Jim Crow's Legacy: Segregation Stress Syndrome

This dissertation is based on a qualitative research project that documents the experiences of nearly 100 elderly African Americans who lived in the total institution of Jim Crow. The collective long lasting psychological effects connected with the racial violence that occurred in the total institution are a critical aspect. In the interviews African Americans shared how on a daily basis they found themselves dealing with anxiety, fear, humiliation, shame, and stress. The narratives were analyzed utilizing the extended case method. The dissertation documents and explores symptoms of a "segregation stress syndrome" for the chronic, enduring, extremely painful experiences and responses to the total institution of Jim Crow that are indicated by numerous respondents in this research project. Preliminary findings indicate that the symptoms of "segregation stress syndrome" are similar to PTSD symptoms documented in psychiatric literature. However, "segregation stress syndrome" differs from PTSD because the traumatic experience was not a one-time occurrence; it was sustained, over time, in African American communities. In addition, the racial violence that occurred was a form of systematic chronic stress, the type that has been shown to have a detrimental impact on a person's psychological well-being. Lastly, the historical and collective trauma that ensued has contributed to an intergenerational aspect of "segregation stress syndrome." The intergenerational aspect predisposes some younger African Americans to psychological damage, stress, and trauma even though contemporary forms of racial violence are seemingly less damaging

Legal segregation: racial violence and the long term implications

This thesis explores the research questions: How did African Americans cope with the oppressive system of legal segregation? How did they survive and raise their families? What were African Americansâ everyday interactions with whites like during legal segregation? What coping and resistance strategies did they utilize to survive? Using case studies from nearly 100 in-depth interviews with elderly African Americans between the ages of 50-90 in the Southeast and Southwest, I use qualitative methods to detail and analyze the experiences of elderly African Americans. This thesis explores how the exploitation and oppression of African Americans during legal segregation were enshrined by means of racial violence and discrimination in every aspect of American society. Much of the racial violence was legitimized and essential to the routine operation of legal segregation in the United States. Building on the work of Jackman(2002), Blee(2005), and Feagin (2006) for this thesis, I conceptualize racial violence as physical violence, written violence, and/or spoken violence, including being called âÂÂnigger,â âÂÂboy,â and âÂÂuncle.â The racial violence can be individual or collective which, intentionally or unintentionally, inflicts or threatens to inflict physical, psychological, social, or material injury on African Americans who often resist. In addition, the racial violence can occur in any public or private geographical location including, the street, workplace, and home. Lastly, an individual does not have to witness or personally experience the racial violence to be psychologically injured or affected by it. During legal segregation the respondents faced actual everyday racial violence or the threat of racial violence in the form of lynchings, sexual abuse, house burnings, imprisonment, rape, and being incessantly called âÂÂnigger.â I argue that the psychological traumatic experiences of fear, anxiety, stress, anguish, humiliation, stigmatization and shame can affect a personâÂÂs life for a very long time. Every one of these injuries is apparent in the interviews with elderly African Americans who survived legal segregation. Thus, I suggest the important idea of a âÂÂsegregation stress syndrome,â for the chronic, enduring, extremely painful responses to official segregation that are indicated by the respondents

Manifold damping of the NLC detuned accelerating structure

In order to investigate the reappearance of the HOM wakefield of a detuned accelerator structure and relax tolerance requirements, we propose to provide low level damping by coupling all cavities to several identical and symmetrically located waveguides (manifolds) which run parallel to each accelerator structure and are terminated at each end by matched loads. The waveguides are designed such that all modes which couple to the acceleration mode are non-propagating at the acceleration mode frequency. Hence the coupling irises can be designed to provide large coupling to higher frequency modes without damping the acceleration mode. Because the higher order modes are detuned, they are localized and have a broad spectrum of phase velocities of both signs. They are therefore capable of coupling effectively to all propagating modes in the waveguides. Methods of analyzing and results obtained for the very complex system of modes in the accelerating structure and manifolds are presented

Recommendations for observational studies of comorbidity in multiple sclerosis

Objective: To reach consensus about the most relevant comorbidities to study in multiple sclerosis (MS) with respect to incidence, prevalence, and effect on outcomes; review datasets that may support studies of comorbidity in MS; and identify MS outcomes that should be prioritized in such studies. Methods: We held an international workshop to meet these objectives, informed by a systematic review of the incidence and prevalence of comorbidity in MS, and an international survey regarding research priorities for comorbidity. Results: We recommend establishing age- and sex-specific incidence and prevalence estimates for 5 comorbidities (depression, anxiety, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes); evaluating the effect of 7 comorbidities (depression, anxiety, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, chronic lung disease, and autoimmune diseases) on disability, quality of life, brain atrophy and other imaging parameters, health care utilization, employment, and mortality, including age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and disease duration as potential confounders; harmonizing study designs across jurisdictions; and conducting such studies worldwide. Ultimately, clinical trials of treating comorbidity in MS are needed. Conclusion: Our recommendations will help address knowledge gaps regarding the incidence, prevalence, and effect of comorbidity on outcomes in MS

Conceptual Analysis: A Social Neuroscience Approach to Interpersonal Interaction in the Context of Disruption and Disorganization of Attachment (NAMDA)

Humans are strongly dependent upon social resources for allostasis and emotion regulation. This applies especially to early childhood because humans – as an altricial species – have a prolonged period of dependency on support and input from caregivers who typically act as sources of co-regulation. Accordingly, attachment theory proposes that the history and quality of early interactions with primary caregivers shape children’s internal working models of attachment. In turn, these attachment models guide behavior, initially with the set goal of maintaining proximity to caregivers, but eventually paving the way to more generalized mental representations of self and others. Mounting evidence in nonclinical populations suggests that these mental representations coincide with differential patterns of neural structure, function, and connectivity in a range of brain regions previously associated with emotional and cognitive capacities. What is currently lacking, however, is an evidence-based account of how early adverse attachment-related experiences and/or the emergence of attachment disorganization impact the developing brain. While work on early childhood adversities offers important insights, we propose that how these events become biologically embedded crucially hinges on the context of the child-caregiver attachment relationships in which the events take place. Our selective review distinguishes between direct social neuroscience research on disorganized attachment and indirect maltreatment-related research, converging on aberrant functioning in neurobiological systems subserving aversion, approach, emotion regulation, and mental state processing in the wake of severe attachment disruption. To account for heterogeneity of findings, we propose two distinct neurobiological phenotypes characterized by hyper- and hypo-arousal primarily deriving from the caregiver serving either as a threatening or as an insufficient source of co-regulation, respectively

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

The Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator

During the past several years, there has been tremendous progress on the development of the RF system and accelerating structures for a Next Linear Collider (NLC). Developments include high-power klystrons, RF pulse compression systems and damped/detuned accelerator structures to reduce wakefields. In order to integrate these separate development efforts into an actual X-band accelerator capable of accelerating the electron beams necessary for an NLC, we are building an NLC Test Accelerator (NLCTA). The goal of the NLCTA is to bring together all elements of the entire accelerating system by constructing and reliably operating an engineered model of a high-gradient linac suitable for the NLC. The NLCTA will serve as a testbed as the design of the NLC evolves. In addition to testing the RF acceleration system, the NLCTA is designed to address many questions related to the dynamics of the beam during acceleration. In this paper, we will report on the status of the design, component development, and construction of the NLC Test Accelerator

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN