Neighborhood Disorder and Adolescent Psychological Distress: Effects of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Social Support, and Self Concept

Sociological research on mental health is often guided by the stress process framework. A key tenet of this paradigm is the proposition that both exposure and vulnerability to social stressors arise from one’s placement in the social structure; those with lower social status face greater exposure and/or greater vulnerability to stressors that detrimentally impact their psychological wellbeing. A consequential social stressor is the neighborhood context in which one resides. Past research has suggested a disadvantageous effect of greater neighborhood physical and social disorder on youth mental health. This research employs the stress process framework to examine how the effects of neighborhood disorder on adolescent psychological distress may vary by two core social statuses: gender and race/ethnicity. This study employed a pooled sample from two waves of the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) (N=4407). Hierarchical linear regression was used to test the main effects of neighborhood disorder on adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms, the moderating effects of gender and race/ethnicity, and the potential mediating pathways of social and personal resources. Findings demonstrated significant main effects of neighborhood disorder on both internalizing and externalizing symptoms of distress. There were also conditional effects of neighborhood disorder on internalizing symptoms with a stronger association found for girls than for boys. In tests of moderating effects of race/ethnicity, the results were less definitive. For internalizing symptoms of psychological distress, finding showed that the negative effects of neighborhood disorder on mental health were marginally lower for African American youth when compared with White youth. As seen with gender, no interaction effects were found for externalizing symptoms. Family support, self-esteem, and mastery all significantly mediated the effect of neighborhood disorder on both internalizing and externalizing symptoms with the largest indirect effect found for mastery. This dissertation adds to the body of accumulating research on neighborhood effects for adolescents by describing more fully the relationship between neighborhood disorder and two indicators of psychological well-being, and reinforces the importance of neighborhood context for adolescents’ development. It also offers a contribution to sociological understandings of the stress process and the interplay between social status, resources, and mental health

Composing Historical Activism: Anecdotes, Archives, and Multimodality in Rhetorics of Lesbian History

This dissertation examines the unique rhetorics and technologies lesbian collectives have employed to compose and wield their histories. Focusing on the Daughters of Bilitis (1955-70), the Lesbian Herstory Archives (1974-), and filmic historiographers such as Barbara Hammer and Cheryl Dunye (1994-), I investigate how these historical activists have deconstructed dominant accounts that underpin conceptions of lesbian deviance and replaced them with collective histories of their own making. I argue that these collective rhetors composed radical versions of a queer past that challenged present oppressions, cohered provisional communities, and disrupted static consolidations of lesbian identity. Examining a diverse collection of primary sources from newsletters to documentary films, I assay alphabetic, material, and multimodal rhetorical strategies for composing lesbian history, including “anecdotal clustering” of experience in print pamphlets and books; radical classification schemas in material archives; and the use of multimodal technologies to reframe and even fabricate archival evidence in experimental documentary films. The study’s three core chapters rely upon archival and primary research, complimented by rhetorical, multimodal, and queer theory, as I analyze the cultural contexts, rhetorics, and technologies employed by the collectives to compose their histories. Because I attend to the effects of these histories on each collective rhetor’s imagined constituency, my dissertation makes clear the rhetorical significance of historical production and the consequences of composing history on gendered and sexual identifications

"Audio Collage Assignment"

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: This four- to six-minute audio collage assignment is designed, as Jean Bessette describes in an article from the 2016 issue of Computers and Composition, to “explore a focused, complex, and nuanced topic in gender and sexuality” (75). Here, students select and assemble materials from an online archive of gay liberation radio shows. In the article, she interprets two case studies of student projects and highlights the emergence of their personal and rhetorical inquiry within the confines of the assignment. In addition to the model assignment, however, Bessette makes a larger argument about the outcomes of the approach. The process of listening to prepare to make the collage involves both listening widely to a number of elements in the archive and listening iteratively in the selection and editing processes. These, she contends, contribute not only to students’ increased engagement with the texts but also to an openness toward difference when the archival material is far from students’ experience and comfort zones

Connecticut Court Improvement Program Reassessment

In 2003, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau issued a program instruction that requires states to conduct a reassessment. The purpose of the reassessment is to update each state’s earlier assessment of court performance in processing child welfare cases and also to determine what progress has been made since the original assessments

Optimization of concrete mix design to account for strength and hydration heat in massive concrete structures

In the case of massive concrete structures, the heat generated by cement hydration may cause cracking due to thermal strains. The mix design of the concrete used for such structures has to take account of mechanicalproperties and generated temperatures. Using experimental design principles, the hydration heat and the development of compressive strength are measured in order to determine how the composition of concrete and the presence of SCM influence the characteristics of concrete and to create a mix design protocol. This protocol can help to determine which mix design minimizes the hydration temperature for a given compressive strength

Targeted Sub-Attomole Cancer Biomarker Detection Based on Phase Singularity 2D Nanomaterial-Enhanced Plasmonic Biosensor

