2,287 research outputs found

    Hippotherapy and Therapeutic Riding: Practicing Social Workers and Undergraduate Social Work Students

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    This study attempted to explore, through the use of surveys, what practicing social workers and undergraduate student social workers know about hippotherapy and therapuetic riding. In addition, this study made an effort to examine what the key means of learning participants had when it came to these alternative methods of therapy. The hypothesis that undergraduate social work students would collectively not be familiar with hippotherapy or therapuetic riding and that practicing social workers would have a better knowledge base in this area, was tested through the use of surveys. These surveys were distributed in a handful of undergraduate social work classes and among a convenience sample of social work agencies in the providence area. A total number of 21 surveys were collected and analyzed using the computer program Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Using percentages that were found by creating frequency tables, it was determined that 44.4% of undergraduate social work students had heard of these alternative therapies compared to 41.7% of professional social workers. These findings were not consistent with the predictions. What was consistent with the study’s predictions was that practicing social workers and undergraduate social work students indicated their community to be their primary means of learning about hippotherapy and therapuetic riding

    Trident: a universal tool for generating synthetic absorption spectra from astrophysical simulations

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    Hydrodynamical simulations are increasingly able to accurately model physical systems on stellar, galactic, and cosmological scales, however, the utility of these simulations is often limited by our ability to directly compare them with the datasets produced by observers: spectra, photometry, etc. To address this problem, we have created Trident}, a Python-based, open-source tool for post-processing hydrodynamical simulations to produce synthetic absorption spectra and related data. Trident} can (i) create absorption-line spectra for any trajectory through a simulated dataset mimicking both background quasar and down-the-barrel configurations, (ii) reproduce the spectral characteristics of common instruments like the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, (iii) operate across the ultraviolet, optical and infrared using customizable absorption line lists, (iv) trace simulated physical structures directly to spectral features, (v) approximate the presence of ion species absent from the simulation outputs, (vi) generate column density maps for any ion, and (vii) provide support for all major astrophysical hydrodynamical codes. The focus of Trident's development is for using simulated datasets to better interpret observations of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and intergalactic medium (IGM), but it remains a general tool applicable in other contexts.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, published in ApJ, Code available at http://trident-project.or

    Understanding How Foreign Influence and Strongman Policies Prevent Democracy in Egypt

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    Devin Smith is a Diplomacy and International Relations major at Seton Hall University with a Middle Eastern Studies minor planning to graduate in May 2021. The objective of his thesis was to investigate the factors that prevent the spread of democracy in Egypt. Upon graduation, Devin hopes to find a job in the nonprofit sector

    Delineating the putative protein O-fucosyltransferase family in Arabidopsis thaliana

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    Terrestrial plant genomes are widely expanded in genes that encode glycosyltransferases, which facilitate the attachment of sugar moieties onto proteins, lipids, or function in the biosynthesis of polysaccharides. Specifically, in Arabidopsis thaliana, 39 genes are predicted to encode protein O-fucosyltransferases (POFTs). In contrast to POFTs in metazoan systems, very little is known about these enzymes in plants, and biochemical evidence for POFT activity for even one of these Arabidopsis genes remains elusive. Nonetheless, this family of enzymes play fundamental roles in essential plant processes, including angiosperm sexual reproduction, termed double fertilization. Importantly, this process is responsible for the production of the majority of our food crops. During double fertilization, the male gametophyte (pollen) germinates to produce a sperm cell trafficking structure called the pollen tube that physically penetrates through the pistil tissues to deliver its gametes to a distant ovule located deep within the ovary. Whereas the process of pollen tube penetration through the pistil has been anatomically well-described, the genetic regulation remains poorly understood. In this dissertation, we identify one novel member of the Arabidopsis putative POFT family, O-FUCOSYL TRANSFERASE 1 (AtOFT1), which plays a key role in pollen tube penetration through the stigma–style interface. oft1 mutant pollen tubes have a reduced ability to elongate past the style, leading to a nearly 2000-fold decrease in oft1 pollen transmission efficiency and as much as a 10-fold reduction in seed set. We demonstrate that AtOFT1 is localized to the Golgi apparatus, indicating its potential role in cellular glycosylation events. Furthermore, we show AtOFT1 and other similar Arabidopsis genes represent a novel clade of sequences related to metazoan POFTs, and that mutation of residues that are important for O-fucosyltransferase activity compromise AtOFT1 function in vivo. Finally, we catalytically assess two other putative POFT family members and show that they utilize the metazoan POFT substrate, GDP-fucose. The results of this study elucidate a physiological function for AtOFT1 in pollen tube penetration during double fertilization, expands our biochemical knowledge of this hypothesized gene family in Arabidopsis, and highlights the potential significance of protein O-glycosylation events in plant systems

