No Choice But to Look Elsewhere: Attracting Immigrants to Newfoundland, 1840-1890

Nineteenth-century Newfoundland was caught up in North America’s drive towards progress. The desire for landward development was present within political discourse from the 1840s onwards, politicians arguing that economic diversification – particularly agricultural development – would free the population from coastal resource dependency. Failure to entice fishermen to farm led officials to believe that individuals to push Newfoundland forward would have to be found elsewhere. Contemporaries were aware of the geographic limitations preventing large-scale immigration, and hoped for a small number of skilled agriculturalists from the British Isles. Yet no government formulated a formal immigration policy, and proposed immigration strategies were cautious.Au 19e siècle, Terre-Neuve était entraînée dans la marche de l’Amérique du Nord vers le progrès. À compter des années 1840, le désir de mettre en valeur l’intérieur du territoire était présent dans le discours de ses politiciens, selon qui la diversification économique – en particulier le développement de l’agriculture – libérerait la population de sa dépendance envers les ressources côtières. Incapables d’amener les pêcheurs à se tourner vers l’agriculture, les autorités publiques en vinrent à croire qu’elles devraient trouver ailleurs les individus qui permettraient à Terre-Neuve d’aller de l’avant. Conscients qu’une immigration à grande échelle était impossible à cause des contraintes géographiques, les contemporains fondaient leurs espoirs sur la venue d’un petit nombre d’agronomes qualifiés des îles Britanniques. Cependant, aucun gouvernement ne formula une politique officielle d’immigration, et les stratégies d’immigration proposées demeuraient prudentes

A Computerized Scheduling Model for Analyzing Cook Freeze Food Production Plans

Costs of food service system resources are steadily increasing, with labor being cited as the most costly resource. A management tool is needed in the food service industry toschedule production personnel and equipment to minimize forced delay time and decrease total labor costs. Material requirements planning was adapted to generate production data for two nine-day menu cycles in a hypothetical cook freeze production system. Data for the total production plan; master food product schedule, a record of specific entree requirements by time period; and bill of materials, consisting of a standardized formula, list of production activities, and an arrow-on-node flow diagram of the preparation process for each entree, were obtained from a hypothetical food production system serving 1,000 meals for noon and supper as defined by Beach (1974). Three categories of labor: cook, assistant cook, and food service worker, and eight major kinds of equipment were utilized to produce the 42 different entrees. Ten hours were available for scheduling necessary production activities. One seven-day and three five-day production plans, an original and two alternatives, were developed from the master production schedule, a summary of master food product schedules. The five-day production plan--Alternative 1 was used as a basis for a production system employing one labor category. The COST-ARREST program was used to generate daily production sheets for one week for each of the four production plans. Labor time requirements, forced delay time, and labor cost were analyzed for each of the production plans. Results showed that the five-day production plan--Alternative 2 minimized the day-to-day fluctuation in labor time requirements. Overtime was minimized when one labor category was utilized with four production cooks. Total forced delay time was less in the five-day production plans than in the seven-day production plan. The lowest percentage of forced delay time and lowest labor cost occurred when one labor category was employed with three production cooks. Comparison of total production duration time needed to complete work activities revealed that more time was required to prepare entree items in the seven-day production plan than in the five-day plans. Total daily labor demand varied by as much as 24 hours in the five-day production plan--Original. Flexibility in the scheduling of entree items within the week allowed a balancing of labor demand. Labor utilization was limited by job descriptions as supported by analysis of overtime, forced delay and labor cost. Implementation of a flexitime plan could decrease the amount of overtime if employees could adjust work schedules to handle fluctuating work loads. The sequencing of activities influenced production duration. Daily labor requirements increased in all production plans by approximately 40% to reflect forced delay time. Material requirements planning, coupled with the COST-ARREST technique, could provide food service managers with relevant, accurate, and timely data for a feasible and effective method of allocating and scheduling resources

Does birth order affect intelligence?

