Examining the political rhetoric of American presidential candidates

Includes bibliographical references.This research is an attempt to deconstruct and discern the patterns that have emerged from within the rhetoric that is reserved for presidential candidates. I examined three potential candidates for the upcoming 2016 presidential elections: Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio. All three candidates are vastly differ from one another in terms of gender, race, and physical appearance. However, the root of my research will be to determine why does the media sexualize and discriminate women and then apply it within a political parameter. Within my research, the coding proponent revealed four categories that would be appropriate in examining the rhetoric of presidential candidates. These four categories are presidential run, personal relationships, appearance, and capability. I will explain what my data yielded in these four categories and then apply theories and findings which help further confirm the interpretation of my results. Overall, I found that gendered bias exists through a particular context for rhetoric amongst the presidential candidates

Expression Identity/Culture

The following thesis contains the background and inspiration for my thesis paintings. I will be explaining how my works reflect my identity and culture and the background of my artistic history, which include Korean calligraphy. I also go into how the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann and Sam Gilliam have influenced my own paintings. I will explain the artistic and technical process of my paintings in detail and show how each processes affected my work

Thromboprophylaxis in atrial fibrillation and association with cognitive decline: systematic review

Objective:Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is associated with dementia. If AF-related cognitive decline is driven by cerebral embolic events, thromboprophylaxis may impact on this. This systematic review assessed the association between cognitive impairment and AF thromboprophylaxis. Methods:Two independent reviewers searched CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science Core Collection, and Cochrane Library from inception until 12th November 2014. Eligible studies compared AF thromboprophylaxis to control with an outcome measure of cognition or dementia. Where data allowed, meta-analyses describing between-group differences in cognitive test scores or rates of incident dementia were performed. Results:Nineteen studies were eligible. For two prospective studies (one RCT) comparing anticoagulation against antiplatelet therapy, change in Mini-Mental State Examination score from baseline to last follow-up (maximal duration:5.9 years) suggested a difference favouring anticoagulation (mean difference:0.90, 95% CI:0.29 to 1.51), in keeping with a trend seen in the single RCT (mean difference MMSE:0.80. 95% CI:-0.07 to 1.67). Pooled odds ratios suggested no association with incident dementia, comparing anticoagulant to antiplatelet therapy (two studies, OR:1.23, 95% CI:0.80 to 1.91) or no treatment (three studies, OR:0.89, 95%CI:0.47 to 1.69). Conclusions:Our analyses show no definitive evidence of cognitive benefit or harm from anticoagulation. We demonstrated a potential benefit of anticoagulation in comparison to antiplatelet over time. Larger-scale studies with longer follow-up are needed to determine the true cognitive impact of AF thromboprophylaxis

Quality Dispersion Among Organic Milk Channels

The most widely used measure of milk hygiene is Somatic Cell Count (SCC), where low SCC values indicate more wholesome milk. Dirt, often associated with grazing, carry bacteria and these bacteria can cause mastitis. Milk from cows with mastitis generally has higher SCC levels and cows with mastitis are most readily treated with antibiotics. Milk with high SCC is penalized by distributers as it is difficult to process and is not considered as wholesome in fluid markets. Grazing cows is common for many organic farmers. However, regulators prohibit antibiotic use under organic production. Intensive management protocols, maintaining equipment, and closely managing the herd’s environment offer substitutes for antibiotics use. Organic milk carries with it a substantial premium but may be at higher risk of discounts or penalties if the milk is more likely to have higher SCC levels. There are two forces at play concerning the quality of organic milk relative to conventional milk. For one, required and proscribed production practices create significant problems when managing milk quality. Secondly, a large premium exists to produce organic milk of high quality. This research seeks to better understand these and other determinants of SCC for conventional milk and for organic milk.milk, organic, quality, quantile, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Perceptions of health risk among parents of overweight children: a cross-sectional study within a cohort.

