The Methodological and Diagnostic Applications of Micro-CT to Palaeopathology: A Quantitative Study of Porotic Hyperostosis

The purpose of this dissertation was to assess the value of micro-CT to palaeopathology for the non-destructive analysis of orbital and cranial porotic hyperostosis, common lesions observed in many archaeological skeletal collections. The objectives of this study were to: 1) identify palaeoepidemiological trends in the prevalence of porotic hyperostosis that may support differential diagnoses, 2) evaluate the reproducibility and reliability of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) methods of micro-CT data collection for the quantitative analysis of bone microarchitecture, and 3) quantitatively evaluate orbital and cranial porotic hyperostosis to determine the value of micro-CT methods for understanding disease pathogenesis and improving the differential diagnosis of these lesions. Sixty-six individuals obtained from four skeletal collections were assessed macroscopically using published methods of visual analysis as well as quantitatively using micro-CT methods. Structural indices used to quantify bone microarchitecture included bone volume density (BV/TV), specific bone surface (BS/BV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th.), trabecular number (Tb.N.), and trabecular spacing (Tb.Sp.) (Hildebrand et al. 1999). The results of the visual analysis demonstrated an age-related trend in the prevalence of porotic hyperostosis, supporting previous hypotheses that this condition has an onset in childhood (e.g. Stuart-Macadam 1985). The micro-CT results illustrated that the most reliable and reproducible method for quantifying bone microarchitecture was a 3D volume of interest (VOI) method that maximized VOI size. Three-dimensional methods using VOIs of a uniform size were recommended with caution, and 2D VOI methods did not provide consistent observer agreement. The analysis of orbital porotic hyperostosis demonstrated significant changes (p \u3c 0.05) to bone microarchitecture in the advanced stages of disease pathogenesis, but not in the early or healing stages. The results for cranial porotic hyperostosis demonstrated significant changes only in the light stage. These results suggest that orbits are differentially and more significantly affected than the cranial vault likely due to structural differences between the bones of the skull. Changes to bone microarchitecture included an overall loss of trabecular bone and an increase in thinned, gracile trabeculae. Considering these findings within the clinical literature a differential diagnosis that includes anaemic conditions was supported. The identified palaeoepidemiological context also supported this differential diagnosis. Overall, the application of 3D micro-CT methods is of significant value for elucidating the process of disease pathogenesis and supporting current differential diagnoses of porotic hyperostosis in archaeological skeletal remains

Rhetoric-Remembrance-Race-Region: Contemporary Stories of Abolition and the Making of Race in the Upper Midwest

The project examines how contemporary stories of abolition are inventive resources for articulating race in the upper Midwest. Focusing online fragments representative of abolition stories, these analyses illustrate the entanglement of rhetoric, remembrance, race, and region in a space distanced from race in the public imaginary. Through three case studies, I utilize the hermeneutic of public memory to advance a rhetorical reading of these narratives that construct the region through rhetorics of whiteness. In the first case study, rhetorics of purity are deployed in remembrances of Joshua Glover in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to absolve the state and its white residents from anti-Blackness across time. The second case study analyzes local and state remembrances of Sojourner Truth in Michigan. I find that these remembrances reflect back onto the Michigan an idealized image of itself, and dodges claims of anti-Blackness by representing Truth through the interrelated values of fortitude, moral superiority, and sanitized reform. The final case study demonstrates how rhetorics of heritage are utilized to portray Ripley, Ohio and its white residents as committed to freedom and morally superior. I theorize claims of heritage not as a companion to heritage but as a rhetorical maneuver to argue for the direct and inevitable passing of a substance on spatial lines. This project conclusions with reviewing the common arguments across case studies and white comfort in stories of abolition in the upper Midwest

2021 Student Symposium Research and Creative Activity Book of Abstracts

The UMaine Student Symposium (UMSS) is an annual event that celebrates undergraduate and graduate student research and creative work. Students from a variety of disciplines present their achievements with video presentations. It’s the ideal occasion for the community to see how UMaine students’ work impacts locally – and beyond. The 2021 Student Symposium Research and Creative Activity Book of Abstracts includes a complete list of student presenters as well as abstracts related to their works

Natural Language Processing: Emerging Neural Approaches and Applications

This Special Issue highlights the most recent research being carried out in the NLP field to discuss relative open issues, with a particular focus on both emerging approaches for language learning, understanding, production, and grounding interactively or autonomously from data in cognitive and neural systems, as well as on their potential or real applications in different domains

WiFi-Based Human Activity Recognition Using Attention-Based BiLSTM

Recently, significant efforts have been made to explore human activity recognition (HAR) techniques that use information gathered by existing indoor wireless infrastructures through WiFi signals without demanding the monitored subject to carry a dedicated device. The key intuition is that different activities introduce different multi-paths in WiFi signals and generate different patterns in the time series of channel state information (CSI). In this paper, we propose and evaluate a full pipeline for a CSI-based human activity recognition framework for 12 activities in three different spatial environments using two deep learning models: ABiLSTM and CNN-ABiLSTM. Evaluation experiments have demonstrated that the proposed models outperform state-of-the-art models. Also, the experiments show that the proposed models can be applied to other environments with different configurations, albeit with some caveats. The proposed ABiLSTM model achieves an overall accuracy of 94.03%, 91.96%, and 92.59% across the 3 target environments. While the proposed CNN-ABiLSTM model reaches an accuracy of 98.54%, 94.25% and 95.09% across those same environments

