Cerebral Palsy in Ancient Egypt

Cerebral palsy not only existed in the ancient world, but it was portrayed artistically by the ancient Egyptians. This paper examines the history of cerebral palsy in ancient Egypt, and Greco-Roman medicinal understandings of the disability. It then posits that the ancient Egyptians described and portrayed their god Harpocrates as having this disability both textually and artistically. Finally, this paper concludes by examining what life was possibly like for those with this disability in the ancient world

A Web of Distortion: How Internet Use is Related to Cognitive Distortion, Personality Traits, and Relationship Dissatisfaction

Internet use is a growing trend among every segment of the population. There are many positive aspects of internet use, such as increased information sharing, communication, business opportunities, and education. However, excessive internet usage has been shown to have a number of deleterious effects on individuals, families, and relationships. Pathological internet use is a growing concern that can have numerous negative outcomes. This study has demonstrated the fact that specific types of internet use were associated with cognitive distortion, personality traits, and relationship satisfaction. Moreover, the number of hours of internet use by type was related to average, weekly, total number of hours of internet use. A difference was also found between users and nonusers of internet pornography. The findings from this study can be used to further develop screening instruments, inform clinical practice, and improve treatment guidelines so that individuals with pathological internet use can be identified and treated

Renal angioplasty does not improve clinical outcomes compared to standard medical therapy in patients with atherosclerotic renal artery stenosis

A critical appraisal and clinical application of Cooper CJ, Murphy T, Cutlip D, Jamerson K, Henrich W. Stenting and medical therapy for atherosclerotic renal-artery stenosis. New Eng J Med. 2014;370(1):13-22. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1310753

Examining Relationships between Early Childcare Teachers\u27 Adult Attachment Orientations and Quality of Interaction in the Infant Classroom

Over the past several decades, women have entered the workforce in increasing numbers. This has led to the majority of infants and young children being cared for outside of the home by extra-familial caregivers. Research has shown the benefits that quality childcare can have on the developmental trajectories of children, as well as the detrimental effects that can be seen when children experience low quality care. Further, children are particularly vulnerable in the first year of life when they are establishing attachment bonds with their primary caregivers. With the long hours that many spend in the care of childcare workers, these teachers are likely serving as attachment figures for these infants. Identifying factors that contribute to quality care in childcare centers is essential to ensure the future well being of children. This study examined the relationship between infant teachers’ emotional characteristics, particularly their levels of anxiety and avoidance as they pertain to their adult attachment orientations and the quality of their interactions with the infants in their classrooms in observations using the CLASS-Infant. The study also examined the relationship between the teachers’ capacities for mentalization, as well as their personal beliefs about infant care, and the observed quality of interactions between them and the infants in their classrooms. 35 classrooms were included from two urban areas of Mississippi and Louisiana that contained 62 teachers. No clear pattern of association was found between the teachers’ emotional characteristics measured and scores on the CLASS observations. Challenges pertaining to observational studies in early childhood classrooms and implications for training and policy are discussed

Thinking Outside The Box: Computing 3D Volume in 2D

This project explores how to compute 3D volume of cardboard boxes in 2D without a calibrated camera. Computer vision techniques to obtain 3D volume typically require camera calibration, the standard method for mapping 3D points to 2D. We created our own solution that doesn’t rely on camera calibration and obtains the areas of each box with unknown dimensions with the help of a chessboard pattern placed on each box side. The solution is a proportion that given the box area in pixels, chessboard pattern in pixels, and the chessboard pattern in inches, determines the box area in inches. We tested this method on 20 boxes, 5 pictures of each side for one box. The results showed positive feedback compared with the defined areas/ volumes and compared with the results of our homographies. Ultimately we determined that our solution has the potential, with improved photos, test methods, etc. to accurately find an unknown box’s volume given only the provided 2D data

The Sheremetevs and the Argunovs: Art, Serfdom, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Russia

This dissertation studies a case of Enlightenment art created in feudal conditions of servitude. The Sheremetevs, one of the richest and most powerful families in eighteenth-century Russia, had some of their hundreds of thousands of serfs trained as painters, architects, opera singers, and musicians. Two of these serfs, Ivan and Nikolai Argunov, became successful portraitists who painted a range of sitters from Empresses to fellow serfs. Tensions between social rank and individuality, already a preoccupation for eighteenth-century portrait painters, became particularly pronounced in this situation. While recent scholarship has focused on the Argunovs' cosmopolitan influences, their paintings of fellow serfs and others of low rank are sometimes visually and iconographically distinct from their usual output. This category of portrait, this dissertation argues, should be considered within the context of the other artistic projects of the Sheremetev household. Despite strong Western European influences on the Argunovs, the painters were also exposed to extremely personal and local precedents. These include earlier portraits, garden prints, an atlas project, the Sheremetevs' many collections, and operas staged by the family's renowned serf theater. Working within this visual environment, Ivan and Nikolai Argunov painted their subjects in intricately allusive ways. Their portraits represented and negotiated the complications of serfdom in a setting where unusual social change was possible

Health Effects of Indoor-Air Benzene in Anchorage Residences: A Study of Indoor-Air Quality in Houses with Attached Garages

