Lord Byron at the Armenian Monastery on San Lazzaro

George Gordon, Lord Byron, arrived in Venice on November 11, 1816, a bitter and unhappy man at age 28. He had left England on April 24 in a cloud of controversy and scandal attending the breakup of his short-lived and unsatisfactory marriage. Immediately after installing himself and his attendants in an apartment in Venice, the young poet sought solace and diversion, finding both in congenial social life and in what became an over-lapping series of ardent love affairs, all well known to the more tolerant Venetians. Eager, too, for mental exercise to distract him from his painful memories, Byron, with characteristic vigor, plunged into the study of the Armenian language. Byron\u27s brief Armenian episode and his association with the Armenian monks of the Mekhitarist Order on the island of San Lazzaro near Venice may be traced in an unusually large collection of books on Byron, constituting an important segment of John S. Mayfield\u27s library of more than 50,000 rare books and manuscripts, housed in the Syracuse University Library. The Mayfield collection includes several rare volumes relating specifically to this experience

Perfectly Good White Boy

Young adult author Carrie Mesrobian will visit Minnesota State University, Mankato on Friday, March 20 from 1-2 p.m. in Memorial Library’s Casual Learning Lab (ML 45) to discuss her most recently published book, “Perfectly Good White Boy.” The “meet the author” event is free and open to the public. Live streaming will be provided by Maverick Visual Productions and Library Services. “Perfectly Good White Boy” is a novel that delves into the world of adolescent boys. It’s about a high school boy’s senior year and the decisions he must make on his future. During the event, Mesrobian will read a passage from her book, and then Minnesota State Mankato Assistant Professor of English Geoff Herbach will interview Mesrobian about her book as well as the writing process. Attendees will also be encouraged to ask questions of the author. Mesrobian’s first book, titled “Sex & Violence,” garnered the author many accolades—Mesrobian was the recipient of the 2014 Minnesota Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a nominee for Young Adult Library Services Association’s 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults, and a finalist for both the 2014 William C. Morris YA and Cybils Best Young Adult Fiction awards. More information about Mesrobian and her books is available on her website, http://www.carriemesrobian.com

Hansel and Gretel

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

An Analysis of Primary Resources Used as Tools for Discovery and Research at Archaeological Sites: Nomini Hall Case Study

Primary documentation is of great help to archaeologists, no matter the site nor the circumstance. At places like Colonial Williamsburg, Belle Grove, Carter’s Grove and Nomini Hall, help has come through primary documentation in many different ways from journals to paintings, from maps to oral histories. It is true that the archaeological excavations at Nomini Hall for Philip Vickers Fithian’s schoolhouse have been confusing

