Homeless Boys: Male Development and Imperial Expansion in Victorian Fiction

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the ways in which traveling boys in Victorian fiction embody and complicate cultural ideas concerning the formation of masculinity and the imperial expansion. Both literary critics and historians of Victorian Britain have investigated how the discourse over the construct of masculinity intersects with the values of the domestic, seeking to challenge traditional thinking around the dichotomy of masculinity/femininity and public/domestic spheres. Extending upon recent studies of male domesticity, this dissertation focuses not on adult men who are defined in terms of the domestic but on boys who have no secure place within home/home country. I define boyhood as a state in which one is settled nowhere but is expected to demonstrate maturity by finding one's own home; it includes not only boys in the biological sense but also the marginalized boy-men with no rightful position in the domestic sphere and/or in the home country. Nineteenth-century British fictions often confirm the myth of male self-development through portraying boy characters' leaving and returning to home and home country. To reintegrate into those spaces, they must demonstrate their acquisition of manliness. By reading their rite of passage in terms of homelessness and at-homeness, I contend that the figure of the traveling boy helps to illuminate unresolved contradictions lurking within the Victorian idea of home building, whether the word "home" addresses the domestic space that is in opposition to the public sphere or the center of the empire that is in opposition to the foreign. One of my central arguments is that by associating boyhood with its national character, Victorian Britain celebrates its continuing advancement to the margins, as well as imagining its subjects being stably anchored at its center even while being away from it. Identifying themselves as displaced from the domestic space, boys seek a sense of at-homeness during journeys, and their homelessness is expected to contribute both to the establishment of a new household and to the expansion of the empire. While the dominant discourse of Victorian Britain asserts that male subjects contribute to the expansion of the home through leaving and returning to it, fictions illuminate that they come to lose their home irrecoverably instead of feeling at home anywhere. Boy characters' relationship with their home and their home country change while traveling, thereby changing nationhood as well. Although they attempt to transform certain places into their homes, such spaces cannot be the same as the home that they have left behind, and the idea of home itself becomes complicated

Amusement Parks in the Cinema: Repositioning Film in the Culture Industry

This article attempts to investigate how not only the history of the amusement park industry and of film but also the different views of modernity are highlighted in the amusement park scenes presented in Sunrise and The Crowd, two Hollywood films of the 1920s. By comparing and contrasting the amusement park scenes, this article argues that those scenes reflect the conflicting views of modernity. While Sunrise and The Crowd both present the amusement park as a place that embodies modernity itself, each film sheds light on the different aspects of modernity: in The Crowd, the amusement park scenes emphasize the totalizing and mechanizing effect of modern experience, while in Sunrise the amusement park is portrayed as a place that offers its visitors a sense of liberation and empowerment. Further, the different portraits of the amusement park mirror the different perspectives towards films position in the culture industry: can film be as liberating as the early form of the amusement park, or is it just a part of the standardizing system that forces individuals to merge into a large crowd? Reading the amusement park scenes in Sunrise and The Crowd together helps us to revive these questions which were at stake at the time of the early cinema

Temporal Discounting and Inter-Temporal Choice in Rhesus Monkeys

Humans and animals are more likely to take an action leading to an immediate reward than actions with delayed rewards of similar magnitudes. Although such devaluation of delayed rewards has been almost universally described by hyperbolic discount functions, the rate of this temporal discounting varies substantially among different animal species. This might be in part due to the differences in how the information about reward is presented to decision makers. In previous animal studies, reward delays or magnitudes were gradually adjusted across trials, so the animals learned the properties of future rewards from the rewards they waited for and consumed previously. In contrast, verbal cues have been used commonly in human studies. In the present study, rhesus monkeys were trained in a novel inter-temporal choice task in which the magnitude and delay of reward were indicated symbolically using visual cues and varied randomly across trials. We found that monkeys could extract the information about reward delays from visual symbols regardless of the number of symbols used to indicate the delay. The rate of temporal discounting observed in the present study was comparable to the previous estimates in other mammals, and the animal's choice behavior was largely consistent with hyperbolic discounting. Our results also suggest that the rate of temporal discounting might be influenced by contextual factors, such as the novelty of the task. The flexibility furnished by this new inter-temporal choice task might be useful for future neurobiological investigations on inter-temporal choice in non-human primates

A sampling strategy for longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses using a large national claims database

