Perceived Support and Connectedness in Greek-letter Organizations During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The goal of this project is to assess whether or not students involved in the fraternity and sorority life community at The University of Southern Mississippi feel supported and connected in their respective chapters. To understand students’ perspectives in this area, a survey was developed. The survey included questions pertaining to the experiences of Greek-letter organization members with the chapter environment, efforts of chapter leadership, and personal feelings of connectedness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey was sent out to all 26 fraternity and sorority chapter presidents at The University of Southern Mississippi, including the College Panhellenic Council, National Pan-Hellenic Council, and Interfraternity Council. A total of 149 responses were returned, 118 of which were analysis-eligible responses with a duration of more than 240 seconds (4 minutes). Results indicated that organizational trust and organizational satisfaction are predictors of satisfaction in organizational COVID-19 response. This research contributes to the fraternity and sorority experience by providing insight into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the chapter’s response to it as well as what variables are necessary for chapter satisfaction

The working papers of Iona and Peter Opie

The present article considers the papers at the Bodleian Libraries, specifically the Opies' primary and secondary data relating to children's verbal art and play. A finding aid for the Opie Working Papers was compiled in 2011, and the material itself is available for consultation onsite in Oxford. A project entitled "Childhoods and Play: An Archive" has recently been set up to seek funding for the full cataloging and digitization of the Opie papers and, subject to the necessary permission, to make them freely available online for academic, educational, and community purposes. The project has been granted British Academy Research Project status (2012-17) and is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, the University of London Institute of Education, the Bodleian Libraries, the British Library, and the Folklore Society

Gender-based violence and gender stereotyping in international law

Includes bibliographical references.As Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, suggests, women who are empowered “understand that they are not destined to subordination and violence; they resist oppression; and they develop their capabilities as autonomous beings and they increasingly question the terms of their existence in both public and private spheres.” By altering stereotypes and empowering women, GBV could be prevented from occurring in the first place, and discrimination and inequality could be mitigated or, hopefully, eradicated. Women’s human rights, and women in general, have been consistently marginalized in international and regional binding documents. This, in many ways, is a product of the stereotype that women are less important than men, and that their rights should therefore be accorded less significance – a twisted logic that only leads to women being further marginalized. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that in order to eradicate GBV in times of so-called peace, it is essential that discriminatory stereotypes of women be altered. This dissertation will examine stereotyping as an underlying cause of GBV, and whether the international and regional normative frameworks provide sufficient protections for women in regards to GBV. There will also be discussion about whether or not States comply with the obligations that do exist, and how States have (or have not) altered the behaviours and attitudes which characterize a stereotyped view of gender roles

The James Madison Carpenter collection of traditional song and drama

James Madison Carpenter (1888-1983) was until recently a relatively unknown figure in the history of Anglo-American folksong and British folk play scholarship (Jabbour 1998; Bishop 1998). Born and bred in Mississippi, he was university-educated and worked as a minister and teacher prior to entering Harvard in 1920 to do a Ph.D. in English. Under the supervision of George Lyman Kittredge, he wrote a thesis on "Forecastle Songs and Chanties," based on fieldwork with retired seamen in the United States and in ports that he visited in the summer of 1928 on a Dexter scholarship around England, Scotland, and Ireland. After gaining his doctorate in 1929, and encouraged by Kittredge, Carpenter returned to Britain in order to continue fieldwork. Armed with a portable typewriter and a Dictaphone cylinder machine, he bought a car and struck off northwards up the east coast (Figure 2).1Not

Managing Forests and Water for People under a Changing Environment

The Earth has entered the Anthropocene epoch and forest managers are facing unprecedented challenges to meet multiple ecosystem service demands from forests. Understanding the complex forest-water relations under a changing environment must add a human dimension, and this is essential in the move towards sustainable forest management in the 21st century. This Special Issue contains 10 papers presented at a joint international forest and water conference in Chile in 2018. These studies provide global examples on new advancements in sciences in forest ecohydrology, watershed management, and ecosystem service assessment under various geographical and socioeconomic settings

Reasons for Rhythm: Multimodal Perspectives on Musical Play

This chapter describes and analyses aspects of musical play at the two primary schools involved in the research. We are concerned not only with sound but also with other modes of communication, especially sight, gesture and touch, in musical play. There has long been recognition that music’s essentially sonic nature is closely allied to speech, gesture and movement (Tagg 2002) and there is a growing literature on music and gesture as well as music and language (Gritten & King 2006; Godøy & Leman 2010; Gritten & King 2011)

State-of-the-art in studies of glacial isostatic adjustment for the British Isles: a literature review

Understanding the effects of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) of the British Isles is essential for the assessment of past and future sea-level trends. GIA has been extensively examined in the literature, employing different research methods and observational data types. Geological evidence from palaeo-shorelines and undisturbed sedimentary deposits has been used to reconstruct long-term relative sea-level change since the Last Glacial Maximum. This information derived from sea-level index points has been employed to inform empirical isobase models of the uplift in Scotland using trend surface and Gaussian trend surface analysis, as well as to calibrate more theory-driven GIA models that rely on Earth mantle rheology and ice sheet history. Furthermore, current short-term rates of GIA-induced crustal motion during the past few decades have been measured using different geodetic techniques, mainly continuous GPS (CGPS) and absolute gravimetry (AG). AG-measurements are generally employed to increase the accuracy of the CGPS estimates. Synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) looks promising as a relatively new technique to measure crustal uplift in the northern parts of Great Britain, where the GIA-induced vertical land deformation has its highest rate. This literature review provides an in-depth comparison and discussion of the development of these different research approaches

Study of the female sex survival advantage in melanoma—a focus on x-linked epigenetic regulators and immune responses in two cohorts

Background: Survival from melanoma is strongly related to patient sex, with females having a survival rate almost twice that of males. Many explanations have been proposed but have not withstood critical scrutiny. Prior analysis of different cancers with a sex bias has identified six X-linked genes that escape X chromosome inactivation in females and are, therefore, potentially involved in sex differences in survival. Four of the genes are well-known epigenetic regulators that are known to influence the expression of hundreds of other genes and signaling pathways in cancer. Methods: Survival and interaction analysis were performed on the skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) cohort in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), comparing high vs. low expression of KDM6A, ATRX, KDM5C, and DDX3X. The Leeds melanoma cohort (LMC) on 678 patients with primary melanoma was used as a validation cohort. Results: Analysis of TCGA data revealed that two of these genes—KDM6A and ATRX—were associated with improved survival from melanoma. Tumoral KDM6A was expressed at higher levels in females and was associated with inferred lymphoid infiltration into melanoma. Gene set analysis of high KDM6A showed strong associations with immune responses and downregulation of genes associated with Myc and other oncogenic pathways. The LMC analysis confirmed the prognostic significance of KDM6A and its interaction with EZH2 but also revealed the expression of KDM5C and DDX3X to be prognostically significant. The analysis also confirmed a partial correlation of KDM6A with immune tumor infiltrates. Conclusion: When considered together, the results from these two series are consistent with the involvement of X-linked epigenetic regulators in the improved survival of females from melanoma. The identification of gene signatures associated with their expression presents insights into the development of new treatment initiatives but provides a basis for exploration in future studies

Social Value Procurement in Policy Creation: Development of a Social Value Framework for Public Procurement Systems

In conjunction with academia and local government, Data Performance Consultancy Ltd. (DPC) is developing a Smart Social Value Procurement Platform (WASP – Workflow Analytics and Social Procurement). The aim of WASP is to electronically connect suppliers to local authorities, where the value will be delivered by superseding the current manual input systems with an online model. Furthermore, it will generate benefits from an included social value matrix, which defines and measures social value within the procurement process of the public sector

Expert Review of the MyCoast Application

Final Project for INST490: Integrated Capstone for Information Science (Spring 2021). University of Maryland, College Park.The MyCoast app is a mobile and web-based application used by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to document and analyze pictures and data of flooding caused by precipitation and coastal events. The data it collects is used for various purposes, including visualizing impacts of flood events, as well as enhancing awareness of flood events among Maryland residents. This project’s goal was to create an expert review of the MyCoast application. Initially, the goal was to create wireframes and a new schema for the app. After discussion, the goal shifted to interviewing people with different backgrounds (who work in sector, peers, etc.) and creating a list of recommendations from our findings. This report reviews the MyCoast application and end-user feedback on app functionality and user experience, makes recommendations for improvements to the app and recommendations for improvements to end-user documentation to improve the user experience and data quality.Maryland Department of Natural Resource