A Compendium of Core Lexicon Checklists

Core Lexicon (CoreLex) is a relatively new approach assessing lexical use in discourse. CoreLex examines the specific lexical items used to tell a story, or how typical lexical items are compared with a normative sample. This method has great potential for clinical utilization because CoreLex measures are fast, easy to administer, and correlate with microlinguistic and macrolinguistic discourse measures. The purpose of this article is to provide clinicians with a centralized resource for currently available CoreLex checklists, including information regarding development, norms, and guidelines for use

Inhibition of histone acetyltransferase (HAT) activity by HBZ extends beyond the p300/CBP HAT family

We previously reported that HTLV-1 basic leucine zipper factor (HBZ) interacts with the cellular coactivator p300 in cells derived from ATL patients. We further determined that HBZ directly binds to the histone acetyltransferase (HAT) domain of both p300 and its homologue CBP. HAT activity transfers an acetyl group to lysine residues on histone tails and transcription factors to generally upregulate transcription. We observed that the HBZ interaction with the HAT domain of p300/CBP inhibits acetylation of histones and of the tumor suppressor p53. In this study, we wanted to determine whether inhibition of HAT activity was limited to p300/CBP or extended to other HAT families. We focused on the GCN5/ p/CAF and MYST HAT families. We found that HBZ co-immunoprecipitates with both p/CAF and HBO1. These data support a recent finding that HBZ interacts with HBO1 in a yeast two-hybrid assay. Through in vitro HAT assays using recombinant proteins we found that HBZ inhibits acetylation of histone H3 and histone H4 by p/CAF and HBO1, respectively. Furthermore, HBZ reduces acetylation of p53 by p/CAF. Since both p300 and p/CAF acetylate p53 to increase its DNA-binding activity, we performed quantitative RT-PCR to evaluate expression of the p53 target genes, GADD45A and NOXA. We observed reduced mRNA levels of these genes when cells expressed HBZ. Overall these results suggest that HBZ inhibits the HAT activity of coactivators from different HAT families to contribute to transcriptional deregulation

Expressing Values and Fulfilling Obligations to Family Through Education: An Exploration of Higher Secondary School Student Experiences & Expectations in Sindhupalchowk, Nepal

Students in Nepal face numerous barriers in accessing and affording higher secondary schooling, yet many of their families prioritize education and send them on rural-to-urban pathways. While being uprooted from their home communities would presumably create conflicts between students’ family and school responsibilities, this exploratory, qualitative research found that students view the value of education and family as synchronous and complimentary. Conducting remote, semi-structured interviews with participants from a rural subsistence-based community in Nepal found that students expressed the value of education as a vehicle to value their family and generate collective returns home. Conflicts arose for students to balance their responsibilities when the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmingly negatively impacted their education. Structural barriers, such as students’ lack of social capital, also limited their abilities to realize the value of their education for their families. The value of family continues to strongly direct students’ pathways even after higher secondary schooling

RELIABILITY OF A TRUNK MOUNTED ACCELEROMETER WHEN DETERMINING GAIT PARAMETERS IN PEOPLE WITH STROKE

Wearable sensors and accelerometers can objectively and reliably assess gait parameters in both healthy individuals and stroke patients. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a wireless tri-axial accelerometer is reliable when measuring spatio-temporal gait parameters in patients with stroke. Thirty-one chronic stroke patients (age: 59.5±13.6 years; time since stroke: 28.1±17.8 months) completed three repeated walks along a 10m flat walkway whilst wearing a trunk mounted accelerometer (BTS G-Walk) secured around the waist of the participant over the L5 vertebrae. Outcome measures included cadence, speed, stride length, %stride length/height, gait cycle duration, step length, stance and swing phase duration, single and double support duration for both symptomatic and asymptomatic lower limbs where relevant. Reliability was assessed via intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), standard error of the mean (SEM) and smallest detectable change (SDC) values. ICCs were \u3e 0.75 for all parameters, excluding step length on the asymptomatic side (ICC = 0.70). SEM and the SDC were marginally larger for the symptomatic limb than the asymptomatic limb for gait cycle duration and step length, but smaller for all other outcomes. The study showed that the BTS G-Walk is a reliable tool for measuring spatio-temporal parameters in patients with stroke. Physiotherapists and clinicians often prefer detailed information on gait ability. As advanced technologies could help with specific goals relating to gait performance, such devices could be reliably implemented as an alternative to the gold standard in clinical and community settings to monitor patients outside of a lab-based environment

Migratory Pipelines: Labor and Oil in the Arabian Sea.

