Spinal Cord Injuries and Evaluation of Treatments

Spinal cord injuries (SCI) are common injuries that do not currently have a fully successful treatment. These injuries cause many physical, psychological, and social burdens for the injured person and any close friends or family members. Older treatment options include surgery, pharmacotherapy, and physical therapy, while newer treatment options include stem cell therapy, bionics, and electrical stimulation. After a full evaluation of the treatments, it was concluded that the best treatment for today is pharmacotherapy, but with more research, stem cell therapy will become the ideal treatment for SCI in the future

Understanding Profitability of Small-Scale Agriculture in Utah

Small-scale agriculture production has increased in Utah. Utah has lost much of its farmable land due to increased development. The increased development and influx of people has increased the demand for food supply, resulting in many beginning to producing their own food. This increase in individuals producing their own food has inherently increased the number of micro farms within Utah. This increase in the number of small-scale operations has left many wondering if these operations are both profitable and worth the effort it takes to operate them. As such, this paper will analyze the budget for three activities: (1) raising a steer for beef, (2) maintaining chickens for eggs, and (3) producing a garden full of mixed vegetables

Fostering Resilience through Early Childhood Education

Resilience is the capacity to thrive in, rather than just survive stress and adversity (Ernst et al., 2019). Supporting children to develop resilience is an essential part of holistic developmentally appropriate practice within the field of Early Childhood Education because an improved capacity for resilience benefits other domains of education and wellness (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011). Studies on resilience in early childhood education were examined to identify and explore protective factors, classroom strategies, and home relationships that contribute to an increased capacity for resilience in young children. In addition, position statements and articles from early childhood professional bodies were used to offer relevant context within the field. The research offered many practical ideas and strategies for educators to nurture resilience within their classrooms and extend opportunities for academic and personal growth of each individual child. Through a holistic vision of early childhood education, a deep comprehension of resilience theory, and developmentally appropriate action to strengthen resilience protective factors, educators can foster resilience in the rising generation. Future research on long-term effects of these tools will offer a more comprehensive perspective of what strategies are most effective and sustainable

Understanding Fear and Self-Blame Symptoms for Child Sexual Abuse Victims in Treatment: An Interaction of Youth Age, Perpetrator Type, and Treatment Time Period

Child Sexual Abuse victims have been known to experience a wide array of emotional and behavioral symptomology following abuse. These symptoms can have a negative impact on victims in the future if proper intervention and treatment is not provided. This study focuses specifically on the symptomology of fear and self-blame in victims and what factors influence the efficacy of treatment due to these symptoms’ continuous and impartial characteristics. Participants were 333 sexually abused youth attending Project SAFE (Sexual Abuse Family Education), a cognitive-behavioral treatment program through a local Child Advocacy Center. Children were 6 to 18 years old, 79.9% female, and 71.8% European American. A repeated measures analysis was performed looking at the interaction between treatment time period (pre-treatment, midpoint-treatment, and post-treatment), victim age at the start of treatment (child vs. adolescent), and perpetrator type (family vs. non-family). The main effect of treatment time period was found to be significant for fear scores and self-blame/guilt scores. This indicates that, regardless of a child’s CSA perpetrator or their age, the treatment is still beneficial at reducing symptoms of fear and self-blame/guilt

Applying Lessons From Women\u27s Economic Behavior to Create MF1 Savings Products for Women\u27s Committees

Along with lack of access to credit, lack of access to savings for the poor is considered a major barrier to economic development (Donnelly, 2). Credit services offered by microfinance organizations have assisted many poor women in improving their financial situation. However, many microfinance organizations lack formal savings products for the poor women they serve, specifically women’s committees. While spending the summer at Fundación Paraguaya, I was floored by the progress that the women were making through the use of their loans. But borrowing is typically riskier than saving, and reliance on loans can lead to over-indebtedness. A focus on debt rather than saving can contribute to a cycle of debt and poverty. While saving requires current sacrifice and delayed gratification, it offers increased flexibility. And while borrowers must pay interest, savers earn it (Vonderlack and Schreiner, 603). Savings offers financial opportunities that credit cannot, and avoids some of the traps that over-reliance on credit falls into. Accumulated savings can buffer spikes in expected household expenses due to life events like childbirth, school feeds, or religious events as well as unexpected expenses such as natural disasters or widowhood. These accumulated savings also gives the poor the capacity to take advantage of unexpected investment opportunities that may lead to increasing returns in the future (Vonderlack and Schreiner, 603). Fundación Paraguaya, like many other institutions, lacks significant savings products to balance their lending. Only by combining both the saving side with credit, can financial inclusion truly be reached. There has been an ideological frame shift within the development world from microcredit to microfinance and now to financial inclusion that recognizes that savings products, not just loans, are a key component to assisting the poor, particularly women. And while microfinance is typically targeting towards women, the design of products rarely addresses gender-specific aspects if the use of these financial services (602). In order to move forward towards financial inclusion, effective savings products that take into account women’s economic behavior need to be implemented in the marketplace

Social re-orientation and brain development: An expanded and updated view.

