Schulz\u27s Religion: Exploring Faith in the Mainstream Media Through the Peanuts Franchise

This dissertation is an exploration of various theoretical and cultural issues surrounding depictions of religion and spirituality in mainstream entertainment media properties. Such portrayals cultivate particular cultural norms that dictate the conditions of public and private discourse on religion, and in this study, these issues are approached through a mixed-method study guided by the Peanuts franchise. The Peanuts franchise is a provocatively rich launching point for analysis of dominant media cultures, given its colossal success in the secular mainstream entertainment industry and its explicit references to and even affirmations of Christian theology. Throughout the study, the references to religion manifested across the various Peanuts media are tracked, catalogued, and analyzed – i.e., across the 75 television titles, global product merchandise, Charles Schulz\u27s biographic history, and of course the nearly 18,000 Peanuts comic strips Schulz drew over a 50 year career. Based on theoretical foundations of cultivation theory, narrativity, and public sphere theory, a hybrid approach of social-scientific content analysis, rhetorical analysis, and historical archive research is employed (including original interview data from Schulz’s family and friends). The study demonstrates that while many entertainment media properties tend to reflect and reinforce a cultural public/private split in secularity/religion, rich opportunities for nuanced portrayals of religious belief and action are possible within a mainstream title

Structure of TAR RNA Complexed with a Tat-TAR Interaction Nanomolar Inhibitor that Was Identified by Computational Screening

AbstractHIV-1 TAR RNA functions critically in viral replication by binding the transactivating regulatory protein Tat. We recently identified several compounds that experimentally inhibit the Tat-TAR interaction completely at a 100 nM concentration. We used computational screening of the 181,000-compound Available Chemicals Directory against the three-dimensional structure of TAR [1]. Here we report the NMR-derived structure of TAR complexed with acetylpromazine. This structure represents a new class of compounds with good bioavailability and low toxicity that bind with high affinity to TAR. NMR data unambiguously show that acetylpromazine binds only to the unique 5′ bulge site to which the Tat protein binds. Specificity and affinity of binding are conferred primarily by a network of base stacking and hydrophobic interactions. Acetylpromazine alters the structure of free TAR less than Tat peptides and neomycin do

Lind, James Meyer the Trumpet Concertos of Anthony Plog: a Performer’s Guide

Anthony Plog (b. 1947) has contributed several notable works for brass instruments. He is known for writing extremely technically challenging works that contain angular melodies, fast rhythms and a large degree of chromaticism. Though his music is difficult, it also conveys intense emotions. His music for trumpet, specifically Concerto no. 1 for Trumpet, Brass Ensemble and Percussion and Concerto no. 2 for Trumpet and Orchestra, represents a zenith in his compositional development. This dissertation examines Concerto no. 1 and Concerto no. 2 from a performer’s perspective to better understand the stylistic characteristics and challenges encountered in his music. Each concerto is examined in terms of rhythmic structure, intervallic structure, thematic material, motivic material and form

Intraoperative suprachoroidal hemorrhage during Xen gel stent implantation

Purpose: To report a rare case of intraoperative suprachoroidal hemorrhage during Xen gel stent implantation with accompanying surgical video and subsequent 6-month follow-up. Observations: Our patient required incisional glaucoma surgery after inadequate pressure reduction with four classes of topical medication, methazolamide, and selective laser trabeculoplasty. The patient underwent Xen gel stent implantation and developed an intraoperative suprachoroidal hemorrhage, which was managed in the operating room. The patient recovered his baseline visual acuity with a functioning bleb out to 6 months postoperatively. Conclusions and Importance: Micro-invasive glaucoma surgeries offer a new repertoire of surgical options, purportedly with safer and less invasive techniques. Xen gel stent implantation may be a promising alternative to traditional trabeculectomies and tube shunt implants, providing similar IOP lowering results with potentially lower risk for complications. However, rare and severe complications such as suprachoroidal hemorrhage may still occur. Recognizing a suprachoroidal bleed, particularly intraoperatively, will still be necessary to help minimize the potential vision threatening sequelae often associated with this severe complication

Spectral Simplicity of Apparent Complexity, Part II: Exact Complexities and Complexity Spectra

