Grant to benefit substance abuse prevention
The money will help establish an Adolescent Transitions
Program for three West Coast Native American tribes
NICHOLAS WILBUR
NEWS REPORTER
The National Institute on Alcohol
Abuse and Alcoholism gave a five
year, $3.7 million grant to the Univer
sity’s Child and Family Center to es
tablish an Adolescent Transitions
Program (ATP) for three West Coast
Native American tribes.
The grant will affect approximate
ly 300 tribal families by providing
parenting support services that
will help curtail substance abuse
in adolescence.
The Confederated Tfrbes of Warm
Springs Reservation of Oregon, the
Klamath TVibe of Oregon, and the
Confederated TYibes of the Colville
Reservation in Washington have vol
unteered to collaborate with the Uni
versity’s Child and Family Center
principal investigators and faculty.
Co-investigator and Family Center
Director of Research Thomas Dishion
is the co-author of “Intervening in
Adolescent Problem Behavior: A
Family-Centered Approach,” where
he and Kate Kavanagh summarize 15
years of the Adolescent Transitions
Program research and development
of an ecological approach to alcohol
abuse and other problem behaviors
of adolescents, a book review said.
“A lot of outside programs impose
their models of parenting on commu
nities,” Dishion said. “But we inte
grate what we know to work while
considering the families’ input, so we
can be more culturally sensitive.”
Dishion said that adolescence is a
time when parents usually reduce the
amount of monitoring and supervi
sion of their kids; “so we’ll support
family management skills for early
adolescence,” a time when alcohol
abuse increases in many families, es
pecially in tribe reservations.
To combat the expected rise in al
cohol abuse, the Family Center will
travel to each community and pro
vide family check-ups where parents
can come to voice their concerns
about their children’s behaviors.
They will be able to meet one-on-one
IN BRIEF
Committee cancels its
second summer meeting
The second Senate Summer
Committee meeting, which was to
take place Wednesday, was can
celed because Senators were unable
to make 2/3 quorum. The Senators
held their last meeting on June 22.
The next meeting date has not
been scheduled, but Senate chair
Reinier Heyden wrote in an e-mail
that it should take place sometime
after Aug. 4. According to the ASUO
Green Tape Notebook, the rules and
regulations guide, “The Summer
Committee shall meet at least once
a month and when deemed neces
sary by the Summer Chair. ”
If the Senate does not reschedule
a meeting before “after Aug. 4,” at
least 44 days will have passed,
which would be a violation of Sen
ate rules, according to the Note
book. Though the summer term
senators were unavailable for com
ment, Senator Heyden wrote in an
e-mail that Jessica Nair, Sara Hamil
ton and Spencer Crum were unable
to attend.
—By Nicholas Wilbur
Brain: Techonology helpful for epileptics
Continued from page 1
high-performance computer system
— they developed a three-dimen
sional computational algorithm that
could pinpoint the location of elec
trical sources in the human brain.
In May, their paper on the discov
ery was chosen out of 200 entries as
one of three winners of an award of
excellence presented at the Fifth In
ternational Conference on Compu
tational Science.
“The mapping of the EEG signals
to the sources in the brain is a
difficult problem, because you
have to know the physics of the
human head, which has to do with
the physical properties of tissues as
well as its shape,” said Allen
Malony, director of NIC and one of
the co-authors.
“Our model is based upon
real structure, real physics, real in
dividual properties of human sub
jects,” Malony said.
The University has filed for a pre
liminary patent on the process
based on the advanced human head
model. Licensing the process from
the University, CDS will develop
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Find fun stuff in the ODE Classifieds: Comics, your daily horoscope, and, of course, the crossword.
software to employ the process
and apply the technology to
clinical treatment.
The scientists already succeeded
in proving the accuracy of their
brain imaging technology with a
case study. In January, Thcker and
his colleagues at EGI precisely pre
dicted the location of seizure onset
in the brain of a 13-year-old girl
who suffered from intractable
seizure disorder, epilepsy uncontrol
lable by medication.
They estimated the location of the
source in the girl's brain that gener
ated the seizure using a product that
that EGI developed, a dense-array
EEG system with 128 channels.
After making two holes in the
girl's skull and measuring the
location with two electrodes directly
attached to the girl's brain for
surgery, they found that the predict
ed location exactly matched the
actual seizure onset. The girl
has not had a seizure since a neu
rosurgeon used the information to
determine which part of her brain to
operate on.
“This is the first time we've
showed that the dense-array EEG
system could localize the seizure
onset. The experiment is generating
a lot of interest in the medical com
munity. But we need validation
with more patients before we know
it's effective,” Thcker said.
By licensing the University's tech
nology to private companies, like
CDS, the University continues to in
crease its licensing revenues.
“With more than $2 million dur
ing fiscal year 2005, the University's
licensing revenues will set a
record for the 10th consecutive year
since fiscal year 1996,” said Don
Gerhart, director for the Office of
Technology Transfer.
The official figures for fiscal year
2005, which ended June 30, will be
announced in about a month, he
added. The University's licensing
revenues amounted to $1.78 million
and $1.93 million for fiscal years
2003 and 2004, respectively.
“The application of University in
ventions to serve societal needs also
enriches the local economy and
generates jobs,” Gerhart said.
with psychologists as well as attend
group meetings with other parents.
“This is a strength-based model,”
Dishion said, “meaning we rein
force what the parents are doing
well and recommend things they
can improve on.”
Principal Investigator for the grant
Alison Foyd-Ball has established a
team of Native American psycholo
gists, mental health professionals and
advisory boards within each tribe.
nwilbm@dailyemercdd.com
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