    The Innominate Exception to the Hearsay Rule in Massachusetts: A Post-Mortem

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    Thin Shields Pierce Easily: A Case for Fortifying the Journalists\u27 Privilege in New Zealand

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    In late 2006, New Zealand’s Parliament inserted Section 68 into the nation’s Evidence Act 2006, providing for the first time a testimonial privilege specifically protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of their confidential sources. The privilege, commonly referred to as a shield law, has been met with approval from politicians, media commentators, and journalists, both in New Zealand and beyond. While New Zealand’s reporter shield law goes a long way toward extending press freedoms, it ultimately falls short of the country’s historically robust commitment to the free flow of information. Section 68’s most glaring shortcoming is the ease with which a judge can tear down its protections. A judicial determination that the public interest in the disclosure of the source outweighs the public interest in maintaining confidentiality will pierce the shield. Unfortunately, balancing tests such as the one codified in Section 68 have a track record of exploitation, often with fair trial concerns overriding free expression. In that light, Section 68 should be strengthened for three purposes: 1) to reflect the nation’s longstanding commitment to a free and vibrant media, 2) to satisfy the requirements of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and 3) to accord with effective models from other democratic governments. Two relevant sources the country could mine for guidance include United States federal law and the newly enacted shield law in Washington State. New Zealand would be well served by observing not only the protective innovations of the two models, but also their shortcomings. The federal status quo in the U.S., should serve as a cautionary tale, both from policy and legal standpoints. Washington State’s statute on the other hand, strikes an appropriate balance between the public interest in disclosure and the public interest in protecting journalists’ sources

    Using a Primordial Gravitational Wave Background to Illuminate New Physics

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    A primordial spectrum of gravitational waves serves as a backlight to the relativistic degrees of freedom of the cosmological fluid. Any change in the particle physics content, due to a change of phase or freeze-out of a species, will leave a characteristic imprint on an otherwise featureless primordial spectrum of gravitational waves and indicate its early-Universe provenance. We show that a gravitational wave detector such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna would be sensitive to physics near 100 TeV in the presence of a sufficiently strong primordial spectrum. Such a detection could complement searches at newly proposed 100 km circumference accelerators such as the Future Circular Collider at CERN and the Super Proton-Proton Collider in China, thereby providing insight into a host of beyond Standard Model issues, including the hierarchy problem, dark matter, and baryogenesis.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; added reference

    Validating Semi-Analytic Models of High-Redshift Galaxy Formation using Radiation Hydrodynamical Simulations

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    We use a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation calculated with Enzo and the semi-analytic galaxy formation model (SAM) GAMMA to address the chemical evolution of dwarf galaxies in the early universe. The long-term goal of the project is to better understand the origin of metal-poor stars and the formation of dwarf galaxies and the Milky Way halo by cross-validating these theoretical approaches. We combine GAMMA with the merger tree of the most massive galaxy found in the hydrodynamic simulation and compare the star formation rate, the metallicity distribution function (MDF), and the age-metallicity relationship predicted by the two approaches. We found that the SAM can reproduce the global trends of the hydrodynamic simulation. However, there are degeneracies between the model parameters and more constraints (e.g., star formation efficiency, gas flows) need to be extracted from the simulation to isolate the correct semi-analytic solution. Stochastic processes such as bursty star formation histories and star formation triggered by supernova explosions cannot be reproduced by the current version of GAMMA. Non-uniform mixing in the galaxy's interstellar medium, coming primarily from self-enrichment by local supernovae, causes a broadening in the MDF that can be emulated in the SAM by convolving its predicted MDF with a Gaussian function having a standard deviation of ~0.2 dex. We found that the most massive galaxy in the simulation retains nearby 100% of its baryonic mass within its virial radius, which is in agreement with what is needed in GAMMA to reproduce the global trends of the simulation.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, submitted to ApJ (version 2

    Pedunculopontine-Induced cortical decoupling as the neurophysiological locus of dissociation

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    Mounting evidence suggests an association between aberrant sleep phenomena and dissociative experiences. However, no wake-sleep boundary theory provides a compelling explanation of dissociation or specifies its physiological substrates. We present a theoretical account of dissociation that integrates theories and empirical results from multiple lines of research concerning the domain of dissociation and the regulation of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This theory posits that individual differences in the circuitry governing the REM sleep promoting Pedunculopontine Nucleus and Laterodorsal Tegmental Nucleus determine the degree of similarity in the cortical connectivity profiles of wakefulness and REM sleep. We propose that a latent trait characterized by elevated dissociative experiences emerges from the decoupling of frontal executive regions due to a REM sleep-like aminergic/cholinergic balance. The Pedunculopontine Induced Cortical Decoupling Account of Dissociation (PICDAD) suggests multiple fruitful lines of inquiry and provides novel insights
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