Lee Smith\u27s The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed and Family Linen: Children\u27s Loss of Innocence

Author Lee Smith began writing years ago as a small child. She is now highly acclaimed and a distinguished author. Her works, including nine novels and many short stories, range in topics from Southern life and mountain customs to family feuds and profound relationships. Each of the topics offering resounding voices, unique perspectives, and spirited approaches to the world. The research explores Lee Smith’s the last day the dogbushes bloomed and family linen. Despite the difference in techniques and level of maturity evident in Smith’s novels, both her first novel and those later in her career explore many of the same themes with the same outlook

PSYDEKICK: REDUCING THE STIGMA OF MENTAL HEALTH ON ECU’S CAMPUS THROUGH THE CREATION OF A PEER EDUCATION PROGRAM

Mental health issues have become a growing concern among all colleges and universities within the nation. There is a lack of education and resources on these topics, which fuels the growing issue of mental health illnesses among college students. According to a survey administered by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 75% of their students were unaware of the university’s counseling services and 92% claimed to be uneducated on mental health prevention (Catanzarite & Robinson, 2013). Psydekick was created on ECU’s campus to provide students with valuable information on ways to cope with the six mental illnesses seen primarily among ECU students: anxiety, depression, stress management, suicide prevention, eating disorders, and substance abuse. As an acting partner with the Counseling Center, the focus of this organization was on the advocacy and peer education of mental health on campus. Through extensive research on the topic of peer education, it was found that the “social learning theory� supported that peers learn best from one another within a specific social context and results in more behavior change (Catanzarite & Robinson, 2013). Psydekick would function as a source of outreach to educate students on different ways to cope with these prevalent mental health issues while attending ECU. When individuals are given accurate information, they can successfully empower and encourage positive behavior change among their peers (Catanzarite & Robinson, 2013). Members in the organization planned to complete national peer education training through a program called BACCHUS to become certified as peer educators, as well as complete training provided by the Counseling Center on the six special topics of mental health. Throughout this process, Psydekick was successful in providing information and research on the importance peer education holds in the area of mental health, which has further led to a professionalized peer education program being formed in direct connection to the Counseling Center

Effect of Cannabinoids on Osteogenic Differentiation of Cultured Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Vascular calcification is strongly correlated with the clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis, heart attacks and strokes. The calcification process resembles bone formation and involves the osteogenic trans-differentiation of smooth muscles cells within the arterial wall. Cannabinoid receptors are known to modulate bone formation and are present in atherosclerotic vessels, suggesting they may also play a role in modulating calcification. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of cannabinoids on the expression of osteogenic proteins by vascular smooth muscle cells undergoing calcification

Geometric and compositional influences on spin-orbit induced circulating currents in nanostructures

Circulating orbital currents, originating from the spin-orbit interaction, are calculated for semiconductor nanostructures in the shape of spheres, disks, spherical shells and rings for the electron ground state with spin oriented along a symmetry axis. The currents and resulting orbital and spin magnetic moments, which combine to yield the effective electron g factor, are calculated using a recently introduced formalism that allows the relative contributions of different regions of the nanostructure to be identified. For all these spherically or cylindrically symmetric hollow or solid nanostructures, independent of material composition and whether the boundary conditions are hard or soft, the dominant orbital current originates from intermixing of valence band states in the electron ground state, circulates within the nanostructure, and peaks approximately halfway between the center and edge of the nanostructure in the plane perpendicular to the spin orientation. For a specific material composition and confinement character, the confinement energy and orbital moment are determined by a single size-dependent parameter for spherically symmetrical nanostructures, whereas they can be independently tuned for cylindrically symmetric nanostructures.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figure

Spin-orbit-induced circulating currents in a semiconductor nanostructure

Circulating orbital currents produced by the spin-orbit interaction for a single electron spin in a quantum dot are explicitly evaluated at zero magnetic field, along with their effect on the total magnetic moment (spin and orbital) of the electron spin. The currents are dominated by coherent superpositions of the conduction and valence envelope functions of the electronic state, are smoothly varying within the quantum dot, and are peaked roughly halfway between the dot center and edge. Thus the spatial structure of the spin contribution to the magnetic moment (which is peaked at the dot center) differs greatly from the spatial structure of the orbital contribution. Even when the spin and orbital magnetic moments cancel (for $g=0$) the spin can interact strongly with local magnetic fields, e.g. from other spins, which has implications for spin lifetimes and spin manipulation.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Spectrally Similar Incommensurable 3-Manifolds

