Letter to Margarette Dye regarding the SEAALL Annual Meeting, January 22, 1985

A letter from Teresa Neaves to Margarette Dye offering assistance with the SEAALL Annual Meeting

Road to Recovery: Recidivism and the McLean County Drug Court

This study explores the effectiveness of the McLean County Drug Court at reducing time to recidivism using survival analysis techniques. Data on 146 drug court participants was collected using the county’s proprietary case management systems. Findings suggest that length of drug court programming significantly reduces time to recidivism. Unfortunately, black offenders and offenders with prior criminal history were found to return to the prison system more rapidly than other groups, suggesting that drug court programming may not be addressing the greater systemic issues present in the criminal justice system. These findings collectively inform policy recommendations provided to county administrators and drug court officials

Characterisation of Rhodopsin Retinitis Pigmentosa mutants located in Intradiscal Loop 1

Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is a genetic condition that results in blindness. There are several hundred RP mutations associated with rhodopsin, a photosensitive GPCR pigment found within rod cells of the retina. Previous studies have shown that many rhodopsin RP mutants fold incorrectly or affect protein stability. This study investigates the effect of three RP mutants located in Extracellular loop 1 of bovine rhodopsin. Expression levels and protein folding have been examined using HEK 293 GnTI- cells and two methods have been used in an attempt to correct protein folding. The effects of these two correction methods on three mutations have been analysed by investigating their UV-visible absorption spectral properties, photobleaching properties, active light-activated state stability kinetics and pigment thermal stability. Pharmacological chaperone rescue with 9-cis-retinal was found to enhance expression levels and folding in two of the three mutant pigments. However, these rescued pigments were unstable at high temperatures (55 °C) when purified. The second approach involved the insertion of a disulphide bridge linking the N-terminal cap to ECL 3 and is known to increase the thermostability of WT rhodopsin. The N2C/D282C bond was found to repair two of the three mutant pigments and enhance stability, signal transduction, photobleaching and Meta-II stability to near WT levels. These two methods, when deployed together, had little additive effect. The main conclusion is that the N-terminal cap of rhodopsin is prevented from either folding correctly or docking correctly to ECL 3 due to the mutations located in ECL 1. However, when the N-terminal cap of rhodopsin is tethered in place by a disulphide bridge or when the retinal binding pocket is occupied, thermal stability and active state properties are restored in some rhodopsin RP mutants

Hypostasis and the dynamic imagination

How we know what we know is complex and multifaceted. In both the humanities and sciences there are instances where the objective and subjective overlap and sometimes merge. This is the terrain of my research. My thesis employs Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology and philosophies of the imagination to investigate the material, poetic and dynamic imaginations as they relate to the sciences, the visual arts and specifically to my work and practice as a visual artist. I argue that the seemingly paradoxical blending of the objective and the subjective, the two ways of knowing, creates a dynamic space that allows for innovative contemplation, reflection, and deeper understanding. The strictly rational generation of scientific knowledge is often initiated out of human curiosity and the capacity to imagine, wonder and formulate interesting questions. By attending to the material reality of the world, poeticized and dynamic images can reveal themselves, providing opportunity for insight and an alignment with the spiritual function of the human imagination and will. In this body of work, I argue that art, like poems, function as phenomenological agents having the potential to activate the human imagination, the creative impulse and a revelatory connection with both life and the material world. The human imagination uses tools such as poetry and the arts to point to that which is beyond the realm of definable knowledge or to give voice to ideas that are beyond the current capacity of human understanding. The ideas and images in my body of work are informed by the reflection on and investigation of the nature of consciousness and contemplation of experiences present in acts of consciousness including everyday experiences as well as reveries, imagination, oneiric experiences and the recognition of patterns. An investigation of the impact of Bachelard’s phenomenology and philosophies of the imagination on diverse fields of inquiry will provide a better understanding and deeper appreciation for his influence on the visual arts and in particular my own practice as an artist. Bachelard’s essays on painters and sculptors from his vast writings including his book The Right to Dream, describe the phenomenological aspect of the creative processes of specific artist. Reason and imagination both determine how we perceive reality and while the sciences and arts are vastly distinct from one another in method and construct they are both distinctly human endeavors. The human experience is itself both objective and subjective in nature. Bachelard’s deep respect for the pre-perceptive nature of the image, and the dynamic function of the human imagination apply to both rational and subjective endeavors. Bachelard’s philosophy of the imagination is a phenomenologically based methodology that intersects and expands the potential of both ways of knowing

On the thermo-electric power and thermal conductivity of semi-conductivity of semi-conductors and metals

The first successful attempt to explain the electrical and thermal properties of metals was made by the Drude-Lorentz theory at the beginning of this century. According to Drude, certain electrons were free to move from atom to atom throughout the metal and it was those electrons which undertook the conduction of electricity and heat. The electrons were then treated as a “gas” and in order to apply the statistical theory of gases to such an electron cloud Lorentz postulated his well-known assumptions. The theory was immediately successful in the derivation of the Wiedemann-Franz law, relating the electrical and thermal conductivities. The major drawback to the theory lay in the evaluation of the electron specific heat. Lorentz had ascribed to the electrons a Maxwell distribution of velocities, the only reasonable choice at that time. On such a picture the electron specific heat was large and such an addition to the specific heat completely destroyed the agreement of Debye’s theory with the experimentally observed specific heats. The theory remained in this state until the discovery by Pauli, in 1925, of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. In its simplest form the principle states that in an atom not more than two electrons can have the same three quantum numbers. This allowed Dirac and Fermi, working independently, to develop the statistics of particles obeying such a principle and gave birth to the Fermi-Dirac statistics. The use of new statistics enabled the discrepancy in the specific heats to be explained. Pauli was able to account for the paramagnetism of the alkali metals and it was left to Sommerfeld to consider the problems of transport phenomena in the light of the Fermi-Dirac statistics. Such were the foundations of the modern electron theory of metals. The modern development of the theory was begun by Block, Sommerfeld, Bether, Peierls and Wilson. It is based on the quantum-mechanical analysis of the motion of an electron in the periodic field of a crystal lattice. Considered from this point of view, the electrons in a metal are distributed over a number of allowed energy bands, forbidden bands occurring in the regions between the allowed energies. Most of these allowed bands are filled completely by the electrons, and it is only the electrons which are contained in incompletely filled bands which contribute to the resultant current. It is these electrons which are regarded as “free” in conduction theory. This picture of a metal also enables us to obtain a better understanding of the “mean free path” of an electron, a quantity which is treated as an arbitrary parameter in the Sommerfeld theory

Patient Perspectives on Learning of a Psychosis Diagnosis

Background: The experience of receiving psychiatric diagnoses is under researched. The impact of how an individual receives a diagnosis of psychosis, as used in early intervention services is particularly lacking in empirical understanding. Method: Participants were recruited from an early intervention for psychosis team in the south-east of England. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 10 participants who were selected using a random sampling methodology, participants were aged between 21 and 61. Interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings: Analysis of the interviews created four themes: “No easy way to say”, “Setting the tone”, “Power” and “Changing perspective”. The themes illustrate the individualised nature of what makes for a good experience of diagnosis, the impact that the diagnostic meeting has on the early beliefs and understanding that individuals form about their diagnosis, the awareness and impact of power dynamics within services and the ways individuals go on to make sense of their diagnosis. Conclusions: Individual perceptions of the diagnostic experience are unique, influenced by individual characteristics, level of prior knowledge and individual context. Diagnosis should be approached by clinicians in a person-centred way that aims to meet the information and communication needs of each individual as early as possible. It should be assumed that internalised stigma will result from the diagnosis and steps taken to mitigate for this as the early negative impacts of the diagnosis can be processed and addressed, ideally with a network of support

Meaningful assessment for improving writing center consultations

This thesis presents the spring 2011 assessment for the University Writing Center at UNC Asheville, a small liberal arts college in Western North Carolina. It includes the results of a study that seeks to shift the focus of assessment in the University Writing Center from operational goals to learning goals; it interprets data related to student writers’ and undergraduate consultants’ perceptions of observable cognitive development activities during typical writing center sessions. The study grew from the University Writing Center’s response to newly developed University Student Learning outcomes (USLOs) and the University Mission Statement