In the UMaine observance, Maine participants hope to place 1,000 of the handmade bones in the plaza in a reflective effort to remember victims and survivors of genocide. Each bone created through this initiative generates a $1 donation through the Bezos Family Foundation to CARE for its work in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Before the April 13 event, members of the UMaine community can create a clay bone or donate $5 to have one made for them at the following times and locations: 3 p.m. April 6, Coe Room, Memorial Union; 7 p.m. April 7, Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, Memorial Union; 6 p.m. April 9, Somerset Hall; and 7 p.m. April 11, Totman Room, Memorial Union.

Students from the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs hope to take the bones to the national One Million Bones event June 8–10 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. More information is online.

The exhibition is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday until May 5.

For more information or to request disability accommodations, call the Department of Art at 207.581.3245.

Bender will address both the 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. ceremonies as part of UMaine’s 211th Commencement in Harold Alfond Sports Arena.

“Lawrence is one of our truly outstanding alumni,” says University of Maine President Paul Ferguson. “We are so pleased to award him a Doctor of Humane Letters in recognition of his excellent contributions to the arts through film and his deep commitment to addressing some of the major issues facing our society. I am confident our new graduates will enjoy and value hearing how his UMaine degree provided a foundation for such success and passion.”

Bender graduated from UMaine in 1979 with a degree in civil engineering. His successful career as a producer and activist spans two decades. His films, which include such noteworthy projects as “Inglourious Basterds,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting,” have been honored with 29 Academy Award® nominations, including three for Best Picture, and have won six.

His film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which raised unprecedented awareness about climate change, won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. His documentary, “Countdown To Zero,” which features Tony Blair, Pervez Musharraf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Frederik De Klerk and Jimmy Carter, among others, details the urgent risk posed by proliferation, terrorism and accidental use of nuclear weapons.

Bender’s other films include: “From Dusk Till Dawn” (1996), “Anna and the King” (1999), “The Mexican” (2001), “Innocent Voices” (2004) and Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), “Jackie Brown” (1997), and “Kill Bill” — Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2003–04). He has also produced “Havana Nights: Dirty Dancing 2”; “Knockaround Guys”; “A Price Above Rubies”; “White Man’s Burden”; “Killing Zoe”; and “Fresh.” His most recent film, “Safe,” which stars Jason Statham, was released worldwide early last year.

Bender is also a passionate social and political activist. In 2003, he co-founded the Detroit Project, a campaign advocating vehicles that will end the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. He also traveled to the Middle East with the Israeli Policy Forum, meeting with heads of state. Bender is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council. He received the ACLU’s Torch of Liberty Award and was named a Wildlife Hero by the National Wildlife Federation.

In 2009, Bender was one of five alumni honored by the University of Maine Foundation at its 75th anniversary celebration. He also was inducted into the College of Engineering’s Francis Crowe Society as a distinguished engineer in recognition of extraordinary accomplishments to society and his profession. Bender returned to campus that fall to give an address at the Maine Business School.

Contact: Margaret Nagle, 207.581.3745; 207.949.4149

While methadone maintenance treatment “is associated with increased stability in maternal and infant health, when compared with illicit opiate use,” long-term effects of prenatal methadone exposure on fetal and infant development are not well known, says Beth Logan, a doctoral student in developmental-clinical psychology at UMaine.

Logan conducted the research in collaboration with Dr. Mark Brown, a neonatologist at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine, and Marie Hayes, a UMaine professor of psychology, cooperating professor of the Graduate School of Biomedical Science and allied scientist at EMMC.

The issue of methadone maintenance therapy during pregnancy is important locally, Logan says, as prescription opiate abuse in rural Maine has reached epidemic proportions.

It’s well documented that methadone causes neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in some newborns. NAS can result in gastrointestinal symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea, as well as slow feeding and growth and, in more severe cases, seizures.

Breastfeeding, Logan says, has been shown in this and other studies to reduce the severity of NAS in opiate-exposed infants.

To better understand long-term implications of prenatal methadone exposure on infant and toddler development, Logan and the UMaine team are conducting a longitudinal study of 200 methadone-exposed and nonexposed demographically matched families.

According to Logan’s dissertation research, at 9 months of age, 37.5 percent of the methadone-exposed infants demonstrated clinically significant motor delays compared with typical development in the nonexposed group. Motor deficits, she says, were particularly prominent in the milestones of sitting independently and crawling.

Maternal alcohol and tobacco use also affect cognitive and motor development of infants, Logan says, and should be considered when evaluating treatment possibilities. Logan also found that electroencephalogram (a test that measures electrical brain activity) markers of learning deficits are associated with comorbid (a medical condition that exists simultaneously and generally independently of another condition) prenatal alcohol exposure in methadone-exposed infants.

In addition, Logan says it appears environmental risks “conspire with” prenatal exposures to pose immediate and long-term developmental implications.

The findings were published in the March 2013 issue of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Contact: Beth Staples, 207.581.3777