Alcoholism: a family disease implications for educators

The purpose of this paper was to inform educators regarding this disease by reviewing recent and current data and literature, in order that they become better informed and able to recognize those students and their families affected by the disease of alcoholism

The Brockport Writers Forum Digitization Project - RRLC Newsletter

News article in the RRLC newsletter about the results of an RRLC Technology Grant received by Drake Memorial Library to fund the digitization of 49 Writers Forum videos

UPI-Net: Semantic Contour Detection in Placental Ultrasound

Semantic contour detection is a challenging problem that is often met in medical imaging, of which placental image analysis is a particular example. In this paper, we investigate utero-placental interface (UPI) detection in 2D placental ultrasound images by formulating it as a semantic contour detection problem. As opposed to natural images, placental ultrasound images contain specific anatomical structures thus have unique geometry. We argue it would be beneficial for UPI detectors to incorporate global context modelling in order to reduce unwanted false positive UPI predictions. Our approach, namely UPI-Net, aims to capture long-range dependencies in placenta geometry through lightweight global context modelling and effective multi-scale feature aggregation. We perform a subject-level 10-fold nested cross-validation on a placental ultrasound database (4,871 images with labelled UPI from 49 scans). Experimental results demonstrate that, without introducing considerable computational overhead, UPI-Net yields the highest performance in terms of standard contour detection metrics, compared to other competitive benchmarks.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted at Visual Recognition for Medical Images (VRMI), ICCV 201

Representations of Italy and Italians in British Fiction and Travel Writing, 1900-1930

Ibis thesis is conceived as a critical exploration of the construction of Italy and Italians in texts by British writers published between 1900 and 1930. Despite this period representing the heyday of writers in and writing on Italy, scholarship on the specifically Italian-centred rhetoric and its significance is sketchy (though advancing): one must look piecemeal to literature on travel-writing, literary modernism, Englishncss and regionalism, or on imperialist-colonialist discourse or on the Mediterranean in literature; and to pre- 1900 periods such as Grand Tourism, Romanticism, the rise of mass tourism in the Victorian age; or the inter-war period. Drawing from this network of scholarship in detailed analyses of a dozen writers' works, a picture is built up of the principal characteristics of literary constructions of Italy and Italians in terms of tropes, rhetorical strategies and themes, accounting for their predominance, while maintaining a sense of variety and change within the parameters of genre and period. The selection of writers is based on their high standing in contemporary literary circles, their personal contact with Italy and the popularity of their texts during the period. Each chapter examines writing on a particular region of Italy - Capri, Tuscany, the North and the South - drawing out the specific connotations of place found in and constructed by the texts. By scrutffuzing the workings of fiction and travel writing on Italy in the light of the discourses and contexts outlined above, the thesis will show that literary representations of Italy provide a window onto the way British writers conceived of British identity as well as of Italy and its people, during the first three decades of the century

Accreta placentation: a systematic review of prenatal ultrasound imaging and grading of villous invasiveness.

BACKGROUND: Determining the depth of villous invasiveness before delivery is pivotal in planning individual management of placenta accreta. We have evaluated the value of various ultrasound signs proposed in the international literature for the prenatal diagnosis of accreta placentation and assessment of the depth of villous invasiveness. OBJECTIVE: We undertook a PubMed and MEDLINE search of the relevant studies published from the first prenatal ultrasound description of placenta accreta in 1982 through March 30, 2016, using key words "placenta accreta," "placenta increta," "placenta percreta," "abnormally invasive placenta," "morbidly adherent placenta," and "placenta adhesive disorder" as related to "sonography," "ultrasound diagnosis," "prenatal diagnosis," "gray-scale imaging," "3-dimensional ultrasound", and "color Doppler imaging." STUDY DESIGN: The primary eligibility criteria were articles that correlated prenatal ultrasound imaging with pregnancy outcome. A total of 84 studies, including 31 case reports describing 38 cases of placenta accreta and 53 series describing 1078 cases were analyzed. Placenta accreta was subdivided into placenta creta to describe superficially adherent placentation and placenta increta and placenta percreta to describe invasive placentation. RESULTS: Of the 53 study series, 23 did not provide data on the depth of villous myometrial invasion on ultrasound imaging or at delivery. Detailed correlations between ultrasound findings and placenta accreta grading were found in 72 cases. A loss of clear zone (62.1%) and the presence of bridging vessels (71.4%) were the most common ultrasound signs in cases of placenta creta. In placenta increta, a loss of clear zone (84.6%) and subplacental hypervascularity (60%) were the most common ultrasound signs, whereas placental lacunae (82.4%) and subplacental hypervascularity (54.5%) were the most common ultrasound signs in placenta percreta. No ultrasound sign or a combination of ultrasound signs were specific of the depth of accreta placentation. CONCLUSION: The wide heterogeneity in terminology used to describe the grades of accreta placentation and differences in study design limits the evaluation of the accuracy of ultrasound imaging in the screening and diagnosis of placenta accreta. This review emphasizes the need for further prospective studies using a standardized evidence-based approach including a systematic correlation between ultrasound signs of placenta accreta and detailed clinical and pathologic examinations at delivery

Women Exiting Prostitution: Reports of Coercive Control in Intimate Relationships

There is burgeoning research on intimate partner violence (IPV) experiences among women globally. However, there is a dearth of research on IPV experiences among marginalized populations in Western countries. Over the past decade, IPV research has shifted from a focus only on physical and sexual violence to include coercive control experiences. These include a continuum of nonviolent behaviors centered on maintaining dominance over one’s partner. However, the empirical literature on examining coercive control among women in prostitution within non-commercial intimate partners is lacking. In this study, we analyzed interviews with 17 women exiting prostitution and examined reported IPV sexual, physical, and coercive control experiences perpetrated by intimate partners. Our findings revealed that participants experienced extensive physical and sexual IPV as well as physical and non-physical coercive control within non-commercial partner relationships. Coercive control was the most frequent type of abuse reported. All nine investigated coercive control tactics were represented within participants’ descriptions. Of these, exploitation (36%), intimidation (16.3%), degradation (12.5%), and deception (10.0%) were the most commonly identified. Understanding and assessing violent actions and control dynamics within non-commercial intimate partner relationships among women exiting prostitution have important implications for various stakeholders within the criminal justice system

Impeachment as a Political Weapon

This study is concerned with the problem of determining the nature of impeachable offenses through an analysis of the English theory of impeachment, colonial impeachment practice, debates in the constitutional convention and the state ratifying conventions, The Federalist Papers and debates in the first Congress, In addition, the precedents established in American cases of impeachment particularly in the trials of Judge John Pickering, Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson are examined. Materials for the study included secondary sources, congressional records, memoirs, contemporary accounts, government documents, newspapers and trial records, The thesis concludes that impeachable offenses include non-indictable behavior and exclude misconduct outside official duties and recommends some alternative method of removal for federal judges

Understanding the mechanisms of polyphyodonty: insights gained from tooth replacement in fish

Most jawed vertebrates replace their teeth throughout life (polyphyodonty) and there is a great drive to understand the developmental basis of this mechanism. The extreme diversity of fish dentitions offers rich opportunities for investigation. Here, surface feature observations and X-ray micro-CT virtual sections are used to identify tooth replacement mechanisms in fossil and modern fish, which are evaluated in light of existing research. A consensus exists that tooth replacement requires a ‘dental lamina’; an epithelial connection between predecessor and replacement tooth, which provides the putative stems cells required for long-term tooth renewal. This single epithelial connection also enables only one tooth to be replaced by one successor, at any one time. The findings herein show this is not the case in the crushing dentitions of an extinct group of fishes, the pycnodonts. Instead, tooth positioning suggests an opportunistic, gap-filling addition, where teeth fill space arising from tooth damage, loss, and the geometry of neighbouring teeth. Contrastingly, in the modern fish specimens, the mechanisms by which teeth are regenerated are recognisable. However, the crushing dentitions of seabream show occasional unusual change in tooth size, shape, and positioning, over one tooth generation. These crushing dentitions, and those of two other modern specimens, exhibit a close-packed, near-tessellating ‘anamestic’ patterning. A range of research is drawn on to propose hypotheses for these observations. In pycnodonts, I propose that gap-filling was enabled by the oral epithelium retaining an odontogenic potential throughout life, possibly facilitated by stem cells that generate taste buds. I propose that tooth positioning and morphology in pycnodont, seabream and other crushing dentitions is an adaptive phenotypic response to mechanical strain at the crushing surface, a known phenomenon in cichlids. I suggest that alternative sources of stem cells to predecessor teeth, and mechanoreception-mediated tooth morphology and patterning, are promising areas for future study