Detection of small cancer biomarkers with low molecular weight and a low concentration range has always been challenging yet urgent in many clinical applications such as diagnosing early-stage cancer, monitoring treatment and detecting relapse. Here, a highly enhanced plasmonic biosensor that can overcome this challenge is developed using atomically thin two-dimensional phase change nanomaterial. By precisely engineering the configuration with atomically thin materials, the phase singularity has been successfully achieved with a significantly enhanced lateral position shift effect. Based on our knowledge, it is the first experimental demonstration of a lateral position signal change > 340 μm at a sensing interface from all optical techniques. With this enhanced plasmonic effect, the detection limit has been experimentally demonstrated to be 10–15 mol L−1 for TNF-α cancer marker, which has been found in various human diseases including inflammatory diseases and different kinds of cancer. The as-reported novel integration of atomically thin Ge2Sb2Te5 with plasmonic substrate, which results in a phase singularity and thus a giant lateral position shift, enables the detection of cancer markers with low molecular weight at femtomolar level. These results will definitely hold promising potential in biomedical application and clinical diagnostics

Oxidative protein folding in bacteria

Ten years ago it was thought that disulphide bond formation in prokaryotes occurred spontaneously. Now two pathways involved in disulphide bond formation have been well characterized, the oxidative pathway, which is responsible for the formation of disulphides, and the isomerization pathway, which shuffles incorrectly formed disulphides. Disulphide bonds are donated directly to unfolded polypeptides by the DsbA protein; DsbA is reoxidized by DsbB. DsbB generates disulphides de novo from oxidized quinones. These quinones are reoxidized by the electron transport chain, showing that disulphide bond formation is actually driven by electron transport. Disulphide isomerization requires that incorrect disulphides be attacked using a reduced catalyst, followed by the redonation of the disulphide, allowing alternative disulphide pairing. Two isomerases exist in Escherichia coli , DsbC and DsbG. The membrane protein DsbD maintains these disulphide isomerases in their reduced and thereby active form. DsbD is kept reduced by cytosolic thioredoxin in an NADPH-dependent reaction.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75150/1/j.1365-2958.2002.02851.x.pd

Mutation analysis and characterization of ATR sequence variants in breast cancer cases from high-risk French Canadian breast/ovarian cancer families

BACKGROUND: Ataxia telangiectasia-mutated and Rad3-related (ATR) is a member of the PIK-related family which plays, along with ATM, a central role in cell-cycle regulation. ATR has been shown to phosphorylate several tumor suppressors like BRCA1, CHEK1 and TP53. ATR appears as a good candidate breast cancer susceptibility gene and the current study was designed to screen for ATR germline mutations potentially involved in breast cancer predisposition. METHODS: ATR direct sequencing was performed using a fluorescent method while widely available programs were used for linkage disequilibrium (LD), haplotype analyses, and tagging SNP (tSNP) identification. Expression analyses were carried out using real-time PCR. RESULTS: The complete sequence of all exons and flanking intronic sequences were analyzed in DNA samples from 54 individuals affected with breast cancer from non-BRCA1/2 high-risk French Canadian breast/ovarian families. Although no germline mutation has been identified in the coding region, we identified 41 sequence variants, including 16 coding variants, 3 of which are not reported in public databases. SNP haplotypes were established and tSNPs were identified in 73 healthy unrelated French Canadians, providing a valuable tool for further association studies involving the ATR gene, using large cohorts. Our analyses led to the identification of two novel alternative splice transcripts. In contrast to the transcript generated by an alternative splicing site in the intron 41, the one resulting from a deletion of 121 nucleotides in exon 33 is widely expressed, at significant but relatively low levels, in both normal and tumoral cells including normal breast and ovarian tissue. CONCLUSION: Although no deleterious mutations were identified in the ATR gene, the current study provides an haplotype analysis of the ATR gene polymorphisms, which allowed the identification of a set of SNPs that could be used as tSNPs for large-scale association studies. In addition, our study led to the characterization of a novel Δ33 splice form, which could generate a putative truncated protein lacking several functional domains. Additional studies in large cohorts and other populations will be needed to further evaluate if common and/or rare ATR sequence variants can be associated with a modest or intermediate breast cancer risk

The USDA Summer Food Service Program in Coös County, New Hampshire

In this report, author Jean Bessette examines the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) operating in 2017 in four communities in Coös County, New Hampshire. She reports that the SFSP provides benefits to Coös County on multiple levels. For children, it ensures the availability of nutritious meals in the summer when school meal programs are not operating; for parents, it helps to alleviate pressure on food budgets; and for communities, it helps to ameliorate the impacts of poverty and lack of economic growth and development. Successful strategies to increase participation in summer food programs include providing bus services to transport children to sites and leveraging non-federal funding to provide meals for adults, thereby increasing the participation of children and youth. Sponsors in Coös County report that the requirements of summer food programs can be frustrating at times. For example, programs are not allowed to send leftover food home with children, and the paperwork can be burdensome. In some cases, program staff were confused or uncertain about program rules, such as procedures for handling leftover meals and snacks. Bessette concludes that expanding and funding more summer food sites and exploring and implementing other innovative strategies to provide food to children in the summer is vital in order to ensure that children grow and thrive