“Why Wouldn’t I Use It?”: Purdue Pharmaceutical’s Push of Pills

Throughout the early 1940’s to mid 1960’s, the popular habit of smoking cigarettes was not only condoned, but advertised by doctors and lawmakers. With the support of medical professionals and non-restrictive advertisement laws, the widespread use of this deadly product exploded. The ‘Big Tobacco’ industry and the federal government made enormous amounts in profit and tax revenue. Numerous similarities can be found between the advertising of cigarettes and the prescription opioid, OxyContin. ‘Big Tobacco’ and the producer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma (Hoffman and Williams Walsh), employed incredibly similar tactics to encourage the public to use their lethal products. By controlling the narrative about the potential dangers, and the addictive properties through their use of advertisements, both “Big Tobacco” and Purdue Pharmaceuticals accomplished their goals of inspiring the “why wouldn’t I use it” question in the consumers’ minds

Fighting PTSD with Horses

After determining my research topic, the effects of therapeutic riding in treating mental disorders, I volunteered at a therapeutic riding center throughout the semester. This opportunity brought first-hand experience and inspiration to my work. Observing how the horses brought joy and brightened the lives of the veterans in the “Helping Hands” program I volunteered with, led me to develop my research question: Can horses (therapeutic riding) help fight the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in veterans? Using both published findings of similar research, as well as my own experience working with the veterans in the program, there was an overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests horses do, in fact, reduce the effects of common PTSD symptoms. Examining the relevant statistics, reviewing the latest research and noting the most memorable interactions from my volunteering, has contributed to the making of this project. Faculty Sponsor: Lisa Higgin

When 'Leadership' Means Acknowledging Others Might Know Better

Humanitarian work in the early twenty-first-century is steeped in the rhetoric of ‘inclusion’ and ‘leave no one behind’. Yet, “too often it is the most vulnerable people and the people most in need [who] fall through the cracks” of humanitarian responses (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2018, p. 5). This paper argues that humanitarian leadership is in need of a major paradigm shift: one requiring agencies to actually learn from people’s lived reality, rather than trying to fit that lived reality into pre-existing international systems and procedures. Humanitarians should reconsider tools that are not fit for purpose and reconsider ways of working that are built on a flawed logic of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘protection’. This paradigm shift is vital for ensuring that those “most vulnerable people”, the most marginalised and excluded, are at the forefront of humanitarian (and development) thinking. (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) 2018, ‘Leaving no one behind’, World Disasters Report, IFRC, Geneva, https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/world-disaster-report-2018/

Factory Farming: Polluting the Environment by Supplying one McDonald’s at a Time

A modern practice that has a negative impact on the environment that many take part in everyday without even knowing, is ‘factory farming’. ‘Factory farming’ is the practice of large-scale production of livestock or crops that are used to compensate for the exponentially growing population and the demand for ready-made meals at a low cost. This paper examines the reason for the transition from sustainable agriculture to factory farming, its environmental impacts, and what corporations are benefitting at the expense of the environment. Explanations are given to support the abolishment of such harmful and unethical practices like ‘factory farming’ in hopes of educating the public about the dangers of supporting the industry through buying their products

Fundamental Frequency and Regional Variation in Lifou French

This study presents two experiments aimed at investigating tune-to-text alignment and pitch scaling in Lifou French, a variety spoken by bilingual speakers of French and Drehu. Descriptions of New Caledonian French have focussed on language use of European descendants or the variety spoken in the urban region, neglecting emergent varieties spoken by the indigenous population in rural areas, like the island Lifou. Due to the reduced inventory of pitch accents, dialectal variation in French intonation has proved to be difficult to detect, which has led to the assumption that French has a relatively homogeneous intonation system across its varieties. This study shows that fine-grained phonetic differences in speaking tempo and at the level of tonal alignment as well as in the scaling of AP-final peaks can be attributed to dialectal variation

Investigating word prominence in Drehu

This study investigates the realization of informational focus in Drehu, an Oceanic language from New Caledonia. Stress in Drehu has informally been described as being demarcative and always falling on the first syllable of words. Our analysis of post-lexical accentuation shows a tendency for salient cues to be realized on a phrasal level. Results show a preference for marking the right edge with longer acoustic duration of final syllables and more extreme pitch movements. This evidence stands in contrast with the stress pattern reported in the literature and suggests a more detailed investigation of stress realization in Drehu is needed

Phrasing and Constituent Boundaries in Lifou French

This study investigates intonational properties related to the marking of boundaries of different kinds of constituents of a French variety spoken in the South Pacific. Lifou French represents an understudied regional variety from New Caledonia and is spoken by bilingual speakers of French and Drehu, an Oceanic language. Within autosegmental metrical phonology the status of the intermediate phrase (ip) in French has been subject to debate. This study focuses on right boundary marking to examine whether phonetic cues can be related to the realisation of different types of prosodic breaks, namely the Accentual Phrase (AP) and the ip. Pitch scaling patterns within and across APs support the existence of the ip based on data from this largely undocumented variety. Interestingly, the phonetic realisation of right boundary marking shows differences from the Standard variety of French

Improving young people’s health and wellbeing through a school health research network: reflections on school-researcher engagement at the national level

The School Health Research Network is a policy-practice-research partnership established in Wales in 2013. The Network aims to: provide health and wellbeing data for national, regional and local stakeholders, including schools; co-produce school-based health improvement research for Wales; and build capacity for evidence-informed practice in the school health community. School-focused engagement activities include providing member schools with bespoke Student Health and Wellbeing Reports, hosting school health webinars, producing school-friendly research briefings, and holding annual events for schools. The Network’s model for co-producing research with schools is described and its impacts on schools is explored. These include more efficient recruitment of schools to research projects, school involvement in intervention development, schools beginning to embed evidence-informed practice by using their Reports and other Network resources, and securing funding to evaluate innovative health and wellbeing practices identified by schools. Drawing on the Trans-disciplinary Action Research (TDAR) literature, the article reflects on how TDAR principles have underpinned Network progress. The concept of reciprocity in the co-production literature and its relevance to engagement with schools is also explored, along with the Network’s contribution to our understanding of how we can build sustainable co-production at large scale in order to generate national level action and benefit

World TB Day 2018: The Challenge of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis.

On 24th March, the world commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). Over 130 years later, tuberculosis (TB) continues to affect individuals, communities, and entire health systems and economies. Koch unsuccessfully tried to 'cure' TB, and despite major advances in other areas of medicine, control of TB remains elusive- in 2016 TB was the leading infectious cause of death. The STOP TB partnership and World Health Organization (WHO) have announced their theme for World TB Day 2018 "Wanted: Leaders for a TB-Free World. You can make history. End TB." This theme recognizes that TB is much larger than any one person, institute or discipline of research, and provides an opportunity for us to reflect on the major challenges and consider how we, as a scientific community, can work together and take the lead to address the global crisis of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB)