Comprehensive Overview of Causative Agents of Alzheimer\u27s Disease: Tau Protein and Amyloid Betas With Their Biochemical Pathways and Proposed Treatments Including Cost Analysis

Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease found within the brain, interfering with neuron function, eventually leading to widespread atrophy. The disease effects millions of Americans with neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid beta plaques, both protein deposits with unclear causes. The goal for this thesis was not only to understand how these proteins form but how to safely interfere with their production. This was completed by a comprehensive overview of the form of the buildups and their precursors, tau proteins and amyloid beta precursor protein, respectively. An emphasis was put on the molecular biology and genetic causes of the amyloids rather than the large-scale symptomatic results. With a systematic review of scientific results and findings, a hypothesis was formed on how these proteins aggregate and techniques that cannot only treat but prevent the proteins, along with an analysis of treatment costs

Integrating the Bullet Physics engine into Minecraft

During the past fall semester, I started a programming project called Rayon which is designed to be a realistic physics engine implementation that runs alongside the videogame Minecraft. It is a library which Minecraft mod developers can use to implement realistic entity movement into their own mods. Rayon, being entirely written in the Java programming language, currently uses a port of the Bullet physics engine called JBullet which is very outdated and no longer being maintained. To find a more performant solution, I have set out to replace JBullet with an alternative library called LibBulletJME which is designed to interface with the original Bullet library written in C++ (generally a faster programming language)

Community Assisted Fundraiser for Camp Rainbow Gold

My service learning project was a garage sale using items donated by my local community. I gave 100% of the funds generated to Camp Rainbow Gold, a local charity that focuses their efforts on supporting children who have been directly impacted by childhood cancer, and their families. Camp Rainbow Gold is currently fundraising for their Hidden Paradise Project, which will be Idaho’s first medical camp aimed at providing a space for children and their families affected by childhood cancer to heal. I held the event on November 12th and solicited donations from my local community through online sources such as Nextdoor and Craigslist, as well as word of mouth through friends, family and workplaces

An Outcome Evaluation of CHOICES: A Brief Alcohol Abuse Prevention Program at Georgia State University

Program Description CHOICES: A Brief Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Harm Reduction Program, is a research-based intervention program that can assist college students in making safer choices as it relates to alcohol consumption. Students in CHOICES are informed of the risks associated with alcohol use and are provided with the tools and strategies necessary for reducing these risks. Students who complete CHOICES leave with the knowledge and strategies that are required to modify risky drinking behavior and reduce negative consequences related alcohol consumption. Evaluation Questions The purpose of the evaluation was to determine how effective is the CHOICES program. Program effectiveness was measured through the assessment of student’s change in background knowledge, knowledge of health related risks associated with alcohol consumption, and attitudes towards excesive drinking. Student’s perceived effectiveness of the program and their likelihood to modify their behavior was also assessed. Below are the five evaluation questions: Do students display an increase in background knowledge of alcohol consumption? Do students display an increased knowledge of health-related risks associated with alcohol consumption? Do students display a change in attitudes towards excessive drinking? Do students consider the CHOICES Program an effective alcohol abuse prevention program? Are students likely to modify their behavior as a result of the CHOICES Program? Methods There were 88 students mandated to participate in and complete Georgia State University’s CHOICES Program from May 2013 to December 2013. Of those 88 students, 83 of them completed pre- and post-tests, and 84 completed the de-identified evaluation. The data was entered directly into IBM’s SPSS Statistics Desktop Version 21. Reliability analyses were conducted to evaluate the internal consistency and reliability of the scales created to answer the evaluation questions. Frequencies were run on the responses from the pre-tests, post-tests and evaluations. A paired-samples t-test was used to compare mean scores of students before and after completing the CHOICES Program. An independent-samples t-test was used to compare the difference in mean scores between men and women. Key Findings Statistically significant findings suggests that CHOICES is an effective alcohol abuse prevention program. There was a statistically significant increase in background knowledge scores from the pre-test to the post-test. These results indicate that students who complete CHOICES display an increase in background knowledge of alcohol use. There was also a statistically significant increase in health knowledge scores from the pre-test to the post-test. This indicates that students who complete CHOICES display an increase in knowledge of health-related risk associated with alcohol consumption. Statistical significance was also found in the increase of student’s attitude scores from the pre-test to the post-test, indicating that students who complete CHOICES display a positive change in attitude towards excessive drinking. Over half of students gave CHOICES an overall rating of “excellent” and 38.6% gave it a rating of “good”. Also, 60.6% of students scored above a 28 on the Program Effectiveness Scale. These results indicate that students consider CHOICES an effective alcohol abuse prevention program. 60.7% of students reported that they would “definitely” change some aspect of their alcohol-related behavior as a result of the CHOICES Program. 29% reported “maybe”. These results indicate that the majority of students are likely to modify their behavior as a result of CHOICES. Students who participate in CHOICES leave the program with increased knowledge, a change in attitude towards excessive drinking and are motivated to make safer choices related to drinking

