Tragedies as Catalysts for Resilience: A Team Approach to Identifying Resilience in International Communities After Natural Disasters
In the wake of natural disasters, surviving individuals often show considerable strength by rebuilding their homes, lives and communities. UNC researchers have studied families and aging populations facing adversity and displaying resilience.
Faculty researchers included Drs. Robbyn Wacker, Ann Bentz, Susan Collins, Nancy Karlin, Sherilyn Marrow, Gary Swanson, and Joyce Weil. Graduate students have also contributed to the work.
A year after Hurricane Katrina, part of the UNC team developed a framework for examining resilience, interviewing community members in New Orleans demonstrating strong coping skills. They found that survivors viewed the disaster as an opportunity to demonstrate their individual and family strengths. These individuals kept a positive attitude despite their hardships and showed limited signs of depression.
They wondered whether similar resilience patterns occurred in other parts of the world following natural disasters, and traveled to Vina Vieja, Peru, a village that experienced three earthquakes in three years.
While there weren’t any earthquake-related casualties, more than half of the village’s 350 residents left the area out of fear or an inability to sustain their livelihoods.
UNC professors and graduate students interviewed survivors, finding that they generally displayed negative moods, experienced low self-efficacy, and felt helpless in response to the earthquakes.
Comparing perspectives on survival in New Orleans and Vina Vieja, the team speculated resilience’s direct link to social support. Research participants in New Orleans had considerable social, financial and government support after Katrina, while Peruvian villagers felt abandoned by fellow community members who left the village, and they received no financial help from village leaders. Both communities had individuals striving to create better lives for themselves after the disasters struck.
UNC researchers have also interviewed subjects in Rome, Thailand and Botswana. The research team is committed to giving back to the communities they study, with faculty and students working to help communities.
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A Fresh Look at a 15th Century Manuscript: A Critical View of the Cancionero 1250 of Gómez Manrique
Increasingly, advanced technology provides researchers with the opportunity to reach back into history and search through priceless relics virtually.
For José Suárez, Ph.D., Professor of Hispanic Studies at UNC, obtaining a digital copy of the 15th-century manuscript of 15th century poet Gómez Manrique’s Cancionero 1250 was eventually more useful than holding the original artifact in his hands—it allowed him to study Manrique’s historically significant work in detail and to complete research he had started more than 30 years ago.
Dr. Suárez’s investigates cultural history by analyzing the poetry’s linguistic features. He transcribed and edited a critical edition of Manrique’s Cancionero 1250, a feat no one had previously accomplished in the 500-years since the poems were written. Dr. Suárez’s critical edition includes the Cancionero in its entirety and also an appendix of additional poems not found in the Cancionero, collectively representing Manrique’s complete works.
Altogether, Dr. Suárez’s critical edition includes more than 400 poems. Wherever possible, he modernized the spelling to make the poems more accessible to the modern reader of Spanish, and also compared this Cancionero to other of Manriquez’s published cancioneros, noting differences in the transcriptions.
Dr. Suárez explained how the Cancionero demonstrates the evolving nature of the Spanish language in the 1400s. Most of the poems in Manrique’s collection are light-hearted verses and love poems, although there are a few political statements peppering the book. Dr. Suárez was surprised to discover a number of poems with hateful messages of misogyny and anti-Semitism. He describes these poems as the “ugly part” of Manrique’s collection.
Dr. Suárez later traveled to Spain to examine the original Cancionero 1250 manuscript, which has been in the Royal Palace Library in Madrid for more than 500 years. He also traveled to Morocco, Japan, and Argentina to conduct research and share his findings internationally.
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Unlocking the Mystery: Searching for Keys to Prevent the Spread of Mosquito-Borne Diseases
With the tremendous need to combat constantly evolving mosquito-borne diseases, and no currently available drug options, new treatments are desperately needed.
University of Northern Colorado Professor Susan Keenan has spent more than a decade researching and developing compounds to help prevent the growth of flaviviruses, more commonly known as mosquito-borne viruses. Such viruses must replicate to grow; Dr. Keenan’s research team is identifying compounds that will inhibit such replication.
“These diseases are killers, and there are really no drugs to combat them,” she said. With a $1.4 million grant from the Rocky Mountain Regional Center of Excellence, funded by the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Keenan’s collaborative work with a colleague at Colorado State University combines computational modeling tools with molecular biology and pharmacology.
The team members have discovered compounds that will bind to a flavivirus enzyme and prevent the viruses from replicating. This discovery comes after testing more than 300,000 compounds for antiviral activities. The researchers have initiated live-virus studies with the long-term goal of developing the small molecules into drugs that would help combat mosquito-borne diseases.
Dr. Keenan’s research team also includes undergraduate and graduate students at UNC. These students have an opportunity for hands-on research experiences in the laboratory, which is a huge benefit of a UNC education. Students gain technical skills, substantive knowledge of biology, and inspiration from being part of a cutting-edge research program.
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