528 research outputs found
Citizens of the empire: A molding of Victorian childhood identity
The Victorian Era in Great Britain was a time period of dramatic change. The Industrial Revolution was altering the social and economic fabric of society. Socially, Victorians were confronted with new theories that challenged their religious beliefs. The British Isles were progressing steadily in creating a national identity. Finally, the existence of the British Empire made imperialism a factor that cannot be ignored. Yet, many historians have pointed out that the history of the British metropole itself is often disconnected from the political and cultural history of the Empire. It is within this conversation that this project seeks to find a place. This project advocates for the ideological existence of what made an ideal British citizen in an imperial context. The term âCitizen of the Empireâ is being used deliberately in this context to describe this ideal British citizen, which existed in conjunction with imperial culture. This ideal identity was one that stemmed from middle class Victorian beliefs about morality, physicality, gender, national identity, and race. This paper attempts to utilize all of these thematic concepts in light of current trends in the fields of world history, British imperial history, and postcolonial discourses. The Citizen of the Empire ideal can be found in numerous cultural sources. However, this paper will investigate two types of primary sources that deal with children. Victorian children were not isolated from these cultural treads. Rather this ideal was so strong that it was inherently embedded in the discourse surrounding various Victorian youth organizations. Furthermore, the Citizen of the Empire ideal can be found in countless examples of childrenâs literature. This imperial ideal stemmed from a proper combination of middle class Victorian beliefs surrounding morality and physicality. Additionally, being a Citizen of the Empire meant conforming to middle class Victorian gender roles. All of these middle class expectations helped to create an ideal, proper, and thereby superior, model of a British citizen within the metropole. Finally, this superior model was used as a justification for the creation of a hierarchical relationship between the British and other cultures. Thus, the fusion of national identity and race produced a sense of cultural superiority which encouraged the civilizing mission and outright racism
Group testing models with unknown link function
Group testing through the use of pooling has proven to be an efïŹcient method of reducing the time and cost associated with screening for a binary characteristic of interest such as infection status. A topic of key interest in this area involves the development of regression models that relate the individual level covariates to the binary pool testing responses. The research in this area has primarily focused on parametric regression models. In this poster, we will introduce a new estimation method which can handle multi-dimensional covariates while assuming the link is unknown. The asymptotic properties of our estimators are also presented. We investigate the performance of our method through simulation and by applying it to a hepatitis data set obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
A general mechanism for signal propagation in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor family
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) modulate synaptic activity in the central nervous system. The α7 subtype, in particular, has attracted considerable interest in drug discovery as a target for several conditions, including Alzheimerâs disease and schizophrenia. Identifying agonist-induced structural changes underlying nAChR activation is fundamentally important for understanding biological function and rational drug design. Here, extensive equilibrium and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, enabled by cloud-based high-performance computing, reveal the molecular mechanism by which structural changes induced by agonist unbinding are transmitted within the human α7 nAChR. The simulations reveal the sequence of coupled structural changes involved in driving conformational change responsible for biological function. Comparison with simulations of the α4ÎČ2 nAChR subtype identifies features of the dynamical architecture common to both receptors, suggesting a general structural mechanism for signal propagation in this important family of receptors
UV-Optical Pixel Maps of Face-On Spiral Galaxies -- Clues for Dynamics and Star Formation Histories
UV and optical images of the face-on spiral galaxies NGC 6753 and NGC 6782
reveal regions of strong on-going star formation that are associated with
structures traced by the old stellar populations. We make NUV--(NUV-I) pixel
color-magnitude diagrams (pCMDs) that reveal plumes of pixels with strongly
varying NUV surface brightness and nearly constant I surface brightness. The
plumes correspond to sharply bounded radial ranges, with (NUV-I) at a given NUV
surface brightness being bluer at larger radii. The plumes are parallel to the
reddening vector and simple model mixtures of young and old populations, thus
neither reddening nor the fraction of the young population can produce the
observed separation between the plumes. The images, radial surface-brightness,
and color plots indicate that the separate plumes are caused by sharp declines
in the surface densities of the old populations at radii corresponding to disk
resonances. The maximum surface brightness of the NUV light remains nearly
constant with radius, while the maximum I surface brightness declines sharply
with radius. An MUV image of NGC 6782 shows emission from the nuclear ring. The
distribution of points in an (MUV-NUV) vs. (NUV-I) pixel color-color diagram is
broadly consistent with the simple mixture model, but shows a residual trend
that the bluest pixels in (MUV-NUV) are the reddest pixels in (NUV-I). This may
be due to a combination of red continuum from late-type supergiants and [SIII]
emission lines associated with HII regions in active star-forming regions. We
have shown that pixel mapping is a powerful tool for studying the distribution
and strength of on-going star formation in galaxies. Deep, multi-color imaging
can extend this to studies of extinction, and the ages and metallicities of
composite stellar populations in nearby galaxies.Comment: LaTeX with AASTeX style file, 29 pages with 12 figures (some color,
some multi-part). Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa
Effective Feedback to Improve Primary Care Prescribing Safety (EFIPPS) a pragmatic three-arm cluster randomised trial:designing the intervention (ClinicalTrials.gov registration NCT01602705)
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Galaxy Populations and Evolution in Clusters IV: Deep HI Observations of Dwarf Ellipticals in the Virgo Cluster
We present in this paper the deepest Arecibo HI observations of Virgo cluster
dwarf ellipticals (dEs) taken to date. Based on this data we argue that a
significant fraction of Virgo cluster dEs recently underwent evolution. Our new
observations consist of HI 21-cm line observations for 22 classified dE
galaxies with optical radial velocities consistent with membership in the Virgo
cluster. Cluster members VCC 390 and VCC 1713 are detected with HI masses M(HI)
= 6*10^7 M_solar and 8*10^7 M_solar, respectively, while M(HI) in the remaining
20 dE galaxies have upper limits as low as 5*10^5 M_solar. We combine our
results with those for 27 other Virgo cluster dEs with HI observations in the
literature, 7 of which have HI detection claims. New optical images from the
WIYN telescope of 5 of these HI-detected dEs, along with archival data, suggest
that seven of the claimed detections are real, yielding a ~ 15% detection rate.
These HI-detected classified dEs are preferentially located near the periphery
of the Virgo cluster. Three Virgo dEs have observed HI velocity widths > 200
km/s, possibly indicating the presence of a large dark matter content, or
transient extended HI. We discuss the possible origins of these objects and
argue that they originate from field galaxies accreted onto high angular
momentum orbits by Virgo in the last few Gyr. As a result these galaxies are
slowly transformed within the cluster by gradual gas stripping processes,
associated truncation of star formation, and passive fading of stellar
populations. Low-mass early-type cluster galaxies are therefore currently being
produced as the product of cluster environmental effects. We utilize our
results to estimate the recent (past 1-3 Gyr) average mass accretion rate into
the Virgo cluster, finding dM/dt ~ 50 M_solar/year.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 21 page
Stellar Populations in Three Outer Fields of the LMC
We present HST photometry for three fields in the outer disk of the LMC
extending approximately four magnitudes below the faintest main sequence
turnoff. We cannot detect any strongly significant differences in the stellar
populations of the three fields based on the morphologies of the
color-magnitude diagrams, the luminosity functions, and the relative numbers of
stars in different evolutionary stages. Our observations therefore suggest
similar star formation histories in these regions, although some variations are
certainly allowed. The fields are located in two regions of the LMC: one is in
the north-east field and two are located in the north-west. Under the
assumption of a common star formation history, we combine the three fields with
ground-based data at the same location as one of the fields to improve
statistics for the brightest stars. We compare this stellar population with
those predicted from several simple star formation histories suggested in the
literature, using a combination of the R-method of Bertelli et al (1992) and
comparisons with the observed luminosity function. The only model which we
consider that is not rejected by the observations is one in which the star
formation rate is roughly constant for most of the LMC's history and then
increases by a factor of three about 2 Gyr ago. Such a model has roughly equal
numbers of stars older and younger than 4 Gyr, and thus is not dominated by
young stars. This star formation history, combined with a closed box chemical
evolution model, is consistent with observations that the metallicity of the
LMC has doubled in the past 2 Gyr.Comment: 30 pages, includes 10 postscript figures. Figure 1 avaiable at
ftp://charon.nmsu.edu/pub/mgeha/LMC. Accepted for publication in Astronomical
Journa
Magnify is a universal molecular anchoring strategy for expansion microscopy
Expansion microscopy enables nanoimaging with conventional microscopes by physically and isotropically magnifying preserved biological specimens embedded in a crosslinked water-swellable hydrogel. Current expansion microscopy protocols require prior treatment with reactive anchoring chemicals to link specific labels and biomolecule classes to the gel. We describe a strategy called Magnify, which uses a mechanically sturdy gel that retains nucleic acids, proteins and lipids without the need for a separate anchoring step. Magnify expands biological specimens up to 11 times and facilitates imaging of cells and tissues with effectively around 25-nm resolution using a diffraction-limited objective lens of about 280ânm on conventional optical microscopes or with around 15ânm effective resolution if combined with super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging. We demonstrate Magnify on a broad range of biological specimens, providing insight into nanoscopic subcellular structures, including synaptic proteins from mouse brain, podocyte foot processes in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded human kidney and defects in cilia and basal bodies in drug-treated human lung organoids
Galaxy Populations and Evolution in Clusters II: Defining Cluster Populations
This paper presents quantitative techniques for studying, in an unbiased
manner, the photometric and structural properties of galaxies in clusters,
including a means to identify likely background objects in the absence of
redshift information. We develop self-consistent and reproducible measurements
of fundamental properties of galaxies such as radius, surface brightness,
concentration of light and structural asymmetry. We illustrate our techniques
through an application to deep UBR images, taken with the WIYN 3.5m telescope,
of the central ~173 arcmin^2 (or 0.3 Mpc * 0.3 Mpc) of the cluster Abell 0146
(Perseus). Our techniques allow us to study the properties of the galaxy
population in the center of Perseus down to M_B = -11. Using these methods, we
describe and characterize a well-defined relation between absolute magnitude
and surface brightness for galaxy cluster members across the entire range of
galaxy luminosity from M_B = -20 to M_B = -11. The galaxies that are assigned
by our techniques to the background show no such tight relationship between
apparent magnitude and surface brightness, with the exception of those we
identify as being members of a background cluster of galaxies at z ~ 0.55. We,
however, find that at the fainter magnitudes, M_B > -16, there is a large
scatter about the underlying color--magnitude relation defined by the brighter
galaxies. Our analysis also indicates that the vast majority of Perseus
galaxies are `normal', with little evidence for features associated with
evolution; we however discuss the detailed properties of a handful of unusual
galaxies. Finally, the galaxy luminosity function of the Perseus cluster center
is computed, with a derived faint end slope of alpha = -1.44+/-0.04, similar to
values found in other nearby clusters.Comment: Accepted on Feb. 2, 2002 to the Astronomical Journa
Initial Validation of a Self-Report Measure of the Extent of and Reasons for Medication Nonadherence
Self-report measures of medication nonadherence confound the extent of and reasons for medication nonadherence. Each construct is assessed with a different type of psychometric model, which dictates how to establish reliability and validity
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