Social development has been the focus of a great deal of neuroscience based research over the past decade. In this review, we focus on providing a framework for understanding how changes in facets of social development may correspond with changes in brain function. We argue that (1) distinct phases of social behavior emerge based on whether the organizing social force is the mother, peer play, peer integration, or romantic intimacy; (2) each phase is marked by a high degree of affect-driven motivation that elicits a distinct response in subcortical structures; (3) activity generated by these structures interacts with circuits in prefrontal cortex that guide executive functions, and occipital and temporal lobe circuits, which generate specific sensory and perceptual social representations. We propose that the direction, magnitude and duration of interaction among these affective, executive, and perceptual systems may relate to distinct sensitive periods across development that contribute to establishing long-term patterns of brain function and behavior

Hunter S. Thompson, Transmetropolitan, and the Evolution from Author to Character

This thesis examines American author Hunter S. Thompson, in the context of his own works – primarily Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary– as well as the representation of him as a character in the graphic text Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. The evolution of Thompson from author to character and the development of that character in his own works is examined, as well as how this development allowed for his character to be fully realised in a completely fictional world. In turn, the fully developed use of Thompson’s character is the starting point for my analysis of Transmetropolitan could potentially be read as a work of New Journalism, albeit a fictional one. The first chapter examines how Thompson began writing himself as a character in his early fictional work The Rum Diary. Though largely overlooked by critics because of its long delayed publication and the focus on the more flashy and better known Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary is critical to Thompson’s development of himself as a character in his works in particular, and to his development as an author in general. Though The Rum Diary is ostensibly a purely fictional novel, this chapter examines how the character Paul Kemp is actually largely autobiographical, and how Kemp is an early version of the same character Thompson uses in his later nonfiction. I then analyse the development of that nonfiction version, Raoul Duke, in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As The Rum Diary is not actually purely fictional, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not actually completely nonfictional. Thompson, as this chapter shows, did not believe in the divide between fact and fiction, and he uses the character he develops in Raoul Duke to write about himself while creatively embellishing the truth. I then look at how Thompson wrote himself so strongly into his character that he became inextricably viewed as actually being Raoul Duke, and how that character was in turn viewed and written about. The second chapter examines the legacy of Thompson’s fully formed self-characterisation, as it is picked up by another author and written in the fully fictional context of the graphic novel series Transmetropolitan. I consider how Transmetropolitan’s main character Spider Jerusalem continues Thompson’s self-as-character through his characterisation, behaviour, and language. Furthermore I analyse how, within the world of the series, Spider as a journalist continues Thompson’s legacy as a writer. The third and final chapter examines how Spider’s characterisation as a continuation of Thompson is an important contextual factor for considering Transmetropolitan as a work of New Journalism. I consider the connection to Thompson, the content of Spider’s articles, and the format in which the articles are depicted in the graphic nove

The Development and Optimization of Raman Spectroscopy Analyses for Mobile Salinity Sensing

To quantify the amount of deicing salt on the roadway in near-real time, this thesis proposes a mobile salinity sensor using Raman spectroscopy. This thesis investigates the viability of using Raman spectroscopy to determine the concentration of salt deicer in an aqueous solution in near-real time through a two part study. The first portion describes the use of Raman spectroscopy to determine the concentration of aqueous solutions consisting of the five most common salt deicers: sodium, calcium, and magnesium chloride, potassium acetate, and calcium magnesium acetate. The Raman spectra are analyzed using previously proven methods for determining chloride salt concentration that were optimized to work with both acetate and chloride salt solutions. These analyses output a benchmark plot for each salt solution over a range of concentrations and temperatures. The second portion of this study focuses on characterizing the effect that the testing surface substrate has on the concentration found from the Raman spectrum of the sample. This was completed by recording the Raman spectrum on a variety of surfaces with multiple surface treatments. The results were compared to the benchmark plots previously determined. Using the optimized analysis methods and the ideal surface found via this study, a mobile salinity sensor using Raman spectroscopy can be designed to work consistently and accurately in near-real time