Transformation of Sympathies: Gendered Mediation of Jordanian Education Reform for a Knowledge Economy

In Jordan, teaching is widely considered “the best job for a woman” because it is accommodating and culturally appropriate for a wife and mother. Public secondary schools and comprehensive (K-12) schools in Jordan are predominantly gender-segregated, with female teachers and staff serving as models of professionalism and womanhood for generations of young girls. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan faces rising youth unemployment and pressures for democratization, and has responded with the explicitly transformational Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy (ERFKE) to overhaul the centralized public education system. ERFKE’s curricular goals include multilingualism, technological fluency, democratic participation, cooperation and teamwork, critical thinking, and entrepreneurship. The rollout of ERFKE relies on teaching educators and staff new ways of thinking about women’s identities in the present and potential future of a democratizing monarchy. This dissertation aims to understand how teachers at a typical Jordanian public school navigate the political, cultural, economic, and social changes in their society, for themselves and for their students, during their daily work of defining, transmitting, and assessing culture and truth. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with public school teachers and teacher trainers in Jordan, I argue that the operationalization of education policy reforms relies on state actors to transform teacher sympathies in a way that makes state goals and visions of the future more sympathetic, emotionally salient, and persuasive reasons for action. I explore the ways institutional power constructs and reconstructs the culture of teaching by bringing to bear contributions of educational anthropology to theories of authority and the state. Specifically, I interpret interactions between teacher trainers and teachers to show how state social policy works in lived experience. More broadly, I question how individuals raised within a culture engage in cultural transformation and the ways in which this transformation can be authoritatively engineered

Staphylococcal Infection Dynamics

Staphylococcus aureus is a clinically significant human pathogen which poses an increasing healthcare threat due to the spread of antibiotic resistance. To better understand the process of S. aureus pathogenesis, a vertebrate model for infection, using zebrafish embryos, was previously pioneered at The University of Sheffield. In this study I have utilised this systemic embryonic model of S. aureus infection in combination with a recently developed fluorescence microscopy technique – light sheet fluorescence microscopy, in order to investigate the real-time dynamics of S. aureus infection within a living host. The first aim of this project was to develop methodology that enables the imaging of infected, living transgenic embryos, over extended time scales. Having established mounting and imaging parameters, infection progression was followed using fluorescent S. aureus reporter strains and fluorescently labelled host phagocytes. The 4D imaging of these interactions identified macrophages as the host-niche in which bacterial expansion, followed by phagocyte escape, occurs. Furthermore, by using bacterial population studies it was confirmed that depletion of macrophages abolishes the immune bottleneck which proceeds clonal, population expansion of S. aureus. When imaging embryos in the terminal stages of infection it was apparent that the large bacterial aggregates which form within the host, have biofilm-like characteristics. As such, the role of staphylococcal proteins involved in biofilm formation, during infection progression was investigated using fluorescent reporters for gene expression. It was determined that S. aureus nuclease is produced both inside of host phagocytes and later by bacteria associated with large aggregates. Nuclease was also identified as a novel virulence factor in the zebrafish embryo model of S. aureus infection. Light sheet fluorescence microscopy has proven a useful tool to gain further insight into the temporal and spatial dynamics of S. aureus pathogenesis and to dissect real-time host-pathogen interactions on a cellular level

Basic psychological needs, socioeconomic status, and well-being of undergraduate honors and non-honors students

Abstract Basic psychological needs, socioeconomic status and involvement in honors programs may impact well-being of undergraduate students. This exploratory study examines these factors and uses Self-Determination Theory as a lens to interpret the effect on well-being of undergraduate honors and non-honors students. Self-Determination Theory is a macro theory of motivation and personality development that relates to individuals’ need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and addresses the social-emotional and cognitive components needed to ensure individuals’ well-being. In this study, researchers examined the relationship among basic psychological needs, socioeconomic status, honors participation, and well-being of 252 undergraduates. Results of a regression analysis indicated that well-being is primarily predicted by autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We discuss the implications of our findings for educators and researchers. Keywords: basic psychological needs, self-determination theory, well-being, gifted, honors, postsecondary, undergraduate, motivatio

Amnion Epithelial Cells as a Candidate Therapy for Acute and Chronic Lung Injury

Acute and chronic lung injury represents a major and growing global burden of disease. For many of these lung diseases, the damage is irreparable, exhausting the host's ability to regenerate new lung, and current therapies are simply supportive rather than restorative. Cell-based therapies offer the promise of tissue regeneration for many organs. In this paper, we examine the potential application of amnion epithelial cells, derived from the term placenta, to lung regeneration. We discuss their unique properties of plasticity and immunomodulation, reviewing the experimental evidence that amnion epithelial cells can prevent and repair lung injury, offering the potential to be applied to both neonatal, childhood, and adult lung disease. It is amazing to suggest that the placenta may offer renewed life after birth as well as securing new life before

Caswell County Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Access Project