Afro-Ecuadorian Educational Movement: Racial Oppression, Its Origins and Oral Tradition

In this paper, three objectives are presented, first, to describe the socio-historical context of Afro-Ecuadorians generally and specifically related to education. Here, it is demonstrated how colonial and nation building practices and processes have attempted to silence and make absent the contributions people of African descent have made to development of the nation. Second, the Afro-Ecuadorian social movement is considered within the local, regional and global socio-historical context, and it is argued that the Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducación is part of a continuous struggle for freedom and inclusion in the nation as full citizens. The third area of analysis focuses on one Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducación program called Afro-Ecuadorian Oral Tradition Workshops. Here, the question what are the objectives of this program through analysis of the curricular materials is answered? Next, it is demonstrated the Taller Tradicion Oral Afro-Ecuatoriano (Afro-Ecuadorian Oral Tradition Workshops, aka, TTOA), an Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducation program is a response to the long history of oppression Afro-Ecuadorians have experienced and their particular location as colonial and national subjects within the nation. This research is based primarily on analysis of proposals and educational materials produced for the TTOA. It also utilizes an investigation of secondary sources, reports and studies that document and analyze these programs. And finally, this research builds on limited interviews and participant observation

How does a Believer Become Evangelical?: Using Habitus to Track the Transfer of Religious Meaning Across Social Contexts

Recent research on religion’s influence on civic life in the United States has focused predominantly on either studying the civic consequences of the rise of Evangelical Protestantism or focused on religion’s ability to promote civic engagement and social capital generally. These two lines of study run the risk of assuming the salience of particular theological beliefs across social contexts while also neglecting an attempt to understand how religious communities and belief can promote explicitly religious civic orientations. I build on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to propose a theoretical remedy for these shortcomings in the research. Using original survey data collected in Mainline Protestant congregations in a Midwest metropolitan area, I use binary logistic regression to test hypotheses which posit how the religious practices, non religious practices, and identities of Mainline Protestants may influence the likelihood of forming a religious civic orientation. Results show early support for the Bourdieuian theoretical framework, and suggest that prayer frequency and employment in the private sector may have a strong ability to influence Mainline Protestants’ civic orientations. I end by suggesting implications the findings have for the future of research on religious meaning’s ability to transfer across contexts into individuals’ orientations towards the civic sphere

A Failed Mission in Liberation: Japanese Women’s Enfranchisement and American Occupation

In this work, I survey the discourse of Japanese feminists in the early twentieth century to understand the ways in which they were working to attain full enfranchisement. I employ this brief survey to argue that their work, while altered by the chaos of total war, was most severely undermined by the American Occupation and democratization effort. Ultimately, I advocate that, though American occupation effectively granted women legislative rights, this foreign allocation meant that widespread and meaningful social change on the practical level never occurred

Desegregation and Multiculturalism in the Portland Public Schools

Helen Marie Casey’s booklet Portland’s Compromise: the Colored School, 1867–1872 recounts the story of William Brown, an African-American resident of Portland, Oregon, and his role in the first and only case of official segregation of African-American children in Portland Public Schools (PPS) in 1867. After unsuccessfully trying to enroll his children in one of Portland’s only two public elementary schools, Brown appealed to the school board, including directors Josiah Failing, W.S. Ladd, and E.D. Shattuck. Again, his children were denied access. The board of directors explained their resistance to integrated schools by saying: “If we admit them [African-American children], then next year we will have no money to run the schools.” According to Casey, the directors were “afraid to provoke the taxpayers and rouse their ire.”1 Rather than attempting such a politically “risky” effort, the school board eventually allocated $800 —$765 more than it had offered prior to Brown’s threat of a lawsuit — for a segregated school at the corner Southwest Fourth and Columbia. Twenty-six African-American students, twenty-one boys and five girls — many of whom had previously attempted to attend another public, or “free,” school in Portland but had been denied — enrolled in the school. The continued existence of the “Colored School” was constantly in question at annual school meetings. Funding for the school was abolished in 1872, and the next year, thirty African-American children were admitted to the newly integrated PPS

Population, Greenspace, and Development:Conversion Patterns in the Great Lakes Region

In this brief, authors Mark Ducey, Kenneth Johnson, Ethan Belair, and Barbara Cook combine demographic, land-cover, and other spatial data to estimate the incidence and extent of conversion from greenspace (forestland, shrublands, and grasslands) to development in the Great Lakes states. They report that greenspace conversions to developed land are most common in areas where greenspace is already limited. Population density strongly influences the conversion of greenspace to development. Conversions are most likely to occur on the urban periphery and in high-amenity rural areas. This research contributes to a better understanding of the linkages between demographic and land-cover change and provides facts that can inform policy aimed at balancing development and greenspace conservation