Considering the Function of Humanistic Imagery within the Court of Pope Julius II: The Stanza della Segnatura

The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between Christian and humanistic themes within the four large frescoes that Raphael painted in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace. Through this examination I plan to demonstrate how the interrelation of these two seemingly contradictory themes was critical for the political aims and papal identity of the patron, Pope Julius II. I will argue that Julius commissioned the decoration of the stanza as a means of asserting his papal authority and presenting an identification of himself as the new Julius Caesar who ushered in a new Roman Golden Age. I will discuss the composition and iconography of the frescoes, the life of Pope Julius II, and Roman humanism in the Early Modern Period, in an attempt to prove that the representation and collaboration of the themes of humanism and Christianity were essential to Julius’s political strategies and identity-formation

Nursing: A Healing Ministry

Nursing is a profession that involves caring for people from all different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, races, and religions. The world is full of unique individuals. One unifying factor for all people is that everyone has needs. In nursing, most of the care needs are physical and psychosocial needs. However, each person has spiritual needs. Nurses are expected to provide holistic care to their patients; thus the spiritual matters cannot be divorced from the physical and psychosocial ones. Since patients do need spiritual care, nurses have a unique opportunity to minister to these individuals. Nurses are also placed in a position that allows them to minister to the family and friends of their patients. Currently, some concerns focus on how nurses should care for spiritual needs. There have also been some suggestions made toward improving spiritual care. This thesis will explore why nursing should be a ministry and how to minister best to patients

The Ghosts of Bindings Past: Micro-Computed X-Ray Tomography for the Study of Bookbinding

This essay describes the results of a new application of micro-computed X-ray tomography (µCT) to conduct nondestructive investigations of the binding structures of premodern books. This application addresses a twofold challenge in the study of historic bindings and their construction. Few premodern books survive in their original bindings. Moreover, until recently, when books were rebound, the original structures were rarely documented, and the remains were usually discarded. Where original bindings do remain in situ, much of their structure is, by design, hidden. Particulars of construction may be surmised; but without destructive disbinding, little can be proven. µCT enables an exploratory, multilinear approach to codicological investigations that makes bindings accessible in the form of tractable volumetric data

Automated detection and tracking of marine mammals in the vicinity of tidal turbines using multibeam sonar

Funding: The monitoring platform was developed with funds from the Natural Environment Research Council (Grant Nos. NE/R015007/1 and NE/R014639/1). Software development and data analysis was funded by the Scottish Government as part of the Marine Mammal Scientific Support Program (Grant No. MMSS/002/15). Umbilical cables to the turbine infrastructure were funded and developed by SIMEC Atlantis.Understanding how marine animals behave around tidal turbines is essential if we are to quantify how individuals and populations may be affected by the installation of these devices in the coming decades. Our particular interest is in collision risk, and how this may be affected by the fine-scale behaviour of seals and small cetacean species around devices. We report on a study in which multibeam sonar data were collected close to an operational tidal turbine in Scotland continuously over a twelve-month period. The sonars provide high-resolution (a few cm) data over a 120° angle out to a range of 55 m at a rate of 10 frames per second. We describe a system which uses automatic computer algorithms to detect potential targets of interest, verified by human analysts using a sophisticated computer user interface to confirm detections and assign target species. To date, we have identified 359 tracks of marine mammals in the data, as well as several thousand tracks from fish and diving birds. These are currently being parameterised to study how these species react to the moving turbine rotors, and the data are now being used to explore the development of improved automated detection and classification algorithms.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Evaluation of a coastal acoustic buoy for cetacean detections, bearing accuracy and exclusion zone monitoring

