The Effects of Different Cupping Therapy Techniques on Hamstring Extensibility in College Age Males

Context: Hamstring injuries are one of the most common injuries in sports and have been connected to lack of flexibility.1 Several techniques have been researched but each has limitations in a clinical setting. Cupping therapy has limited research but provides clinical utility that needs further exploration. Objective: Examine the effects of movement and stationary cupping on hamstring range of motion (ROM). Design: Experimental cross-over. Patients: 41 physically-active males (age=20.9±1.0). Intervention: Participants were randomly assigned to the stationary or movement group. Treatments included: movement cupping, movement control, stationary cupping, and stationary control. Main Outcome Measures: 90/90 passive knee extension ROM and perceived tightness measured pre and post intervention. Results: For ROM, the comparison of means showed no significance for group (p=0.306) or treatment (p=0.072) interactions. Perceived tightness significantly improved from pre to post when comparing cupping to the controls (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Although ROM did not increase significantly, participants reported decreased tightness.Master of Art

Poetic Performances: Tracing Castiglione\u27s Theory of Courtliness in the Poetry of John Donne and John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester

In The Book of the Courtier, Baldesar Castiglione outlines the three criteria that courtiers and would-be courtiers must implement to fashion a successful performance, one that helps them maintain or strengthen their social status: grazia, sprezzatura, and dissimulazione. Each of these elements enables and supports the others; the success of the performative act relies on the courtier’s mastery and manipulation of these three characteristics. Their poetry indicates that John Donne and John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester both attained that high level courtly skill – Donne through his novel use of the metaphysical conceit and Rochester through his representations of failed attempts at courtly performance. Their uses of Castiglione’s performative theory are at odds – the goal of Donne’s poetic performances was social mobility, while Rochester’s performances were conservative reactions against social mobility. However, recognizing Castiglione’s influence in the poetry of Donne and Rochester enable us to understand some of the more perplexing aspects of their verse by providing an insight into their anxieties as individuals within a rapidly evolving English society

Statistical Methods to Account for Gene-Level Covariates in Normalization of High-Dimensional Read-Count Data

The goal of genetic-based cancer research is often to identify which genes behave differently in cancerous and healthy tissue. This difference in behavior, referred to as differential expression, may lead researchers to more targeted preventative care and treatment. One way to measure the expression of genes is though a process called RNA-Seq, that takes physical tissue samples and maps gene products and fragments in the sample back to the gene that created it, resulting in a large read-count matrix with genes in the rows and a column for each sample. The read-counts for tumor and normal samples are then compared in a process called differential expression analysis. However, normalization of these read-counts is a necessary pre-processing step, in order to account for differences in the read-count values due to non-expression related variables. It is common in recent RNA-Seq normalization methods to also account for gene-level covariates, namely gene length in base pairs and GC-content, the proportion of bases in the gene that are Guanine and Cytosine. Here a colorectal cancer RNA-Seq read-count data set comprised of 30,220 genes and 378 samples is examined. Two of the normalization methods that account for gene length and GC-content, CQN and EDASeq, are extended to account for protein coding status as a third gene-level covariate. The binary nature of protein coding status results in unique computation issues. The results of using the normalized read counts from CQN, EDASeq, and four new normalization methods are used for differential expression analysis via the nonparametric Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Test as well as the lme4 pipeline that produces per-gene models based on a negative binomial distribution. The resulting differential expression results are compared for two genes of interest in colorectal cancer, APC and CTNNB1, both of the WNT signaling pathway

Creating and Conducting Intergenerational Learning in Higher Education

The creation, conduction and revision of a one of a kind intergenerational course taught in the Grand Valley State University Fredrick Meijer Honors College. Elders and Traditional Honors College Freshman came together in a mixed classroom in order to bridge the gaps of communication and misunderstanding between generations

The Costs of Cuba Libre: U.S. Neo-Imperialism, Tourism in Cuba, and the Habana Hilton

This paper is an investigation into North American tourism in Cuba between the “Spanish-American War” in 1898 and the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The research it presents was prompted by a set of photographs taken at the grand opening of the Habana Hilton in March 1958, part of the Bern and Franke Keating Collection, held in the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi. Many of these photos are also included throughout the text of the paper. I begin with an overview of the relationship between Cuba and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, since the nation’s military presence and political authority on the island were the foundation for its economic expansion and cultural influence there during the period this paper examines. Early in the century, elite Cubans and U.S. investors led the first concerted efforts to establish a tourism industry in Havana, and I consider both the impact of this development on the island and the North American cultural imperatives it reflected. I trace the similarities between this early boom and tourism’s resurgence in 1950s Cuba under Fulgencio Batista, and I explore the role of tourism in Cuban rebels’ opposition to his U.S.-backed dictatorial regime. I am also concerned with the particular symbolic significance of the Habana Hilton, suggested by the fact that Fidel Castro occupied the hotel and ran Cuba’s provisional government from it in the months following the revolution. I consider the Hilton Corporation’s international expansion at mid-century, the tourist experience its hotels orchestrated, and the Cold War ideology that underpinned both. If North Americans saw the Habana Hilton as Cuba’s latest and grandest monument to U.S. superiority and righteousness, I argue, it was a symbol of empty North American promises to many Cubans

