Age-related declines in capabilities may compromise older adults’ ability to maintain their homes thus threatening successful aging in place. Structured interviews were conducted with forty-four independently living older adults (Mage = 76.1, SD = 4.7) to discuss difficult home maintenance tasks and how they managed those tasks. Solutions to managing difficulties were categorized as person-related or environment-related. The majority (85%) of responses were person-related solutions. An understanding of the specific challenges that older adults face in maintaining their homes can guide redesign efforts and interventions to effectively support older adults’ desire to age in place.

Using data from the New Immigrant Survey, we examine the religious beliefs and practices of new legal immigrants to the United States. We find that Christian immigrants are more Catholic, more Orthodox, and less Protestant than American Christians, and that those immigrants who are Protestant are more likely to be evangelical. In addition to being more Catholic and more Orthodox than American Christians, the new immigrants are also paradoxically less Christian, with a fifth reporting some other faith. Detailed analysis of reported church attendance at places of origin and in the United States suggest that immigration is a disruptive event that alienates immigrants from religious practice rather than “theologizing” them. In addition, our models clearly show that people who join congregations in the United States are highly selected and unrepresentative of the broader population of immigrants in any faith. In general, congregational members were more observant both before and after emigration, were more educated, had more cumulative experience in the United States, and were more likely to have children present in the household and be homeowners and therefore yield biased representations of all adherents to any faith. The degree of selectivity and hence bias also varies markedly both by religion and nationality.

Ironically, some of our most advanced technologies, when discarded, may represent a rapidly expanding and sometimes unregulated exposure to a toxicant that plagued even the ancient Romans: lead. Almost all electronic devices contain lead, and such devices are proliferating—and becoming obsolete—at breathtaking speed. A University of Florida environmental engineer is researching the potential environmental fate of the lead found in electronics sent to landfills. In a report sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and issued 15 July 2004, Timothy G. Townsend described his study of 12 different types of electronic items and his finding that the items leached lead at concentrations exceeding the EPA threshold for categorizing a waste as hazardous.

When most people think of ethics (or morals), they think of rules for distinguishing between right and wrong, such as the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), a code of professional conduct like the Hippocratic Oath ("First of all, do no harm"), a religious creed like the Ten Commandments ("Thou Shalt not kill..."), or a wise aphorisms like the sayings of Confucius. This is the most common way of defining "ethics": norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.