A joint project between the Notre Dame Law 91ĘÓƵ’s and the College of Arts and Letters’ will examine the effectiveness of an intervention for parents involved in child custody disputes. , the Law 91ĘÓƵ’s Fritz Duda Family Chair in law, , professor and Notre Dame Chair in Psychology, and , clinical professor of law and concurrent faculty in psychology, are co-principal investigators on the Family Mediation Project.

In this project, “we’re dealing with custody disputes that are referred to us by the courts here in St. Joseph County,” Brining says. “They’re either couples who are divorcing and can’t resolve custody themselves, or they’re paternity actions where the couple has never been married, perhaps never lived together.”

Parents are referred to the project to participate in mediation as a means of resolving disagreements about custody of their children. Mediation is an attempt to resolve disputes outside of the normal court process that is facilitated by mediators educated in the theory and practice of this form of alternative dispute resolution. Students enrolled in the Law 91ĘÓƵ’s Applied Mediation program developed and run by Jenuwine serve as mediators for project participants.

In addition to mediation, some parents will participate in a parent program designed by Cummings and colleagues. Based on Cummings’ emotional security theory and growing out of an ongoing program of research, this particular program is aimed at educating parents about the potential consequences for children of ongoing conflict between parents, and providing parents with concrete skills for communicating effectively with one another.

The primary questions addressed in this research regard the mediation and parent education process, participants’ satisfaction with that process, and the long term outcomes for parents and children.

Participants will respond to surveys at various points in the study and researchers on the Family Mediation Project will incorporate these data into future interventions and clinical trials.

The study, which is underway this fall, is unusual because lawyers rarely get involved in research that involves random assignment to controls, says Brinig.

The project is funded by a Strategic Academic Planning Committee research grant. Co-sponsors include the and the . The law students will receive credit through the Applied Mediation courses.

Originally published by Renee Hochstetler, Office of Research at on July 15, 2011.

Among the 900 or so texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls is the Book of Jubilees, a second- century retelling of Genesis and the first part of Exodus.

Originally written in Hebrew, Jubilees continues to interest scholars for its commentary on the earlier texts.

is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at the University of Notre Dame and a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of ancient religious texts found between 1947 and 1956 in caves in and around Qumran, along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea about 15 miles east of Jerusalem.

VanderKam is one of the scholars working on the original Hebrew text of the Book of Jubilees. He has edited the fragmentary remains of several manuscripts—describing them, noting their measurements and details like the writing itself and to what time they can be dated. He has also translated the book from the original texts.

Often written in Hebrew or Aramaic on treated leather parchment, some of the scrolls have holes that can present a problem for editors. VanderKam has worked with the scrolls first- hand, though he mostly works from high quality photographs. He says it is possible to mistake a small mark for part of a letter— which is why checking the original text is so important.

“Despite the fact I have literally worked with every word in the Book of Jubilees by editing the text and writing about it, I keep finding new things,” says VanderKam. By returning to the original manuscripts, he has identified problems in previous translations.

Case in point: Jubilees’ account of the story of Enoch. According to the story, God took Enoch—who lived before the flood and whose life ended without death—to the Garden of Eden to record the deeds of humanity.

A previous English translation of the Ethiopic text states in chapter 4 verse 24: “on account of it God brought the waters of the flood upon all the land of Eden.”

The problem, says VanderKam, is that the translation implies that God brought the flood on Eden because of Enoch’s presence there. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he says, “because Enoch continues to live—he doesn’t drown in the flood.”

VanderKam’s research revealed what the text actually says: “Because of him, God did not bring the waters of the flood on Eden.”

Why the mistranslation? It turns out that the Ethiopic words for “he brought” and “it did not come” look almost exactly the same: The mistranslation was the result of a visual misinterpretation.

VanderKam is particularly interested in how the author of Jubilees worked with Genesis and Exodus, commenting on and solving problems in the original texts. “It’s a very, very early stage in the process of commenting on the Bible, which goes on today,” he says. “It feels good to be part of that tradition.”

Although Jubilees’ author is unknown, VanderKam says that its intention is clear: The author thought Genesis and Exodus were very important books, and wanted people to draw the correct conclusions. “He retold them in such a way as to get across the message he thought they had,” says VanderKam. There’s reason to think that Jubilees was an authoritative text in its own right because it was cited in other ancient texts, VanderKam adds.

Between 70 and 80 scholars have worked on editing the scrolls, says VanderKam. It was an international effort, and one that involved scholars from Jewish, Christian and other traditions. “It’s been a real ecumenical experience in which I think everyone has appreciated the contributions of the others,” says VanderKam. “To get the chance to go back 2,000 years and see what the texts looked like is quite a privilege.”

Contact: James VanderKam, 574-631-3421, jvanderk@nd.edu

A project on the dynamics of social networks at the University of Notre Dame’s (iCeNSA) has found a link between cell phone usage and relationship strength.

The study, conducted by Notre Dame faculty members , , , and , is a collaborative effort between four departments at the University.

Toroczkai and his students worked on the modeling aspects while Chawla and his group focused mainly on data mining and prediction. Hachen and Lizardo both studied the number and frequency of calls and text messages to explore reciprocity, the way people respond to each other, and how it emerges over time.

“If I called you a lot and you didn’t call me a lot, that’s an imbalanced relationship,” Hachen said. “It turns out that’s extremely important. We now believe what’s really important in networks is not the formation of ties—which is important—but instead the persistence or the dissolution of ties.”

According to Hachen, social network research is unique because in addition to identifying ties between people, it also investigates how strong or weak those ties are.

The researchers used cell phone data—numerical information such as the number, frequency and timing of calls and texts—from 7 million people to form a picture of a social network. Neither the content of conversations nor any information such as phone numbers, which could have led to the identification of individuals, were used in the study.

That social network gave the group an idea of how many friends a caller has in addition to how many people the caller interacts with and the strength of those ties. Combined together, that information even enabled them to predict future behaviors.

To study relationship strength, researchers also looked at who initiated contact and how frequently it occurred, discovering that ties that are more reciprocal are more likely to remain intact. However, if there is an imbalance, ties will most likely dissolve.

“If you have 20 friends, and I have 20 friends, we can achieve a balance,” Hachen said. “If I have 20 friends and you have two, you’re more likely to try to call me a lot more.”

Meaning, in social networks a person tends to connect with others who connect as much as they do. In physical networks such as air transportation systems, the networks must connect major hubs with many regional airports because connecting major hubs only to each other breaks the system.

A decade ago, most data came from interviews that required people to remember friends and provide subjective information. With technological advancements, researchers are now able to gather information about people’s actual behavior instead of the memories about their behavior.

Interviews, the previous method of information gathering, only revealed strong ties, as weak ties were not important to the subject. With the behavioral data now available, both ties can be studied.

The next step for the sociology group is to add another layer of data–attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors from surveys.

The team has also begun working on another cell phone project that will provide 250 Notre Dame freshmen with smart phones. The study aims to address questions such as whether ties influence people’s behavior or whether people choose to form ties based on existing similarities.

Engineers are also planning on collaborating with the researchers to help increase the quality of wireless networks around campus.

What must we change in order to help us bridge the gap between the world as it is, and the world as it should be?

In its first year, the (NDIAS), inspired by the classical values of beauty, goodness and truth, began transforming the academic landscape through an annual conference, lecture series and fellowships supporting research that extends beyond the analysis of particular problems to the examination of larger—often ethical —ultimate questions.

“The institute seeks to have a broad, meaningful and visible impact on the research of the University, the academy and the world,” says , NDIAS director and Paul Kimball Chair of Arts and Letters in Notre Dame’s .

The NDIAS, established in 2009 as one of the University’s initiatives, supports research related to ultimate questions and questions of value, especially as they engage the Catholic intellectual tradition.

The agenda of NDIAS is open, permitting fellows to pursue outstanding research in all areas. Discourse is shaped by an emphasis on broad questions that link multiple areas of inquiry, allowing scholars to examine questions beyond the narrow boundaries of their discipline. Catholic dedication to the wholeness of knowledge means that no questions are off limits.

NDIAS also offers artists, professionals, scholars and scientists an opportunity to explore the relationship between the descriptive (the world as it is) and the normative (the world as it should be).