The meromorphic functional calculus developed in Part I overcomes the nondiagonalizability of linear operators that arises often in the temporal evolution of complex systems and is generic to the metadynamics of predicting their behavior. Using the resulting spectral decomposition, we derive closed-form expressions for correlation functions, finite-length Shannon entropy-rate approximates, asymptotic entropy rate, excess entropy, transient information, transient and asymptotic state uncertainty, and synchronization information of stochastic processes generated by finite-state hidden Markov models. This introduces analytical tractability to investigating information processing in discrete-event stochastic processes, symbolic dynamics, and chaotic dynamical systems. Comparisons reveal mathematical similarities between complexity measures originally thought to capture distinct informational and computational properties. We also introduce a new kind of spectral analysis via coronal spectrograms and the frequency-dependent spectra of past-future mutual information. We analyze a number of examples to illustrate the methods, emphasizing processes with multivariate dependencies beyond pairwise correlation. An appendix presents spectral decomposition calculations for one example in full detail.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables; most recent version at http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/sdscpt2.ht

Many Roads to Synchrony: Natural Time Scales and Their Algorithms

We consider two important time scales---the Markov and cryptic orders---that monitor how an observer synchronizes to a finitary stochastic process. We show how to compute these orders exactly and that they are most efficiently calculated from the epsilon-machine, a process's minimal unifilar model. Surprisingly, though the Markov order is a basic concept from stochastic process theory, it is not a probabilistic property of a process. Rather, it is a topological property and, moreover, it is not computable from any finite-state model other than the epsilon-machine. Via an exhaustive survey, we close by demonstrating that infinite Markov and infinite cryptic orders are a dominant feature in the space of finite-memory processes. We draw out the roles played in statistical mechanical spin systems by these two complementary length scales.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures: http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/kro.htm. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 10-11-02

Self-Reported Hearing Handicap and Mental Health in Australia: Some Preliminary Findings

"Article Copyright 2012 The Authors." "Published edition Copyright 2012 Australian Academic Press. Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher."It has long been suggested that the consequences of adult hearing impairment (HI) include stress, anxiety and depression, yet relatively little formal assessment of mental health status amongst adult Australians who have acquired HI has been reported. This questionnaire- based study investigated the self-reported hearing handicap and mental health characteristics of a sample of 375 Australian adults with HI who were members of Better Hearing Australia (BHA) in six Australian states/territories. Participants completed two mental health questionnaires; the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale-10 (K-10; Kessler, Andrews, Colpe, & Hiripi, 2002) and the Depression- Anxiety-Stress Scale (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) as well as the short version of the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults — Screening Version (HHIA-S; Newman, Weinstein, Jacobson, & Hug, 1990). No difference was found in the prevalence of psychological distress amongst participants compared to that of the Australian adult population. It was noted, however, that increased severity of self-reported hearing handicap was associated with higher levels of self-perceived psychological distress. In turn, high or very high levels of psychological distress measured on the K-10 were correlated with depressive states more than with stress or anxiety ratings on the DASS. The results highlighted the need to incorporate a combination of questionnaire-based measures in evaluating self-reported mental health and hearing handicap

Survival of patients with small cell lung cancer undergoing lung resection in England, 1998–2009

Introduction: Chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy is the recommended treatment for small cell lung cancer (SCLC), except in stage I disease where clinical guidelines state there may be a role for surgery based on favourable outcomes in case series. Evidence supporting adjuvant chemotherapy in resected SCLC is limited but this is widely offered. Methods: Data on 359 873 patients who were diagnosed with a first primary lung cancer in England between 1998 and 2009 were grouped according to histology (SCLC or non-SCLC (NSCLC)) and whether they underwent a surgical resection. We explored their survival using Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox regression, adjusting for age, sex, comorbidity and socioeconomic status. Results: The survival of 465 patients with resected SCLC was lower than patients with resected NSCLC (5-year survival 31% and 45%, respectively), but much higher than patients of either group who were not resected (3%). The difference between resected SCLC and NSCLC diminished with time after surgery. Survival was superior for the subgroup of 198 'elective' SCLC cases where the diagnosis was most likely known before resection than for the subgroup of 267 'incidental' cases where the SCLC diagnosis was likely to have been made after resection. Conclusions: These data serve as a natural experiment testing the survival after surgical management of SCLC according to NSCLC principles. Patients with SCLC treated surgically for early stage disease may have survival outcomes that approach those of NSCLC, supporting the emerging clinical practice of offering surgical resection to selected patients with SCLC

System for Removing Pollutants from Incinerator Exhaust

A system for removing pollutants -- primarily sulfur dioxide and mixed oxides of nitrogen (NOx) -- from incinerator exhaust has been demonstrated. The system is also designed secondarily to remove particles, hydrocarbons, and CO. The system is intended for use in an enclosed environment, for which a prior NOx-and-SO2-removal system designed for industrial settings would not be suitable