The Erosion of Rights: Declining Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Bush Administration

The erosion of civil rights across our nation over the past six years is the result of willful neglect and calculated design. The Bush administration continues to use the courts and the judicial appointment process to narrow civil rights protections and repeal remedies for legal redress while allowing the traditional tools of the executive branch for civil rights enforcement to wither and die. The resulting inequality of opportunity, deteriorating civil liberties, and rising religious and racial discrimination are sad commentaries on the priorities of the current administration

Effects of Zinc on Cognition

Insulin resistance is the defining symptom of type 2 diabetes and a key risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Work from our lab and others has shown that insulin is a key component of brain pathways mediating cognition; specifically, mechanisms that transduce hippocampal memory processing. In the hippocampus, insulin regulates glucose metabolism through translocation of the glucose transporter GluT4 and modulates several other molecular cascades. Studies where insulin is studied as a cognitive modulator have generally used a formulation that contains zinc to stabilize insulin. However, zinc itself modulates molecular signaling pathways including AKT and GSK3β, which are both downstream of insulin; as well as having a known effect in modulating neuronal glutamate release, suggesting a role in memory. Hence, delivery of zinc as an artifact of administering treatment to insulin-treated animals may confound the impact of insulin on cognition and metabolism. This is especially true since in vivo, the insulin hexamer, stabilized by zinc and calcium, breaks apart almost immediately after being released from beta cells in the pancreas; thus, insulin delivery would not produce an increase in zinc at the site of action. This project therefore aimed to parse the distinct effects of zinc and insulin on hippocampal metabolism and cognitive processes. Sprague-Dawley rats received a microinjection guide cannulae into their left hippocampus and were then treated with intrahippocampal delivery of Humulin (a zinc-containing insulin), Apidra (a zinc-free form of insulin), artificial extracellular fluid (aECF; a vehicle control condition), or zinc dissolved in aECF. Post injection the animals were placed in a plus maze for 20 mins for a spontaneous alternation test, followed immediately by a novel object recognition test spread over one day, both of which test cognition 3 and short-term memory. Brain samples from the left and right hippocampus along with the prefrontal cortex were removed and were analyzed for the presence of key proteins in the activation cascades via western blots. Evidence from current literature indicates a strong possibility of finding a confound, to some degree, between the known actions of zinc and insulin in the hippocampus

An Introduction to Twisted Particle Filters and Parameter Estimation in Non-linear State-space Models

Twisted particle filters are a class of sequential Monte Carlo methods recently introduced by Whiteley and Lee to improve the efficiency of marginal likelihood estimation in state-space models. The purpose of this article is to extend the twisted particle filtering methodology, establish accessible theoretical results which convey its rationale, and provide a demonstration of its practical performance within particle Markov chain Monte Carlo for estimating static model parameters. We derive twisted particle filters that incorporate systematic or multinomial resampling and information from historical particle states, and a transparent proof which identifies the optimal algorithm for marginal likelihood estimation. We demonstrate how to approximate the optimal algorithm for nonlinear state-space models with Gaussian noise and we apply such approximations to two examples: a range and bearing tracking problem and an indoor positioning problem with Bluetooth signal strength measurements. We demonstrate improvements over standard algorithms in terms of variance of marginal likelihood estimates and Markov chain autocorrelation for given CPU time, and improved tracking performance using estimated parameters.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

The Intentions Behind the Creation of Barbie

Many researchers of Barbie are either entirely positive or negative in their outlook on the purpose of the doll. Some claim that Barbie was created for girls to have an imaginative outlet, but others say that Barbie was meant to confine and restrict women within a certain role. Many agree with the creator, Ruth Handler, that Barbie was a symbol of the independent woman; however, others believe she was limited to a traditional woman’s place in the 1950s and 1960s. Using Barbie novels published in the early 1960s, which have been analyzed by only few authors, and other primary and secondary sources, I will attempt to write a balanced history of the intentions behind the creation of Barbie while discussing the difficulty of determining the truth behind her creation

Measuring Systemic and Climate Diversity in Ontario’s University Sector

This article proposes a methodology for measuring institutional diversity and applies it to Ontario’s university sector. This study first used hierarchical cluster analysis, which suggested there has been very little change in diversity between 1994 and 2010 as universities were clustered in three groups for both years. However, by adapting Birnbaum’s (1983) diversity matrix methodology to Ontario’s university sector, the author appears to have found a decrease in systemic diversity (differences in the type of institution and size of institution; Birnbaum, 1983) and climate diversity (differences in campus environment and culture; Birnbaum, 1983) between 1994 and 2010. Policy implications resulting from this study are also considered.  Cet article propose une méthodologie pour mesurer la diversité institutionnelle, et l’applique au secteur universitaire de l’Ontario. De prime abord, l’étude a utilisé une analyse de classification hiérarchique suggérant un faible taux de changement de diversité entre 1994 et 2010, période durant laquelle les universités se divisaient en trois groupes. Toutefois, en adaptant la méthodologie de mesure de la diversité de Birnbaum (1983) aux universités de l’Ontario, l’auteur semble avoir décelé une diminution de la diversité systémique (différence dans le type et la grandeur de l’institution, Birnbaum, 1983) et de la diversité climatique (différence dans l’environnement et la culture d’un campus, Birnbaum, 1983) entre 1994 et 2010. L’auteur a également pris en compte les effets de cette étude sur les politiques