The purpose of this exploratory investigation was to determine whether birth order has an effect on intelligence. Seventy-four undergraduate students from Rowan University participated in my study. During class-time, I handed out a questionnaire with questions pertaining to the student\u27s birth order within their family and SAT scores. The SAT scores served as a measure of intelligence. The SAT scores were broken into seven different ranges, between 800 - 1400 & above. The birth order variable was broken down into four levels; firstborn, middle child, youngest and only child. The different levels of birth order and SAT scores were compared to see if significant difference existed between the two variables. The Kruskal-Wallis test, a non-parametric one-way analysis of variance, was used to determine if a significant difference existed between intelligence and birth order. This test found that there was a significant difference found when comparing the different variables of birth order and intelligence

Lingering 'on the borderland': the meanings of home in Elizabeth Gaskell's fiction

This thesis explores the meanings of home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s fiction. I argue that there are five components to Gaskell’s fictional iteration of homes, each of which is explored in the chapters of this thesis. I analyse the ways in which Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century cultural construct of the home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the strains and stresses of the external world. Gaskell’s fictional homes frequently fail to provide a place of safety. Even the architecture militates against a sense of peace and privacy. Doors and windows are ambiguous openings through which death can enter, and are potent signifiers of entrapment as well as protective barriers. The underlying fragility of Gaskell’s concept of home is illustrated by her narratives of homelessness, which for her, is better defined as a psychological, social and emotional separation rather than the literal lack of shelter. Education takes place within the home and is grounded in Gaskell’s Unitarian beliefs and associationist psychology. Gaskell creates challenging paradigms for domestic relationships in her fictional portrayals of feminized men and servants. Her detailed descriptions of domestic interiors provide nuanced and unconventional interpretations of character and behaviour. I draw on Gaskell’s letters, her non-fiction writing and a range of other contemporary documents for insights into her fictional presentations of home. This methodology provides a creative, holistic interpretative framework within which Gaskell’s achievement can be more adequately measured. I argue that Gaskell’s own experience of home was that of an outsider lingering on the borderland, and her concept of home was therefore unstable, fluid and unconventional. The tensions she experienced in her personal life found their way into her fiction, where her portrayal of home is multifaceted and complex

Stability analysis of the Witten black hole (cigar soliton) under world-sheet RG flow

We analyze the stability of the Euclidean Witten black hole (the cigar soliton in mathematics literature) under first-order RG (Ricci) flow of the world-sheet sigma model. This analysis is from the target space point of view. We find that the Witten black hole has no unstable normalizable perturbative modes in a linearized mode analysis in which we consider circularly symmetric perturbations. Finally, we discuss a result from mathematics that implies the existence of a non-normalizable mode of the Witten black hole under which the geometry flows to the sausage solution studied by Fateev, Onofri and Zamolodchikov.Comment: 17 pages, version to appear in Physical Review D, and now has complete proof of stability for circularly symmetric perturbations, in response to referee comment

Assessment of adherence to visual correction and occlusion therapy in the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study

AbstractOcclusion therapy throughout early childhood is believed to be efficacious in treating deprivation amblyopia but has not been rigorously assessed in clinical trials. Further, tools to assess adherence to such therapy over an extended period of time are lacking. Using data from the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study, a randomized clinical trial of treatment for unilateral congenital cataract, we examined the use of quarterly 48-h recall interviews and annual 7-day prospective diaries to assess reported hours of patching in 114 children throughout the first 5 years of life. Consistency of data reported was assessed using correlation coefficients and intraclass correlation coefficients. Both interview and diary data showed excellent consistency with Cronbach’s Alpha’s ranging from 0.69 to 0.88 for hours of patching and 0.60 to 0.73 for hours of sleep. However, caregivers reported somewhat more adherence in prospective diaries than retrospective interviews. Completion rates, on the other hand, were substantially higher for telephone interviews than prospective diaries. For example, four years after surgery response rates to telephone interviews exceeded 75% versus completion rates of only 54% for diaries. In situations where occlusion dose monitors cannot be used for assessing adherence to occlusion therapy, such as in infants or over an extended period of time, quantitative assessments of occlusion therapy can be obtained by parental report, either as a series of prospective diaries or a series of recall interviews

Dating App Use among Rural Men Who Have Sex with Men and Its Relationship to HIV Prevention and Risk Behaviors: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

INTRODUCTION: Men who have sex with men (MSM) in rural areas have limited access to HIV prevention and education resources. Given the growing usage of mobile dating apps among the wider MSM population, this research sought to explore their use among MSM in rural areas and their potential for delivering HIV prevention information. METHODS: Participants were recruited from different areas of the rural Southern USA. This mixed-methods study consisted of an online survey (n=85) and follow-up qualitative phone interviews with 20 survey respondents. The survey assessed dating app use, sexual behaviors, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) awareness, usage, and attitudes among MSM in the rural, Southern USA. Interviews explored perceptions of dating apps and their potential value as a source of health and HIV prevention information. RESULTS: Among survey respondents, 74% had used a dating app, with Grindr being the most frequently used app. Of individuals who were in a relationship, 41% had met their current partner online. Using a dating app was associated with having a greater number of sexual partners. Three-quarters of participants had heard of PrEP, but only 7% had ever received a prescription for it and less than one-third reported that it would be easy to get PrEP if they wanted it. Dating app users were more likely than non-app users to have more positive attitudes toward taking PrEP and interest in taking PrEP. In qualitative interviews, respondents expressed support for integrating HIV prevention information into dating apps. CONCLUSION: Dating app usage is high among rural MSM. Individuals who use these apps have more sexual partners and also are more interested in PrEP for HIV prevention, suggesting that this is an ideal group to target for PrEP education and interventions. This could be especially beneficial for MSM in rural areas, as most have difficulty accessing PrEP and PrEP education

Making Space : Key Popular Women Writers Then and Now

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Design and development of a low-cost AM system to help increase accessibility for people with sight loss

This research reports on the findings of a study carried out through a multidisciplinary partnership comprising the following higher education and cultural and community organisations: School of Engineering at Lancaster University, Lancaster City Museums and Galloways, a sight-loss charity. An overarching aim of the Touch & See project was to increase accessibility of 2D historical artefacts to those with sight impairment, with the use of additive manufacturing (AM). There are significant engagement barriers in museums presented to people with sight impairment, which the project sought to understand. It then aimed to utilise technology, incorporating the use of AM to help address some of those barriers, aiming to increase accessibility to historic artefacts. To help design a system that could be implemented in small and medium-sized museums elsewhere, several factors had to be considered to offer scale-up. This includes user-engagement, effectiveness of tactile parts, ease-of-operation (for curator, as a non-expert AM user) and cost. This system utilises 2D photographs and a low-cost FDM desktop machine to produce lithophanes, as 3D relief versions of images, such as paintings or water-colours. This provides the user with a kinaesthetic sensory engagement which hitherto has been difficult to achieve in museum environments. Furthermore, by integrating the lithophanes with backlighting and audio systems, one may develop a multi-sensory experience which appeals to those who are both fully and partially blind. This research reports on the development of the system used to obtain and print selected 2D artefacts including consideration given to geometry, depth, finish, contrast, print orientation and size. The use of AM in this research allows the resulting product to be low-cost, accessible to both users and non-technical staff and efficient. One such advantage of this is the speed in which lithophanes are generated, which if being produced manually by hand would take far longer, increasing development time and cost. This rapid manufacture allows for developments to be implemented in the lithophanes geometry as they are suggested, allowing quick and efficient testing. The potential impact of this system is substantial, offering museums and other cultural institutions an affordable solution to increase accessibility by allowing visually impaired visitors to experience historical artwork in a more inclusive and engaging manner, with the history of the art being conveyed through detailed audio description. It is hoped that the findings from this will allow museums to better adapt artwork for visually impaired visitors in an enriching and welcoming experience

Physician decision making in selection of second-line treatments in immune thrombocytopenia in children.

Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an acquired autoimmune bleeding disorder which presents with isolated thrombocytopenia and risk of hemorrhage. While most children with ITP promptly recover with or without drug therapy, ITP is persistent or chronic in others. When needed, how to select second-line therapies is not clear. ICON1, conducted within the Pediatric ITP Consortium of North America (ICON), is a prospective, observational, longitudinal cohort study of 120 children from 21 centers starting second-line treatments for ITP which examined treatment decisions. Treating physicians reported reasons for selecting therapies, ranking the top three. In a propensity weighted model, the most important factors were patient/parental preference (53%) and treatment-related factors: side effect profile (58%), long-term toxicity (54%), ease of administration (46%), possibility of remission (45%), and perceived efficacy (30%). Physician, health system, and clinical factors rarely influenced decision-making. Patient/parent preferences were selected as reasons more often in chronic ITP (85.7%) than in newly diagnosed (0%) or persistent ITP (14.3%, P = .003). Splenectomy and rituximab were chosen for the possibility of inducing long-term remission (P < .001). Oral agents, such as eltrombopag and immunosuppressants, were chosen for ease of administration and expected adherence (P < .001). Physicians chose rituximab in patients with lower expected adherence (P = .017). Treatment choice showed some physician and treatment center bias. This study illustrates the complexity and many factors involved in decision-making in selecting second-line ITP treatments, given the absence of comparative trials. It highlights shared decision-making and the need for well-conducted, comparative effectiveness studies to allow for informed discussion between patients and clinicians