Lights, Camera, Representation and Direction: How Hollywood, Netflix and other Media Empires Represent Race and Disability

Major Research Paper (Master's), Critical Disability Studies, School of Health Policy and Management,Faculty of Health, York UniversityThroughout history, racialized people, and people with disabilities have been harmed by negative stereotypes, especially through the intersection of ableism and racism, which is still going on today. This Major Research Paper is about the lack of representation and the misrepresentation of People of Colour and people with disabilities. Through the portrayal of various tropes, such as ‘super abilities’ in mass media culture, this paper will discuss how stereotypes hinder racial and disability justice. The research paper analyzes how mass media producers of film and television, like Marvel and Netflix, including international media content such as Bollywood, employ portrayals of negative stereotypes to further marginalize disabled people of various racialized identities. Through the analysis of selected media, this paper explores the way oppressive narratives have evolved toward inclusion and a more disability-positive outlook, for example disabled characters are not only playing the role of victim, or the narrative is not only about the character suffering from a disease. However, the paper argues improvements in narrative to be less racist or ableist are not enough, much more can be done to make media more inclusive, diverse and disability-positive. For example, film and television political organizations such as unions could promote and advocate for the roles of disabled characters to only be played by disabled actors

Distribution of Steroid like Compounds in Plant Flora

Medicinal herbs constitute an effective source of traditional (Ayurvedic, Unani and Homeopathy) and modern medicine. The plant is a biosynthetic laboratory, not only for chemical compounds, but also a multitude of compounds like glycosides, alkaloids etc. These exert physiological and therapeutic effect. The compounds that are responsible for medicinal property of the drug are usually secondary metabolites. Alkaloids, glycosides, neutral principles, resins, oleoresins, sesquiterpene lactones are some of the common active constituents of medicinal herbs. The article reviews distribution of steroid like compounds and their pharmacological importance

Distribution of Steroid-like Compounds in Plant Flora

Medicinal herbs constitute an effective source of traditional (Ayurvedic, Unani and Homeopathy) and modern medicine. The plant is a biosynthetic laboratory, not only for chemical compounds, but also a multitude of compounds like glycosides, alkaloids etc. These exert physiological and therapeutic effect. The compounds that are responsible for medicinal property of the drug are usually secondary metabolites. Alkaloids, glycosides, neutral principles, resins, oleoresins, sesquiterpene lactones are some of the common active constituents of medicinal herbs. The article reviews distribution of steroid like compounds and their pharmacological importance

A Public Health Perspective on Campus Initiatives Against Sexual Violence

With the public health model of violence prevention as a lens, this Undergraduate Research Scholarship project utilized a statistical analysis to determine whether a relationship could be established between number of sexual violence prevention initiatives on a university campus and proportion of students who have experienced nonconsensual sexual contact.Using a public health framework, this project aims to address the question, “How does quantity of university prevention initiatives correlate with rates of campus sexual violence, including harassment, assault, and rape?”. Using the results of the 2019 Association of American Universities Campus Climate Survey and publicly available information regarding individual university trainings and programs (collected using defined search terms), hypothesis testing was conducted to determine whether the existence of a linear relationship could be established between the explanatory variable of number of initiatives and the response variable of proportion of students experiencing sexual violence. Using a scatterplot, a point estimate regression line was created with formula ŷ = .129946 + 0.004992x and p-value of 0.3071, from which it was determined that there was not enough evidence to establish a correlation between these two variables at the 0.05 significance level.This research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

The Progress and Pitfalls of Pharmacogenetics-Based Precision Medicine in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders:A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The inadequate efficacy and adverse effects of antipsychotics severely affect the recovery of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). We report the evidence for associations between pharmacogenetic (PGx) variants and antipsychotics outcomes, including antipsychotic response, antipsychotic-induced weight/BMI gain, metabolic syndrome, antipsychotic-related prolactin levels, antipsychotic-induced tardive dyskinesia (TD), clozapine-induced agranulocytosis (CLA), and drug concentration level (pharmacokinetics) in SSD patients. Through an in-depth systematic search in 2010–2022, we identified 501 records. We included 29 meta-analyses constituting pooled data from 298 original studies over 69 PGx variants across 39 genes, 4 metabolizing phenotypes of CYP2D9, and 3 of CYP2C19. We observed weak unadjusted nominal significant (p &lt; 0.05) additive effects of PGx variants of DRD1, DRD2, DRD3, HTR1A, HTR2A, HTR3A, and COMT (10 variants) on antipsychotic response; DRD2, HTR2C, BDNF, ADRA2A, ADRB3, GNB3, INSIG2, LEP, MC4R, and SNAP25 (14 variants) on weight gain; HTR2C (one variant) on metabolic syndrome; DRD2 (one variant) on prolactin levels; COMT and BDNF (two variants) on TD; HLA-DRB1 (one variant) on CLA; CYP2D6 (four phenotypes) and CYP2C19 (two phenotypes) on antipsychotics plasma levels. In the future, well-designed longitudinal naturalistic multi-center PGx studies are needed to validate the effectiveness of PGx variants in antipsychotic outcomes before establishing any reproducible PGx passport in clinical practice.</p

Monitoring of spatio‐temporal glaciers dynamics in Bhagirathi Basin, Gharhwal Himalayas using remote sensing data

Glacier retreat represents a highly sensitive indicator of climate change and global warming. Therefore, timely mapping and monitoring of glacier dynamics is strategic for water budget forecasting and sustainable management of water resources. In this study, Landsat satellite images of 2000 and 2015 have been used to estimate area extent variations in 29 glaciers of the Bhagirathi basin, Garhwali Himalayas. ASTER DEM has been used for extraction of glacier terrain features, such as elevation, slope, area, etc. It is observed from the analysis that Bhagirathi sub-basin has a maximum glaciated area of ~ 35% and Pilang has the least with ~ 3.2%, whereas Kaldi sub-basin has no glacier. In this region, out of 29 glaciers, 25 glaciers have shown retreat, while only 4 glaciers have shown advancement resulting in a total glacier area loss of ~ 0.5%, while the retreat rate varies from ~ 0.06 m/yr to ~ 19.4 m/yr. Dokarni glacier has maximum retreat rate (~ 19.4 m/yr), whereas Dehigad has maximum advancing rate (~ 10.1 m/yr). Glaciers retreat and advance have also been analyzed based on terrain parameters and observed that northern and southern orientations have shown retreat, whereas the area change is highly correlated with glacier length. The study covers more than 65% of the total glaciated area and based on the existing literature represents one of the most exhaustive studies to cover the highest number of glaciers in all sub-basins of the Bhagirathi basin