The NDIAS offers two types of that encompass all disciplines: residential fellowships for faculty and scholars, and graduate student fellowships.

The inaugural class included eight residential and two graduate fellows from a variety of academic disciplines and countries who lived and developed as a community of scholars, inviting conversations that are global in scope.

The institute’s , held last year, focused on the nature of beauty. The three-day event brought to campus eminent scholars including Maxim Kantor, acclaimed Russian painter, novelist and essayist, as well as anthropologists, artists, composers, economists, historians and theologians from universities around the world.

“We try to create an engaging relationship with the visiting scholar and students and faculty,” Hösle says. “Maxim’s visit crossed a number of interdisciplinary boundaries; he delivered a series of lectures dealing with political life in Russia, which drew in the German and Russian language departments and fellows from the . He also presented a lecture and demonstration at the , and spent a day doing critiques of graduate students’ work in the

Interaction across disciplines and national boundaries is critical to the University’s continued success as a premier international research university, says Hösle.

The , focused on the nature of goodness, will be held April 4 to 6, featuring 17 leading scholars and other experts from a wide variety of disciplines, including biomedicine, engineering, law, philosophy, political science, psychology and theology. The conference will address significant questions such as the nature of values, biological factors that have rendered the evolution of moral behavior possible, and how engineering can contribute to a better world.

Two NDIAS publications will serve as resources for scholars and the public: “The Idea of a Catholic Institute for Advanced 91ĘÓƵ,” and a collection of essays presented at last year’s conference.

“The institute provides an atmosphere where the most talented graduates and undergraduates develop pleasure in the life of the mind,” says Hösle. “It’s important to stay in touch with students because they inspire you not just with their knowledge, but with their questions.”

As debate about how to improve education continues across the country, research currently underway at the University of Notre Dame will significantly contribute to the conversation.

, a professor of sociology and education, is conducting two studies that seek to understand instruction’s role in student achievement.

“It’s not just about assessment data, and it’s not only about evaluation,” Berends says. “It’s to help with school improvement efforts.”

The first project, funded by a Walton Family Foundation grant awarded to Notre Dame’s (IEI), helps Catholic schools in nine U.S. cities report student achievement data. The schools then use the data to see levels and growth in achievement over time to assess challenges and opportunities.

Berends says this is a new approach for some Catholic schools because they aren’t subject to laws like No Child Left Behind that require public schools to report test scores. One of the challenges is the lack of uniform data: 91ĘÓƵs choose their own student assessments and data structures, and while comparing institutions isn’t a primary goal, doing so becomes tricky when formats vary.

“We’re excited about the prospects of this because we think that over time this will be a great opportunity for Notre Dame and IEI to provide additional services to Catholic schools in this country,” Berends says.

Berends also directs the “National Center on 91ĘÓƵ Choice”: (NCSC), an intercollegiate, research center funded by the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

The center’s What Makes 91ĘÓƵs Work project examines student achievement in different types of public and private schools. The study surveyed roughly 2,500 teachers in 100 schools. The point, says Berends, is to understand what’s going on in the schools.

“There have been a lot of studies that looked at overall effects of charter schools versus public schools,” he says. “This really goes deeper to understand the organization, instructional processes, teacher work lives, and leadership differences to see if that explains some of the differences in something like test scores.”

Data analysis currently is underway, and findings will inform researchers, educators and policy makers who are interested in school choice—especially charter schools, a focus of the U.S. Department of Education.

If education is moving in the direction of charter schools, says Berends, then we need to know what to consider in order to implement them well.

“A big part of this project,” he says, “is looking at differences between charter, magnet and private schools compared to traditional public schools to understand where school choice can be effective and where it can present certain challenges.”

As an independent center, the NCSC does not endorse a particular type of school.

The research will inform implementation, Berends says, but will not provide blueprints for how to create schools. The project also looks at teachers’ expectations in math instruction.

“When you’re covering a topic in mathematics, what level of cognitive complexity are you expecting of students?” he asks. “Is it lower-order simple basic skills, or analytical thinking and making connections?”

Teachers’ responses to objective survey questions help researchers understand the effect instructional differences have in the various types of schools.

When they complete the survey, participants can immediately see how their responses compare in their school, district and state. The survey is so specific that researchers can connect a teacher with a group of their students. That, says Berends, enables the teacher to see whether they need to adjust their course content to better address assessment standards.

Both the Walton Family Foundation and the IES grants enable unprecedented research and knowledge. “This has the opportunity to be really helpful for schools,” Berends says.

Contact: Mark Berends, mberends@nd.edu

The average global temperature at the Earth’s surface could increase as much as six degrees Celcius by 2100, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If that happens, the impact would reach far beyond hot summers and rising sea levels to affect society in complicated ways.

The question is not only how to slow or stop climate change, but how to adapt and live with the consequences of climate change—and that requires getting as complete a picture as possible by collecting research findings from experts around the world and allowing researchers to work together to solve climate change problems.

A Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) grant from the National Science Foundation’s enables a new University of Notre Dame interdisciplinary project, the Collaboratory for Adaptation to Climate Change, to do just that.

The project’s initial function is to collect survey data on expert opinion about adaptation to climate change, climate data, ecological data, legal and regulatory data and to develop novel computational tools that help researchers and managers grapple with the effects of climate change. The collaboratory will make the data and tools available and make research results searchable, and also will provide a database of regulations and laws that pertain to climate change adaptation. These tools will enable anyone interested in climate change—most likely scientists and field practitioners like conservationists—to make decisions about climate change adaptation.

The pervasive interest in climate change is evidenced by the range of academic disciplines represented by the project’s principal investigators: Notre Dame researchers Nitesh Chawla in , in political science, and in biological science, Jaroslaw Nabrzyski in the , and in sociology.

According to Javeline, an expert in survey research methodology, studies typically look at how to slow climate change—but considering how and why to adapt is also crucial. That’s the collaboratory’s niche, she says, and it allows access to research in real time—getting and distributing data as it is gathered instead of waiting years before action is possible.

Accessing experts’ research and their adaptation conclusions means that people can make decisions based on comprehensive, scientifically significant information.

“For the first time we can say what thousands of scientists are thinking because their data will be available in the collaboratory,” Javeline says.

A large number of data, along with computational tools, will be publicly available and likely applied to make decisions in countless fields. In biology, for example, scientists might run simulations about whether and where to introduce non-native species of trees. In government, policy makers might use it to develop regulations for animal relocation. City planners might use the collaboratory to decide how to deed and allocate land.

Hellmann says the project in later phases may include more disciplines.

“The dream is beyond an initial focus on the adaptation of ecosystems to climate change so that the Collaboratory can help inform policy about all aspects of climate change adaptation,’” she says.

The collaboratory, says Chawla, is like a public sandbox—anyone can contribute, and everyone involved can see the simulations that others are running. Having so much data requires sizeable computing power, and the University’s Center for Research Computing oversees that aspect of the project.

As for what comes next, Chawla, an expert in data mining and network science, also is considering the impact the collaboratory itself will have.

“We plan to study how people incorporate the database information into decision making,” he says, “and examine the impact of information and evidence on people.”

Something as simple as whether a disease-carrying mosquito lives primarily inside or outside can affect whether it comes into contact with humans or is exposed to insecticides—and that has implications for disease transmission and control.

A particular species may develop resistance to insecticide over time, or may behave differently from one region to another. That behavioral difference has its basis in natural variation, and it’s something the scientific community studies in genomics—the study of an organism’s complete hereditary information.

In order to get a complete picture, biologists need access to a species’ genome—its biological blueprint—and that’s where the University of Notre Dame’s project comes in. Simply put, VectorBase is a Website that makes available genomes and related information on five vectors—insects and ticks known to transmit diseases to humans or animals.

is a professor in Notre Dame’s department and one of the project’s principal investigators. VectorBase, he says, goes beyond simply providing information.

“The site involves the maintenance of a lot of data, the analysis of the data, and the public presentation of those data to other scientists,” he says.

The site is used primarily by biologists interested in genomes or in the species catalogued. Visitors use VectorBase to visualize genome annotations and to access and analyze data with various tools.

