Metaphor as an Act of Seeing: The Examination of “Inward Light” in the Works of Philip Sidney, Robert Hooke, Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, and Anne Finch

This dissertation examines works of Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Robert Hooke (1635-1703), John Milton (1608-1674), Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), and Anne Finch (1661-1720) through the lens of two competing world views that were well-known to all of the subjects of my study. The dissertation will begin with a discussion of these two different ways of perceiving and representing truth—one informed by the poetic imagination and the other influenced by the emerging new science of the seventeenth century. In his The Defence of Poesy, Sir Philip Sidney advocates a poetic vision that possesses a unique spiritual and creative power to produce truths, making the material world subordinate to the spiritual vision of the poet. In contrast, Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) insists upon the value of actual physical seeing, through the microscope, and constructing models of the world based upon accumulated details of the tiniest observable physical minutia. Though he wasn’t directly responding to Sidney’s works, Hooke’s microscopic seeing disputes the autonomy of Sidney’s “inward light each mind hath in itself,” a source of poetic sight that Sidney considered sacred to the poetic imagination. Because my chief interest involves the topos of light and the representation of “inward light” articulated by Sidney in The Defence of Poesy, Sidney’s metaphysics and conception of the poetic imagination remain a constant, semi-theoretical foundation throughout my work as I examine the poetic works of Cavendish, Milton, and Finch. Although Cavendish, Milton, and Finch had different poetic goals among them, they are united in my study by their insistence that accumulating larger piles of minute sensory data does not get one closer to “truth.” Because of the modern reader’s location in history—given the grand success of the scientific narrative—such a position appears to border on irrationality, but much is to be gained by reading these poets’ works through the less familiar framework Sidney’s poetics provides

Evaluating the effect of SWITCH PE on physical activity and sedentary behavior in and out of physical education classes

Physical education (PE) is a key channel to influencing youth physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) but it has proven difficult to improve the quality of PE lessons. SWITCH PE is a concept-based PE curriculum that helps shape healthy behaviors in relation to the energy-balanced lifestyle. The purposes of this study are to evaluate (a) whether a SWITCH PE can provide recommended amounts of PA in PE and (b) whether SWITCH PE can impact children’ s daily PA and SB levels. Data were collected from fourth and fifth grade students at four elementary schools in Iowa (with two schools in the experimental group and two in the control group; N = 475). Children’s in-class PA during PE were monitored via Actigraph GT3X+w accelerometer. Their overall PA and SB were pre- and post-measured using the Youth Activity Profile (YAP). Descriptive statistics and two-way (time and group) repeated measure analyses of variance were conducted to address the research questions. The SWITCH PE lessons yielded similar distributions of SB, LPA and MVPA as regular PE lessons. The SWITCH PE lessons did not meet the absolute standard for in-class PA (i.e., MVPA for 50% of the PE time) but neither did the regular PE lessons. There was no statistical difference in PA levels at home by time or group (p\u3e.05) between youth in SWITCH PE or traditional PE classes. There was a significant group difference in PA at school (Pre: F1, 926=6.36, p\u3c0.01; Post: F1, 926=9.42, p\u3c0.01, η2 = .017) but this difference was driven by the significantly lower scores at one SWITCH PE school (i.e., School 1). The time effect for PA at school was not significant. The levels of SB at both SWITCH PE and regular PE schools decreased over time. However, only the SWITCH PE schools demonstrated significant decrease from baseline (F1, 928=7.33; p\u3c0.01, η2 = .006). In conclusion, SWITCH PE provided similar amounts of MVPA as regular PE but levels did not meet recommendations for MVPA time in PE (i.e. 50% of the class time). SWITCH PE did not significantly impact students’ behavior outsides of school but the education on lifestyle behaviors may have long term benefits. The SWITCH PE program is an innovative addition to the SWITCH program but further work is needed to improve the lessons

Unleashing the full potential of Hsp90 inhibitors as cancer therapeutics through simultaneous inactivation of Hsp90, Grp94, and TRAP1

Cancer therapeutics: Extending a drug's reach A new drug that blocks heat shock proteins (HSPs), helper proteins that are co-opted by cancer cells to promote tumor growth, shows promise for cancer treatment. Several drugs have targeted HSPs, since cancer cells are known to hijack these helper proteins to shield themselves from destruction by the body. However, the drugs have had limited success. Hye-Kyung Park and Byoung Heon Kang at Ulsan National Institutes of Science and Technology in South Korea and coworkers noticed that the drugs were not absorbed into mitochondria, a key cellular compartment, and HSPs in this compartment were therefore not being blocked. They identified a new HSP inhibitor that can reach every cellular compartment and inhibit all HSPs. Testing in mice showed that this inhibitor effectively triggered death of tumor cells, and therefore shows promise for anti-cancer therapy. The Hsp90 family proteins Hsp90, Grp94, and TRAP1 are present in the cell cytoplasm, endoplasmic reticulum, and mitochondria, respectively; all play important roles in tumorigenesis by regulating protein homeostasis in response to stress. Thus, simultaneous inhibition of all Hsp90 paralogs is a reasonable strategy for cancer therapy. However, since the existing pan-Hsp90 inhibitor does not accumulate in mitochondria, the potential anticancer activity of pan-Hsp90 inhibition has not yet been fully examined in vivo. Analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas database revealed that all Hsp90 paralogs were upregulated in prostate cancer. Inactivation of all Hsp90 paralogs induced mitochondrial dysfunction, increased cytosolic calcium, and activated calcineurin. Active calcineurin blocked prosurvival heat shock responses upon Hsp90 inhibition by preventing nuclear translocation of HSF1. The purine scaffold derivative DN401 inhibited all Hsp90 paralogs simultaneously and showed stronger anticancer activity than other Hsp90 inhibitors. Pan-Hsp90 inhibition increased cytotoxicity and suppressed mechanisms that protect cancer cells, suggesting that it is a feasible strategy for the development of potent anticancer drugs. The mitochondria-permeable drug DN401 is a newly identified in vivo pan-Hsp90 inhibitor with potent anticancer activity

Surf at MEDIQA 2019: Improving Performance of Natural Language Inference in the Clinical Domain by Adopting Pre-trained Language Model

While deep learning techniques have shown promising results in many natural language processing (NLP) tasks, it has not been widely applied to the clinical domain. The lack of large datasets and the pervasive use of domain-specific language (i.e. abbreviations and acronyms) in the clinical domain causes slower progress in NLP tasks than that of the general NLP tasks. To fill this gap, we employ word/subword-level based models that adopt large-scale data-driven methods such as pre-trained language models and transfer learning in analyzing text for the clinical domain. Empirical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods by achieving 90.6% accuracy in medical domain natural language inference task. Furthermore, we inspect the independent strengths of the proposed approaches in quantitative and qualitative manners. This analysis will help researchers to select necessary components in building models for the medical domain.Comment: 9 pages, Accepted to ACL 2019 workshop on BioNL

Develop a correct scaled body figure for global apparel product development

Global ready-to-wear apparel production requires specifications of various information. Among many, flat is one of the most important key factors for design communication as it is used as a blue print of product development and production. In global apparel development and production, designs are presented and interpreted by flats and samples are developed based on details of flats. To be successful in fashion business, therefore, proportionally correct flats based on correct scaled human body figures are imperative

Geometric metasurface enabling polarization independent beam splitting

A polarization independent holographic beam splitter that generates equal-intensity beams based on geometric metasurface is demonstrated. Although conventional geometric metasurfaces have the advantages of working over a broad frequency range and having intuitive design principles, geometric metasurfaces have the limitation that they only work for circular polarization. In this work, Fourier holography is used to overcome this limitation. A perfect overlap resulting from the origin-symmetry of the encoded image enables polarization independent operation of geometric metasurfaces. The designed metasurface beam splitter is experimentally demonstrated by using hydrogenated amorphous silicon, and the device performs consistent beam splitting regardless of incident polarizations as well as wavelengths. Our device can be applied to generate equal-intensity beams for entangled photon light sources in quantum optics, and the design approach provides a way to develop ultra-thin broadband polarization independent components for modern optics.113Nsciescopu

Ultraviolet photodepletion spectroscopy of dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether complexes with alkali metal cations

Ultraviolet photodepletion spectra of dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether complexes with alkali metal cations (M+-DB18C6, M = Cs, Rb, K, Na, and Li) were obtained in the gas phase using electrospray ionization quadrupole ion-trap reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The spectra exhibited a few distinct absorption bands in the wavenumber region of 35450−37800 cm^(−1). The lowest-energy band was tentatively assigned to be the origin of the S_0-S_1 transition, and the second band to a vibronic transition arising from the “benzene breathing” mode in conjunction with symmetric or asymmetric stretching vibration of the bonds between the metal cation and the oxygen atoms in DB18C6. The red shifts of the origin bands were observed in the spectra as the size of the metal cation in M^+-DB18C6 increased from Li^+ to Cs^+. We suggested that these red shifts arose mainly from the decrease in the binding energies of larger-sized metal cations to DB18C6 at the electronic ground state. These size effects of the metal cations on the geometric and electronic structures, and the binding properties of the complexes at the S_0 and S_1 states were further elucidated by theoretical calculations using density functional and time-dependent density functional theories