Obituary: Ross McDonald Parish (1928 - 2001)

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Human Dignity in the Light of Humanism and the New Testament

This study investigates the concept of human dignity in the light of the philosophy of humanism and of the New Testament. The thesis is aimed at examining, analyzing, and evaluating the humanistic views for their philosophical and practical worth; and comparing, contrasting, and harmonizing the good in them with those ideas in the New Testament which parallel them

Reassessing the Effects of Unemployment Insurance Generosity on Search Intensity: New Evidence from Earnings Histories

This paper provides the first nationally representative estimates of how unemployment insurance (UI) generosity in the United States affects the search intensity of unemployed individuals using individual level variation in UI generosity. The paper expands the current literature through fully simulating monetary eligibility and entitlement to unemployment insurance at the individual level where past studies have been unable to examine monetary eligibility and have relied on state variations in the maximum weekly benefit amount which can differ significantly from an individual’s actual benefit amount. To simulate monetary eligibility and entitlement, work histories of unemployed respondents were obtained through fully matching American Time Use Survey respondents to all of their observations in the Current Population Survey, the population from which they are drawn. The results suggest that higher replacement rates are associated with large reductions in time spent searching for a job during normal economic conditions. However, the results are more mitigated during the Great Recession and post recession period with higher replacement rates being associated with small and statistically insignificant effects on time spent searching for a job, although these results appear to be partially driven by the years 2009 and 2010 which were at the height of the labor market decline

Association between obesity and bacterial vaginosis as assessed by Nugent score

Background Bacterial vaginosis is one of the most common vaginal conditions in the U.S. Recent studies have suggested obese women have an abnormal microbiota reminiscent of BV; however, few studies have investigated the prevalence of bacterial vaginosis in overweight and obese populations. Moreover, despite the increased prevalence of obesity and bacterial vaginosis in black women, it is not known whether racial disparities exist in the relationship between obesity and bacterial vaginosis. Objective The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between body mass index and bacterial vaginosis as determined by Nugent score and to determine the influence of race in this context. Study Design We performed a cross-sectional study using patient data and vaginal smears from 5,918 participants of the Contraceptive CHOICE Project. Gram stained vaginal smears were scored using the Nugent method and categorized as BV-negative (Nugent score 0-3), BV-intermediate (Nugent score 4-6), or BV-positive (Nugent score 7-10). Body mass index was determined using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and obese individuals were categorized as Class I, II, or III obese based on NIH and World Health Organization body mass index parameters. Linear regression was used to model mean differences in Nugent scores and Poisson regression with robust error variance was used to model prevalence of bacterial vaginosis. Results In our cohort, 50.7% of participants were black, 41.5% were white, and 5.1% were of Hispanic ethnicity with an average age of 25.3 years old. Overall, 28.1% of participants were bacterial vaginosis-positive. Bacterial vaginosis was prevalent in 21.3% of lean, 30.4% of overweight, and 34.5% of obese women (p<0.001). The distribution of bacterial vaginosis-intermediate individuals was similar across all body mass index categories. Compared to lean women, Nugent scores were highest among overweight and obese Class I women (adjusted mean difference; overweight 0.33 [95% CI 0.14, 0.51] and Class I obese 0.51 [95% CI 0.29, 0.72]). Consistent with this, overweight and obese women had a higher frequency of bacterial vaginosis compared to lean women, even after adjusting for variables including race. Among white women, the prevalence of BV was higher for overweight and Class I and Class II/III obese white women compared to lean white women, a phenomenon not observed among black women, suggesting an effect modification. Conclusion Overweight and obese women have higher Nugent scores and a greater occurrence of bacterial vaginosis compared to lean women. Black women have a greater prevalence of bacterial vaginosis independent of their body mass index compared to white women

Three Essays on Unemployment Insurance in the 21\u3csup\u3est\u3c/sup\u3e Century

My dissertation consists of three essays focusing on unemployment insurance (UI) and how it affects recipients. The first essay examines how UI generosity affects the search intensity of recipients through matching American Time Use Survey respondents to all of their observations in the Current Population Survey (CPS), the population from which they are drawn. Earnings from the CPS are then run through a benefit calculator that determines eligibility and benefit amounts which are used to determine how UI generosity affects search times. The second essay uses the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine how lesser known policies affecting UI eligibility of workers with limited earnings histories, part-time workers, voluntary job leavers, and expanding benefit amounts for individuals with children affect unemployment duration. The third essay examines how liquidity constraints affect the consumption smoothing benefits of UI. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1968-2012, I find that the consumption smoothing benefits of UI that past studies have found are primarily concentrated on the 27% of households that do not have other means of smoothing consumption. For these households, a 10 percentage-point increase in the replacement rate reduces the decline in consumption by between 3.5-4.9% using food consumption and 1.5-2.1% using imputed total consumption

Seeing Star Formation Regions with Gravitational Microlensing

We qualitatively study the effects of gravitational microlensing on our view of unresolved extragalactic star formation regions. Using a general gravitational microlensing configuration, we perform a number of simulations that reveal that specific imprints of the star forming region are imprinted, both photometrically and spectroscopically, upon observations. Such observations have the potential to reveal the nature and size of these star forming regions, through the degree of variability observed in a monitoring campaign, and hence resolve the star formation regions in distant galaxies which are too small to be probed via more standard techniques.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, ApJ accepte

Mitochondria (and other cytoplasmic structures) in tissue cultures

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The Einstein Ring 0047-2808 Revisited: A Bayesian Inversion

In a previous paper, we outlined a new Bayesian method for inferring the properties of extended gravitational lenses, given data in the form of resolved images. This method holds the most promise for optimally extracting information from the observed image, whilst providing reliable uncertainties in all parameters. Here, we apply the method to the well studied optical Einstein ring 0047-2808. Our results are in broad agreement with previous studies, showing that the density profile of the lensing galaxy is aligned within a few degrees of the light profile, and suggesting that the source galaxy (at redshift 3.6) is a binary system, although its size is only of order 1-2 kpc. We also find that the mass of the elliptical lensing galaxy enclosed by the image is (2.91$\pm$0.01)$\times10^{11}$ M_{\sun}. Our method is able to achieve improved resolution for the source reconstructions, although we also find that some of the uncertainties are greater than has been found in previous analyses, due to the inclusion of extra pixels and a more general lens model.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap