Cultural Factors in Mental Health Referral Among Asian Americans

Epidemiological studies have shown that disparities in mental health service utilization still exist among ethnic minority groups in the United States. This study looks specifically at the lay referral system and what factors influence the likelihood of an individual referring a friend to mental health services. Since college student populations have fewer barriers than most to seeking treatment, 60 Asian American and 49 White American college students were sampled for the purposes of this study. They evaluated one of four vignettes in which cultural competency of the potential therapist and type of symptoms being presented were manipulated. Though there was no significant interaction found, implications of the current findings and corrections to the methodology for future research are discussed

Revisiting Conditional Typology for Bangla

The paper presents new data on two strategies of forming Conditionals in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language Bangla: Correlative Conditionals and Participial Conditionals. It further shows that there is a subtle division of labor between the two kinds of constructions. It is proposed that the distributional difference between these two provides evidence in favor of the theories of conditionals that classify Hypothetical Conditionals and Biscuit Conditionals as having the same underlying semantics. Furthermore, it is shown that the distinction extends to the then-word tahole in the language. This leads to a pragmatic account of the conditional participle -le in different types of participial conditionals. The paper ends with discussing how a pragmatic account leads to an unresolved question regarding the syntactic classification of the conditionals

Hitting the right targets : a study of molecular mediators of sensitivity to novel potential targeted therapies in cutaneous malignant melanoma

Cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) is the deadliest form of skin cancer with a 5-year overall survival (OS) rate of less than 10% among patients diagnosed with disseminated disease. During the past decade the emergence and use of novel targeted therapy and immunotherapy has significantly increased the 5-year OS rate (34%). There are some CMM patients who harbor primary resistance to current therapeutic regimes and hence never respond to treatment, whereas a major subset of the patients with objective response ultimately develops a refractory disease due to acquired resistance. Moreover, clinical biomarkers that can be used to find patient subgroups who are most likely to benefit from a particular therapy remains elusive. In paper I, we found that the combination treatment of ERBB family inhibitor afatinib and MET/ALK inhibitor crizotinib was cytotoxic to CMM cells independent of BRAF/NRAS mutation status. The observations were validated both in vitro and in vivo. In paper II, we explored the molecular mechanisms behind the combination treatment effect of afatinib and crizotinib. We found that the combination treatment downregulated IRS-1, RPS6KB1 and RPS6 protein expression. PMEL/Melanoma gp-100 and PI3K-p85 were upregulated in cells with induced resistance to the combination. We also showed that the resistance to the combination was reversible after a drug holiday. In paper III, we found that the efficacy of MTH1 inhibitor TH1579 is independent of BRAF/NRAS mutation status. TH1579 abrogated cell growth both in vitro and in vivo. We showed that AXL and CAV-1 play a role in mediating sensitivity to TH1579. Moreover, combination treatment of BRAF inhibitors with TH1579 further potentiated cell death in BRAF mutant CMM cells, including BRAF inhibitor resistant CMM cells. In paper IV, we showed that co-expression of MTH1 and PMS2 mRNA, key players in the DNA damage response pathway, is associated with shorter progression free survival after immunotherapy in CMM. We also found that these proteins were increased in refractory tumors. Finally, we showed that co-silencing of MTH1 and PMS2 further induced apoptosis compared to silencing of either gene alone in patient-derived short-term CMM cell cultures. Overall this thesis highlights potential novel targeted therapeutic strategies for patients with CMM and suggests possible alternate molecular markers that can be targeted to overcome resistance mechanisms that currently pose as a serious clinical challenge in the systemic treatment of CMM

Adnominal Distributive Numerals in Bangla

This paper provides an introduction to the adnominal distributive numerals in Bangla and their interpretations. Discussing the licensing conditions of the adnominal distributive numerals, the paper classifies them with distributive items that require overt or covert, syntactically c-commanding clause-mate pluralities as their antecedents. The paper also shows that the Bangla distributive numerals can distribute over contextually salient non-atomic covers of plurals

Gaussian Process Regression for Option Pricing and Hedging

Recent literature in the field of quantitative finance has employed machine learning methods to speed up typical numerical calculations including derivative pricing, fitting Greek profiles, constructing volatility surfaces and modelling counterparty credit risk, to name a few. This dissertation aims to investigate the accuracy and efficiency of Gaussian process regression (GPR) compared to traditional quantitative pricing algorithms. The GPR algorithm is applied to pricing a down-and-out barrier call option. Notably, Crepey and Dixon ´ (2019) propose an alternative method for computing the Gaussian process Greeks by directly differentiating the GPR option pricing model. Based on their approach, the GPR algorithm is further extended to compute the delta and vega of the option. Numerical experiments display that option pricing accuracy scores are within a tolerable range and demonstrate increased speed of considerable magnitudes with speed-up factors in the 1 000s. Computing the Greeks convey favourable computational properties; however, the GPR model struggles to obtain accurate predictions for the delta and vega. The trade-off between accuracy and speed is further investigated, where the inclusion of additional GPR input parameters hinder performance metrics whilst a larger training data set improves model accuracy