Dr. Susan Mason, professor at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, has updated her successful and influential book Diagnosis Schizophrenia, (Columbia University Press). The new volume offers invaluable information about schizophrenia and the people who have first-hand experiences with this powerful disorder. 35 young and recently diagnosed patients speak about what it is like to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and how it has impacted their lives and the lives of those around them. The book also offers the most up-to-date research about the disorder and the current social service benefits for those afflicted.

Dr. Joan Beder, professor at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, has guest-edited a special issue of Social Work in Health Care, (50:1, 1–3) titled “Preface to Special Issue: Social Work With the Military: Current Practice Challenges and Approaches to Care”. Major advances in protective armor and advances in military medicine have resulted in unprecedented numbers of American military service members surviving injuries sustained in direct combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unique to the history of war for Americans, 90% of military members wounded who participate in Iraq and Afghanistan will survive their injury and this has created a situation in which traditional systems of care have become overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of those returning from battle. Social workers, who are employed by the government, carry significant caseloads and often cannot keep pace with the demand. As such, service members, veterans and their families are utilizing civilian social workers for psychosocial and mental health service needs. This Special Issue—the first of two—was initiated to help acquaint and educate the civilian social worker to the world of the service member/veteran. Civilian social workers do not have the experience of those who work in the VA (Veterans Affairs) or DoD (Department of Defense) systems and need an orientation to care that is grounded in knowledge that may be gained from the expertise of others. This edition attempts to bring together a number of experienced clinicians and service providers to help educate the profession. Veterans and returning service members have a multiplicity of concerns and needs related to their war experience and require the best and most informed practice approaches. Mason Updates New Edition of Book on Schizophrenia

Dr. Frederick J. Streets, the Carl and Dorothy Bennet Professor of Pastoral Counseling at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, was presented the Rev. John LaFarge, S.J. Award by the Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx, Ph.D., president of Fairfield University, during their annual Convocation observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 20, 2011. Professor Streets delivered the keynote address. LaFarge was the author of three books on racism and the founder of the Catholic Interracial Review and is perhaps best remembered for having established the Catholic Interracial Council in 1934. He also labored almost single-handedly to make American Catholics aware of the moral dimensions of racism in America.

Dr. Richard Caputo, director of the doctoral program at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, has published a new book titled U.S. Social Welfare Reform: Policy Transitions from 1981 to the Present, (Springer, 1st Edition, 2011). The book examines the evolution of major federal cash assistance programs to low-income families, from the advent of the Reagan administration to the early Obama years. Written for the professional (but not requiring expertise in quantitative analysis to understand it), it details which programs succeeded, analyzes why others failed and highlights the need for further reform in the context of today’s economic climate. The uniqueness of its scope and presentation suits U.S. Social Welfare Reform to researchers in family relations, family sociology, economics of the family and social policy, whether the task at hand is reviewing past events or charting a future course of action.

Daniel Laufer, associate professor of marketing at Sy Syms School of Business, has been published in The Wiley International Encyclopedia of Marketing, the first international, multi-volume encyclopedia of marketing. His article, "Marketing Warfare Strategies", refers to competitor-centered strategies borrowed from the field of military science and applied in a marketing context. According to Rindfleisch, advocates of this approach suggest that both marketing and the military are very similar, and both fields share “(i) two or more opposing forces; (ii) competition for a limited and valuable resource; (iii) a zero-sum orientation in which gains come at the expense of competitor losses; and (iv) defined rules of engagement in which one competitor attacks while the opposing defends.” While this approach was popular in the 1980s, in the current era of relationship marketing it has become less relevant. Also, an increased awareness of differences between business and military organizational cultures raises questions of the applicability of military strategies in a business context.