Does working memory training affect decision making ? : a neuroeconomic study

We all make decisions of varying levels of importance every day. Because making a decision implies that there are alternative choices to be considered, almost all decision involves some conflicts or dissatisfaction. Traditional economic models esteem that a person must weight the positive and negative outcomes of each option, and based on all these inferences, determines which option is the best for that particular situation. However, individuals rather act as irrational agents and tend to deviate from these rational choices. They somewhat evaluate the outcomes' subjective value, namely, when they face a risky choice leading to losses, people are inclined to have some preference for risk over certainty, while when facing a risky choice leading to gains, people often avoid to take risks and choose the most certain option. Yet, it is assumed that decision making is balanced between deliberative and emotional components. Distinct neural regions underpin these factors: the deliberative pathway that corresponds to executive functions, implies the activation of the prefrontal cortex, while the emotional pathway tends to activate the limbic system. These circuits appear to be altered in individuals with ADHD, and result, amongst others, in impaired decision making capacities. Their impulsive and inattentive behaviors are likely to be the cause of their irrational attitude towards risk taking. Still, a possible solution is to administrate these individuals a drug treatment, with the knowledge that it might have several side effects. However, an alternative treatment that relies on cognitive rehabilitation might be appropriate. This project was therefore aimed at investigate whether an intensive working memory training could have a spillover effect on decision making in adults with ADHD and in age-matched healthy controls. We designed a decision making task where the participants had to select an amount to gamble with the chance of 1/3 to win four times the chosen amount, while in the other cases they could loose their investment. Their performances were recorded using electroencephalography prior and after a one-month Dual N-Back training and the possible near and far transfer effects were investigated. Overall, we found that the performance during the gambling task was modulated by personality factors and by the importance of the symptoms at the pretest session. At posttest, we found that all individuals demonstrated an improvement on the Dual N-Back and on similar untrained dimensions. In addition, we discovered that not only the adults with ADHD showed a stable decrease of the symptomatology, as evaluated by the CAARS inventory, but this reduction was also detected in the control samples. In addition, Event-Related Potential (ERP) data are in favor of an change within prefrontal and parietal cortices. These results suggest that cognitive remediation can be effective in adults with ADHD, and in healthy controls. An important complement of this work would be the examination of the data in regard to the attentional networks, which could empower the fact that complex programs covering the remediation of several executive functions' dimensions is not required, a unique working memory training can be sufficient. -- Nous prenons tous chaque jour des décisions ayant des niveaux d'importance variables. Toutes les décisions ont une composante conflictuelle et d'insatisfaction, car prendre une décision implique qu'il y ait des choix alternatifs à considérer. Les modèles économiques traditionnels estiment qu'une personne doit peser les conséquences positives et négatives de chaque option et en se basant sur ces inférences, détermine quelle option est la meilleure dans une situation particulière. Cependant, les individus peuvent dévier de ces choix rationnels. Ils évaluent plutôt les valeur subjective des résultats, c'est-à-dire que lorsqu'ils sont face à un choix risqué pouvant les mener à des pertes, les gens ont tendance à avoir des préférences pour le risque à la place de la certitude, tandis que lorsqu'ils sont face à un choix risqué pouvant les conduire à un gain, ils évitent de prendre des risques et choisissent l'option la plus su^re. De nos jours, il est considéré que la prise de décision est balancée entre des composantes délibératives et émotionnelles. Ces facteurs sont sous-tendus par des régions neurales distinctes: le chemin délibératif, correspondant aux fonctions exécutives, implique l'activation du cortex préfrontal, tandis que le chemin émotionnel active le système limbique. Ces circuits semblent être dysfonctionnels chez les individus ayant un TDAH, et résulte, entre autres, en des capacités de prise de décision altérées. Leurs comportements impulsifs et inattentifs sont probablement la cause de ces attitudes irrationnelles face au risque. Cependant, une solution possible est de leur administrer un traitement médicamenteux, en prenant en compte les potentiels effets secondaires. Un traitement alternatif se reposant sur une réhabilitation cognitive pourrait être appropriée. Le but de ce projet est donc de déterminer si un entrainement intensif de la mémoire de travail peut avoir un effet sur la prise de décision chez des adultes ayant un TDAH et chez des contrôles sains du même âge. Nous avons conçu une tâche de prise de décision dans laquelle les participants devaient sélectionner un montant à jouer en ayant une chance sur trois de gagner quatre fois le montant choisi, alors que dans l'autre cas, ils pouvaient perdre leur investissement. Leurs performances ont été enregistrées en utilisant l'électroencéphalographie avant et après un entrainement d'un mois au Dual N-Back, et nous avons étudié les possibles effets de transfert. Dans l'ensemble, nous avons trouvé au pré-test que les performances au cours du jeu d'argent étaient modulées par les facteurs de personnalité, et par le degré des sympt^omes. Au post-test, nous avons non seulement trouvé que les adultes ayant un TDAH montraient une diminutions stable des symptômes, qui étaient évalués par le questionnaire du CAARS, mais que cette réduction était également perçue dans l'échantillon des contrôles. Les rsultats expérimentaux mesurés à l'aide de l'éléctroencéphalographie suggèrent un changement dans les cortex préfrontaux et pariétaux. Ces résultats suggèrent que la remédiation cognitive est efficace chez les adultes ayant un TDAH, mais produit aussi un effet chez les contrôles sains. Un complément important de ce travail pourrait examiner les données sur l'attention, qui pourraient renforcer l'idée qu'il n'est pas nécessaire d'utiliser des programmes complexes englobant la remédiation de plusieurs dimensions des fonctions exécutives, un simple entraiment de la mémoire de travail devrait suffire

Clare Leighton’s Wood Engravings of English Country Life between the Wars

Clare Leighton's wood engravings of interwar English country life portray a rural culture barely touched by modernity, a domesticated landscape in which robust farm workers maintain a close relationship with the soil and its associated values of simplicity, stability, and diligence. Void of references to the hardships of rural life during a period of sustained agricultural depression and unprecedented rural commodification, the prints speak to a sense of order, permanence, peace, and purpose. At once imaginative and scrupulously accurate depictions of rural labor and craft, they nourish nostalgia and the preservationist impulse to record dying traditions. This study seeks to contextualize the images in their original purpose as book illustrations. A close reading of the books for which Leighton created the engravings shows that the text serves to idealize country life while also speaking to the disorders and anxieties of the turbulent 30s. The Farmer's Year (1933), Four Hedges (1935), and Country Matters (1937), mediate her various publishers' senses of the market and differing viewpoints with her personal and wider concerns. All voice a deep sense of loss for traditional modes of living that fulfill a range of criteria for the country life genre, yet each addresses distinct concerns relevant to changing cultural interests and anxieties in a period of uneasy peace between the world wars. The landscape becomes a stage against which can be expressed deep-seated communal and personal reaction to the destructive elements of mechanization as well as for advocating her strong humanitarian beliefs and modernist interests. Moving past debates about national identity, tradition and modernism, she sets out a basic doctrine for a peaceful, communal existence that rises above issues of race, class, and national interest: renewing an organic, symbiotic connection with nature and tending to the land, a creatively singular vision enabled by a sustained engagement with modernist formal means

Effect of Emotion and Personality on Deviation from Purely Rational Decision-Making

Human decision-making has consistently demonstrated deviation from "pure" rationality. Emotions are a primary driver of human actions and the current study investigates how perceived emotions and personality traits may affect decision-making during the Ultimatum Game (UG). We manipulated emotions by showing images with emotional connotation while participants decided how to split money with a second player. Event-related potentials (ERPs) from scalp electrodes were recorded during the whole decision-making process. We observed significant differences in the activity of central and frontal areas when participants offered money with respect to when they accepted or rejected an offer. We found that participants were more likely to offer a higher amount of money when making their decision in association with negative emotions. Furthermore, participants were more likely to accept offers when making their decision in association with positive emotions. Honest, conscientious, and introverted participants were more likely to accept offers. Our results suggest that factors others than a rational strategy may predict economic decision-making in the UG

Event-Related Potentials during a Gambling Task in Young Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by deficits in executive functions and decision making during childhood and adolescence. Contradictory results exist whether altered event-related potentials (ERPs) in adults are associated with the tendency of ADHD patients toward risky behavior. Clinically diagnosed ADHD patients ( javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement@5fb8b0ff = 18) and healthy controls ( javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement@76b3b68b = 18), aged between 18 and 29 (median 22 Yo), were screened with the Conners' Adult ADHD Rating Scales and assessed by the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview, adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, and by the 60-item HEXACO Personality Inventory. The characteristic personality traits of ADHD patients were the high level of impulsiveness associated with lower values of agreeableness. All participants performed a probability gambling task (PGT) with two frequencies of the feedback information of the outcome. For each trial, ERPs were triggered by the self-paced trial onset and by the gamble selection. After trial onset, N2-P3a ERP component associated with the attentional load peaked earlier in the ADHD group than in controls. An N500 component related to the feedback frequency condition after trial onset and an N400-like component after gamble selection suggest a large affective stake of the decision making and an emphasized post-decisional evaluation of the choice made by the ADHD participants. By combining ERPs, related to the emotions associated with the feedback frequency condition, and behavioral analyses during completion of PGT, this study provides new findings on the neural dynamics that differentiate controls and young ADHD adults. In the patients' group, we raise the hypothesis that the activity of frontocentral and centroparietal neural circuits drive the decision-making processes dictated by an impaired cognitive workload followed by the build-up of large emotional feelings generated by the conflict toward the outcome of the gambling choice. Our results can be used for new investigations aimed at studying the fine spatiotemporal distribution of cortical activity, and the neural circuits that underly the generation of that activity, associated with the behavioral deficits characteristic of ADHD

Search for 2νββ decay of ^(136)Xe to the 0^+^1 excited state of ^(136)Ba with the EXO-200 liquid xenon detector

EXO-200 is a single phase liquid xenon detector designed to search for neutrinoless ββ decay of ^(136)Xe to the ground state of ^(136)Ba. We report here on a search for the two-neutrino ββ decay of 136Xe to the first 0+ excited state, 0^+_1, of ^(136)Ba based on a 100 kg yr exposure of ^(136)Xe. Using a specialized analysis employing a machine learning algorithm, we obtain a 90% CL half-life sensitivity of 1.7 × 10^(24) yr. We find no statistically significant evidence for the 2νββ decay to the excited state resulting in a lower limit of T^(2ν)_(1/2)(0^+ → 0^+_1) > 6.9 ×10^(23) yr at 90% CL. This observed limit is consistent with the estimated half-life of 2.5 × 10^(25) yr