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Maryland Offshore Wind Development Fund at the Maryland Energy Administration cosponsored this work. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government.There is strong socio-political support for offshore wind development in US territorial waters and construction is planned off several east coast states. Some of the planned development sites coincide with important habitat for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Both exclusion zones and passive acoustic monitoring are important tools for managing interactions between marine mammals and human activities. Understanding where animals are with respect to exclusion zones is important to avoid costly construction delays while minimizing the potential for negative impacts. Impact piling from construction of hundreds of offshore wind turbines likely require exclusion zones as large as 10 km. We have developed a three-hydrophone passive acoustic monitoring system that provides bearing information along with marine mammal detections to allow for informed management decisions in real-time. Multiple units form a monitoring system designed to determine whether marine mammal calls originate from inside or outside of an exclusion zone. In October 2021, we undertook a full system validation, with a focus on evaluating the detection range and bearing accuracy of the system with respect to right whale upcalls. Five units were deployed in Mid-Atlantic waters and we played more than 3500 simulated right whale upcalls at known locations to characterize the detection function and bearing accuracy of each unit. The modelled results of the detection function error were then used to compare the effectiveness of a bearing-based system to a single sensor that can only detect a signal but not ascertain directivity. Field trials indicated maximum detection ranges from 4-7.3 km depending on source and ambient noise levels. Simulations showed that incorporating bearing detections provide a substantial improvement in false alarm rates (6 to 12 times depending on number of units, placement and signal to noise conditions) for a small increase in the risk of missed detections inside of an exclusion zone (1%-3%). We show that the system can be used for monitoring exclusion zones and clearly highlight the value of including bearing estimation into exclusion zone monitoring plans while noting that placement and configuration of units should reflect anticipated ambient noise conditions.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Lifestyle Medicine-Related Cardiovascular Risk Factor Changes in Employees Participating in a Pharmacist-Run Risk Reduction Program

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death among American adults accounting for approximately one-third of all deaths. It has been shown, however, that the actual causes of death are related to lifestyle behaviors such as tobacco use, poor diet and physical activity and alcohol consumption. A pharmacist-run employee health program, started in 2008, sought to lower CVD risk through the use of individualized lifestyle behavior programming, medication therapy management, and care coordination activities. Following one year of participation in the program, employee participants were shown to significantly increase exercise quantity (p < 0.001), fruit and vegetable consumption (p < 0.001), and decrease self-reported stress level (p = 0.006). The percentage of program participants simultaneously adherent to the recommended levels of exercise, combined fruit and vegetable intake and tobacco abstinence at one-year was 34.5% vs. 5.5% at baseline. This compares with only 5.1% of the U.S. population adherent to the same three behaviors. Pharmacists can positively impact healthy lifestyle behaviors when working in an employee health setting

What’s Hiding in the Spine? A Study of Adhesives in Medieval Books Using Mass Spectrometry

Glues, and in particular glued spines, are notable features of late medieval European books, yet little research has been done into how they were sourced, produced, and used. In this article we present preliminary results from using the paleoproteomic methods of Electromagnetic Zooarchaeology through Mass Spectrometry (eZooMS) and Peptide Mass Fingerprinting (PMF) to identify the source species for animal glues used in late medieval books. We first introduce readers to the principal kinds of glue used in medieval craftsmanship and what is known about their use in bookbinding, principally from the discipline of book conservation. We describe the micro-sampling methods of eZooMS, in which a PVC eraser is rubbed gently on the surface of the book. We then describe the process through which we tested and fine-tuned our sampling methods on eight medieval books held in Canadian repositories, addressing some of the challenges we faced, potential further uses or expansions upon the technique, and the benefits of our collaborative approach to such “manuscientific” studies

Evaluation of the i3 Scale-up of Reading Recovery | Year One Report, 2011-12

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery (RR) teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child's literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the scale-up of Reading Recovery by training 3,675 new RR Teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding capacity to allow service to an additional 88,200 students.The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) was contracted to conduct an independent evaluation of the i3 scale up of Reading Recovery over the course of five years. The evaluation includes parallel rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs for estimating program impacts, coupled with a large-scale mixed-methods study of program implementation under the i3 scale-up. This report presents findings through the second year of the evaluation. The primary goals of this evaluation were: a) to assess the success of the scale-up in meeting the i3 grant's expansion goals; b) to document the implementation of scale-up and fidelity to program standards; and, c) to provide experimental evidence of the impacts of Reading Recovery on student learning under this scale-up effort