Steven McCadney, a PhD candidate in social welfare at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, will deliver a speech at the 3rd Annual World Vaccine Congress (WCV-2011), which will be held in Beijing, China, March 23-25. The conference’s theme is “The Future of Global Vaccines,” and McCadney’s discourse will focus on “Hope for an AIDS Vaccine.” McCadney was appointed a fellow in 2006, and formerly taught cultural diversity at Wurzweiler. BIT Life Sciences’ Annual World Congress of Vaccine has become the forum for a state-of-the-art report on the latest progress in the development of vaccines for disease prevention and treatment. Through a series of impassioned and interesting symposiums, expositions, and poster demonstrations, participants will exchange valuable and creative ideas, agree to become scientific partners or business collaborators, and obtain research funding and job opportunities. Over 1,000 participants and 100 exhibitors from 46 countries and regions from around the world attended the 2010 conference in Beijing. WCV-2011 will be the largest meeting to date devoted exclusively to research on vaccines and will be associated with the technologies of infectious and non-infectious diseases in China.

Catherine Pearlman, adjunct professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, has been featured on a CNN ongoing series called “Stop Bullying, Speak Up”. A practicing social worker and doctoral candidate at Wurzweiler, Pearlman is also founder of The Family Coach, a business that specializes in helping families resolve everyday problems. Citing a University of Cambridge study on an empathy rating scale that found the development of empathy is closely related to parental supervision, Pearlman emphasized that it is not sufficient for parents to teach children manners to prevent them from being a bully. She states that parents must also actively teach their children empathy with others, and should take the time to talk to their children about what they — as a family, in their community — can do to help make the world better.

Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter, University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought and Senior Scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future, will be a presenter at the Orthodox Union's One-Day Conference on Jewish Life on Sunday, January 16, 2011, in Woodcliff Lake, NJ. He will be discussing how the Orthodox community can play a significant role in the building and future development of American Jewry, including the current challenges and opportunities. Schacter will also address the significance of the fact that, at this point, it appears that Orthodox Jewry makes up the largest demographic of affiliated American Jews under the age of thirty and what this means for the present and for the future.

Drs. Jeffrey H. Weisburg, Alyssa G. Schuck, Harvey Babich and Harriet L. Zuckerbraun, at Stern College for Women’s department of biology, have jointly published an abstract titled “Pomegranate Extract, a Prooxidant with Antiproliferative and Proapoptotic Activities Preferentially Towards Carcinoma Cells” in the journal Anticancer Agents In Medicinal Chemistry (Dec. 24, 2010). The team was aided by current Stern College students Malki Silverman, Channa Gila Ovits-Levy and recent Stern College graduate, Loriel Solodokin. The work studied how the antiproliferative and proapoptocic effects of pomegranate extract (PE) correlated with its prooxidant activity and showed that PE attacked cancer cells more readily than isolated human cells. PE’s antiproliferative properties were induced by oxidative stress, while the mode of cell death was apoptosis (self-induced cell death), which was caused by PE’s prooxidant nature.

Dr. Emil Prodan, assistant professor of physics at Stern College for Women, has had an article accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Physical Review E. The article, titled "Topological phonon modes in filamentary structures," was completed by undergraduate students Nina Berg, Kira Joel and Miriam Koolyk in the research session of Summer of 2010 under Dr. Prodan’s mentorship. It focuses on a completely new phenomenon that involves classical mechanics, elements of topology from pure mathematics, numerical analysis, computer simulations and a good deal of imagination and intuition. The team used analytical methods to demonstrate that the filamentary structures can have extremely unusual vibrational properties, manifested in mechanical vibrations localized at the ends of the structures that cannot be suppressed by smooth deformations of the structures. Such vibrations are called topological phonon modes. To demonstrate the concept, the team turned to the world of living cells, where they identified a filamentary structure called actin microfilament, which they considered likely to support topological phonon modes. The actin microfilaments fulfill vital functions for a living cell, such as providing the motile force cells use to navigate. The team also hypothesized that the topological phonon modes play a crucial role in how actin generates the motile force for live cells. Inspired by this structure, the team built a mechanical model whose motion was simulated on computers by solving the classical equations of motion. As the theory predicted, the simulations showed that the structure does indeed support topological phonon modes, which could now be visualized and studied in great detail. Physical Review E is published by the American Physical Society, and in the last few years it has become the main forum for physicists working in soft condensed matter.