How biologists apply the data depends on their research interests. According to , a principal investigator also in the biological sciences department, a scientist interested in how a mosquito finds its way to a host may search VectorBase to identify genes that are likely involved in that process.

Collins says that scientists are often interested in the biology of behavior because it potentially provides ways to control vectors. Biologists may study odor or taste detection to understand how a vector finds a place to lay eggs or feed, and that knowledge can be used to combat insects and ticks.

VectorBase staff trains international scientists how to use the database and tools at workshops and conferences, traveling to countries like Kenya and Mali—places where diseases like malaria are widespread.

VectorBase currently contains information on three species of mosquitoes— Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae, Culex quinquefasciatus —one species of tick— Ixodes scapularis —and one species of louse— Pediculus humanus. These species are linked to malaria, dengue, typhus and lyme disease, among other infections.

The data set continues to grow.

Besansky recently organized and is leading the sequencing of 13 new anopheles (mosquito) genomes that will go into VectorBase. The data will enable researchers to compare genomes of related species and examine what enables one species to effectively transmit a disease when a closely related species does not. Scott Emrich will lead the computing aspect of this research.

Emich and Greg Madey, both from the computer science and engineering department, are also principal investigators on the VectorBase project.

While much of the biological research and computing happens at Notre Dame, which also directs and houses the primary computer hardware, an international consortium of investigators contributes data, gene sequencing and analysis to the project. The consortium includes the European Bioinformatics Institute in Kingston, Imperial College in London, the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete, Harvard University and the University of New Mexico.

VectorBase has existed in some form since 2002, when biologists at Notre Dame first sequenced the Anopheles gambiae—the mosquito that carries Malaria—and needed to make it available to the broader scientific community. Now funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, VectorBase is publicly available at .

With the new Family Lifestyles and Heart to Heart projects, researchers at the University of Notre Dame’s are taking direct aim at two major obstacles to healthy child development: childhood obesity and child maltreatment.

The Center for Children and Families, established in 2001 by Professors and , works to improve the well-being of children and families through research and intervention.

Projects impact three key areas: income and health disparities; developmental disabilities and psychopathology; and optimization of development, education and learning. The center currently is conducting more than 20 research projects with faculty from economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, business and other disciplines.

“When you have a research center, you’re bringing in people who have different interests and experiences,” says , professor of psychology and the center’s director. “Yet there’s often a common issue that researchers would like to tackle, and that’s when it gets exciting.”

The Family Lifestyles Project, led by Braungart-Rieker, Jennifer Burke Lefever, research assistant professor of psychology, and Elizabeth Moore, associate professor of marketing, is an interdisciplinary study that examines environmental contributors to childhood obesity. At a time when one in five preschoolers is at risk of becoming obese before age six, a study of this kind is an essential first step to creating successful early intervention programs.

Participants include a diverse set of families with children ages three to five. The research team looks at factors like family dynamics, physical activity, children’s self-control skills and large-scale issues such as the impact the media has on a family’s food choices.

Families visit the center’s lab once, and the team visits family homes twice to study child behavior, talk with parents and evaluate the environment, noting contents of cupboards and proximity of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores. Cultural distinctions are important, and work is done in part by family coaches who are familiar with and sensitive to participants’ cultures.

The Heart to Heart Project, led by Kristin Valentino, assistant professor of psychology, is an intervention program that aims to relieve the emotional, social and cognitive effects of abuse and neglect in preschool-aged children.

The project seeks to determine whether coaching mothers on how best to communicate with their children about daily experiences and emotions will improve a maltreated child’s development.

Participants are families with children ages 4 to 6 who have open cases with the Department of Child Services for substantiated child maltreatment. In order for Valentino’s team to observe effects of intervention, half the participants receive coaching right away and the other half receives coaching after six weeks.

Family coaches visit homes once a week for four weeks, teaching parents communication skills like asking open-ended questions and discussing what their children were feeling and why. Together, the coach and the mom review videotaped sessions of the mom practicing new skills, so she learns to evaluate herself.

“The intervention really builds on the resilience literature,” said Valentino. “Fostering the parent-child relationship and communication are what lead to change and positive development.”