Reid has asked whether hyperbolic manifolds with the same geodesic length spectrum must be commensurable. Building toward a negative answer to this question, we construct examples of hyperbolic 3–manifolds that share an arbitrarily large portion of the length spectrum but are not commensurable. More precisely, for every n ≫ 0, we construct a pair of incommensurable hyperbolic 3–manifolds Nn and Nµn whose volume is approximately n and whose length spectra agree up to length n. Both Nn and Nµn are built by gluing two standard submanifolds along a complicated pseudo-Anosov map, ensuring that these manifolds have a very thick collar about an essential surface. The two gluing maps differ by a hyper-elliptic involution along this surface. Our proof also involves a new commensurability criterion based on pairs of pants

Does alpha phase modulate visual target detection? Three experiments with tACS-phase-based stimulus presentation

In recent years, the influence of alpha (7–13 Hz) phase on visual processing has received a lot of attention. Magneto‐/encephalography (M/EEG) studies showed that alpha phase indexes visual excitability and task performance. Studies with transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) aim to modulate oscillations and causally impact task performance. Here, we applied right occipital tACS (O2 location) to assess the functional role of alpha phase in a series of experiments. We presented visual stimuli at different pre‐determined, experimentally controlled, phases of the entraining tACS signal, hypothesizing that this should result in an oscillatory pattern of visual performance in specifically left hemifield detection tasks. In experiment 1, we applied 10 Hz tACS and used separate psychophysical staircases for six equidistant tACS‐phase conditions, obtaining contrast thresholds for detection of visual gratings in left or right hemifield. In experiments 2 and 3, tACS was at EEG‐based individual peak alpha frequency. In experiment 2, we measured detection rates for gratings with (pseudo‐)fixed contrast. In experiment 3, participants detected brief luminance changes in a custom‐built LED device, at eight equidistant alpha phases. In none of the experiments did the primary outcome measure over phase conditions consistently reflect a one‐cycle sinusoid. However, post hoc analyses of reaction times (RT) suggested that tACS alpha phase did modulate RT for specifically left hemifield targets in both experiments 1 and 2 (not measured in experiment 3). This observation requires future confirmation, but is in line with the idea that alpha phase causally gates visual inputs through cortical excitability modulation

Genomic Correlates of Virulence Attenuation in the Deadly Amphibian Chytrid Fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

Emerging infectious diseasespose a significant threat to global health, but predicting disease outcomes for particular species can be complicated when pathogen virulence varies across space, time, or hosts. The pathogenic chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has caused worldwide declines in frog populations. Not only do Bd isolates from wild populations vary in virulence, but virulence shifts can occur over short timescales when Bd is maintained in the laboratory. We leveraged changes in Bd virulence over multiple generations of passage to better understand mechanisms of pathogen virulence. We conducted whole-genome resequencing of two samples of the same Bd isolate, differing only in passage history, to identify genomic processes associated with virulence attenuation. The isolate with shorter passage history (and greater virulence) had greater chromosome copy numbers than the isolate maintained in culture for longer, suggesting that virulence attenuation may be associated with loss of chromosome copies. Our results suggest that genomic processes proposed as mechanisms for rapid evolution in Bd are correlated with virulence attenuation in laboratory culture within a single lineage of Bd. Moreover, these genomic processes can occur over extremely short timescales. On a practical level, our results underscore the importance of immediately cryo-archiving new Bd isolates and using fresh isolates, rather than samples cultured in the laboratory for long periods, for laboratory infection experiments. Finally, when attempting to predict disease outcomes for this ecologically important pathogen, it is critical to consider existing variation in virulence among isolates and the potential for shifts in virulence over short timescales

g-Factors and diamagnetic coefficients of electrons, holes and excitons in InAs/InP quantum dots

The electron, hole, and exciton g-factors and diamagnetic coefficients have been calculated using envelope-function theory for cylindrical InAs/InP quantum dots in the presence of a magnetic field parallel to the dot symmetry axis. A clear connection is established between the electron g-factor and the amplitude of the those valence-state envelope functions which possess non-zero orbital momentum associated with the envelope function. The dependence of the exciton diamagnetic coefficients on the quantum dot height is found to correlate with the energy dependence of the effective mass. Calculated exciton g-factor and diamagnetic coefficients, constructed from the values associated with the electron and hole constituents of the exciton, match experimental data well, however including the Coulomb interaction between the electron and hole states improves the agreement. Remote-band contributions to the valence-band electronic structure, included perturbatively, reduce the agreement between theory and experiment.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Reliability of intrasubject absolute quantification of kidney function measured with 99mTc DMSA in piglets

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