Archaeological Research at the Wilson-Durham-Chandler Site

Work conducted by the Center for Archaeological Studies, under contract with the Wilson Pottery Foundation, and sponsored by that foundation with a grant from the Texas Historical Commission, was undertaken in 2007-2009 to document and conserve the remains of the Wilson-Durham-Chandler site, protecting the location of important socioeconomic transitions following the Civil War. Today, these material remains, along with other significant locations in Seguin including the other Wilson sites, the Capote community church, cemetery, and schoolhouse, and the Wilson Pottery Museum (under construction for a future opening) all function to link members of modern society with important people and events of the past. In this way, this project has sought to fulfill archaeological goals of documentation and conservation, but also to perform a social role for archaeology in providing and protecting material remains of the past so that people today can use them to understand their origins, contemplate this country’s history, and shape present-day social identity

Governing the constructs of life: what constitutes ‘good’ governance?

This thesis explores contrasting perspectives on what constitutes 'good governance' for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. It asks whether there are systematic differences between perspectives of UK and US policy actors and what kinds of patterns are discernible. Biomedical technologies like hESCs generate complex interactions between public values, institutional interests, societal expectations and technological uncertainties. These pose serious governance challenges. Under such conditions, diverse aspects and implications of risk, ambiguity and uncertainty come into focus. We need appraisal processes that address these issues by combining quantitative and qualitative dimensions to 'open up' divergent governance framings. The research framework employed here uses and further develops one such elicitation and analysis process called Multicriteria Mapping (MCM). MCM combines qualitative sensitivity with quantitative precision, while also aiding transparency and reflexivity in documenting and understanding diverse stakeholder perspectives. We therefore address 'good' governance both as an analytical subject and as a rationale for testing a novel form of appraisal. The analysis discerns systematic patterns in perspectives on good governance across national contexts and between stakeholders, identifying several points of convergence and divergence. We examine underlying rationales behind individual perspectives, obtaining empirical support for recent theoretical arguments concerning technology appraisal and democratic deliberation. We find national policy literatures make greater use of moral and ethical language to frame governance challenges, by comparison with stakeholders' emphasis on institutional and socio-political factors. This suggests a more critical and cautious stance is needed towards the legitimatory language of 'bioethics' in policy making. Finally, we explore some of the normative implications for governance of culturally sensitive and scientifically uncertain issues. By providing reflexive explanations of factors influencing perspectives of policy actors, this thesis makes a number of interlinked theoretical, methodological, empirical and normative contributions to understanding of how good governance of biomedical technologies is and should be conducted

Characteristics of Subjects Who Avoid Activities and Participation due to a Fear of Falling in Parkinson’s Disease

Background and Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) exhibiting fear of falling avoidance behavior to those with no fear of falling avoidance behavior. Because avoidance behavior can have deleterious downstream consequences, it is important to determine what potentially mitigated physical and psychological factors are associated with it. Subjects: Fifty-six community dwelling individuals (age=72.1 years, SD=9.6; males=42, females=14) with PD (Hoehn and Yahr Scale stage median=2.0, mode=3.0) were classified into two groups using the Fear of Falls Avoidance Behavior Questionnaire (FFABQ): avoiders (n=26, ≥20 FFABQ), and non-avoiders (n=30, \u3c20 on the FFABQ). Methods: Avoiders and non-avoiders were compared using five domains: demographics (age, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), education), PD (Parkinson’s Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS), Hoehn and Yahr Scale, Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39)), balance and falls (fall history, Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Activities Specific Balance Scale (ABC)), physical performance (2-minute step test (2MST), 30 second Sit to Stand Test (30STS), Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT), ActivPAL physical activity monitor data), and psychological factors (Zung Anxiety Scale (ZAS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)). Results: There were no differences between avoiders and non-avoiders in age, gender, SES, education, year of diagnosis, and fall history, including injurious falls (ps\u3e0.272). Avoiders had worse scores on the MDS-UPDRS (sections I-III, ps\u3c0.014) and the PDQ (mobility, ADLs, emotion, stigma, cognition, and bodily discomfort subscales, ps\u3c0.028). Avoiders also exhibited poorer balance performance and less balance iv confidence (BBS, p=0.003; ABC, p\u3c0.001; FES, p=0.048). Avoiders reported higher depression, anxiety, and catastrophization (BDI, p=0.015; ZAS, p=0.028; CAFS, p=0.001; CoFQ, p\u3c0.001). Discussion: Results of this study suggest that individuals with PD who report higher avoidance behaviors have more involved PD symptoms, score lower for balance, strength and conditioning, and have greater psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, and catastrophization. There were no differences in fall history between the two groups, presumably because avoiders may have avoided activities that increase the risk for a potential fall. While these findings suggest that avoidance behavior has both physical and psychological dimensions, the cause-effect relationship cannot be determined

The Occupation of Driving: A Guide for Occupational Therapists Working with Adolescents Who Have ADHD

Driving is a rite of passage for all teens with or without a disability. Individuals with ADHD are at a far greater risk of being in an accident or receiving a traffic violation as a compared to their developmental counterparts. In addition, parents and practitioners are often unaware of an individual’s readiness to drive skills prior to receiving formal driver’s education. Thus, this can be a stressful transition or learning process with individuals with ADHD and their families. For parents, practitioners, and teens, it is important that they understand the resources available to them and the steps to access those resources in order to promote safe participation in the occupation of driving. After an initial literature review and additional research, the authors decided to create a driving resource guide for occupational therapists, families, and teens to assist these individuals in addressing factors that impact occupational engagement in driving. The guide provides them with support, education, and additional resources for program development. The methodology for the development of the resource guide was a review of skills needed for readiness to drive, and provides a review of current driving resources. The resource guide was designed for use by an occupational therapist to bridge the gap in communication between occupational therapy practitioners and individuals with ADHD and their families in relation to readiness to drive. The reproducible handouts from the guide can be given to parents prior to the first occupational therapy visit. The resource guide includes information on communicating with parents and teens, role of OT, value of occupation of driving, screening and assessments, professional development resources, and program development resources

Inhibitory Receptor Signaling Destabilizes Immunological Synapse Formation in Primary NK Cells

Upon engagement of their cognate class I major histocompatibility complex ligands, receptors containing immunotyrosine-based inhibitory motifs (ITIMs) transduce signals that block cytolytic and inflammatory responses. In this manner, ITIM-coupled receptors play a crucial role in maintaining natural killer (NK) cell tolerance toward normal, healthy tissue. A number of studies, mostly using immortalized NK cell lines, have demonstrated that ITIM signaling functions by disrupting the cytolytic immunological synapse formed between an NK cell and its target. However, more recent imaging experiments using primary NK cells have suggested that inhibitory receptor engagement does not antagonize contact formation, casting doubt on the hypothesis that ITIM signals destabilize the synapse. To resolve this issue, we analyzed primary NK cell activation and contact formation on supported lipid bilayers containing controlled combinations of activating and inhibitory ligands. Under these conditions, we observed that ITIM signaling clearly inhibited adhesion, cell arrest, and calcium influx, three hallmarks of synapse formation. These results are consistent with previous reports showing that inhibitory receptors deliver a “reverse stop” signal, and confirm that ITIM signaling functions at least in part by destabilizing cytolytic synapse formation

A large predatory reef fish species moderates feeding and activity patterns in response to seasonal and latitudinal temperature variation

Climate-driven increases in ocean temperatures are expected to affect the metabolic requirements of marine species substantially. To mitigate the impacts of increasing temperatures in the short-term, it may be necessary for ectothermic organisms to alter their foraging behaviour and activity. Herein, we investigate seasonal variation in foraging behaviour and activity of latitudinally distinct populations of a large coral reef predator, the common coral trout, Plectropomus leopardus, from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. P. leopardus exhibited increased foraging frequency in summer versus winter time, irrespective of latitude, however, foraging frequency substantially declined at water temperatures >30 degrees C. Foraging frequency also decreased with body size but there was no interaction with temperature. Activity patterns were directly correlated with water temperature; during summer, the low-latitude population of P. leopardus spent up to 62% of their time inactive, compared with 43% for the high-latitude population. The impact of water temperature on activity patterns was greatest for larger individuals. These results show that P. leopardus moderate their foraging behaviour and activity according to changes in ambient temperatures. It seems likely that increasing ocean temperatures may impose significant constraints on the capacity of large-bodied fishes to obtain sufficient prey resources while simultaneously conserving energy

Cross-study analyses of microbial abundance using generalized common factor methods

By creating networks of biochemical pathways, communities of micro-organisms are able to modulate the properties of their environment and even the metabolic processes within their hosts. Next-generation high-throughput sequencing has led to a new frontier in microbial ecology, promising the ability to leverage the microbiome to make crucial advancements in the environmental and biomedical sciences. However, this is challenging, as genomic data are high-dimensional, sparse, and noisy. Much of this noise reflects the exact conditions under which sequencing took place, and is so significant that it limits consensus-based validation of study results. We propose an ensemble approach for cross-study exploratory analyses of microbial abundance data in which we first estimate the variance-covariance matrix of the underlying abundances from each dataset on the log scale assuming Poisson sampling, and subsequently model these covariances jointly so as to find a shared low-dimensional subspace of the feature space. By viewing the projection of the latent true abundances onto this common structure, the variation is pared down to that which is shared among all datasets, and is likely to reflect more generalizable biological signal than can be inferred from individual datasets. We investigate several ways of achieving this, and demonstrate that they work well on simulated and real metagenomic data in terms of signal retention and interpretability