Re-Presenting Racist Objects: A Case Study of the Dentzel Carousel at Ontario Beach Park in Rochester, NY

Caricatures of African Americans and associated racist imagery, once commonplace in American life, have been used to display dominance and oppression over African Americans. These images were created in order to support the Jim Crow hierarchy, which white Southerners established in the late 1800s and upheld until the 1960s, with white people reigning at the top and black people at the bottom. This Southern social construct was not limited to this geographical area, but also influenced white opinions and attitudes towards the black population in the north as well. In part, white supremacy was maintained through the creation of everyday consumer objects to reinforce the idea that black people were inferior to white people. This tactic was used on any number of manufactures, such as on salt and pepper shakers, restaurant buildings and lawn ornaments, and was also seen in the visual culture during that time in TV shows, cartoons and commercials. Their relevance eventually became overlooked and the items fell out of favor in the post-Civil Rights era. Nonetheless, these objects still exist, and subsequently leave those that come across them wondering what we are supposed to do with such items. In this thesis, I have conducted a case study of one such situation. The focus of this case study is the racist imagery removed from an amusement park-like attraction in Rochester, New York, the Dentzel Carousel, in 2016 and the charge of a local institution, the Rochester Museum and Science Center, to create a display and interpretive plan surrounding it. This examination and the related analysis is based upon interviews with museum staff and members of the Rochester community as well as recent press clippings and documents regarding the controversy surrounding the carousel. I combine these with a review of museum ethics and recent approaches to exhibiting like materials to answer the following questions: What is the responsibility of a museum to its community in addressing and facilitating the display and interpretation of difficult content? How can these activities reclaim the past and re-present it within an appropriate context? While the topics researched in this paper center around racially sensitive objects and depictions of African Americans in particular, the discussion is applicable across other contexts

Quantitative Systems Pharmacology and Biased Agonism at Opioid Receptors: A Potential Avenue for Improved Analgesics

Chronic pain is debilitating and represents a significant burden in terms of personal and socio-economic costs. Although opioid analgesics are widely used in chronic pain treatment, many patients report inadequate pain relief or relevant adverse effects, highlighting the need to develop analgesics with improved efficacy/safety. Multiple evidence suggests that G protein-dependent signaling triggers opioid-induced antinociception, whereas arrestin-mediated pathways are credited with modulating different opioid adverse effects, thus spurring extensive research for G protein-biased opioid agonists as analgesic candidates with improved pharmacology. Despite the increasing expectations of functional selectivity, translating G protein-biased opioid agonists into improved therapeutics is far from being fully achieved, due to the complex, multidimensional pharmacology of opioid receptors. The multifaceted network of signaling events and molecular processes underlying therapeutic and adverse effects induced by opioids is more complex than the mere dichotomy between G protein and arrestin and requires more comprehensive, integrated, network-centric approaches to be fully dissected. Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) models employing multidimensional assays associated with computational tools able to analyze large datasets may provide an intriguing approach to go beyond the greater complexity of opioid receptor pharmacology and the current limitations entailing the development of biased opioid agonists as improved analgesics

Gesture and speech in maternal input to children with Down's syndrome

Background: Despite recent interest in relationships between maternal gesture and speech and communicative development in typically developing (M) children, little work has examined either speech or gesture in mothers of children with Down's syndrome (DS). Aims: To compare aspects of speech and gesture production by mothers of children with DS with that of mothers of TD children. Methods & Procedures: Participants were five mothers of children with DS (mean chronological age (CA)=47.6 months; mean mental age (MA,)=22.4 months) and five mothers of TD children. To equate for expressive language ability, children in the TD and DS groups were individually matched on the basis of: (1) gender; (2) correspondence between the TD child's chronological age and the DS child's language age; and (3) observed expressive vocabulary size. Each mother-child dyad was videotaped for approximately 30 min during free play. Data analyses focused on: (1) the number and types (speech only, gesture only, mixed) of maternal utterances; (2) the gesture types (deictic, iconic, conventional, emphatic); and (3) for mixed utterances, the structure and the temporal patterning of spoken and gestured components. Outcomes & Results: Relative to mothers of TD children, mothers of children with DS produced significantly fewer utterances overall, but the distribution of utterance types did not differ between the two groups. Relative to mothers of TD children, mothers of children with DS used proportionately more deictic gestures and made more frequent use of SHOWING. Mothers of TD children produced more POINTING gestures. Finally, mothers of children with DS produced a significantly higher proportion of utterances consisting of a single gesture and a single verbal utterance; in contrast to mothers of TD children, more complex structures (one gesture with multiple verbal utterances, one verbal utterance with multiple gestures) were never observed. Within the category of utterances consisting of a gesture and a single verbal utterance, mothers of children with DS tended to produce gestures that were held throughout the complete verbal utterance, while the gestures of mothers of TD children tended to co-occur with only a portion of the utterance. Conclusions: The findings suggest that mothers of children with DS adjust their communication to the developmental status of their child. Results are discussed in terms of the role of gesture in maternal communication and in the regulation of mother-child interaction

UAV Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing of an Italian Mud Volcano

Extreme environments like active volcanoes exhibit many difficulties in being studied by in situ techniques. For exam-ple, during eruptions, summit areas are very hard to be accessed because of logistics problems and/or volcanic hazards. The use of remote sensing techniques in the last 20 years by satellite or airborne platforms has proven their capabilities in mapping and monitoring the evolution of volcanic activity. This approach has become increasingly important, as much interest is actually focused on understanding precursory signals to volcanic eruptions. In this work we verify the use of cutting-edge technology like unmanned flying system thermally equipped for volcanic applications. We present the results of a flight test performed by INGV in collaboration with the University of Bologna (Aerospace Division) by using a multi-rotor aircraft in a hexacopter configuration. The experiment was realized in radio controlled mode to overcome many regulation problems which, especially in Italy, limit the use of this system in autonomous mode. The overall goal was not only qualitative but also quantitative oriented. The system flew above an Italian mud volcano, named Le Salinelle, located on the lower South West flank of Mt. Etna volcano, which was chosen as representative site, providing not only a discrimination between hot and cold areas, but also the corresponding temperature values. The in-flight measurements have been cross-validated with contemporaneous in-situ acquisition of thermal data and from independent measurements of mud/water temperature

Cerebellar transcranial magnetic stimulation: The role of coil type from distinct manufacturers

BACKGROUND: Stimulating the cerebellum with transcranial magnetic stimulation is often perceived as uncomfortable. No study has systematically tested which coil design can effectively trigger a cerebellar response with the least discomfort. OBJECTIVE: To determine the relationship between perceived discomfort and effectiveness of cerebellar stimulation using different coils: MagStim (70 mm, 110 mm-coated, 110-uncoated), MagVenture and Deymed. METHODS: Using the cerebellar-brain inhibition (CBI) protocol, we conducted a CBI recruitment curve with respect to each participant's maximum tolerated-stimulus intensity (MTI) to assess how effective each coil was at activating the cerebellum. RESULTS: Only the Deymed double-cone coil elicited CBI at low intensities (-20% MTI). At the MTI, the MagStim (110 mm coated/uncoated) and Deymed coils produced reliable CBI, whereas no CBI was found with the MagVenture coil. CONCLUSION: s: The Deymed double-cone coil was most effective at cerebellar stimulation at tolerable intensities. These results can guide coil selection and stimulation parameters when designing cerebellar TMS studies