Narratives of Hostility and Survivance in Multiethnic American Literature, 1850-1903

In Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Mary Louise Pratt coined the term contact zones, which she defined as social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination-like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today (4). The United States of America has a dismal history of racially violent encounters between Anglos and indigenous populations, with other settlers, and those who immigrated there. Many of America\u27s practices, policies, and historical events provide evidence of acts spurred by racism against non-Anglo groups, but evidence of this also exists throughout US media sources. Specifically, from the middle of the nineteenth century to its close, the majority of mass print media written by and controlled by the Anglo American population reveals an excess of discussion and debate regarding non-Anglo races, their places in Anglo society, and how to answer the race \u27question\u27 of each non-Anglo group. Yet, while violent rhetoric encouraging racially charged mass murder from newspapers and novels dominated the Anglo publishing industry, several non-Anglo American authors used the Anglo publishing industry during the latter half of the nineteenth century to resist the dominant narratives of the time. In effect, these authors challenge what Gerald Vizenor refers to in Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance as the \u27literature of dominance\u27 (3). This dissertation considers minority author use of the Anglo publishing industry to respond to the lies and misrepresentations of minorities, racially charged events, and violent encounters printed regularly in newspapers, novels, and other forms of US print media, locally and nationally, with the aim of exposing and excoriating racially charged mass murders of minority groups. These authors achieved this goal both through newspaper articles and through the inclusion of newspaper articles in their literary texts in order to debunk the falsehoods perpetuated by the numerous Anglo publishers at the time, but also through the re-telling of events as minority groups saw and experienced them. In turn, I argue each text works to challenge Anglo readers\u27 apathy and willing acceptance of such misinformation by enacting various forms of survivance in order to repudiate the victimry that popular Anglo novels of the time depicted in order to perpetuate societal norms and expectations. This includes works by Charles Chesnutt, S. Alice Callahan, and John Rollin Ridge. Finally, I look at Chinese American responses to calls for their extermination and forced deportation/exclusion throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Chinese Americans went directly to Anglo-dominant yet friendly newspapers to refute the numerous fabrications many American newspapers printed. These include responses from Norman Asing (Sang Yuen), and Hab Wa and Tong A-chick, as they set the precedent for Chinese American response, as well as Kwang Chang Ling, Yan Phou Lee, and Lee Chew, several of whom wrote in response to Dennis Kearney\u27s extreme anti-Chinese movement in California

Conservative State Policies Contribute to Higher Mortality Rates among Working-age Americans

The risk of dying during working ages (25 to 64) is high, rising, and unequal in the United States. Working-age mortality rates are much higher in some states than others. Part of the explanation may relate to differing policies across states that affect health. While some states enact policies that invest in people’s economic, social, and behavioral wellbeing, others enact policies that are potentially harmful to health. Using mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this study examined how state policies on criminal justice, taxes, environment, firearms, marijuana, health care, labor, and tobacco were associated with the risk of dying among working-age adults from 2000 to 2019. The authors also estimated how changing these policies across a liberal-to-conservative continuum might affect the risks of dying from any cause and from cardiovascular disease (CVD), suicide, alcohol, and drug poisoning. The authors found that more conservative marijuana policies and more liberal policies on firearms, labor, environment, taxes, and tobacco were related to lower risk of death among working-age adults. Simulations show that changing all eight state policy domains to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives. Fixing the high and rising mortality among working-age adults requires state policymakers to enact policies that provide a foundation for all Americans to achieve economic, social, and behavioral wellbeing

Physical activity mediates the relationship between outdoor time and mental health

Both spending time outdoors and participating in physical activity improve mental health. Given that the outdoor environment provides an ideal location for physical activity, better understanding of the relationships among time spent outdoors, physical activity and positive mental health is needed to help guide interventions. The aim was to examine if physical activity moderates or mediates the relationship between outdoor time and positive mental health. Two-hundred-forty-two participants (15 ± 1 years old, 59% girls) from New Brunswick, Canada were included in the current analysis. Youth self-reported time spent outdoors and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) three times between October 2016 and June 2017. Data on their mental health were collected in October 2017. Values of outdoor time and MVPA were averaged across the three time points to represent the exposure and mediator variables, respectively. Mental health, dichotomized as flourishing/not flourishing, was the outcome in the mediation analysis. An interaction term tested if the mediation effect depended on outdoor time. Analyses were undertaken in 2019 using the mediation package in R. In univariate analyses, both MVPA (p < 0.001) and outdoor time (p = 0.05) were positive predictors of flourishing mental health. In mediation analyses, a small indirect mediation (OR: 1.02, 95% CI: 1.01–1.04) and no direct (1.00, 0.98–1.05) effect were noted, suggesting that MVPA mediates the effect of outdoor time on positive mental health. This effect did not vary as a function of outdoor time (interaction: 1.00, 0.99–1.01). Physical activity mediates the relationship between outdoor time and positive mental health. Outdoor time could promote positive mental health among youth through increases in physical activity

