The Wanderers

My work focuses on moments that convey a wide range of human emotion. Through examination of these private moments, I investigate contemporary issues of isolation, alienation, and anguish. In my artwork, unrecognizable landscapes and unidentifiable solitary figures grace panoramic canvases devoid of color and fine detail yielding scenes that, while rooted in reality, lend themselves to the surreal. The compositions are designed to evoke feelings of unease, as the viewer is confronted with figures experiencing raw emotion

Demands for “Sisterly” Love: Exploring the Hyperpenalization of Black Girls in the School District of Philadelphia

An immense amount of research, memos, and scholarship has surfaced in the last decade considering the school-to-prison pipeline and Black boys’ involuntary participation in it. Various education scholars have presented data emphasizing how Black male students are disproportionately punished–notably in ways that negatively impact their prospects for educational attainment, social mobility, and long-term empowerment. Many, however, fail to consider their close counterparts: Black girls. This thesis expands upon the Crenshaw, Ocen, and Nanda (2015) report to see if Black girls are also disproportionately penalized in Philadelphia public schools within the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) at higher rates relative to female students of other races. The thesis also employs relative risk ratios to determine, through an intra-gender analysis between Black and white students, if Black girls are disproportionately penalized at higher rates relative to Black boys. The aforementioned scholars created a report on school discipline within Boston and New York City Public Schools. Their intra-gender analyses found that Black girls had a statistically greater risk of experiencing suspension and expulsion relative to female students of other races. This paper applies quantitative research methods through disciplinary data collection from the Civil Rights Data Collection Tool via the Department of Education. Additionally, the project weaves together education policy and political theory to investigate (1) how discourses of power, marginality, and intersectionality inform hyperpenalization; and (2) existing alternatives to current punitive paradigmatic practices

A Comparison of the Success of Community College Graduates Who Entered College with a GED, a High School Diploma, or an Alternative Diploma

In this study, the researcher compared the success of community college graduates who entered college with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma. The researcher used a quantitative analysis method with the existing data of students for three years within a single community college system to answer research questions to determine success of community college graduates who entered college with various high school diplomas or equivalences. The researcher asked four research questions to compare the success of the selected community college graduates: What is the grade point average (GPA) at the end of the first semester, number of credits earned, and graduation rate for community college graduates who entered college with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma? Is the GPA at the end of the first semester for community college graduates who entered college with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma statistically significantly different? Is the number of credits earned for community college graduates who entered with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma statistically significantly different? Is the graduation rate for community college students who entered college with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma statistically significantly different? The researcher’s purpose in this study was to compare the success of community college graduates who entered college with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma. In Conclusion 1, the researcher determined that findings from this study show that GED graduates have the least success as community college students with a lower GPA and credit hours attempted than high school diploma graduates, but they do have a statistically equivalent graduation rate of 22.7% compared to alternative diploma graduates of 19.6%. Supporting Conclusion 2, the researcher’s analysis shows that high school graduates are more successful in community college studies with a higher GPA the first semester, more credit hours earned, but a statistically equivalent graduation rate compared to GED graduates or alternative diploma graduates

Qualifying Quantifiers: A Usage-Based, Diachronic Analysis of Quantifier Constructions

Adnominal quantifiers have been a source of contention in existing research, owing to their unique distributional patterns that do not match those of adjectives or determiners. Traditional accounts have typically focused on one aspect of quantifier behavior without looking at the group as a whole, and existing theories are disparate and inconsistent. This study tackles the problem of quantifier variation from a diachronic, usage-based, constructionist perspective. The goal of this paper is to identify patterns of change that can explain the variation exhibited by quantifiers today, focused on whether they are best classified as adjectives, determiners, or both; why every cannot be a pronoun; and what separates quantifiers that occur in atypical positions—predeterminer, postnominal, and postposed—from those that do not. Data have been collected from the Paston Letters for the Middle English (ME) period and the British National Corpus for Present-Day English (PDE) and analyzed for frequency patterns either alone or with other nominal dependents. This paper concludes that relative quantifiers function as determiners prenominally while absolute quantifiers function as grounding adjectives. The inability for every to occur pronominally follows from its development of a collective meaning to distinguish it from each. Thepredeterminer use of all and both has been reanalyzed as a subtype of the partitive, allowing them to retain this position. Finally, the postnominal and postposed positions are functional slots for focus marking, where all and both project contrastive focus as a result of their being maximal and each as a result of its being distributive

Living with HIV after Release from Prison: An Evaluation of the Long-term Health of Formerly Incarcerated Individuals who used Michigan’s Community Reentry Service