The Design of Interactive Visualizations and Analytics for Public Health Data

Public health data plays a critical role in ensuring the health of the populace. Professionals use data as they engage in efforts to improve and protect the health of communities. For the public, data influences their ability to make health-related decisions. Health literacy, which is the ability of an individual to access, understand, and apply health data, is a key determinant of health. At present, people seeking to use public health data are confronted with a myriad of challenges some of which relate to the nature and structure of the data. Interactive visualizations are a category of computational tools that can support individuals as they seek to use public health data. With interactive visualizations, individuals can access underlying data, change how data is represented, manipulate various visual elements, and in certain tools control and perform analytic tasks. That being said, currently, in public health, simple visualizations, which fail to effectively support the exploration of large sets of data, are predominantly used. The goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate the benefit of sophisticated interactive visualizations and analytics. As improperly designed visualizations can negatively impact users’ discourse with data, there is a need for frameworks to help designers think systematically about design issues. Furthermore, there is a need to demonstrate how such frameworks can be utilized. This dissertation includes a process by which designers can create health visualizations. Using this process, five novel visualizations were designed to facilitate making sense of public health data. Three studies were conducted with the visualizations. The first study explores how computational models can be used to make sense of the discourse of health on a social media platform. The second study investigates the use of instructional materials to improve visualization literacy. Visualization literacy is important because even when visualizations are designed properly, there still exists a gap between how a tool works and users’ perceptions of how the tool should work. The last study examines the efficacy of visualizations to improve health literacy. Overall then, this dissertation provides designers with a deeper understanding of how to systematically design health visualizations

Exploring parental experiences and decision-making processes following a fetal anomaly diagnosis

Often the first indication that something may be wrong in a seemingly normal pregnancy occurs during the first detailed ultrasound appointment between 16 and 20 weeks gestation. Even the most tentative suspicions of fetal anomalies is jarring. Parent’s default reality of a normal pregnancy and a ‘perfect child’ changes to one of risk factors and the possibility of an ‘unhealthy child’. This study begins with the realization of this first loss in a series of losses that follow for parents as they grapple with diagnostic information to be able to make informed medical decisions regarding their fetus and pregnancy. The study aims to explore the gap between clinical/ professional knowledge and the private worldviews of parents when they return home to process the information and make decisions. This study was situated within a Canadian healthcare context that provides prenatal screening and medical care within a socialized medicine system. Using Grounded Theory methodology, this study bridges the disciplinary boundaries of Thanatology, Psychology, Bioethics and Reproductive medicine to explore the lived experience and the processes of personal/emotional decision making of parents, as well as a needs assessment of services. The process of inquiry and the results will be discussed with relevance to scholars and clinicians on the context of end-of-life decision making that occurs within the prenatal context. Theoretical lens also examines the multiple death related and non-death losses as well as the reframed identity of parents and their unborn babies following a diagnosis of fetal anomalies

The 26th Annual Boston University Undergraduate Research (UROP) Abstracts

The file is available to be viewed by anyone in the BU community. To view the file, click on "Login" or the Person icon top-right with your BU Kerberos password. You will then be able to see an option to View.Abstracts for the 2023 UROP Symposium, held at Boston University on October 20, 2023 at GSU Metcalf Ballroom. Cover and logo design by Morgan Danna. Booklet compiled by Molly Power

Need Not Necessity: Purgatorial Torment and Healing in Medieval and Early Modern Drama

Seeking to expand on the work of Jacque Le Goff in The Birth of Purgatory, this dissertation examines Purgatory and purgatorial suffering on the early modern stage in Britain. Le Goff asserts in The Birth of Purgatory that Purgatory, though a prominent if elusive feature of Christian thinking about the afterlife, seems to have been a perishable rather than an enduring idea (358). I choose to look for those places in the British early modern dramatic imagination where the idea of Purgatory, even when used as a dramatic device or metaphor, managed to endure, even if it never quite flourishes. While it is a dominant belief in medieval Britain, Purgatory serves to bring together a community of believers, strengthening their ties to dead ancestors and to one another (Chapter 2). When belief in Purgatory wanes in Britain and its attendant practices are purged from religious expression during the Reformation, the kinetic energies and symbolic systems that tied together the community of believers does not so easily die away (Chapter 1). All through the Reformation, invective diatribes against Purgatory can be found on stage at the same time that contemporary playwrights are employing Purgatory in ways that connect it to expiation of sin and suffering for love (Chapters 3 and 4). In many instances, ideas about Purgatory are being translated by dramatists, particularly Shakespeare, into dramatic structures that support a specifically Judeo-Christian articulation of Aristotelian catharsis (Chapter 5). Purgatory, as a literary and cultural metaphor, continues to demarcate not only areas of cultural upheaval and uncertainty, but also areas where delimiting practices, of this world and the next, are evolving or being reorganized within dramatic culture. The Lovers\u27 Purgatory and the Cuckold\u27s Purgatory, for example, focus cultural anxieties about fidelity and Reformation anxieties about divorce (Chapter 4). The application of metaphors of purgatorial suffering to both male and female anxieties about romantic relationships provides limits on the social consequences of infidelity and provides a patient coping strategy which in some respects forestalls domestic violence. As metaphor for the love relationship, Purgatory focuses complex discussions about sin, sex, and the heavenly and earthly political structures which regulate intimate relationships. Purgatory\u27s liminal but positive orientation towards heavenly reward focuses representations of suffering so that suffering becomes communal rather than isolating. While they are punished according to their own culpability, no one is alone in either the earthly or otherworldly Purgatory