A Strategic Alliance: An Exploration of Israeli-Russian Relations

This paper offers an exploration of various facets of the Israeli-Russian political relationship. The positive relationship between the two states seems unlikely considering each state’s history and strategic alliances, though Israel and Russia have endeavored towards a strong working relationship since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. This paper first explores the history of the relationship between the former Soviet Union/Russia and Israel from the formation of Israel in 1948 to the present day. The historical arc is used in an attempt to explain the development of the current relationship. Next, this paper explains the current status of the relationship, particularly through Vladimir Putin’s leadership of Russia and his diplomatic relationship with Israeli leaders Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. I then turn to the multiple facets of the strategic alliance, including military, economic, technological, and cultural partnerships. Lastly, this paper summarizes the implications of the Israeli-Russian alliance on Middle Eastern and international geopolitics

Biophysical Characterization of Katanin’s Regulation of Microtubules

Microtubules, as an essential part of the cytoskeleton, require proper function as well as correct spatial and temporal localization. In order to achieve correct organization, microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) regulate microtubule dynamics. Katanin, a known microtubule-severing enzyme from the AAA family of proteins, plays a role in regulating microtubules, but the mechanisms of microtubule control and the mechanism of severing activity remain to be elucidated. In the following studies I examine mechanisms of katanin-based regulation of microtubule dynamics using a single molecule biophysics approach. I use this simplified in vitro approach to change specific parameters to investigate how katanin targets microtubules with defects, how free tubulin regulates katanin severing activity, and how katanin and tau regulate dynamic microtubules. This work provides us with new insights as to how katanin targets both stable and dynamic microtubules as well as how katanin is regulated by other cellular components

Resisting Disciplinarity: Curriculum Mapping and Transdisciplinarity

American higher education relies on a taxonomy of knowledge stemming from Puritan ways of thinking and knowing—a disciplinary classification system that sorts “questions asked” and “answers possible” into epistemic categories. This paper interrogates the notion of disciplinarity to better understand the arbitrariness of epistemic divisions and the harm that these decisions cause. The author explores transdisciplinarity as an emerging concept in honors education, one which rejects boundaries and explores problems through multiple, competing perspectives. Transdisciplinary pedagogical approaches offer honors educators a mechanism for pivoting teaching and learning away from outdated assumptions of honors as elitist, giving honors students a liberating way to conceptualize and approach inquiry. The result reimagines students and the academy in a way that subverts the boundaries and assumptions posed by modern disciplinary logic and encourages applied and integrative ways of knowing and being

The 2019 Statewide Economic Contribution of Maine’s Forest Products Sector

Maine’s forest products sector includes (but is not limited to) businesses, organizations, and individuals involved with logging and forestry, paper and related product manufacturing, sawmills and wood-product manufacturing, wood furniture manufacturing, the generation of biomass electricity, and the Maine Forest Service. The forest products sector contributes directly to the Maine economy through its day-to-day operations (e.g. direct sales, wages, employment of workers). In addition to these direct impacts, every dollar that is spent on local purchases by any business, organization or individual involved in the forest products sector circulates throughout Maine’s economy and is used by other businesses and organizations to pay their employees, taxes, and purchase more goods and services. This “multiplier effect” is a crucial component to consider when studying the total economic contribution of the forest products sector to the state of Maine. When considering these multiplier effects, Maine’s forest products sector contributed an estimated $8.1 billion in total output and over 31,000 full and part-time jobs to the state economy in 2019

Emerging from the Project! Evolving Views of Emory\u27s Library Use System

Beginning in 2014, Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Library initiated a project to connect entry card swipe data to demographic data within a locally created system . The system provides data visualizations as well as file export functionality. This project has involved developing a process for collecting and analyzing the data and presenting the results it in a way that can enable data-driven decision making

A Qualitative Study of Mothers Who Work Full-Time as Hospital Floor Nurses

We conducted qualitative interviews with a sample of 13 female floor nurses in a Midwest hospital. The women worked full-time and also had children at home for whom they provided care. The overall four results reported include particular challenges they faced in their dual-roles, including separating home from work, high stress, sleep deprivation, odd hours, and difficulty in advancing due to home life pressures. The nurses also related perceived assets and drawbacks of their profession for the given season of life. They described what they believed to be necessities for success in the dual-roles of professional nurse and care taker. Last, they related two wish-list components they desired at this point their careers as they engaged in child rearin

Economic Contribution of Colleges and Universities in Maine

Maine has 38 colleges and universities that educate 72,605 students, employ a combined 14,621 nonstudent workers, and generate about $2.2 billion in annual revenue. Colleges and universities in Maine generate a total annual economic contribution—including the spending of students and visitors, and multiplier effects—of an estimated$4.5 billion in output, 31,267 full- and part-time jobs, and $1.7 billion in labor income. Maine’s colleges and universities support at least ten jobs in 125 Maine sectors, and there are statewide employment impacts of twenty jobs or more in 108 industries. This report examines the statewide economic contribution of colleges and universities in Maine. Economic contribution is defined as the direct revenue generated by these institutions and the spending of their students and visitors; employment and employee compensation in Maine’s colleges and universities and the jobs and earnings supported by the spending of students and visitors; and the multiplier effects associated with the spending of workers (i.e., induced effects) and companies (i.e., indirect effects) connected to Maine’s institutions of higher learning (and the workers and businesses supported by the spending of students and visitors). The economic impact analysis includes 38 institutions of postsecondary education (e.g., private colleges, public universities, community colleges) and uses data from the U.S. Department of Education (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, National Center for Education Statistics), surveys of student expenditures, past economic impact studies, and information collected from the websites of Maine’s colleges and universities. The multiplier effects and some of the direct impacts (e.g., labor income) are estimated by a Maine input-output model (IMPLAN)