This dissertation examines the development of oil production in the Arabian Sea through the lens of Indian labor migration. Beginning with the Arabic-speaking Persian Gulf’s first large oil projects in the 1940s and continuing through the present, I consider how circulations of labor and oil have produced the modern Arabian Sea. These networks are composed of actors including government bureaucrats (both colonial administrators and postcolonial administrators), oil company managers, recruiters, and migrants. I explore how labor practices and migrant networks help shape the nature of oil production specific to the Arabian Sea. Using both archival and ethnographic sources, I find labor circulations are integral to oil companies policies and states regulation of migration. While much research on migration primarily engages with national polities and the Middle East and South Asia are often studied as different regions, I, instead, consider the entire process of migration from villages to oilfields and all parties involved in this process from migrants to corporations. What emerge are migrants and their networks dynamic capacities to form and reform relationships between people, the nation-state, and industry. I use interdisciplinary methods and insights to investigate how corporations, states, and individuals shape international economies, national policies, communities, and individual practices. I explore how citizenship, politics, and kinship in India and the Arabic-speaking Persian Gulf gave the oil industry in the Arabian Sea its unique character. The oil industry in the Gulf is a site not only of commodity extraction, but also a place where culture, politics, and histories converge and encourage us to rethink regions, commodities, and governance. What emerges is that the localized politics and kinship structures of migrants shape oil production and management policies in the Gulf. As workers circulate, they destabilize the neat division of the world into local, national, and global scales.PHDAnthropology and HistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113653/1/agwa_1.pd

A Heuristic Multiple-Case Study of Culturally Relevant Practices of Six Urban Elementary School Principals

Title from PDF of title page viewed March 11, 2020Dissertation advisor: Loyce CaruthersVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 269-293)Thesis (Ed.D.)--School of Education. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2019The purpose of this heuristic multiple-case study was to explore the practices of six urban elementary school principals regarding the use of culturally relevant practices in their schools. The central question was: How do urban elementary principals perceive their preparation for providing teachers assistance with culturally relevant instruction? Data sources included a qualitative questionnaire, in-depth semi-structured interviews, observations, and documents. Within case and cross analysis were incorporated with coding the data for patterns and meaning. The most prevent theme was Leadership for Curriculum and Instruction that consisted of monitoring student data and supporting standards. Findings suggested that most of the co-researchers were unprepared to assist teachers with culturally relevant practices. None of them considered equity leadership as a way to provide equity and justice within districts and schools. What they valued about elements of culturally relevant practices, especially the richness of students’ backgrounds and celebratory multicultural education as starting points for implementation, was compromised by preparation coupled with Midway School District’s (pseudonym) reform agenda of assessment, standards and monitoring data that derailed support for culturally relevant practices.Introduction -- Review of literature -- Methodology -- Results -- Implications of findings -- Appendix A. Initial questionnaire -- Appendix B. Interviewing protocol -- Appendix C. Observation protocol for daily practices of principals: a heuristic case stud

Controls on Sediment Bed Erodibility in a Muddy, Partially-Mixed Tidal Estuary

he objectives of this study are to better understand controls on bed erodibility in muddy estuaries, including the roles of both sediment properties and recent hydrodynamic history. An extensive data set of erodibility measurements, sediment properties, and hydrodynamic information was utilized to create statistical models to predict the erodibility of the sediment bed. This data set includes \u3e160 eroded mass versus applied stress profiles collected over 15 years along the York River estuary, a system characterized by “depth-limited erosion,” such that the critical stress for erosion increases rapidly with depth into the bed. For this study, erodibility was quantified in two ways: the mass of sediment eroded at 0.2 Pa (a stress commonly produced by tides in the York), and the normalized shape of the eroded mass profile for stresses between 0 and 0.56 Pa. In models with eroded mass as the response variable, the explanatory variables with the strongest influence were (in descending order) tidal range squared averaged over the previous 8 days (a proxy for recent bottom stress), salinity or past river discharge, sediment organic content, recent water level anomalies, percent sand, percent clay, and bed layering. Results support the roles of 1) recent deposition and bed disturbance increasing erodibility and 2) cohesion/consolidation and erosion/winnowing of fines decreasing erodibility. The most important variable influencing the shape of the eroded mass profile was eroded mass at 0.2 Pa, such that more (vs. less) erodible cases exhibited straighter (vs. more strongly curved) profiles. Overall, hydrodynamic variables were the best predictors of eroded mass at 0.2 Pa, which, in turn, was the best predictor of profile shape. This suggests that calculations of past bed stress and the position of the salt intrusion can serve as useful empirical proxies for muddy bed consolidation state and resulting erodibility of the uppermost seabed in estuarine numerical models. Observed water content averaged over the top 1 cm was a poor predictor of erodibility, likely because typical tidal stresses suspend less than 1 mm of bed sediment. Future field sampling would benefit from higher resolution observations of water content within the bed’s top few millimeters

Undergraduate Textbook Representations of Meiosis Neglect Essential Elements

The process of meiosis is an essential topic that secondary and postsecondary students struggle with. The important meiosis-related concepts of homology, ploidy, and segregation can be described using the DNA Triangle framework, which connects them to the multidimensional nature of DNA (chromosomal, molecular, and informational levels). We have previously established that undergraduate biology students typically fail to describe and/or link appropriate levels to their explanations of meiosis. We hypothesize that students\u27 understanding mirrors the resources they are given – in other words, textbook figures often lack many of the important connections that experts include when talking about meiosis. Prior work showed that text in meiosis chapters typically fails to include many concepts that experts consider important, so we examined how textbook figures present meiosis concepts. We found that almost all textbook representations include the chromosomal level of DNA, but few include the other levels, even to illustrate concepts that are rooted in informational and/or molecular levels. In particular, the molecular level of DNA was absent from nearly all introductory textbook figures examined, and the informational level was seldom depicted in mid/upper-level textbook figures. The previously established deficits in text portions of textbooks are clearly not compensated by their accompanying illustrations