Immunohistochemistry in Irradiated Skin Tissue

Currently there is no effective treatment for radiation dermatitis that results from clinical or accidental radiation exposures. Radiation exposure can cause severe burns and sloughing of the skin and damage muscle and bone layers underneath the skin. Radiation exposure in cells results in several types of cell death, such as necrosis, apoptosis, or autophagy, or accelerated senescence. Preliminary experiments demonstrated that accelerated senescence is a primary response to radiation in normal skin cells in culture and skin tissue in vivo in mice. We wanted to use immunohistochemistry to identify the skin cells that undergo senescence in tissues obtained from 4 mice over a time course from 1-30 days following exposure to 17.9 Gy (0.6 Gy/min) irradiation. The different stains that are going to be used are hematoxylin and eosin stain which shows the morphology of the whole tissue, K15 which marks adult skin epidermal stem cells, p21/waf1 which is a marker for senescence, DCT which marks melanocyte stem cells, and c-kit which marks melanocytes and basal epithelial cells. The results from these experiments will help us to determine which cells to protect in order to treat severe radiation exposure

Let us now praise famous students: A qualitative study of high school students with learning disabilities

This study used qualitative methodology in order to gain understanding of the school lives of high school students with learning disabilities in the areas of reading and writing. Two resource room sections of students were observed, using methods of participant observation over a year long period and four case studies of students from these sections were conducted. Classroom work of all students was studied and special education files of those chosen as case studies were reviewed. Students and school personnel involved in the education of the students were interviewed. Research findings suggested that, despite years of intervention, high school students with learning disabilities in this study continued to have severe reading and writing difficulties. These difficulties pervaded their school lives, negatively impacting all academic areas, social interactions and personal development. Difficulties experienced by the students were exacerbated by issues involving ways in which their differences marginalized them, language development, academic disengagement, problems seeing relationships between actions and consequences, and limited expectations for their present and future lives

Conceptual problems in the study of populism: normativity, contestability, and plurality

The complicated and mercurial character of populism is apodictic, but the consequences of populism’s conceptual confusion have been overlooked as scholars refashion populism to fit the methodological and empirical goals of their research. In this thesis, I interrogate the nature of the conceptual debate and the problems of creating an unequivocal definition of populism. I identify and analyze the challenges of normativity and contestability, and, given these challenges, I utilize the philosophical and epistemological frames of relativism and pluralism to analyze populism’s conceptual utility. I compare populism with a related concept, nativism, based on the pluralist assumption of concepts that concepts can be treated as distinct entities, but we can also form generalizations of concepts at a higher level of abstraction. I analyze the Manichean frame of “us” versus “them” that is the nexus between populism and nativism, and I discuss the vertical and horizontal planes of antagonism that can help differentiate the concepts. From an epistemological perspective, the contestable and normative conceptualizations of populism are not inherently disagreeable, so long as our understanding of concepts is based in the pluralist view

Assessing the style of advance and retreat of the Des Moines Lobe using LiDAR topographic data

Successive advances of the late-Wisconsinan Des Moines Lobe to form three major end moraines in Iowa--sequentially the Bemis, Altamont, and Algona moraines--are thought to be the result of the lobe surging out of balance with a warming climate. Various styles of hummocky topography, collectively sometimes called stagnation moraine, are interpreted to be the result of widespread stagnation and down-wasting of ice following surges. Alternatively, end moraines could be recessional--a result of incremental back-wasting of the glacier margin and unrelated to surging. To study the retreat style of the Des Moines Lobe, high resolution LiDAR data were used to re-evaluate the subtle landscape of the lobe\u27s footprint in Iowa. Results indicate that ~90% of the lobe\u27s area, excluding major Holocene stream drainages, consists of stagnation features. Some landforms are more prevalent than mapped previously, including eskers and features interpreted to be subdued ice-walled lake plains. Importantly, subglacially formed minor moraines (a.k.a. washboard moraines), which resulted from sediment filling of transverse crevasses, cover ~60% of the lobe\u27s area with stagnation landforms. Also, ~25 previously unmapped end moraine ridges have been identified. Transverse crevasse-fill ridges in the forefields of modern glaciers form due to longitudinal ice extension associated with surging and are not found in the forefields of non-surge-type glaciers, so minor moraines are good evidence of Des Moines Lobe surges. Most end moraines have minor moraine sets associated with them, consistent with a surge-like advances, and many areas have multiple sets of minor moraines indicating a surge history more complicated than one advance for each of the three major end moraines. Therefore, asserting stagnation and down-wasting after three surge-like advances provides an incomplete characterization of the Des Moines Lobe\u27s advance and retreat. The surge-type Bering Glacier in Alaska is a good but imperfect modern analog for the lobe

A rich portrait of the non-violent resistance multi-parent therapeutic programme

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Professional Doctorate in Systemic PracticeNon-violent resistance group therapy is an innovative way of working with parents whose children are violent and out of control. The programme brings about change on a number of levels, some of which were beyond our expectations. This research aims to both look into the clinical practice and to develop a research method which can do it justice. My aim was to research into those areas which are ‘felt’: beyond the known and the written about. In order to do this I take aspects of the research method portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffmann Davis, 1997) and bring them together with rich description, rich pictures and arts research practices, so as to create a new qualitative inquiry method which I call ‘rich portraiture’. I describe the development of rich portraiture as a research method and show how I applied it to my practice. At the heart of my dissertation is a complex and layered rich portrait which inquires into the particular experiences of the facilitators of and participants in this groupwork programme (Day and Heismann, 2010). Rich portraiture draws on the performative abilities of clinicians: music, poetry, film, quilt making, painting, dance, sculpture, writing. Detailed narrative portraits of participants and facilitators are located in their social and political context and combined with a juxtapositioning of performance and text which moves into that tacit dimension in which we know more than we can tell (Polanyi, 1966). This is ‘performance in use’ (Cho and Trent, 2009, p 1). My preferred performance method is painting. I made artworks which resonated with the lived experiences of the facilitators and parents who participated in the non-violent resistance therapy programme. As additional layers of performance the paintings were shown in venues where they were viewed by audiences at events during which I spoke and showed films of me working. In this thesis I show how participants and facilitators embody the principles of non-violent resistance and how they perform them in the group. This ‘living’ of non-violent resistance creates change in people’s lives on a number of levels, some of them profound. I argue that there is a gap in the research methods which we use to look at our systemic practice. We constantly seek to creatively enhance our clinical practice so we should also be exploring emerging embodied and performative research practices. This would reflect the shift, in our therapeutic work with clients, towards embodiment (Shotter, 2010), the corporeal (Sheets-Johnstone, 2009) affective or performance turn (Denzin, 2003, 2006). My thesis both describes clinical practice in detail and sets out a new research method

US 36 Truss Bridge Rehabilitation (Schedule-Critical Deadline Met with Teamwork and Innovation)

The US 36 over the Wabash River truss bridge, which spans more than 1,200 feet, underwent a deck replacement in 2017. The existing historical structure had a deteriorated bridge deck and a substandard load rating. During construction, coordination between all parties allowed for load rating improvement by taking advantage of composite action. This time-saving measure allowed for meeting a schedule-critical completion date in order to reopen for the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival. Join us for a discussion

Zooming in on CBT supervision: a comparison of two levels of effectiveness evaluation

Clinical supervision is of growing importance professionally, but instruments to measure its effectiveness are scarce. Based on the observational instrument Teachers' PETS, two complementary levels of outcome measurement were used to analyse supervisory effectiveness, namely momentary time sampling (i.e. a micro-analysis of frequencies) and the more molar “change episodes”. Ten audio-taped sessions of routine (baseline; N = 5) and CBT supervision (N = 5; i.e. the intervention phase) were coded with both measures, to assess their relative sensitivity to this manipulation. Improved supervisee learning was detected during the intervention phase by both measures. However, a retrospective comparison between the data within these change episodes and the accompanying non-episode data indicated that the micro level of analysis provided a more sensitive measure of supervisory effectiveness. Technical and conceptual issues arise

Student Reactions to a Faculty Strike

Following a three week faculty strike at Dalhousie University in 1988, questionnaires were obtained from 187 students concerning how the strike affected their academic work, emotions and opinions of the university. Results were analyzed separately for first year undergraduates, other undergraduates, and graduate or professional school students. There was much individual variability in reactions, but on average the strike had slightly negative academic and emotional effects but substantial negative effects on opinions about the university. Undergraduate students indicated the most academic disruption, and upper year undergraduates indicated the most negative opinions. There was no correlation, however, between degree of personally experienced academic disruption and degree of negative opinion. Another survey two years after the strike indicated the reestablishment of positive opinions. Implications for ameliorating the effects of a faculty strike are discussed.Une enquête a été menée auprès de 187 étudiants et étudiantes de l'Université Dalhousie visant à évaluer l'effet de la grève de trois semaines du corps professoral de l'Université Dalhousie en 1988 sur le travail académique, les émotions, et l'opinion qu'avaient les étudiants de l'Université. Les résultats furent désagrégés selon trois groupes d'étudiants soit ceux inscrits à la première année du premier cycle, les autres étudiants du premier cycle et les étudiants des cycles supérieurs et des programmes professionnels. Bien qu'on remarque une grande variabilité chez les répondants individuellement, on observe que généralement, la grève n'a eu que de faibles effets négatifs au plans académique et émotif, mais qu'elle a généré de vives réactions négatives quant aux opinions que les étudiants avaient de l'Université. Par rapport à la différenciation par groupes, les étudiants de la première année du premier cycle ont été davantage affecté au plan académique alors que ceux inscrits aux études supérieures ont manifesté le degré le plus élevé d'opinions négatives envers l'Université. Il n'y a toutefois pas de corrélation entre le niveau de perturbation académique personnellement rapporté par les étudiants et les opinions négatives détenues. Une seconde enquête effectuée deux ans plus tard démontre que les opinions des étudiants envers l'Université sont redevenues positives. L'article conclut sur une analyse des implication d'une grève du corps professoral

Diversity Matters: Intersectionality and Women’s Descriptive Representation in the USA and UK

Women's organisations can help address some specific challenges faced by different groups of women during the political recruitment process. This article explores whether US and UK organisations do so. Legislative composition analysis confirms women of colour are under-represented, although they are better represented in the USA than in the UK; women with disabilities are under-represented in both countries, along with younger women in the USA and older women in the UK. Interviews with US women's organisations reveal a greater attention to diversity, particularly with regard to women of colour; however, the focus remains on increasing the overall number of women in both countries