Benzene is a known carcinogen. It affects white blood cells; it causes leukemia and aplastic anemia. It may also affect the immune system which is dependent on white blood cells.1 It has been removed from all household products, but it is still present in gasoline. Alaskan gasoline is particularly high in benzene (>5%). Gasoline refined in Alaska has high concentrations of benzene and other the aromatic compounds as much as 50% aromatics by volume. Leaving the aromatics in the gasoline helps cars start in the cold, but it also puts high concentrations of benzene in both the ambient and indoor air. We already knew from previous work done in Alaska by Bernard Goldstein in Valdez2 and the Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services in Anchorage3 that people were exposed to high ambient levels of benzene in the winter, and that there were high indoor benzene concentrations in homes with attached garages if the garage was used to store gasoline or gasoline powered engines. Benzene does not bioaccumulate in the body as dioxin or some pesticides do. But are its effects cumulative? Does a little dose of benzene everyday have the same effect as a large dose over less time? Benzene reduces CD4 cells in a dose-response manner at workplace concentrations less than 1 ppm (OSHA 8-hour exposure limit) in workers.4 People who live in homes with high benzene concentrations may be exposed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There have been no studies of health effects of such environmental exposure to benzene. This study was done to determine three things: 1. What percentage of Anchorage homes with attached garages had high levels of indoor benzene? 2. Were the high levels of indoor benzene affecting the health of the residents? 3. Were residents more likely to develop asthma in homes with high levels of indoor benzene?Municipality of AnchorageIntroduction / Methods / Recruitment / Results / Laboratory Results / Smoking / Health Results / Demographics / Determining Risk Levels / Asthma Outcomes / Children / Work and Hobby Exposure / General Health / Conclusions / Bibliography / Appendice

Do managed clinical networks improve quality of diabetes care? : Evidence from a retrospective mixed methods evaluation

Peer reviewedPostprin

Early signals of parasitism expressed through changes in host activity and social behaviour

Parasites are ubiquitous in the environment and can profoundly impact the health and welfare of their hosts. Infected animals will often exhibit an array of behavioural responses that are termed sickness behaviours. By exhibiting these behaviours, animals can potentially reallocate energetic resources to reduce the severity of infection. However, focusing energetic resources to fight infection could remove resources from other activities that are more beneficial to host fitness. Infected animals may therefore, modulate their behavioural response to infection across different environments including their social environment. This thesis comprises a series of experimental work in a domestic sheep (Ovis aries) system. I first validated two remote monitoring systems (activity monitors and proximity loggers) (Chapter 2) that would be used to record the activity and social behaviour of lambs. The validation work aimed to compare the level of agreement between the behaviours recorded using remote monitoring systems and live focal observations during a series of experiments and evaluate the capabilities of the proximity system to be used in future hypothesis testing. In Chapter 2, I found a positive correlation between live behavioural observations and the data collected by the remote sensors. However, proximity loggers provided a more detailed representation of animal behaviour and could detect subtle changes in behaviour earlier than what could be detected using focal observations. I then carried out a large-scale field trial to investigate how parasite infection affects the activity behaviour (Chapter 3) and social behaviour (Chapter 4) of groups of lambs of different parasitic status, to understand what stages of infection these behavioural changes occur, and what affect the infection status an individual’s social group can have on their behavioural response to infection. I monitored the activity and social contact behaviour of lambs during four phases of infection (pre-parasite, pre-patent; patent-parasite, post-parasite). Lambs were part of one of three treatments: Parasitised; all lambs were experimentally infected with the gastrointestinal nematode Teladorsagia circumcincta, Non-parasitised; all lambs were given a sham infection and dosed with water, Mixed; part of the group were infected with T. circumcincta, and part of the group were dosed with water. Faecal samples were taken each week to measure the number of nematode eggs per gram of faeces, blood samples were taken at three time points to measure serum pepsinogen levels to give an indication of gut wall damage and lambs were weighed weekly to measure liveweight gain. Analysis of the animals’ measurements (faecal egg counts, pepsinogen levels and weight) demonstrated experimental infection was successful in all cases and lambs to remain parasite free remained clear of parasites throughout the study (Chapter 3 and 4). In Chapter 3, I found that parasitism affects the activity behaviour of lambs in both single-parasitic state and mixed-parasitic state groups immediately after exposure to parasitism, during the pre-patent phase, three weeks before parasitism could be detected through standardised assessment measures of parasitism and before any noticeable impact of parasitism on physiological measures or condition/weight. However, the extent of this behaviour change was affected by the infection status of an individual’s social group. I also show that following treatment with anthelmintic, the behaviour of infected animal’s returns to pre-parasite levels, providing further evidence these effects are a direct consequence of parasitism. In Chapter 4, I found that all individuals in the parasitised groups had reduced contact frequency during the pre-patent, patent-parasite and post-parasite phases, but increased duration of contacts during the pre-patent phase. There was also a reduction in the frequency of contacts in the mixed groups relative to the non-parasitised groups; however this was driven by a reduction in contacts between infected individuals only, as there was no change in the social contact behaviour between infected and non-infected animals. I also found that although infected animals in mixed-state groups had reduced contact frequency, there was no change in the network architecture of the group as non-infected animals maintained pre-infection levels of social interactions. These results show that parasitism can affect the activity and social behaviour of infected individuals. However, in mixed-parasitic state groups the parasitic status of other group members can socially modulate the behaviour of both infected and non-infected individuals. Moreover, given the social effects of parasitism and the impact on traits associated with host fitness as well as on behaviour, this research highlights that parasite-mediated behavioural changes can vary due to an individual’s social environment. This may have implications for our understanding of how sociality impacts infection across different populations