A Pink and Blue Room

Non-fiction by Joan Rabold

A study of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in poly-trauma patients

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityIntroduction: A paucity of research has been performed to understand the prevalence and predictors of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in patients who have experienced multiple blunt forced traumas. These two disorders are very debilitating for the patients who are affected, thus it is important to understand who may be at greatest risk and what factors predict poor outcomes in order to design interventions aimed at decreasing the negative psychological consequence of traumatic injury. Aims and Hypotheses: Our goals are to examine if there is a relationship between gender and the prevalence of depression, if an open fracture leads to an increased prevalence of depression, and if there is a link between a patient’s length of stay in the hospital and depression. In regards to PTSD we wanted to investigate if there was a significant relationship between gender and PTSD, and if there was a strong relationship between a patient’s past trauma and an increased risk of developing PTSD after subsequent trauma.. We believed that women would have a higher prevalence of depression and PTSD. We also expected that patients with open fractures, and patients with longer stays in the hospital, would all have a higher prevalence of depression. We also hypothesized that patients with past traumas would have a higher prevalence of PTSD. [TRUNCATED

Approximations of disciplinary literacy in English Language Arts: an analysis of high school students' developing understanding of literary analysis

This study investigated the approximations of disciplinary literacy in high school English Language Arts students’ writing. To study the development of these disciplinary conventions, the portfolios of written literary analyses were examined from fourteen twelfth-grade students over their last two years in high school. The conceptual framework for analysis of data was informed by a developmental approach. Intermediate forms, approximations, or incremental moves students made as they progressed toward the more expert or conventional forms of literary discourse were identified. Analysis focused on macro-characteristics of literary analysis, adapted from the literature on literary studies, rhetoric and composition, and systemic functional linguistics, including Appreciation, Interpretation, Textual Evidence, Warrant, and Response to Literature Genres. Analysis included a cross-case descriptive analysis of macro-characteristic scores on a rubric designed for the study and a cross-case analysis of literary discourse approximations as seen in students’ writing portfolios. Analysis of scores on midterms and finals found that students’ scores increased from Year 1 to Year 2, with Appreciation scores increasing the most. Analysis of literary discourse approximations resulted in several findings: 1) Development in Interpretation was characterized by increasing accuracy of comprehension, logical consistency, and depth of interpretative meaning; 2) Development in Appreciation was characterized by a growing awareness of the role of the author in a literary text; and 3) Response to Literature Genres demonstrated a range of genres, including Character Analysis, Thematic Interpretation, Thematic Analysis, Critical Response, and alternative or hybrid genres. Thematic Analysis is a proposed new genre that differed from the Thematic Interpretation on the elements of subject, audience, and purpose. Additional analysis of student writing portfolios found a growing awareness in many students of the values and beliefs of the academic literary community, or habits of mind of literary disciplinary literacy, including 1) Increased level of familiarity with the audience’s common knowledge in the field, as demonstrated in use of definitions; 2) Understanding of the value of multiple interpretations of literature, as demonstrated in use of graduation resources, such as epistemic hedges or epistemic boosters; and 3) Ability to engage with multiple voices, as demonstrated in instances of intertextuality

The Smug Assumption of Reverse Discrimination: Abigail Fisher and \u3cem\u3eFisher v. University of Texas at Austin\u3c/em\u3e

Many expected Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (Fisher I), 133 S. Ct. 2411 (2013)—an appeal from the Court ofAppeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding the University of Texas at Austin\u27s race-conscious admissions program—to sound the death knell for race-based affirmative action in higher education. Instead, in remanding the case back to -the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the consideration of race in college admission programs, so long as such use could satisfy strict scrutiny. Nonetheless, Fisher I concerned academics and practitioners with its potentially limiting language, leaving the future of race-based aftirmative action programs uncertain. When the Fifh Circuit again held the University of Texas at Austin\u27s race-conscious admissions program was constitutional, the Fisher found its way back to the Supreme Court. Oral arguments for Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (Fisher II), 136 S. Ct. 2198 (2016) revived concern for the abolition of race-based affirmative action policies in the United States. In ruling, however, the Supreme Court again upheld the constitutionality of race-based affirative action programs in higher education, this time also explicitly approving of the program used by the University of Texas at Austin. Although the decision was hailed as a great victory for proponents of affirmative action—and it was—this Note argues Fisher II\u27s admittedly great precedential value is weakened by the case\u27s failure to confront certain legal fictions enveloping the law of affrmative action. Specifcally, this Note argues it is time for the Court to disregard false equivalences between positive and negative racial preferences, recognize the problems associated with the generalized grievances alleged by opponents of affirmative action, and permit universities even greater discretion to explicitly consider flexible racial quotas in their admnission programs

