Slavery exacts an impossible price: John Quincy Adams and the Dorcas Allen case, Washington, DC

On August 22, 1837, a Georgetown resident sold Dorcas Allen and her four children to James H. Birch, a District of Columbia slave trader He transported them across the Potomac to Alexandria, Virginia to hold them in the largest slave pen in the District. They faced, most likely, passage on a slave coffle to Natchez or New Orleans. That same evening, Allen, who had married and been living unofficially in the District as a free Negro for a number of years, killed the two youngest children and was restrained from harming the others, after their terrified shrieks alerted someone nearby. On October 8, 1837, she appeared before the District Circuit Court in Alexandria and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. At her trial the following day, her attorneys called several witnesses who testified on her behalf, and the jury found her not guilty. James Birch reclaimed his now near valueless property and promptly advertised Allen and her two surviving children for sale at an auction house in downtown Washington. Seventy-year-old John Quincy Adams, then serving his fourth term as a Massachusetts congressman, noticed the advertisement and attended the auction. For the first time in his life, Adams witnessed the utter misery of a slave auction, and, after learning that Allen\u27s husband, Nathan, wished to purchase his wife and children, he pledged fifty dollars in aid. During the next few days, Adams became disturbed as he discovered the details of Allen\u27s trial and the questionable circumstances behind her sale to Birch. Already in the public limelight as the congressman who insisted on presenting abolitionist petitions to Congress despite the gag rule forbidding it, Adams agonized that his entanglements with the fate of a slave might cause his political ruin. Slavery Exacts An Impossible Price argues that the Allen case illustrates the tensions in the District of Columbia between the moral law and the codified law within the context of the antislavery and abolitionist petitions presented to Congress. It argues that her predicament connects directly to the ideological, legal, and moral questions which arose from the abolitionist petition campaign and the presence of the slave trade in the District. Every twist and complicated turn of Allen\u27s case, and its participants, shows how abstract political arguments about the legalities of slavery eventually became inseparable from moral and religious objections. As evidence, this dissertation relies principally on the unpublished diaries and letters of John Quincy Adams, cases involving African Americans in the District Circuit Court, early Republic insanity cases, census, church, and demographic records from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. As this case occurred a few years before the more commonly known Amistad controversy, it provides provocative insights into John Quincy Adams\u27s struggles with the morality and legalities of slavery. It also demonstrates the human cost involved in the long process behind the eventual Congressional ban of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, in comparison with studies that concentrate on abstract political partisan wrangling over the issue

University Chorale and Women\u27s Choir, Threaded with Stars

University Chorale and Women\u27s Choir perform a special program titled Threaded with Stars featuring a variety of choral works ranging from well-loved sacred and secular works to new, contemporary pieces and arrangements.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1053/thumbnail.jp

KSU Women\u27s Choir and ET Booth Middle School Bel Canto

The Kennesaw State University Women\u27s Choir, led by Dr. Alison Mann, present their fall concert with special guest ET Booth Middle School Bel Canto, led by Laura Martin.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/2238/thumbnail.jp

University Chorale and Women\u27s Choir, Behold, How Good

Under the direction of Dr. Alison Mann, University Chorale and Women\u27s Choir present a program titled Behold, How Good, featuring sacred and secular works from a wide variety of composers and arrangers in the choral music repertoire.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1010/thumbnail.jp

Quality of care: testing some measures in homes for elderly people

In this national study of 17 residential homes, 309 residents were interviewed, 264 members of staff completed an anonymous survey, and 228 relatives responded to a postal questionnaire. The data were collected between January andSeptember 1995. The aim of the study was to suggest promising measures of quality of care, looking particularly at depression as a possible indicator. It also served as a follow-up study of the Caring in Homes Initiative, although its timing ruled out evaluation of the impact of this development programme, because changes occurred in the homes before this study began. No strict definition of quality was adopted a priori, but a pragmatic approach was taken, addressing the perspectives of residents, health and social care professionals, home staff, managers, and relatives

Unification via intermediate symmetry breaking scales with the quartification gauge group