ImportanceThe United States (US) Medicare claims files are valuable sources of national healthcare utilization data with over 45 million beneficiaries each year. Due to their massive sizes and costs involved in obtaining the data, a method of randomly drawing a representative sample for retrospective cohort studies with multi-year follow-up is not well-documented.ObjectiveTo present a method to construct longitudinal patient samples from Medicare claims files that are representative of Medicare populations each year.DesignRetrospective cohort and cross-sectional designs.ParticipantsUS Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes over a 10-year period.MethodsMedicare Master Beneficiary Summary Files were used to identify eligible patients for each year in over a 10-year period. We targeted a sample of ~900,000 patients per year. The first year's sample is stratified by county and race/ethnicity (white vs. minority), and targeted at least 250 patients in each stratum with the remaining sample allocated proportional to county population size with oversampling of minorities. Patients who were alive, did not move between counties, and stayed enrolled in Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) were retained in the sample for subsequent years. Non-retained patients (those who died or were dropped from Medicare) were replaced with a sample of patients in their first year of Medicare FFS eligibility or patients who moved into a sampled county during the previous year.ResultsThe resulting sample contains an average of 899,266 ± 408 patients each year over the 10-year study period and closely matches population demographics and chronic conditions. For all years in the sample, the weighted average sample age and the population average age differ by <0.01 years; the proportion white is within 0.01%; and the proportion female is within 0.08%. Rates of 21 comorbidities estimated from the samples for all 10 years were within 0.12% of the population rates. Longitudinal cohorts based on samples also closely resembled the cohorts based on populations remaining after 5- and 10-year follow-up.Conclusions and relevanceThis sampling strategy can be easily adapted to other projects that require random samples of Medicare beneficiaries or other national claims files for longitudinal follow-up with possible oversampling of sub-populations

Patch-Mix Contrastive Learning with Audio Spectrogram Transformer on Respiratory Sound Classification

Respiratory sound contains crucial information for the early diagnosis of fatal lung diseases. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a growing interest in contact-free medical care based on electronic stethoscopes. To this end, cutting-edge deep learning models have been developed to diagnose lung diseases; however, it is still challenging due to the scarcity of medical data. In this study, we demonstrate that the pretrained model on large-scale visual and audio datasets can be generalized to the respiratory sound classification task. In addition, we introduce a straightforward Patch-Mix augmentation, which randomly mixes patches between different samples, with Audio Spectrogram Transformer (AST). We further propose a novel and effective Patch-Mix Contrastive Learning to distinguish the mixed representations in the latent space. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance on the ICBHI dataset, outperforming the prior leading score by an improvement of 4.08%.Comment: INTERSPEECH 2023, Code URL: https://github.com/raymin0223/patch-mix_contrastive_learnin

Physical activity engagement outside of college physical education: Application of the transtheoretical model

Objective: In this study, we examined physical activity (PA) engagement outside of college physical education (PE) classes using the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). Methods: Overall, 414 university students enrolled in PE classes voluntarily participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete a survey packet to measure 4 core constructs of TTM and their PA level performed outside of PE classes. Among the participants, 150 randomly selected students were asked to wear a triaxial accelerometer for 7 consecutive days to identify their PA level. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses of variance were used to determine the association between stages of motivational readiness and other strategic core constructions. Results: We categorized 77% of respondents into either the 'action' stage or the 'maintenance' stage for engaging in additional PA outside of the classes. Behavioral processes of change showed a graded and significant association with the stages. Both self-efficacy and decisional balance were significantly higher in students at higher stages. Conclusion: Our findings showed that most students enrolled in college PE classes had additional PA outside of the class participation. In addition, behavioral processes may be effective strategies for this specific target group to promote PA.Peer reviewedCommunity Health Sciences, Counseling and Counseling Psycholog

Vasopressin V2R-Targeting Peptide Carrier Mediates siRNA Delivery into Collecting Duct Cells

Internalization of receptor proteins after interacting with specific ligands has been proposed to facilitate siRNA delivery into the target cells via receptor-mediated siRNA transduction. In this study, we demonstrated a novel method of vasopressin V2 receptor (V2R)-mediated siRNA delivery against AQP2 in primary cultured inner medullary collecting duct (IMCD) cells of rat kidney. We synthesized the dDAVP conjugated with nine D-arginines (dDAVP-9r) as a peptide carrier for siRNA delivery. The structure of synthetic peptide carrier showed two regions (i.e., ligand domain to V2R (dDAVP) and siRNA carrying domain (nine D-arginine)) bisected with a spacer of four glycines. The results revealed that 1) synthesized dDAVP-9r peptides formed a stable polyplex with siRNA; 2) siRNA/dDAVP-9r polyplex could bind to the V2R of IMCD cells and induced AQP2 phosphorylation (Ser 256); 3) siRNA/dDAVP-9r polyplex was stable in response to the wide range of different osmolalities, pH levels, or to the RNases; 4) fluorescein-labeled siRNA was delivered into V2R-expressing MDCK and LLC-PK1 cells by siRNA/dDAVP-9r polyplex, but not into the V2R-negative Cos-7 cells; and 5) AQP2-siRNA/dDAVP-9r polyplex effectively delivered siRNA into the IMCD cells, resulting in the significant decrease of protein abundance of AQP2, but not AQP4. Therefore, for the first time to our knowledge, we demonstrated that V2R-mediated siRNA delivery could be exploited to deliver specific siRNA to regulate abnormal expression of target proteins in V2R-expressing kidney cells. The methods could be potentially used in vivo to regulate abnormal expression of proteins associated with disease conditions in the V2R-expressing kidney cells

Wearables in medicine

Wearables as medical technologies are becoming an integral part of personal analytics, measuring physical status, recording physiological parameters, or informing schedule for medication. These continuously evolving technology platforms do not only promise to help people pursue a healthier life style, but also provide continuous medical data for actively tracking metabolic status, diagnosis, and treatment. Advances in the miniaturization of flexible electronics, electrochemical biosensors, microfluidics, and artificial intelligence algorithms have led to wearable devices that can generate real-time medical data within the Internet of things. These flexible devices can be configured to make conformal contact with epidermal, ocular, intracochlear, and dental interfaces to collect biochemical or electrophysiological signals. This article discusses consumer trends in wearable electronics, commercial and emerging devices, and fabrication methods. It also reviews real-time monitoring of vital signs using biosensors, stimuli-responsive materials for drug delivery, and closed-loop theranostic systems. It covers future challenges in augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, communication modes, energy management, displays, conformity, and data safety. The development of patient-oriented wearable technologies and their incorporation in randomized clinical trials will facilitate the design of safe and effective approaches

Escaping institutionality: rebellion and gendered space in Eric, or Little by Little and A Little Princess

By the convention of nineteenth-century school narratives, students are supposed to grow up in the school while their characters are being molded by the standardized educational system. Eric, or Little by Little and A Little Princess both resist the very idea of linear growth that is a trope of the Bildungsroman through endowing their protagonists with the rebelliousness and outsider status of the unruly child. This essay examines how Eric Williams and Sara Crewe, disobedient students who leave their schools after deriving no benefit from the institutional education, illuminate the ways in which institutionality is incorporated with the gendered agendas of nineteenth-century England. Eric and Sara both challenge the authority of the central adult in each tale by exploiting and changing the interior space of the schools; not only the inner structures of each school but also the connection/disconnection between school and home differ in the two stories. My proposition is that in the nineteenth-century school narratives discipline and character-building in the institution are not viewed as inevitable in reaching adulthood for girls, while for boys there is neither exit from the institutionality nor way to recover their lost home and childhood. Keywords:  children’s literature; rebelliousness; institutionality; gender; school space; home space; nineteenth-century school narratives; linear growth; unrulines

Investigating the roles of odor -evoked oscillations in information processing in the turtle olfactory bulb.

It has been earlier established that presentation of an odorant stimulus to the turtle evokes specific spatio-temporal responses in the olfactory bulb. This response includes three distinct oscillatory patterns (rostral, middle and caudal) that have different spatial (locations and scopes) and temporal (frequencies and delay from the odorant onset) properties. In this thesis we investigate, using modeling and experimental approaches; the mechanisms of formation and the role of the oscillatory patterning in the turtle olfactory bulb. We have built a computational model that incorporates the basic anatomy and neurophysiology of the olfactory bulb to investigate how the observed patterns relate to activity of individual neurons and what roles they could play in olfactory information processing. We show that three basic anatomical/physiological properties of the olfactory network underlie formation of a temporal sequence of simultaneous activations of glomerular modules: fast synaptic inhibition between populations of excitatory and inhibitory cells, slow self-inhibition observed on excitatory cells; and input strength. The model suggests that the role of oscillations is to organize the neural activity in a temporal sequence which groups the activation of glomerular modules based on the input strength similarity. We show that this type of code explains particularly well the experimental findings reported also by other groups, showing that temporal patterning may mediate discrimination of similar odorants. Furthermore, we showed that within our model, feedback from cortical regions of the brain could modulate oscillatory patterning and provide mechanisms to generate experimentally observed period doubling in one of the oscillations. This requires the cortical processing to act as a type of coincidence modulator and provide functional coupling between excitatory modules that is absent in the bulbar network. This hypothesis is partially supported by our experiments that investigate dynamics of cortical feedback on the olfactory bulb. Using optical imaging with voltage sensitive dyes we showed that cortical feedback induced by stimulating one bulb changes odor evoked oscillatory patterning in the other bulb. We have observed that the feedback front cortical regions reduces overall response in the other olfactory bulb indicating that the cortical feedback has an inhibitory effect on the bulbs. Furthermore the changes in the oscillatory power indicate amplification of fast and slow caudal oscillation and reduction of the rostral oscillation, as was predicted from the model.Ph.D.Biological SciencesNeurosciencesPhysicsPure SciencesZoologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125407/2/3192680.pd