Genetic structure, reproductive skew, and the evolution of sociality in the hover wasp Liostenogaster flavolineata

In this thesis, I use field experiments to test whether a potentially universal benefit of sociality operates in the facultatively eusocial hover wasp Liostenogaster flavolineata (Stenogastrinae). The Central Limit Theorem (CLT) is a potential reason why individuals come together to provision offspring. I report the results of an original experiment designed to test the central tenets of the CLT by manipulating the variance of food inputs to L. flavolineata nests. I show that with increased variance there was no effect on levels of brood abortion, or larval development rates. However, some assumptions of the CLT were found to hold, such as smaller groups producing more brood per-capita with higher rates of brood removal. Theoretically, genetic relatedness between adult nest-mates should have an important influence on how reproduction is partitioned (reproductive skew). However, reproductive skew in newly initiated colonies of L. flavolineata, where nest-mate relatedness is low, is not significantly different to that in mature colonies, and is unaffected by group size. Genetic relatedness between subordinates and the dominant egg-layer could potentially vary systematically according to position in the age-based queue to inherit the egg-laying role in L. flavolineata groups. Using newly developed microsatellite markers, in combination with manipulations to determine queue position, I test for systematic associations between a worker’s relationship to the dominant, inheritance rank and group size. I find that there is an increasing likelihood for daughters and nieces to occur at the lowest ranks, i.e. those with the greatest indirect fitness pay-offs and greatest foraging effort. I also investigate how genetic relatedness and group size influence foraging effort, and suggest that smaller groups might experience effects of the CLT, but work harder to compensate. I integrate theories of reproductive skew and my findings from L. flavolineata into a framework of potential behavioural concessions in larger groups

Prelamin A Accumulation Attenuates Rac1 Activity and Increases the Intrinsic Migrational Persistence of Aged Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) motility is essential during both physiological and pathological vessel remodeling. Although ageing has emerged as a major risk factor in the development of cardiovascular disease, our understanding of the impact of ageing on VSMC motility remains limited. Prelamin A accumulation is known to drive VSMC ageing and we show that presenescent VSMCs, that have accumulated prelamin A, display increased focal adhesion dynamics, augmented migrational velocity/persistence and attenuated Rac1 activity. Importantly, prelamin A accumulation in proliferative VSMCs, induced by depletion of the prelamin A processing enzyme FACE1, recapitulated the focal adhesion, migrational persistence and Rac1 phenotypes observed in presenescent VSMCs. Moreover, lamin A/C-depleted VSMCs also display reduced Rac1 activity, suggesting that prelamin A influences Rac1 activity by interfering with lamin A/C function at the nuclear envelope. Taken together, these data demonstrate that lamin A/C maintains Rac1 activity in VSMCs and prelamin A disrupts lamin A/C function to reduce Rac1 activity and induce migrational persistence during VSMC ageing

Substrate Binding Regulates Redox Signaling in Human DNA Primase

Generation of daughter strands during DNA replication requires the action of DNA primase to synthesize an initial short RNA primer on the single-stranded DNA template. Primase is a heterodimeric enzyme containing two domains whose activity must be coordinated during primer synthesis: an RNA polymerase domain in the small subunit (p48) and a [4Fe4S] cluster-containing C-terminal domain of the large subunit (p58C). Here we examine the redox switching properties of the [4Fe4S] cluster in the full p48/p58 heterodimer using DNA electrochemistry. Unlike with isolated p58C, robust redox signaling in the primase heterodimer requires binding of both DNA and NTPs; NTP binding shifts the p48/p58 cluster redox potential into the physiological range, generating a signal near 160 mV vs NHE. Preloading of primase with NTPs enhances catalytic activity on primed DNA, suggesting that primase configurations promoting activity are more highly populated in the NTP-bound protein. We propose that p48/p58 binding of anionic DNA and NTPs affects the redox properties of the [4Fe4S] cluster; this electrostatic change is likely influenced by the alignment of primase subunits during activity because the configuration affects the [4Fe4S] cluster environment and coupling to DNA bases for redox signaling. Thus, both binding of polyanionic substrates and configurational dynamics appear to influence [4Fe4S] redox signaling properties. These results suggest that these factors should be considered generally in characterizing signaling networks of large, multisubunit DNA-processing [4Fe4S] enzymes