Twelve-Month Follow-up of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Children With Functional Abdominal Pain

To determine whether a brief intervention for children with functional abdominal pain and their parents' responses to their child's pain resulted in improved coping 12 months later

Lysyl-tRNA synthetase, a target for urgently needed M. tuberculosis drugs

Tuberculosis is a major global cause of both mortality and financial burden mainly in low and middle-income countries. Given the significant and ongoing rise of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis within the clinical setting, there is an urgent need for the development of new, safe and effective treatments. Here the development of a drug-like series based on a fused dihydropyrrolidino-pyrimidine scaffold is described. The series has been developed against M. tuberculosis lysyl-tRNA synthetase (LysRS) and cellular studies support this mechanism of action. DDD02049209, the lead compound, is efficacious in mouse models of acute and chronic tuberculosis and has suitable physicochemical, pharmacokinetic properties and an in vitro safety profile that supports further development. Importantly, preliminary analysis using clinical resistant strains shows no pre-existing clinical resistance towards this scaffold

A study protocol of a randomised controlled trial incorporating a health economic analysis to investigate if additional allied health services for rehabilitation reduce length of stay without compromising patient outcomes

Background Reducing patient length of stay is a high priority for health service providers. Preliminary information suggests additional Saturday rehabilitation services could reduce the time a patient stays in hospital by three days. This large trial will examine if providing additional physiotherapy and occupational therapy services on a Saturday reduces health care costs, and improves the health of hospital inpatients receiving rehabilitation compared to the usual Monday to Friday service. We will also investigate the cost effectiveness and patient outcomes of such a service. Methods/Design A randomised controlled trial will evaluate the effect of providing additional physiotherapy and occupational therapy for rehabilitation. Seven hundred and twelve patients receiving inpatient rehabilitation at two metropolitan sites will be randomly allocated to the intervention group or control group. The control group will receive usual care physiotherapy and occupational therapy from Monday to Friday while the intervention group will receive the same amount of rehabilitation as the control group Monday to Friday plus a full physiotherapy and occupational therapy service on Saturday. The primary outcomes will be patient length of stay, quality of life (EuroQol questionnaire), the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), and health utilization and cost data. Secondary outcomes will assess clinical outcomes relevant to the goals of therapy: the 10 metre walk test, the timed up and go test, the Personal Care Participation Assessment and Resource Tool (PC PART), and the modified motor assessment scale. Blinded assessors will assess outcomes at admission and discharge, and follow up data on quality of life, function and health care costs will be collected at 6 and 12 months after discharge. Between group differences will be analysed with analysis of covariance using baseline measures as the covariate. A health economic analysis will be carried out alongside the randomised controlled trial. Discussion This paper outlines the study protocol for the first fully powered randomised controlled trial incorporating a health economic analysis to establish if additional Saturday allied health services for rehabilitation inpatients reduces length of stay without compromising discharge outcomes. If successful, this trial will have substantial health benefits for the patients and for organizations delivering rehabilitation services

Functional Variant in Complement C3 Gene Promoter and Genetic Susceptibility to Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Febrile Seizures

BACKGROUND: Human mesial temporal lobe epilepsies (MTLE) represent the most frequent form of partial epilepsies and are frequently preceded by febrile seizures (FS) in infancy and early childhood. Genetic associations of several complement genes including its central component C3 with disorders of the central nervous system, and the existence of C3 dysregulation in the epilepsies and in the MTLE particularly, make it the C3 gene a good candidate for human MTLE. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A case-control association study of the C3 gene was performed in a first series of 122 patients with MTLE and 196 controls. Four haplotypes (HAP1 to 4) comprising GF100472, a newly discovered dinucleotide repeat polymorphism [(CA)8 to (CA)15] in the C3 promoter region showed significant association after Bonferroni correction, in the subgroup of MTLE patients having a personal history of FS (MTLE-FS+). Replication analysis in independent patients and controls confirmed that the rare HAP4 haplotype comprising the minimal length allele of GF100472 [(CA)8], protected against MTLE-FS+. A fifth haplotype (HAP5) with medium-size (CA)11 allele of GF100472 displayed four times higher frequency in controls than in the first cohort of MTLE-FS+ and showed a protective effect against FS through a high statistical significance in an independent population of 97 pure FS. Consistently, (CA)11 allele by its own protected against pure FS in a second group of 148 FS patients. Reporter gene assays showed that GF100472 significantly influenced C3 promoter activity (the higher the number of repeats, the lower the transcriptional activity). Taken together, the consistent genetic data and the functional analysis presented here indicate that a newly-identified and functional polymorphism in the promoter of the complement C3 gene might participate in the genetic susceptibility to human MTLE with a history of FS, and to pure FS. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The present study provides important data suggesting for the first time the involvement of the complement system in the genetic susceptibility to epileptic seizures and to epilepsy