Constitutional Law - First Amendment - Establishment of Religion

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has held that teaching a course in the Science of Creative Intelligence Transcendental Meditation in public high schools is an establishment of religion prohibited by the first amendment. Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F.2d 197 (3d Cir. 1979)

Gewalt und andere Formen abweichenden Verhaltens in Förderschulen für Lernbehinderte

Abweichendes Verhalten in Förderschulen für Lernbehinderte wird bislang in der empirischen Forschung wenig thematisiert, obwohl v.a. aufgrund der spezifischen Zusammensetzung der Schülerschaft von einer erhöhten Problembelastung auszugehen ist. Mit Hilfe von Schülerbefragungen, die in Förderschulen in Oldenburg und Hannover in den Jahren 2005 und 2006 in der neunten Jahrgangsstufe durchgeführt worden sind, lässt sich das bestehende Desiderat über die Häufigkeit des Vorkommens verschiedener Formen der Viktimisierung (Opferwerdung) und verschiedener Formen abweichenden Verhaltens teilweise schließen. Der Vergleich mit anderen Schulformen zeigt dabei, dass Jugendliche, die in Förderschulen unterrichtet werden, tatsächlich häufiger als Jugendliche in Realschulen oder Gymnasien Opfer von Gewalt geworden sind. Sie führen zudem in ähnlicher Häufigkeit wie Jugendliche an Hauptschulen gewalttätige und delinquente Verhaltensweisen aus; beim Drogenkonsum und Schulschwänzen gehören sie allerdings deutlich seltener als Hauptschüler zu den Problemgruppen. Die Risikofaktoren, die in Zusammenhang mit einer erhöhten Gewaltbereitschaft stehen, sind über die verschiedenen Schultypen hinweg weitestgehend gleich, was in einem abschließenden multivariaten Erklärungsmodell gezeigt wird. (DIPF/Orig.)Deviant behavior in schools for students with special needs has so far hardly been considered in empirical research, although - especially due to the specific constitution of the body of students - a higher load of stress is to be presupposed. By means of surveys carried out among ninth-graders in schools for students with special needs in Oldenburg and Hannover in the years 2005 and 2006, the existing knowledge gap concerning the frequency of the appearance of different forms of victimization and different forms of deviant behavior can be partially closed. A comparison with other types of school shows that adolescents attending schools for students with special needs are in fact more frequently victimized than adolescents going to other secondary schools (Realschule or Gymnasium). They exhibit about the same frequency of violent or delinquent behavior as adolescents attending lower secondary schools (Hauptschulen); however, with regard to drug consumption or absenteeism they figure clearly less often among the problem groups than students from lower secondary schools. The risk factors that are related to a greater willingness to use violence remain more or less the same throughout the different school types, as is shown by a concluding multi-variate explanatory model. (DIPF/Orig.

Practical cost keeping for contractors: a book giving a system of accurate cost keeping and the methods used for adapting it to all classes of construction work

In Present day competition among contractors of all classes of construction work, it is vitally important that the contractor, to be successful, should keep costs on the different branches of work performed by him. Costs stated in dollars and cents are not truly costs, for the reason that a cost in money in one locality may be absolutely worthless in another where wages are different

Precision cosmology with baryons: non-radiative hydrodynamics of galaxy groups

The effect of baryons on the matter power spectrum is likely to have an observable effect for future galaxy surveys, like Euclid or Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). As a first step towards a fully predictive theory, we investigate the effect of non-radiative hydrodynamics on the structure of galaxy groups sized haloes, which contribute the most to the weak-lensing power spectrum. We perform high-resolution (more than one million particles per halo and one kilo-parsec resolution) non-radiative hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations of a sample of 16 haloes, comparing the profiles to popular analytical models. We find that the total mass profile is well fitted by a Navarro, Frenk & White model, with parameters slightly modified from the dark matter only simulation. We also find that the Komatsu & Seljak hydrostatic solution provides a good fit to the gas profiles, with however significant deviations, arising from strong turbulent mixing in the core and from non-thermal, turbulent pressure support in the outskirts. The turbulent energy follows a shallow, rising linear profile with radius, and correlates with the halo formation time. Using only three main structural halo parameters as variables (total mass, concentration parameter and central gas density), we can predict, with an accuracy better than 20 per cent, the individual gas density and temperature profiles. For the average total mass profile, which is relevant for power spectrum calculations, we even reach an accuracy of 1 per cent. The robustness of these predictions has been tested against resolution effects, different types of initial conditions and hydrodynamical schemes