Public memory denotes how groups recall the past and how those ideas take shape, evolve, and prompt differences or agreement about history’s events and actors. Examining first ladies through their tenures in office, memoirs, interviews, historic sites, and memorials often reveal how they wanted to be remembered. Biographies, dramatic films, documentaries, and historical fiction about them can determine how presidential wives’ legacies are preserved or morph in the public psyche over time. Siena College Research Institute’s scholar polls and Ranker online surveys rate first ladies among historians and the general public. This chapter applies such evidence to first ladies Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Mary Lincoln, Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Barbara Bush. Each exemplifies a variety of legacies—both positive and negative—and reflects how memorializations and public memories evolve.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) diagnosis mostly relies on (late) clinical (parkinsonism) symptoms, whereas we need early diagnostic markers in order to initiate and monitor the effects of forthcoming disease-modifying drugs in the earliest phase of this disease. Therefore, reliable diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers are urgently needed. Evidence suggests the potential (differential) diagnostic and prognostic value of clinical, genetic, neuroimaging, and biochemical markers (e.g., in saliva, urine, blood and cerebrospinal fluid). Such biomarkers may include α-synuclein species, lysosomal enzymes, markers of amyloid and tau pathology, and neurofilament light chain, closely reflecting the pathophysiology of PD. Here, we provide an overview of these markers with practical guidelines for facilitating early PD diagnosis.

Many drugs are available to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD), but are limited to alleviating symptoms; no disease-modifying treatment (DMT) has been approved by any authority. There is much effort to develop remedies capable of altering the underlying neurodegenerative processes in PD. Current concepts target the deposition of pathologic α-synuclein oligomers either by immunization strategies or by small molecules that interact with the protein aggregation. Further DMT approaches modulate pathologically active intracellular processes such as the c-Abl kinase or LRRK2 pathway or aim to activate signaling pathways involved in neuroprotection, such as the GLP-1 receptor pathway (with GLP1-agonist exenatide being the most advanced DMT in the PD drug pipeline). Replacement of enzymes such as β-glucocerebrosidase, modification of the microbiome, or targeting energy metabolism or inflammation are further approaches proposed to slow down neurodegeneration. Novel symptomatic treatment approaches envisage improvement of pharmacologic properties of levodopa or dopamine agonists or target non-dopaminergic neurotransmitter systems, e.g., the glutamatergic, serotoninergic or cholinergic system.

US first ladies have exercised a complicated kind of activism when it comes to women’s rights. Some have acted as vocal advocates to insist that women’s equality should be a national priority. Others have used their platform more quietly to intervene on behalf of women’s rights. Still others have held and promoted views that have contradicted, undermined, or altogether avoided efforts to advance women’s rights. This chapter traces how US first ladies have addressed and influenced the prevailing women’s rights issues of their day, with a focus on two national campaigns: a federal amendment for women’s suffrage and a federal amendment for equal rights. By engaging or avoiding the debates surrounding women’s suffrage and the ERA, these women stretched the political and rhetorical boundaries of their platform and shaped public understanding about the ongoing struggle for women’s equality in the United States.