Where Is Jill Scott?: The Significance of Cultural Mulattoes on Disrupting Class Identity Archetypes

The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the occurrence and fluidity of cross-cultural exchanges exhibited through cultural mulattoes. Jill Scott serves as a working example of cultural mulatto characteristics, a person who can be a black urban, working-class person with middle-class aspirations and who navigates between working-class and middle-class. The framework contextualizes a qualitative critical, interpretive word based approach to the music of Jill Scott's first album, Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 as Scott navigates between classes. The position allows for further exploration on how a person obtains and executes social, political, and cultural capital--as in the case of cultural mulattoes--to increase a person's probability of having privilege and earning potential in real social settings.

A multi-modal data resource for investigating topographic heterogeneity in patient-derived xenograft tumors.

Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) are an essential pre-clinical resource for investigating tumor biology. However, cellular heterogeneity within and across PDX tumors can strongly impact the interpretation of PDX studies. Here, we generated a multi-modal, large-scale dataset to investigate PDX heterogeneity in metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) across tumor models, spatial scales and genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and imaging assay modalities. To showcase this dataset, we present analysis to assess sources of PDX variation, including anatomical orientation within the implanted tumor, mouse contribution, and differences between replicate PDX tumors. A unique aspect of our dataset is deep characterization of intra-tumor heterogeneity via immunofluorescence imaging, which enables investigation of variation across multiple spatial scales, from subcellular to whole tumor levels. Our study provides a benchmark data resource to investigate PDX models of metastatic CRC and serves as a template for future, quantitative investigations of spatial heterogeneity within and across PDX tumor models

Effect of unicompartmental knee replacement tibial component design on proximal tibial strain and ongoing pain

Introduction: Unicompartmental knee replacements (UKRs) are an alternative to total knee replacements (TKRs) for treating isolated medial compartment knee osteoarthritis. However, revision rates are consistently higher than for TKR and UKRs are commonly revised for “unexplained” pain, a possible cause of which is elevated proximal tibial bone strain. The influence of implant design on this strain has not been previously investigated. Aims: The aims of this thesis are to determine the effect of medial UKR tibial component design on proximal tibial strain and ongoing pain. Methods: A retrospective clinical cohort study was performed comparing patient reported outcome and implant survival of a metal backed mobile bearing UKR implant (n=289) and an all-polyethylene (AP) fixed bearing UKR implant (n=111) with minimum 5 year follow up. A method of digital radiological densitometry, the greyscale ratio b (GSRb), was developed, validated and applied to plain radiographs to measure changes in bone density over 5 years in both the metal backed (n=173) and all-polyethylene (n=72) UKR patients. A finite element model (FEM) was validated against previous mechanical testing data and was used to analyse the effect of metal backing and implant thickness on proximal tibial cancellous bone strain in fixed bearing UKR implants. Results: There were no significant differences in patient reported outcomes between implants throughout follow up. Ten year all cause survival was 90.2 (95%CI 86-94) for the metal backed implant and 79.9 (60.7 to 99) for the all-polyethylene. Revision for unexplained pain was significantly greater in the AP implant where revisions were performed significantly earlier. Overall, the mean GSRb reduced following medial UKR with no difference between implants. In those patients where GSRb increased, patient reported outcomes were worse with an association with ongoing pain. A finite element model was successfully validated using acoustic emission and digital image correlation data. This model confirmed that the volume of cancellous bone exposed to compressive and tensile strains in excess of 3000 (pathological overloading) and 7000 (fracture) microstrain were higher in the AP implants, as were peak tensile and compressive strains. Varying polyethylene insert thickness did not affect these strain parameters in the metal backed implant, but varying polyethylene thickness in the AP implants had significant effects at all loads with elevated strains in thinner implants. Increasing the AP thickness to 10mm did not reduce strains to the levels found under metal backed implants, and imminent cancellous bone failure was implied when AP thickness was reduced to 6mm. Conclusion: UKRs with all-polyethylene tibial components are associated with greater proximal tibial strains than metal backed implants and this is exacerbated in thinner implants. The clinical consequences of this are uncertain. Medial UKR implantation does alter proximal tibial GSRb, though this is not uniform and is independent of implant type. When GSRb increases it is associated with ongoing pain

“See, I’m not racist!”: Aversive Racism, Peer Pressure, and Blaming Adolescents

Abstract This study examined how peer pressure influences participant’s attribution of blame to Black or White youth committing a crime. Participants read one of four scenarios in which a Black or White male (Kevin), who was or was not under peer pressure, stole a bicycle. To measure the amount of blame participants assigned to the adolescent, they completed a blame attribution inventory. Participants also completed a personality scale to measure their perceptions of the adolescent’s personal characteristics. To avoid being perceived as prejudiced, the researchers predicted participants would blame the White adolescent more than the Black adolescent for stealing the bicycle. Additionally, the researchers predicted that participants would blame the adolescent under peer pressure less than the adolescent not under peer pressure, regardless of race. Finally, the researchers hypothesized that participants would blame the Black adolescent less than the White adolescent in the presence of peer pressure. As predicted, participants blamed the White adolescent more than the Black adolescent, regardless of peer pressure and blamed the adolescent less when under peer pressure, regardless of race. Additionally, in the peer pressure condition, the White adolescent was blamed more than the Black adolescent. There was no interaction between the adolescent’s race and peer pressure