The University of Miami’s Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies and the George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences announce the return to print of The American Jewish Year Book (Springer), the annual record of American Jewish Civilization.

After a four-year hiatus, the newly released American Jewish Year Book (AJYB) contains important findings about the Jewish population in the United States. Despite concerns about the decline in the Jewish community’s numbers, figures in the AJYB indicate that the numbers remain stable at approximately 6.5 million, according to Ira Sheskin, UM professor of geography and regional studies, director of the Miller Center’s Jewish Demography Project, and co-editor of the year book. This is important in view of the continuing debate over which community—Israel or the United States—has the world’s largest Jewish community. Another important finding is the increase in the number of Jews, 500,000, who identify themselves as secular members of a community rather than as Jews by religion. Read the full story

More than 50 University of Miami faculty members and graduate students contributed to the first encyclopedia devoted to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of behavioral medicine, the Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. UM’s cross-disciplinary team was led by Editor in Chief Marc D. Gellman, research associate professor of psychology and associate director for administration at the Behavioral Medicine Research Center, and Associate Editor Alan M. Delamater, professor of pediatrics and psychology.

Spanning four volumes and including 700 contributing authors from 26 countries, the encyclopedia is a major resource for health care professionals, and includes more than 1,200 synopses and full-length essays covering many aspects of behavioral medicine principles, research, clinical investigations, health policies, and much more.

Each volume opens with an introduction by Stephen M. Weiss, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Neil Schneiderman, the James L. Knight Professor of Psychology, professor of medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and biomedical engineering, and director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center.

Dozens of other faculty and graduate students from the Miller School of Medicine, the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology, and the School of Nursing and Health Studies contributed to the compendium, which was published by Springer, a global leader in scientific publications.

The Jackson Book Prize was awarded by the Association of American Geographers to Jan Nijman, professor emeritus, for his 2011 book, Miami: Mistress of the Americas, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The AAG praises the book as “a superb example of geographic insight and interpre­tation” and “historical urban geography at its best—intelligent, original, and wide-ranging.” Previous winners of the Jackson Prize include Donald W. Meinig, Peirce F. Lewis, and Wilbur Zelinsky.

Ding Di

Di Ding, a graduate student in the laboratory of Sanjoy K. Bhattacharya, associate professor at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, has published a major scientific report in the journal European Molecular Biology Organization.

In Ding’s study, published in collaboration with Professors Miguel Perez-Pinzon and Kunjan Dave of the Department of Neurology, she has shown an irreversible post-translational modification, deimination, as a regulator of mitochondrial co-translational protein import and contributor to neurodegeneration in demyelinating diseases.

Mitochondrial impairment is a critical factor in multiple sclerosis and glaucomatous degeneration associated with progressive irreversible visual dysfunction. Ding and co-authors have shown altered mRNA binding by a co-factor in deiminated state that affects co-translational mitochondrial import of an ATPase (ATP5b).

Mileidis Gort, assistant professor of teaching and learning in the School of Education, and Eurydice Bauer, associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have published Early Biliteracy Development: Exploring Young Learners’ Use of Their Linguistic Resources (Routledge). The edited volume provides findings from empirical research with young bilinguals growing up with English and Spanish, Chinese, German, or Turkish in home and school contexts and practical applications of these findings.