In 2003, Michigan implemented a reentry service to assist HIV-infected people incarcerated in state prisons in linking to HIV medical care immediately upon their release. We examined whether formerly incarcerated people were linked to care successfully, remained in care, and were in good health 3 years after their date of release. In all, 190 people used the service over the 5 years following its inception. Only a minority of those who were alive and not reincarcerated at the time of the evaluation engaged consistently with medical care. Unsurprisingly given low rates of engagement in care, 3 years after their release only 27% had achieved viral suppression. Concerted efforts to support formerly incarcerated HIV-infected individuals’ engagement in care over the long term are urgently needed

Experiences of health communication within the family: Parent and adolescent perspectives

Background: Adolescence is a critical period for the development of health and well-being and is a pivotal time for transition toward independent health decision making. Family health communication patterns, can influence behaviors and attitudes of adolescents. Health literacy is a pre-requisite for acquiring and comprehending health information. However, minimal research exists examining the connection between health literacy and family communication. Purpose: To examine the risk of limited health literacy and explore the experiences of health communication among families. Methods: 9 Adolescents and 8 parents completed demographic questionnaires, the Newest Vital Sign and private semi-structured qualitative interviews. Glazer’s grounded theory approach was used to identify thematic categories and theoretic cores of the qualitative data. Results: Limited health literacy risk was 12.5% for parents and 22/2% for adolescents. Narrow definitions of health, evaluation methods of information, opportunity and interpretation were the identified themes. Conclusions: Results from our study suggest that within families who are not at risk for limited health literacy, health communication is occurring related to topics of interest to adolescents. These conversations persist despite parental perceptions of these conversations being negative. Further research should investigate parent motivation related to health communication and the role that health literacy may play in motivation toward and ability to engage in family health communication

Still Questioning the Ideal: Possibilities for the Critical Curation of Classical Antiquities at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Although Survey Museums are slowly becoming more receptive to the possibility of creating exhibitions using critical frameworks, Mediterranean archaeology collections within these institutions are overwhelmingly presented using a grand narrative of idealization of the Classical world. These exhibitions of the Classical world not only negate the diversity of realities of the Classical past, but also deny the existence of problematic discourses within the fields of art history and archaeology thereby contributing to the perception of a Western supremacy inside and outside of the museological context. This thesis examines art historical and archaeological discourses surrounding Mediterranean archaeology, and the impact of its presentation as art or artifact, historically and within the context of the Survey Museum, as a starting point for the curation of a new exhibition of Mediterranean Archaeology at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts due to open in the fall of 2019. This examination is then countered with an overview of relevant Critical Museological theory and Institutional Critique artistic practice in order to suggest a possible critical curatorial methodology for the display of Mediterranean archaeology. Using this curatorial methodology, the proposal for the new exhibition of the Mediterranean Archaeology collection at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presented, including all didactic panels, object labels and images

Self-assembling peptide/glycosaminoglycan hydrogels for spinal therapies

Back pain affects 80% of adults at some stage during their lifetimes, with one of the most common causes being disc degeneration. Currently, early stage interventions are limited and many patients continue to suffer further. This work focuses for the first time on using self-assembling peptide gels in the treatment of disc degeneration by providing an injectable nucleus replacement that can mimic the mechanical function of the natural tissue and restore the swelling pressure of the disc. Here the behaviour of a range of designed P11 peptide blocks with systematic variations in their structure was studied and the design criteria for a suitable peptide hydrogel were established. The peptides were analysed using a series of complementary analytical techniques (proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy, circular dichroism ultra-violet spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy) to determine their behaviour at the molecular and nanoscale levels. Tests were also carried out on the gels to establish their behaviour both inside and outside the disc. The results have shown that the mechanical properties of the gels can be controlled by allowing up to a 10,000 fold variation in the stiffness. The peptides were further optimised by mixing with glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) that occur naturally within the disc. It was found that the presence of GAGs in the peptide gels can enhance their material properties, making them more similar to that of the natural nucleus. The GAGs also acted as a trigger to the onset of gelation and speed up the time for gelation to occur. P11-12:GAG solutions, injected in bovine caudal discs ex vivo, were evaluated under compressive loading, and they were found to partly restore the biomechanical function of degenerated discs. The results also demonstrate that the new peptide:GAG materials could have applications in other fields of regenerative medicine, e.g. as substrates for cell growth or cartilage tissue engineering

Quality Improvement of Documentation of the Use of Chlorhexidine (Hibiclens) in Patients with Central Venous Catheters

https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/student_scholarship_posters/1099/thumbnail.jp

Sympatric woodland Myotis bats form tight-knit social groups with exclusive roost home ranges (dataset)

The article relating to this dataset is available in ORE: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15799Dataset associated with the PLOS journal article with the same title. The two sets of data in the Excel file were used to create the networks in the Tiff file.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC