Reducing Stress Through Morning Meetings

Stress in the lives of urban students, caused by multiple factors, specifically from violence and bullying, can affect their ability to do well both academically and socially. Student observation notes that the majority of students lack the coping mechanisms needed to deal with this stress in healthy and productive ways. This thesis project examines some of the causes of urban childhood stress and how educators can help their students reduce that stress and develop appropriate coping strategies for dealing with situations students may encounter daily at school. As part of this action research project, the use of daily morning meetings, student journals, weekly surveys, and group meetings were conducted. The literature review section briefly discusses the following as they bear on the research topic: family, violence, bullying, coping strategies, stress, and social constructivism. The project was conducted in a third grade classroom in an urban school district in western New York. Analysis of the research data confirms the positive effect of morning meetings to reduce stress and increase coping strategies for students

Social Learning Biases in the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

In the United States, the use of complementary and alternative medicine (usually referred to as CAM) has increased dramatically over the last three decades. However, theoretically informed explanations about why people decide to use CAM therapies are lacking. The purpose of this study is to determine if there is enough statistical evidence to justify additional research on the relationship between social learning and the decision to use CAM. Working on the assumption that people make decisions based on information they have or can obtain, I applied the concept of learning bias in order to examine the ways in which people gain information about CAM. I used a subsample of n=9991 from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and results from 12 semi-structured contextual inquiry interviews in a mixed-methods approach. Statistical evidence from Chi-square tests of independence indicated that a relationship between CAM and social learning bias does exist. However, results also indicated that the relationship is dependent on the type of therapy used. Additionally, the contextual inquiry interviews revealed that upbringing influences later-in-life predispositions towards learning biases favorable to CAM usage. I also found that individuals differentiate between recommendations from friends and co-workers as well as those from parents and other family members. These differences are not made clear in the standard models of learning bias. I discuss how the results of this study illuminate people’s decisions to use CAM, they relate to the way bias is modeled, and use of this knowledge to inform future studies

Feathered Glory : A Poet in Flight from Medieval Ireland to the Twentieth Century

Feathered Glory explores the relevance of the medieval Irish character Suibhne, usually anglicized as Sweeney, to twentieth-century writers. Suibhne is the protagonist of the twelfth-century text Buile Suibhne, in which he is depicted as a minor king who goes mad on the field of battle, abandons his kingdom and his role in society, and flies like a bird into the woods, where he becomes a poet of exceptional power and beauty. This tale languished in obscurity for many centuries, but following J. G. O\u27Keeffe\u27s publication of a scholarly edition and English translation of Buile Suibhne in 1913, Suibhne has come to serve as an important precursor figure for a number of modern writers, especially in Ireland. My dissertation opens with an examination of the medieval Suibhne, with particular emphasis on his role as a figure of the artist, and then moves on to consider three of the most substantive twentieth-century iterations of his tale: Flann O\u27Brien\u27s exuberantly experimental novel At Swim-Two-Birds, Seamus Heaney\u27s volumes Sweeney Astray and Station Island, and the unfinished play Sweeney Agonistes as well as four poems by T. S. Eliot that feature the character Sweeney, who bears a significant thematic resemblance to the medieval Suibhne. While these texts vary widely both in form and in the use they make of the figure of Suibhne, they share an interest in the role and portrayal of the artist that tends toward a modernist revision of the Romantic model. Buile Suibhne supplies particularly fertile material for such a project, for the text embodies numerous tensions relevant to the role of the artist, most notably conflicts among the political, religious, and aesthetic realms and an internal contradiction between the solitary model of the poet that the work seems to extol and the anonymous, collective process by which the text itself was compiled. Walter Benjamin\u27s groundbreaking work on reproduction is a theoretical lynchpin of my analysis, together with Jacques Derrida\u27s discussion of iteration in Signature Event Context and Limited, Inc.

Recrystallization Kinetics of 3C Silicon Carbide Implanted with 400 keV Cesium Ions

Polycrystalline 3C silicon carbide was implanted at room temperature with 400 keV cesium ions to a dose of 1016 ions·cm-2. The samples were then annealed at 600 – 1000°C for 0-48 hours in ultra-high purity argon. The implanted zone of each sample was characterized by transmission electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectroscopy. It is shown that the implantation resulted in a 217 ± 2 nm amorphous region with microstructural damage extending to approximately 250 nm below the surface. Recrystallization of the amorphous region was observed at 725°C, although minimal densification was observed until ≥ 800°C. Densification of the annealed samples was observed through the measurement of the implantation region thickness. Through these measurements, the as-implanted sample region was estimated as being 2.6 g·cm-3.Transmission electron microscopy revealed that recrystallization generally occurred through nucleation and growth at the interface of the amorphous and polycrystalline material. The recrystallized regions consisted of large identifiable 3C-SiC grains along with fine grained material. Image analysis was used to quantify the fraction of the crystalline phase as a function of time and temperature. The rate of recrystallization was greater at higher temperatures and appeared to follow an Arrhenius dependency. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy analysis demonstrated that most of the cesium was retained within the recrystallized microstructure

Analysis of the Tribolium homeotic complex: insights into mechanisms constraining insect Hox clusters

The remarkable conservation of Hox clusters is an accepted but little understood principle of biology. Some organizational constraints have been identified for vertebrate Hox clusters, but most of these are thought to be recent innovations that may not apply to other organisms. Ironically, many model organisms have disrupted Hox clusters and may not be well-suited for studies of structural constraints. In contrast, the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, which has a long history in Hox gene research, is thought to have a more ancestral-type Hox cluster organization. Here, we demonstrate that the Tribolium homeotic complex (HOMC) is indeed intact, with the individual Hox genes in the expected colinear arrangement and transcribed from the same strand. There is no evidence that the cluster has been invaded by non-Hox protein-coding genes, although expressed sequence tag and genome tiling data suggest that noncoding transcripts are prevalent. Finally, our analysis of several mutations affecting the Tribolium HOMC suggests that intermingling of enhancer elements with neighboring transcription units may constrain the structure of at least one region of the Tribolium cluster. This work lays a foundation for future studies of the Tribolium HOMC that may provide insights into the reasons for Hox cluster conservation

Genome-wide analysis of YY2 versus YY1 target genes

Yin Yang 1 (YY1) is a critical transcription factor controlling cell proliferation, development and DNA damage responses. Retrotranspositions have independently generated additional YY family members in multiple species. Although Drosophila YY1 [pleiohomeotic (Pho)] and its homolog [pleiohomeotic-like (Phol)] redundantly control homeotic gene expression, the regulatory contributions of YY1-homologs have not yet been examined in other species. Indeed, targets for the mammalian YY1 homolog YY2 are completely unknown. Using gene set enrichment analysis, we found that lentiviral constructs containing short hairpin loop inhibitory RNAs for human YY1 (shYY1) and its homolog YY2 (shYY2) caused significant changes in both shared and distinguishable gene sets in human cells. Ribosomal protein genes were the most significant gene set upregulated by both shYY1 and shYY2, although combined shYY1/2 knock downs were not additive. In contrast, shYY2 reversed the anti-proliferative effects of shYY1, and shYY2 particularly altered UV damage response, platelet-specific and mitochondrial function genes. We found that decreases in YY1 or YY2 caused inverse changes in UV sensitivity, and that their combined loss reversed their respective individual effects. Our studies show that human YY2 is not redundant to YY1, and YY2 is a significant regulator of genes previously identified as uniquely responding to YY1

Do teashirt family genes specify trunk identity? Insights from the single tiptop/teashirt homolog of Tribolium castaneum

The Drosophila teashirt gene acts in concert with the homeotic selector (Hox) genes to specify trunk (thorax and abdomen) identity. There has been speculation that this trunk-specifying function might be very ancient, dating back to the common ancestor of insects and vertebrates. However, other evidence suggests that the role of teashirt in trunk identity is not well conserved even within the Insecta. To address this issue, we have analyzed the function of Tc-tiotsh, the lone teashirt family member in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. Although Tc-tiotsh is important for aspects of both embryonic and imaginal development including some trunk features, we find no evidence that it acts as a trunk identity gene. We discuss this finding in the context of recent insights into the evolution and function of the Drosophila teashirt family genes