Review of Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India.

Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 703 pp. ISBN 9780520260030

Mind the Gap: Exploring Mindfulness as a Tool for Tutors, Students, and Everyone In Between

Tutors, students, and anyone else involved in academics tend to shoulder oversized cognitive loads. Those who are under stress need tactics for dealing with emotional burdens in order to continue functioning and performing at the highest level. In writing labs and other peer-headed facilities for academic help, tutors can use mindfulness to increase their own emotional capacity while helping students regulate their own emotions as well. Simple strategies and mindfulness practices can be implemented by individuals at the front lines of tutoring centers to accomplish goals of stress relief and emotional health. By implementing simple practices to refocus on the present moment, tutors can facilitate calm, healthy learning environments for everyone involved. This essay will explore mindfulness as a tool within writing centers to decrease cognitive load and increase overall efficiency of tutors and students

Review of Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India.

Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 703 pp. ISBN 9780520260030

Worm House

WORM HOUSE is a weekly zine I make; it contains original diaristic brain regurgitation.https://digital.kenyon.edu/covid19words/1063/thumbnail.jp

Creating a zero + energy building model

The goal of this project was to create an accurate representation of a zero + energy home both for physical experimentation and for numerical modeling. This means that the home does not rely on power from the grid, but only on alternative energy sources such as solar. The project consists of two major subcategories. The electrical portion of the project consists of implementing the energy source and control system, and the mechanical portion of the project consists of thermal analysis, thermal flow simulations, and physical construction. A 50 W solar panel was chosen as an energy source, which directs power to a 12 V battery or directly to a load when the battery is fully charged by means of a charge controller. Two 20 Watt heating elements wired in parallel inside the house serve as the load and are controlled by an Intel ® Edison micro-controller. This divides the amount of power going into the house between the two heaters. The data representing this power input along with internal and external temperatures uploads to Ubidots every five seconds. Upon startup, the house is able to reach the set point temperature in under two minutes from a cold start, which is a great improvement over the previous thermal study project, which took over 6 hours to heat. The success of the project is determined by tracking the energy within 15% for the experimental model, using the numerical model as a baseline. The time required to heat the physical model was 160 seconds in comparison to the numerical model, which only took 95.5 seconds. This results in a 67.5% error for the experimental model, assuming that the two tests did not accurately capture the experiment. This results in an unsuccessful project, but further iterations and additional testing could improve the error. The majority of this work should focus on the physical model, minimizing all energy loss and maximizing sensor accuracy

The Unintended Consequence of Tort Reform in Michigan: An Argument for Reinstating Retailer Product Liability

Tort reform became an important issue during the 1994 Congressional Campaign as part of the Republican Party\u27s Contract with America. Since then, many federal and state laws have attempted to reduce both liability and recovery in tort actions. In 1996, Michigan passed the Tort Reform Act, encompassing many drastic changes to state tort law. One provision of the Act, § 294 7, scaled back liability against non-manufacturing retailers in product liability actions. The Michigan Supreme Court interpreted the exceptions of the law narrowly and the prohibition broadly, essentially barring recovery from retailers. Since 1996, this provision has prevented victims injured by defective products from receiving compensation for their injuries from retailers. Unfortunately, many of the defective products found in the United States originate from manufacturers abroad. If jurisdiction over the manufacturer cannot be established in the United States, then the Michigan victim has no opportunity for recovery. As an example, this Note will discuss the problems associated with establishing jurisdiction to sue a Chinese manufacturer Many of the recently publicized defective products were manufactured in China, but victims injured by a defective product from China have found it futile to sue the Chinese manufacturer. The Chinese manufacturers therefore remain protected from liability. As a result, a person injured in Michigan by a product manufactured in China is unlikely to recover damages for his or her injury from either the manufacturer or the retailer This Note will argue that Michigan must reinstate retailer liability in order to discourage the importation of defective products and also to compensate those who are injured when a defective product does make it to market

Development of an Attenuated Zika Virus by Editing the 5’ Untranslated Region

Zika Virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-transmitted flavivirus that usually causes no symptoms to mild febrile in humans, and it has been regarded as an insignificant pathogen to public health. However, recent outbreaks of ZIKV infection have revealed that ZIKV can cause severe neurological effects in adults, such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), and in infants whose mothers acquired the virus during pregnancy, causing Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS). Currently, no approved vaccine is available and there is a critical need to develop an effective and safe vaccine. While most vaccine developmental strategies target the viral prM-E protein of ZIKV, we aimed to create an attenuated ZIKV by inserting several different nucleotide lengths into the 5’ untranslated region (UTR) of the viral genome. We generated a viable mutated ZIKV virus (Z7) was after inserting a 50-nt sequence into the 5’UTR. We then characterized Z7 by comparing growth kinetics in vivo replication by using qPCR and immunostaining assays in cell cultures. We also measured the infectivity and immunogenicity of Z7 in Ifnar1-/-mice. We found that this mutated virus developed a lower viremia compared to WT ZIKV control but induced a similar level of antibody response. Importantly, one dose of Z7 inoculation can protect the mice from a secondary high dose of ZIKV infection in Ifnar1-/-mice. Together, these results suggest that we have successfully developed an attenuated ZIKV strain, which induces protective immune responses against ZIKV infection in mice

Chapter 20 Icons

Among one of the older sub-fields in Buddhist Studies, the study of Theravāda Buddhism is undergoing a revival by contemporary scholars who are revising long-held conventional views of the tradition while undertaking new approaches and engaging new subject matter. The term Theravāda has been refined, and research has expanded beyond the analysis of canonical texts to examine contemporary cultural forms, social movements linked with meditation practices, material culture, and vernacular language texts. The Routledge Handbook of Theravāda Buddhism illustrates the growth and new directions of scholarship in the study of Theravāda Buddhism and is structured in four parts: Ideas/Ideals, Practices/Persons, Texts/Teachings, Images/Imaginations. Owing largely to the continued vitality of Theravāda Buddhist communities in countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as in diaspora communities across the globe, traditions associated with what is commonly (and fairly recently) called Theravāda attract considerable attention from scholars and practitioners around the world. An in-depth guide to the distinctive features of Theravāda, the Handbook will be an invaluable resource to provide structure and guidance for scholars and students of Asian Religion, Buddhism and in particular Theravāda Buddhism