Hippotherapy as a Tool for Improving Motor Skills, Postural Stability, and Self Confidence in Cerebral Palsy and Multiple Sclerosis

Hippotherapy utilizes the three dimensional movement of the horse to improve balance, strength, coordination, and postural symmetry in those with cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, or related neuromuscular disorders. The forward, side-to-side, and rotational movement of the horse provides the rider with different sensory cues to help improve gait. While this therapy is a passive exercise for the patient, the individual must engage the core muscles to sit upright along with making small corrections due to the constant movement of the horse to help with postural stability and strengthening. Ultimately, understanding how affected brain areas lead to symptoms in those with CP and MS, innovative therapies can be utilized such as hippotherapy to help improve balance, strength, coordination, and postural symmetry along with aspects of self confidence

The Case for Extending Pretrial Diversion to Include Possession of Child Pornography

Pretrial diversion removes offenders with a low-risk of reoffending from the penal system and instead sends them to supervised treatment programs. The result is lower cost to the state and a second chance for those who successfully complete the program. Typically, violent crimes, such as murder and attempted murder, are exempt from pretrial diversion. Notably, sex related crimes are also ineligible in all jurisdictions. By excluding all sex-related crimes from pretrial diversion, possession of child pornography is adjudicated by the courts. As a result, young, first-time offenders who may be candidates for treatment are bundled with physical offenders, members of child pornography “circles”, and rapist, charged as felons, and faced with fifteen years as a registered sex offender. While this may make the public feel safe, it eliminates an option for those who could truly benefit from pretrial diversion. By offering pretrial diversion for “simple” possession of child pornography, offenders who are unlikely to reoffend or to escalate their actions will receive necessary treatment, making it more likely that they move forward and become productive law abiding citizens

Hippotherapy as a Tool for Improving Motor Skills, Postural Stability, and Self Confidence in Cerebral Palsy and Multiple Sclerosis

Hippotherapy utilizes the three dimensional movement of the horse to improve balance, strength, coordination, and postural symmetry in those with cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, or related neuromuscular disorders. The forward, side-to-side, and rotational movement of the horse provides the rider with different sensory cues to help improve gait. While this therapy is a passive exercise for the patient, the individual must engage the core muscles to sit upright along with making small corrections due to the constant movement of the horse to help with postural stability and strengthening. Ultimately, understanding how affected brain areas lead to symptoms in those with CP and MS, innovative therapies can be utilized such as hippotherapy to help improve balance, strength, coordination, and postural symmetry along with aspects of self confidence

Marie Olivieri Russell and Sarah Sundborg Long

Marie Olivieri Russell Dr. Russell attended Jefferson Medical College where she graduated top of her class in 1970. In addition to being the first woman to receive the Alumni Prize for highest cumulative GPA, in 1971 she became the first student to serve as a full voting member of the Board of Trustees at Jefferson. After graduation she completed both a residency in Pediatrics and a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology Oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia before continuing on as a part of their academic staff until 1981 and managing the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Program. After leaving Children’s and academic medicine Dr. Russell transitioned into Primary Care, eventually co-founding a pediatric practice for Crozer-Keystone Health System in Media, Pennsylvania. The practice later moved to Springfield, Pennsylvania, grew to include six physicians, and became part of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Primary Care Network. Over the years she also held faculty appointments at University of Pennsylvania, Hahnemann Medical College, and Drexel University. Dr. Russell retired in 2005 to spend more time with her family. Sarah Sundborg Long Dr. Long graduated from St. Francis College with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology before entering Jefferson Medical College. Upon her graduation in 1970 she completed an Infectious Disease residency and fellowship at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. She is currently the Chief for the Section of Infectious Diseases at St Christopher’s and a Professor of Pediatrics at Drexel University College of Medicine. Throughout her teaching career she has held more than seventy-five visiting professorships and earned a number of honors and awards, including most recently the Lindback Award. Dr. Long is the founding editor of Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Disease as well as an associate editor of The Journal of Pediatrics and the Red Book Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Her main research areas are common infectious diseases and vaccine-preventable diseases in children.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/oral_histories/1010/thumbnail.jp

The New Student Politics Curriculum Guide

The New Student Politics: The Wingspread Statement on Student Civic Engagement (2002) can be assigned as a text in a political science service-learning course that has as an explicit course objective the exploration of contemporary conceptions of citizenship, or a sociology service-learning course that focuses on community building and social transformation. Additionally, the text can be incorporated in service-learning courses across the disciplines with the aid of The New Student Politics Curriculum Guide. The Curriculum Guide is designed to provide a structure for engaging students in reflection on their community service experiences in a way that allows for the exploration of the connections between service and politics, the purposes of their education and their work in community, and their role as participants in the civic life of American democracy. The structured reflection provided in the Curriculum Guide recognizes that all disciplinary competence is infused with an element of civic awareness and purpose, or as William Sullivan has written, there is no viable pursuit of technical excellence without participation in those civic enterprises through which expertise discovers its human meaning. The Curriculum Guide delves deeper into the concept of service politics introduced in The New Student Politics, provides a guide to including civic engagement reflection in service-learning courses, and includes concrete tools for reflection on student civic engagement

An optimized method for 3D fluorescence co-localization applied to human kinetochore protein architecture

Two-color fluorescence co-localization in 3D (three-dimension) has the potential to achieve accurate measurements at the nanometer length scale. Here, we optimized a 3D fluorescence co-localization method that uses mean values for chromatic aberration correction to yield the mean separation with ~10 nm accuracy between green and red fluorescently labeled protein epitopes within single human kinetochores. Accuracy depended critically on achieving small standard deviations in fluorescence centroid determination, chromatic aberration across the measurement field, and coverslip thickness. Computer simulations showed that large standard deviations in these parameters significantly increase 3D measurements from their true values. Our 3D results show that at metaphase, the protein linkage between CENP-A within the inner kinetochore and the microtubule-binding domain of the Ndc80 complex within the outer kinetochore is on average ~90 nm. The Ndc80 complex appears fully extended at metaphase and exhibits the same subunit structure in vivo as found in vitro by crystallography

Geodesic Mode Connectivity

Mode connectivity is a phenomenon where trained models are connected by a path of low loss. We reframe this in the context of Information Geometry, where neural networks are studied as spaces of parameterized distributions with curved geometry. We hypothesize that shortest paths in these spaces, known as geodesics, correspond to mode-connecting paths in the loss landscape. We propose an algorithm to approximate geodesics and demonstrate that they achieve mode connectivity.Comment: Published as a TinyPaper at ICLR 202

A Feasibility Study of 21st-Century Sanitation in North Carolina

Sarah E A Long: A Feasibility Study of 21st-Century Sanitation in North Carolina (Under the direction of Jamie Bartram) There is growing recognition among practitioners and government officials, of the human right to safe water and sanitation. As the United States of America invests in its water and sanitation infrastructure over the next decade, it is worth exploring opportunities to the limitations of conventional systems. Sewer systems are costly to install and maintain, while septic systems are prone to poor maintenance and made challenging by not suitable soil conditions. Inspired by examples of sanitation innovation abroad, I explore what a 21st century sanitation system, that both meets sanitation gaps and improves upon conventional systems, would look like in the U.S. using the case of the state of North Carolina. I conducted a literature review of sanitation alternatives and conceptualized the design of a system that meets the health, economic, and environmental needs of a range of communities within the state. I conducted qualitative analysis of a series of interviews to examine incentives, barriers, and perceptions among key stakeholders. I explored the financial feasibility of such a system, for communities in North Carolina with a range of available resources. Results suggest that the primary incentives for a conceptualized alternative are environmental, and economic, particularly in comparison to septic systems. The biggest advantage over septic systems would be the decreased minimum lot size due to the elimination of a septic drain field. The conceptualized alternative’s capital costs are estimated to be cheaper than both sewer and septic; however, maintenance and lifetime costs were higher than the conceptualized systems, making the alternative’s overall costs more expensive. The potential for resource recovery and retrofitting existing infrastructure are, however, promising. The stakeholder responses to the conceptualized design warrant further exploration of this conceptualized system.Master of Scienc