Barriers to Attending Vaginal Breech Birth in the American Healthcare System: A Qualitative Analysis

A fetus is considered breech when the presenting part is the buttocks, foot/feet, or hips. Annually, approximately 5% of all pregnancies in the United States (U.S.) are breech at term (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). Vaginal delivery of a breech baby is increasingly rare in the U.S., as 95% of those presenting as breech at term are delivered via cesarean section (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). While the number of vaginal breech deliveries has been trending downwards since the 1970s, the rate dropped precipitously in 2000 after the Term Breech Trial (ACOG, 2020; Freeze, 2019; Hunter, 2014). The Term Breech Trial (TBT) found that “Perinatal mortality, neonatal mortality, or serious neonatal morbidity was significantly lower for the planned caesarean section group than for the planned vaginal birth group” (Hannah et al., 2000). The most commonly cited concerns about vaginal breech delivery include risk of head entrapment, where the body emerges but the head (typically the widest part of the fetus) is stuck in the pelvis, and birth trauma/injury related to manipulation of the fetus during delivery (ACOG, 2020; Berhan & Haileamlak, 2016)

Verbatim: Henry Kissinger, the Yom Kippur War, and the Legacy of the United States in the Modern Middle East

Henry Kissinger deeply influenced the foreign policy of the United States for much of the latter half of the Twentieth Century. This was especially true during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. On October 6, Egypt and Syria launched a combined invasion of Israel that caught Israel by surprise. As Secretary of State, Kissinger was heavily involved before the conflict in talking to Egypt, Syria, Israel, the Soviet Union and others to prevent the conflict. After the fighting started, Kissinger continued to leverage United States influence to end the conflict and advance the United States’ interests. His influence was even greater as President Richard Nixon was preoccupied dealing with the fallout of the Watergate Scandal, and was not focused on responding to a Middle East conflict. New archives of telephone conversations and memoranda of conversations have been declassified that show that Kissinger used this influence to keep Nixon even further away from making decisions during the Yom Kippur War. Kissinger then stepped in to implement even more of his own agenda to advance United States interests based on realpolitik and against the backdrop of dètente. He tried to appease the Arab countries while also maintaining balance in its relationships with the Soviet Union and Israel. These newly declassified documents provide a parallel narrative to Kissinger’s own prolific memoirs, and serve as a method to critique Kissinger’s own narrative which has been the prevailing historical narrative for the past four decades

Customization of Discriminant Function Analysis for Prediction of Solar Flares

This research is an extension to the research conducted by K. Leka and G. Barnes of the Colorado Research Associates Division, Northwest Research Associates, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado (CORA) in which they found no single photospheric solar parameter they considered could sufficiently identify a flare-producing active region (AR). Their research then explored the possibility a linear combination of parameters used in a multivariable discriminant function (DF) could adequately predict solar activity. The purpose of this research is to extend the DF research conducted by Leka and Barnes by refining the method of statistical discriminant analysis (DA) with the goal of selecting those photospheric magnetic parameters most capable of identifying flare-producing active regions in hopes of increasing the reliability of short term flare warnings and the understanding of flare production. The data for this research were photospheric vector magnetograms captured by the Imaging Vector Magnetograph (IVM) at the University of Hawai`i Mees Solar Observatory at Haleakala and provided by CORA. Increasing the data set size was an essential task for this research in order to have a more statistically significant training sample for DA. This research also modified current DF procedures to enable the customization of the costs of flare false alarms and flare misses. Work was also done to expand the binary DF results to produce flare probability forecasts. The selection of the optimum combination of photospheric magnetic parameters to be used as predictors in a linear DF began with the elimination of redundant parameters and those parameters least likely to contribute to flare production. The selection of parameters was governed by maximizing the Mahalanobis distance in a step-up method. The DF results show a pre-flaring active region may be characterized by larger magnetic flux, an active region with a larger area of magnetic shear angle greater than 80°, larger current of heterogeneity, larger spatial vertical magnetic field gradient, and a larger kurtosis of the shear angle. With the optimum combination of parameters, DF flare probability forecasts were compared to the daily forecasts produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Space Environment Center (NOAA SEC). The Chi-Squared values of each forecast show the objective DF based flare probability forecasting method performs as well as the subjective forecasting method employed by the SEC

Improved Modeling of Midlatitude D-region Ionospheric Absorption of High Frequency Radio Signals during Solar X-ray Flares

The purpose of this research was to improve modeling of midlatitude D-region ionospheric absorption of high frequency radio signals during solar X-ray flares through analysis of HF propagation data obtained during the HF Investigation of D-region Ionospheric Variation Experiment (HIDIVE) and obtained at the Canadian Space Agency NORSTAR riometer in Pinawa, Manitoba, Canada and X-ray flux data, as reported by GOES satellites. The findings of the data analysis were then used to validate and suggest improvements for two existing HF absorption models, the operational Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) D-region Absorption model and the physical AbbyNormal model. Analysis of the HIDIVE data revealed an absorption dependence on signal frequency and a dependence on solar zenith angle which differ from those used in the SWPC model. Analysis of nitric oxide (NO) density data obtained with the Student Nitric Oxide Explorer and during the Halogen Occultation Experiment provided improved methods of defining NO profiles within AbbyNormal

The Memory of the Temple in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature

This dissertation concerns the memory of the Jerusalem Temple in rabbinic literature, arguing that different groups of rabbis continued to remember and recall the Temple after its destruction in 70 CE for a series of changing memorial purposes. This dissertation concerns two discrete questions about the role of the Temple in rabbinic literature: why did the rabbis remember the Temple in their various texts after its destruction in 70 CE and why were they often so accurate in their memories of the Temple and people that lived in the Second Temple period? Previous scholarship on this question has primarily argued that rabbinic memories of the Temple were a means to create rabbinic authority. This explanation does not account rabbinic literature’s accuracy concerning the Temple and the figures of the Second Temple period. My argument is that the project of rabbinic memory of the Temple is far more complex, and I argue that each rabbinic collection has its own particular set of memorial purposes, which motivated its commemoration of the Temple. Indeed, the very object of commemoration shifts between different rabbinic collections, which shows the malleability of rabbinic accounts of the Second Temple period. For this dissertation, I draw on the methodology of social memory, looking at how the past was updated and changed to fit the present. This provides a conceptual model for understanding the Temple and the Second Temple period in rabbinic literature, as well as how its portrayal was updated and changed by various groups of rabbis. Social memory studies suggests that we focus on the historical conditions in which these particular groups of rabbis operated, providing a means to write a history of the memory of the Temple. At the same time, social memory also provides a conceptual model for addressing the historicity of rabbinic recollections of the past. Drawing on this model of social memory, I argue that rabbinic accounts of figures and events from the Second Temple period were accurate to a certain degree, but that these accounts were constructed in the service of a set of internal rabbinic goals and biases that govern the transmission of these memories. Each chapter of the dissertation examines a different aspect of the rabbinic memory of the Temple and how it reports and reimagines the memories of the Second Temple period. Chapter 1 focuses on the Temple in the first century CE, examining the descriptions of the Temple found in the works of the historian Josephus and descriptions of dedications to the Temple. The evidence of Josephus and these dedications suggest that Jews and non-Jews alike saw the Temple as a commemorative site. This chapter is an explanatory prologue to the main body of my dissertation, which focuses on rabbinic literature. This claim of Chapter 1 frames my argument about the function of the Temple in the Mishnah in Chapter 2, where it continued to function as a commemorative site. Chapter 2 primarily concerns ritual narratives, descriptions of the Temple and its rituals that. I claim that one purpose of these narratives is to serve as a memorial of the destroyed Temple. Drawing on this account of the Mishnah, I turn to Mishnah Middot, a tractate that provides the measurements of the Temple’s space. I argue that Middot uses the commemoration of individuals and events from the Second Temple period to construct a narrative of the Jewish past. The rabbis of the Mishnah adapt and change the commemorative function of the Temple in Mishnah Middot. In the late antique rabbinic collections the Talmud Yerushalmi and Eichah Rabbah, the focus of rabbinic memory shifts from the Temple to the Second Temple period more generally. I argue that stories in these different collections portray the Second Temple period as a particular sort of historical time, characterized by Jewish greatness. This Second Temple past is a time of moral and material superiority to the rabbinic present. I argue that this discourse reflects the context of Roman rule, as the rabbis sought to craft a usable and evocative Jewish past, which reminded Jews of their shared historical experience before Roman rule. Chapter 3 concerns moral exemplarity as a means of commemorating the Second Temple period, focusing on stories in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Palestinian amoraic midrash collections. I provide close readings of three stories in which figures from the Second Temple period (who often seem to have been real individuals in the Second Temple period) are transformed into moral exemplars, embodiments of moral virtues or vices. Chapter 4 turns to another discourse around the Second Temple past, which is found in the Yerushalmi and Eichah Rabbah (ER). I argue that this discourse, the “Romanization” of the Second Temple period, uses the Roman convivial meal and the Roman province of Palestine to describe the greatness of the Jews in the Second Temple period, projecting these institutions back onto the Second Temple past. This strategy of displaced anachronism and misremembering commemorates Jewish greatness in the Second Temple period, a potential form of resistance to Roman rule, but the highly Roman means for doing so show the degree to which the rabbis are embedded in their Roman provincial context

Solution of Divertor Magnetohydrodynamic Equilibria for the Study of Alpha Particle Edge Transport in Fusion Plasmas

Removal of thermalized alpha particles from deuterium- tritium (D-T) fusion plasmas can be accomplished through the use of divertor magnetic fields if the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibria is well understood [1]. Modifying a MHD variational energy principle for poloidal flux surfaces described by = (ρ, θ) results in an inverse Fourier representation of the three-dimensional (3-D) equilibria solution. Application of the = (ρ, θ) flux profile allows transformation of the magnetic field into a non-singular coordinate system along the divertor separatrix [2] and therefore, analysis of different divertor schemes. Derivation of the coupled, non-linear differential equations follows [5] except in the contravariant representation of the magnetic field. Theoretical background, formulation of the variational principle, benchmark results, and preliminary computations are presented