OBJECTIVE: To identify the socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics associated with perceptions of weight-related health risk among the parents of overweight children. METHODS: Baseline data from a cohort of parents of children aged 4-11 years in five areas in England in 2010-2011 were analysed; the sample was restricted to parents of overweight children (body mass index ≥ 91(st) centile of UK 1990 reference; n=579). Associations between respondent characteristics and parental perception of health risk associated with their child's weight were examined using logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: Most parents (79%) did not perceive their child's weight to be a health risk. Perception of a health risk was associated with recognition of the child's overweight status (OR 10.59, 95% CI 5.51 to 20.34), having an obese child (OR 4.21, 95% CI 2.28 to 7.77), and having an older child (OR 2.67, 95% CI 1.32 to 5.41). However, 41% of parents who considered their child to be overweight did not perceive a health risk. CONCLUSIONS: Parents that recognise their child's overweight status, and the parents of obese and older children, are more likely to perceive a risk. However, many parents that acknowledge their child is overweight do not perceive a related health risk

Atomic layer deposition of Zn(O,S) thin films with tunable electrical properties by oxygen annealing

Zinc oxysulfide, Zn(O,S), films grown by atomic layer deposition were annealed in oxygen to adjust the carrier concentration. The electron carrier concentration of Zn(O,S) can be reduced by several orders of magnitude from $10^{19}$ to $10^{15} cm^{−3}$ by post-deposition annealing in oxygen at temperatures from 200 °C to 290 °C. In the case of Zn(O,S) with S/Zn = 0.37, despite the considerable change in the electron carrier concentration, the bandgap energy decreased by only ∼0.1 eV, and the crystallinity did not change much after annealing. The oxygen/zinc ratio increased by 0.05 after annealing, but the stoichiometry remained uniform throughout the film.Chemistry and Chemical BiologyEngineering and Applied Science

When to hold that thought: an experimental study showing reduced inhibition of pre-trained associations in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia encompasses a wide variety of cognitive dysfunctions, a number of which can be understood as deficits of inhibition. To date, no research has examined ‘conditioned inhibition’ in schizophrenia - the ability of a stimulus that signals the absence of an expected outcome to counteract the conditioned response produced by a signal for that outcome (a conditioned excitor). A computer-based task was used to measure conditioned excitation and inhibition in the same discrimination procedure, in 25 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of schizophrenia and a community-based comparison sample. Conditioned inhibition was measured by a ratio score, which compared the degree to which the inhibitory stimulus and a neutral control stimulus reduced conditioned responding to the excitatory cue: the lower the ratio, the greater the inhibitory learning. At test the ratios were 0.45 and 0.39 for patient and control groups respectively, and the relevant interaction term of the ANOVA confirmed that the degree of inhibition was reduced in the patient group, with an effect size of r = 0.28. These results demonstrate for the first time that inhibitory learning is impaired in schizophrenia. Such an impairment provides an attractive framework for the interpretation of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. However, we were unable to demonstrate any relationship between the level of conditioned inhibition and medication. Similarly, in the present study it must be emphasised that the available data did not demonstrate any relationship between individual variation in inhibitory learning and the level of positive symptoms as measured by the PANSS. In fact inhibitory learning impairment was relatively greater in participants with a predominantly negative symptom profile and their excitatory learning was also reduced. Accordingly the next step will be to investigate such relationships in a larger sample with a priori defined sub-groups displaying predominantly positive versus predominantly negative symptoms

Support vector machines with adaptive penalty

The standard Support Vector Machine (SVM) minimizes the hinge loss function subject to the L2 penalty or the roughness penalty. Recently, the L1 SVM was suggested for variable selection by producing sparse solutions (Bradley and Mangasarian, 1998; Zhu et al., 2003). These learning methods are non-adaptive since their penalty forms are pre-determined before looking at data, and they often perform well only in a certain type of situation. For instance, the L2 SVM generally works well except when there are too many noise inputs, while the L1 SVM is more preferred in the presence of many noise variables. In this article we propose and explore an adaptive learning procedure called the Lq SVM, where the best q > 0 is automatically chosen by data. Both two- and multi-class classification problems are considered. We show that the new adaptive approach combines the benefit of a class of non-adaptive procedures and gives the best performance of this class across a variety of situations. Moreover, we observe that the proposed Lq penalty is more robust to noise variables than the L1 and L2 penalties. An iterative algorithm is suggested to solve the Lq SVM efficiently. Simulations and real data applications support the effectiveness of the proposed procedure

Nanostructured Flexible Gas Sensors for Breath Monitoring System

Clothing is a microenvironment surrounding the human body that has the most proximity than anything else, which can be a good tool for monitoring and interfacing with the human body (Dunne, 2012). Monitoring breath gives important information about body condition simultaneously for wearers, guardians, and medical specialists to protect from hazardous situations and emergencies (Galassetti et. al., 2005)