Marra Award for Excellence in Writing by the Society of Wood Science and Technology (SWST). Award recipients will receive a plague and a $1,000 prize at the Annual SWST Business Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, in June. The paper, “Hydrogen bonding in wood-based materials: An Update,” was published in Volume 48, No. 4 (2016) of Wood and Fiber Science. More information is online.
A special issue book guest edited by Dorothy Klimis-Zacas, professor of clinical nutrition, has been published. “Berry Antioxidants in Health and Disease” was published by the Antioxidants journal of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. The book presents advances made in the past 10 years regarding the understanding of berry antioxidants’ role in maintaining health. Chapters include research that examines the molecular mechanisms and signaling pathways influenced by berry antioxidants, and how these compounds prevent or even reverse disease in cell cultures, animal models and humans.
UMaine was well represented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, Canada, March 29–April 2, 2017. Alice Kelley, associate research professor in the Climate Change Institute, was a discussant for the symposium on “Burning Libraries: Environmental Impacts on Heritage and Science.” Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, was a discussant in two sessions — “Advancements and Prospects in Geoarchaeology Today: the GIG (Geoarchaeology Interest Group) at 20, Part 1; A.D. 600 Cultural and Environmental Transformation in Ancient Peru” — and gave another talk on “Early Fishing on the Atacama Desert Coast of Southern Peru” in a symposium on Evolutionary Adaptations and Population History of the Atacama Desert. The A.D. 600 symposium was organized and chaired by Ana Cecilia Mauricio, who received an IPh.D. in geoarchaeology from UMaine in 2015. Sandweiss also participated in his last meeting as a member of the SAA Board of Directors. Climate Change master’s student Ani St. Amand gave a paper on “Aeolian Geoforming at a Preceramic Mound in Coastal Peru,” co-authored by Kelley and Sandweiss. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Climate Studies Greg Zaro gave a paper co-authored by four colleagues on “From Liburnian to Ottoman: Unraveling Settlement History at Nadin-Gradina, Croatia in the General Session on European Archaeology: From the Paleolithic to the Recent Past,” and was a co-author on two other papers. Kelley and Sandweiss were also co-authors with Fred Andrus (University of Alabama) on “Productivity in a Human Context: Creating and Applying Proxies Relevant to Chicama Valley Archaeology in the symposium on Landscapes of Change: Integrated Socio-Ecological Histories in the Chicama Valley, Peru.” In addition to Mauricio; former UMaine students Peter Leach, Paul Pluta, Kurt Rademaker; and David Reid also presented at the meeting.
Vasiliki Papakotsi, a graduate student in the University of Maine’s School of Food and Agriculture, was recognized at the Berry Health Benefits Symposium in Pismo Beach, California for presenting one of the best research posters at the conference. The poster featured a collaborative project between the laboratory of professor Dorothy Klimis-Zacas of the University of Maine’s School of Food and Agriculture, and the laboratory of Professor Lambris, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Two articles written by Elizabeth McKillen, professor of history, have been published. “Labor and the Legacies of World War I” was published March 20 in Labor Online. And “Divided Loyalties: Irish-American Women Labor Leaders and the Irish evolution, 1916–1923,” was in the fall/winter 2016 issue of Éire-Ireland (muse.jhu.edu/issue/35520).
Karyn Sporer, assistant professor of sociology, and Paige Toller, “Family identity disrupted by mental illness and violence: An application of relational dialectics theory,” Southern Communication Journal, 10.1080/1041794X.2017.1302503 (2017).
A study conducted by economists at the University of Maine titled “An Analysis of the Economic Impacts of Big-Box Stores on a Community’s Retail Sector: Evidence from Maine” was published in March 2017 in the The Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy. The researchers and authors were: Emily Freedman, former UMaine School of Economics graduate student and research assistant; James McConnon, University of Maine Cooperative Extension specialist and professor of economics; Gary Hunt, professor of economics; and Todd Gabe, professor of economics.
Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, published a book chapter as a result of an invited talk he gave at a conference in Paris, France in December 2014: “Maritime aspects of early Andean civilizations,” in The Sea in History — The Ancient World, ed. by Philip de Souza and Pascal Arnaud, pp. 41–54. Boydell Press, Suffolk U.K. (2017). In addition, Sandweiss has been reappointed to a three-year term as a research associate in the Division of Anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. March 17, he gave a talk at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico in Ponce, Puerto Rico: “Exploracciones con Thor Heyerdahl: Pirámides Peruanas y una Conección con Cuba.” Also that day, an hour-long interview he did with Católica Radio was broadcast.
Josh Roiland, assistant professor of journalism, will join a Bangor Public Library panel Tuesday, March 28 that addresses “Fake News.” Roiland will be joined 5–6 p.m. by Joyce Murdoch, managing editor at the Bangor Daily News; Angel Matson, assignment editor at WABI (Channel 5); and Clare Davitt, reference and digital media librarian at the Bangor Public Library.
Karyn Sporer, sociology, Amy L. Anderson, & Johanna Peterson. (2017). Macro- and micro-approaches to crime prevention and intervention programs. In B. Teasdale & M. S. Bradley (eds.), Preventing Crime and Violence, Advances in Prevention Science (pp. 169–176). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Susan Gardner, professor of higher education, and Amy Blackstone, professor of sociology, “Faculty Agency in Applying for Promotion to Professor,” Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education.
University of Maine paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill will speak Friday, Feb. 17 in Boston at the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2017 Annual Meeting: Serving Society Through Science Policy. Gill’s talk is titled “The Past Isn’t Dead: The Last 2 Million Years Can Help Biodiversity in the Next 100.” “Large herbivores appear to buffer the impact of climate change on plants, and their removal had large-scale consequences for modern ecosystems that are still playing out today,” says the assistant professor of paleoecology and plant ecology. Climate change, extinction and other threats facing ecosystems are not new, she says, and a number of examples in the recent fossil record can be drawn upon as analogs. And understanding how the past’s biodiversity responded to these so-called natural experiments can help people today prepare for the next century, according to Gill. Those lessons from the past can inform cutting-edge — and often controversial — conservation strategies, including managed relocation of species, de-extinction and rewilding. A UMaine Today magazine story related to this research is online.
University of Maine paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill joined 314 Action, a new online organization, aimed at recruiting scientists to run for office, The Atlantic reports. According to its website, 314 Action also seeks to strengthen communication among the STEM community, the public and our elected officials; educate and advocate for and defend the integrity of science and its use; provide a voice for the STEM community on social issues; promote the responsible use of data driven fact-based approaches in public policy and increase public engagement with the STEM community through media.
Douglas Nangle, professor of psychology and director of the doctoral program in clinical psychology, has been appointed to a six-year term as senior editor of Education and Treatment of Children (ETC), a peer-reviewed journal published quarterly that is devoted to the dissemination of information concerning the development of services for children and youth. A primary criterion for publication is that the material be of direct value to educators, parents, childcare providers or mental health professionals in improving the effectiveness of their services. ETC is abstracted/indexed in ERIC, Psychological Abstracts, Exceptional Child Education Resources, Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography, Clinical Behavior Therapy Review, Current Index to Journals in Education, and available online to institutions through Project Muse. Nangle has been on the ETC board for more than 20 years, serving in a variety of editorial roles.