Background: A lack of access to and consumption of diverse, healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables is linked to negative health outcomes. Caswell County, North Carolina is a rural food desert, and its low-income residents are vulnerable to diet-related illnesses, particularly cardiovascular disease and obesity. Methods: The Capstone team completed four deliverables culminating in recommendations for sustainable improvements to access to fresh fruits and vegetables in Caswell County. Each product represented a sequential phase of data collection necessary to make evidence-based recommendations. The first deliverable was an in-depth, qualitative community assessment, informed by key informant interviews, online survey data, and extensive field observation. The second deliverable consisted of a mixed-methods assessment of 22 retail food outlets in the county, based on the pricing, promotion, placement, and product availability of fruits and vegetables. Following this fieldwork, the Capstone team reviewed four categories of existing intervention models to inform a recommendation of the most appropriate fit for Caswell County. The fourth and last deliverable laid the foundation for a pilot implementation of the recommended intervention model. The Capstone team conducted interviews with four storeowners to determine their readiness to implement a healthy corner store pilot program in Caswell County. Results: The community assessment, food outlet survey, and review of intervention models informed the Capstone team's recommendation of a healthy corner store initiative for Caswell County. This recommendation was made based on limited funding and dedicated staffing, and was designed to build on Caswell's existing food system infrastructure. The storeowner interviews laid out first steps in the implementation of a pilot project to be conducted by the Community Transformation Grant Project, the Capstone partner organization in Caswell County. Discussion: The assessment tools and guidance for adapting intervention models developed by the Capstone team laid the foundation for enhancing access to fresh fruits and vegetables in Caswell County via healthy corner stores. The findings from this project have implications for rural food deserts around the county by contributing to the evidence base for best practices in limited resource settings.Master of Public Healt

The effect of electrical stimulation on corticospinal excitability is dependent on application duration: a same subject pre-post test design

Background: In humans, corticospinal excitability is known to increase following motor electrical stimulation (ES) designed to mimic a voluntary contraction. However, whether the effect is equivalent with different application durations and whether similar effects are apparent for short and long applications is unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the duration of peripheral motor ES influenced its effect on corticospinal excitability

Stochastic Expression of Sae-Dependent Virulence Genes during Staphylococcus aureus Biofilm Development Is Dependent on SaeS

The intricate process of biofilm formation in the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus involves distinct stages during which a complex mixture of matrix molecules is produced and modified throughout the developmental cycle. Early in biofilm development, a subpopulation of cells detaches from its substrate in an event termed “exodus” that is mediated by SaePQRS-dependent stochastic expression of a secreted staphylococcal nuclease, which degrades extracellular DNA within the matrix, causing the release of cells and subsequently allowing for the formation of metabolically heterogenous microcolonies. Since the SaePQRS regulatory system is involved in the transcriptional control of multiple S. aureus virulence factors, the expression of several additional virulence genes was examined within a developing biofilm by introducing fluorescent gene reporter plasmids into wild-type S. aureus and isogenic regulatory mutants and growing these strains in a microfluidic system that supplies the bacteria with a constant flow of media while simultaneously imaging developing biofilms in 5-min intervals. This study demonstrated that multiple virulence genes, including nuc, were expressed stochastically within a specialized subpopulation of cells in nascent biofilms. We demonstrated that virulence genes regulated by SaePQRS were stochastically expressed in nearly all strains examined whereas Agr-regulated genes were expressed more homogenously within maturing microcolonies. The commonly used Newman strain contains a variant of SaeS (SaeSP) that confers constitutive kinase activity to the protein and caused this strain to lack the stochastic expression pattern observed in other strain backgrounds. Importantly, repair of the SaeSP allele resulting in reversion to the well-conserved SaeSL allele found in other strains restored stochastic expression in this strain

Intense windstorms in the northeastern United States

Windstorms are a major natural hazard in many countries. The objective of this study is to identify and characterize intense windstorms during the last 4 decades in the US Northeast and determine both the sources of cyclones responsible for these events and the manner in which those cyclones differ from the cyclone climatology. The windstorm detection is based on the spatial extent of locally extreme wind speeds at 100 m height from the ERA5 reanalysis database. During the top 10 windstorms, wind speeds exceed their local 99.9th percentile over at least one-third of land-based ERA5 grid cells in this high-population-density region of the USA. Maximum sustained wind speeds at 100 m during these windstorms range from 26 to over 43 ms−1, with wind speed return periods exceeding 6.5 to 106 years (considering the top 5 % of grid cells during each storm). Property damage associated with these storms, with inflation adjusted to January 2020, ranges from USD 24 million to over USD 29 billion. Two of these windstorms are linked to decaying tropical cyclones, three are Alberta clippers, and the remaining storms are Colorado lows. Two of the 10 re-intensified off the east coast, leading to development of nor'easters. These windstorms followed frequently observed cyclone tracks but exhibit maximum intensities as measured using 700 hPa relative vorticity and mean sea level pressure that is 5–10 times the mean values for cyclones that followed similar tracks over this 40-year period. The time evolution of wind speeds and concurrent precipitation for those windstorms that occurred after the year 2000 exhibit good agreement with in situ ground-based and remote sensing observations, plus storm damage reports, indicating that the ERA5 reanalysis data have a high degree of fidelity for large, damaging windstorms such as these. A larger pool of the top 50 largest windstorms exhibit evidence of only weak serial clustering, which is in contrast to the relatively strong serial clustering of windstorms in Europe