The idea of quark-lepton universality at high energies has been introduced as a natural extension to the standard model. This is achieved by endowing leptons with new degrees of freedom -- leptonic colour, an analogue of the familiar quark colour. Grand and partially unified models which utilise this new gauge symmetry SU(3)_\ell have been proposed in the context of the quartification gauge group SU(3)^4. Phenomenologically successful gauge coupling constant unification without supersymmetry has been demonstrated for cases where the symmetry breaking leaves a residual SU(2)_\ell unbroken. Though attractive, these schemes either incorporate ad hoc discrete symmetries and non-renormalisable mass terms, or achieve only partial unification. We show that grand unified models can be constructed where the quartification group can be broken fully [i.e. no residual SU(2)_\ell] to the standard model gauge group without requiring additional discrete symmetries or higher dimension operators. These models also automatically have suppressed nonzero neutrino masses. We perform a systematic analysis of the renormalisation-group equations for all possible symmetry breaking routes from SU(3)^4 --> SU(3)_q x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y. This analysis indicates that gauge coupling unification can be achieved for several different symmetry breaking patterns and we outline the requirements that each gives on the unification scale. We also show that the unification scenarios of those models which leave a residual SU(2)_\ell symmetry are not unique. In both symmetry breaking cases, some of the scenarios require new physics at the TeV scale, while others do not allow for new TeV phenomenology in the fermionic sector.Comment: 25 page

Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center To the Urban Fringe

Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center To the Urban Fringe is prepared by the Urban Agriculture Committee of the Community Food Security Coalition to raise awareness of the ways that urban agriculture can respond to food insecurity. The document advocates for policies that promote small-scale urban and peri-urban farming, and thereby prepare the next generation of urban farming leaders

Recovery of Nerve Function after Treatment for Childhood Cancer

Background Chemotherapeutic agents have been the backbone treatment for pediatric cancers. Unfortunately, a number of the chemotherapy medications have potential side effects, including chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). To measure the extent of CIPN, the Pediatric Modified Total Neuropathy Score (Peds-mTNS) has been shown to be a reliable and valid measure of CIPN in school-aged children and is associated with relevant functional limitations. However, future research is needed to describe the recovery of CIPN in children and adolescent cancer patients after treatment has ended. Purpose To analyze the trajectory of recovery for CIPN in school-aged children diagnosed with non-CNS cancers and to evaluate if diagnosis and treatment impact CIPN type and recovery. Methods Forty-seven subjects ranging in age from 5-18 years undergoing chemotherapy with vincristine or a combination of vincristine and intrathecal methotrexate participated in the study. Peds-mTNS scores as well as standardized balance and hand function measures were taken on treatment (at the anticipated peak of CIPN) and then 3 and 6 months post treatment. Descriptive statistics and one-way repeated measures ANOVA were run to compare subjects over time (on treatment, 3 months, and 6 months post). A 2-way III repeated measures ANOVA was run to compare mean Peds-mTNS scores for each diagnostic group over time. Results 18 subjects with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), 8 with Wilma’ tumor, 14 with non/Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 7 with other non-CNS cancers were evaluated. Across all subjects (n=47), Peds-mTNS scores decreased significantly over time (on treatment 9.5± 4.4, 3 months 5.8 ± 4.7, 6 months 4.3 ± 4.0, p\u3c 0.001), indicating an improvement in CIPN. Overall effect size, with Partial Eta Squared, was found to be large (0.609). Greatest individual measure effect size was shown in deep tendon reflex (.659). Of the diagnostic groups, patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma were found to have significantly less improvement on the Peds-mTNS than subjects with leukemia (6.4 ± 0.7 vs 2.2 ± 0.6 at 6 months, p\u3c0.05), even though their treatment time was shorter in duration and they received less vincristine. Conclusion Overall, the trajectory of recovery for pediatric cancer patients was found to be positive, resulting in significant improvements in CIPN symptoms over time post-treatment, although patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma were more likely to have residual neuropathy

Spring Concert Choral Ensembles

Join us (virtually) for an evening of performances by Women\u27s Choir, Men\u27s Ensemble, and University Chorale!https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/2382/thumbnail.jp