Pathway of protection: Ethnic identity, self-esteem, and substance use among multiracial youth

Fifty percent of adolescents have tried an illicit drug and 70% have tried alcohol by the end of high school, with even higher rates among multiracial youth. Ethnic identity is a protective factor against substance use for minority groups. However, little is known about the mechanisms that facilitate its protective effects, and even less is known about this relationship for multiracial youth. The purpose of the present study was to examine the protective effect of ethnic identity on substance use and to determine whether this relationship operated indirectly through self-esteem, a strong predictor of substance use for among adolescent populations. Participants included 468 multiracial youth in grades six through 12 (53% female). The results found that ethnic identity was indeed related to substance use, partially through changes in self-esteem. Findings from this study contribute to our understanding and development of models of risk and protection for an understudied population

Proteomic responses to elevated ocean temperature in ovaries of the ascidian \u3cem\u3eCiona intestinalis\u3c/em\u3e

Ciona intestinalis, a common sea squirt, exhibits lower reproductive success at the upper extreme of the water temperatures it experiences in coastal New England. In order to understand the changes in protein expression associated with elevated temperatures, and possible response to global temperature change, we reared C. intestinalis from embryos to adults at 18°C (a temperature at which they reproduce normally at our collection site in Rhode Island) and 22°C (the upper end of the local temperature range). We then dissected ovaries from animals at each temperature, extracted protein, and measured proteomic levels using shotgun mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). 1532 proteins were detected at a 1% false discovery rate present in both temperature groups by our LC-MS/MS method. 62 of those proteins are considered up- or down-regulated according to our statistical criteria. Principal component analysis shows a clear distinction in protein expression pattern between the control (18°C) group and high temperature (22°C) group. Similar to previous studies, cytoskeletal and chaperone proteins are upregulated in the high temperature group. Unexpectedly, we find evidence that proteolysis is downregulated at the higher temperature. We propose a working model for the high temperature response in C. intestinalis ovaries whereby increased temperature induces upregulation of signal transduction pathways involving PTPN11 and CrkL, and activating coordinated changes in the proteome especially in large lipid transport proteins, cellular stress responses, cytoskeleton, and downregulation of energy metabolism

Student Recital (April 23, 2012)

Londonderry Air / Joseph McCarthy arr. Domenico Savino Alison Kenney, soprano Zueignung, Op. 10, No. 1 / Richard Strauss Diane M. Card, alto from Dichterliebe, Op. 48 / Robert Schumann Im wunderschonen Monat Mai Ein Jungling liebt ein Madchen Allnachtlich im Traume Greg Fernandes, bass Prelude No. 4 / Heitor Villa-Lobos Nick Rice, guitar Kind of In Love / John Harbison Why / Jonathan Larson Samuel Lathrop, tenor Sonata for Saxophone in Eb and Piano / Bernard Heiden Chelsea Fisk, alto saxophone The Crucifixion, Op. 29, No. 5 / Samuel Barber Mary Sanker, soprano Sicilienne, Op. 78 / Gabriel Faure Charles Sherwin, trombone Sonata for Trumpet and Piano / Eric Ewazen II. James Sheehan, trumpethttps://vc.bridgew.edu/student_concerts/1035/thumbnail.jp

Effects of Conceptual Training and Procedural Training for Teaching Aviation Instrument Holding Patterns

ABSTRACT Twenty private pilots without instrument ratings trained how to fly instrument holding patterns. Holding patterns are advanced aviation maneuvers learned during instrument training where pilots maintain a particular "race-track" figure that keeps the airplane essentially stationary. Participants were randomly assigned to a procedural training group or a conceptual training group. The step-by-step sequence of actions to fly instrument holds was emphasized in the procedural training group. The reasons for flying instruments holds and the interrelationship of elements in a dynamic environment were emphasized in the conceptual training group. Training stimuli included reading text and watching videos. Participants who were conceptually trained showed no difference in situation awareness when flying a typical instrument hold in a flight simulator compared to when flying a more difficult, atypical instrument hold in a flight simulator. However, the procedurally trained participants showed significantly less situation awareness when flying the atypical instrument hold compared to when flying the typical instrument hold. It was found that participants who required more attempts to answer questions correctly during training showed better situation awareness when flying atypical holding patterns. Finally it was found that participants required more attempts to answer questions correctly during the training delivered via video than they did during the training delivered via text

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Preliminary Design of a Live Vaccine Using Diaminopimelic Acid-Dependent Y. pestis

Diaminopimelic acid (DAP) is a modified lysine amino acid required for cell wall synthesis in most bacteria. This project's goal was to design a live growth-controllable vaccine using a strain of Y. pestis, the causative agent of plague, lacking the DAP gene to make its growth dependent on exogenous DAP while allowing host immune responses. Y. pestis starvation assays showed that DAP-starved cells cannot revive after 24 hours of starvation, and growth curves showed the minimum exogenous DAP concentration required per cell. Mock skin diffusion experiments showed that DAP diffuses through "skin", sustaining and limiting growth to areas of application. Results suggest that DAP-dependent Y. pestis can be a live vaccine controlled by DAP application

Aspartame: Not a Healthy Alternative to Sugar

https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/gps-posters/1013/thumbnail.jp

Evaluating 'Business Opportunities with Solar Energy in Un-electrified Areas' in Namibia

A large proportion of Namibia does not have access to grid electricity and will not be electrified for many years. In an effort to provide energy to these areas, the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia has implemented ten "energy shops" in un-electrified areas to provide basic energy services such as cell phone charging and haircutting. The goal of our project is to assess the performance of this DRFN pilot program by evaluating economic success, technical capacity, social implications, and customer satisfaction