The last objects

All material carries a past. Whether we acknowledge this lineage or not, it exists. It may be to our advantage — as a way of orienting ourselves in our world — to consider the cycles of creation and destruction intrinsic to the objects and materials that surround us. By deliberately pushing material into its next incarnation, and tracing the history of objects, I simultaneously reach forward and backward, determining my place in the world. My experience as a jeweler has led me to an understanding that what is true for metal is also true for us: matter is neither lost nor gained. We, and our belongings and environments, are made of the same cycling material. Anything new only seems that way because its origins are opaque to us, its history untraced. I practice the tracing of material histories. This tracing reveals that the life of matter is more expansive than our singular lives; it encompasses us. Made of organic and fleeting stuff, we are arrangements in a temporary state. We use objects to extend ourselves beyond the boundaries of our bodies and lifespans. In the face of our mortality, we send transmissions to the future, to the world after our world, through more enduring materials like metal. I test my reality by tracing select materials across incarnations, assaying associated behaviors and beliefs. I practice the limits of my influence by pushing materials forward; compiling object transmissions that tell of multiple generations. I question how our possessions—our jewelry, personal objects, and homes—relate to the their roles and to their material. How do these abstract and concrete layers interact? As we change our material world, what does it change in us

Adult Reflections on a High School Choral Music Program: Perceptions of Meaning and Lifelong Influence

The purpose of this study was to investigate the lifelong meaning and influence of participation in a high school choral music program. This study described and analyzed the reflections of adults who participated in one high school choral program selected by the researcher as meeting high standards of practice in choral music. The eight participants, who were involved in the choral program for at least three years and pursued careers in fields other than music, were selected via criterion sampling and interviewed regarding their experiences in chorus and how those experiences may have influenced their lives. Semi-structured interviews were the primary method of investigation in this case study. The first interview began with a broad-scope, grand-tour question. Prior to the second interview, former-student participants reviewed transcriptions of the first interview. The second interview consisted of specific questioning around the possible lifelong influence of their choral experience. During the second interview, each former-student participant was asked to complete an evaluation survey of effective teaching strategies/dimensions based on their memories of their choral director. The data collection process took place over a period of approximately five months. The school’s choral director was observed to verify teaching strategies consistent with criteria established by the researcher and to provide contextual data for triangulation of former-student participant data. Interview data, field notes, and archival information were coded for analysis by relevant themes and narratives were crafted. Findings suggested that the lifelong influence of this high school choral program was related to multiple social aspects, including a sense of pride and achievement, as well as to the learned ability to critique and evaluate. Participants valued the high expectations of the choral director and the exposure to many genres of music. Data revealed that some self-perceived outcomes of the program, such as critical thinking and self-confidence, were influential in the development of lifelong learning skills. Findings implied that traditional performing ensembles in secondary schools may not provide the greatest opportunity for engaging school musical experiences that encourage lifelong involvement in music. Additionally, the findings revealed that extra-musical benefits of the program outweighed the musical influence in adulthood

Implementing a Current Research Information System (CRIS) in Canada

The practice of research information management (RIM) is becoming more important as the research environment becomes increasingly complex, competitive and globalized. National mandates and requirements of national funding agencies regarding open access and research data management are creating added incentives for universities to showcase their publications and make them available in an open access format. Libraries are well situated to offer expertise throughout the adoption of a research information management system by a university. In aligning themselves with the wider strategic plans of the institution, libraries can use this as a platform to further their own goals and communicate their value and place in the institution by championing open access, ensuring discoverability and supporting the researcher endeavour. Dalhousie University is in the process of implementing a Research Information System (RIS) with the goal of providing a number of benefits to the university and its researchers. RIS serve to aid researchers when applying to funding agencies by creating consistent, standardized CVs, decrease workload when generating annual reports, increase the visibility and discoverability of an institution to potential collaborators and research contacts, augment the research currently being performed at an institution and make it more widely available, and manage and measure the research impact of individual researchers and institutions. While some challenges exist at Dalhousie that require mitigation and attention, the institution stands to benefit greatly from the implementation of this system

Utah College Sexual Behavior Survey: Initial Findings Report

The purpose of the Utah College Sexual Behavior project was to establish the reliability and validity of the retrospective measures used in the survey and gain a better understanding of the sexual behaviors of Utah youth by asking Utah State University (USU) students about their sexual behaviors as youth

Self-harm and suicidal ideation among young people is more often recorded by child protection than health services in an Australian population cohort

OBJECTIVE: We investigated patterns of service contact for self-harm and suicidal ideation recorded by a range of human service agencies - including health, police and child protection - with specific focus on overlap and sequences of contacts, age of first contact and demographic and intergenerational characteristics associated with different service responses to self-harm.METHODS: Participants were 91,597 adolescents for whom multi-agency linked data were available in a longitudinal study of a population cohort in New South Wales, Australia. Self-harm and suicide-related incidents from birth to 18 years of age were derived from emergency department, inpatient hospital admission, mental health ambulatory, child protection and police administrative records. Descriptive statistics and binomial logistic regression were used to examine patterns of service contacts.RESULTS: Child protection services recorded the largest proportion of youth with reported self-harm and suicidal ideation, in which the age of first contact for self-harm was younger relative to other incidents of self-harm recorded by other agencies. Nearly 40% of youth with a health service contact for self-harm also had contact with child protection and/or police services for self-harm. Girls were more likely to access health services for self-harm than boys, but not child protection or police services.CONCLUSION: Suicide prevention is not solely the responsibility of health services; police and child protection services also respond to a significant proportion of self-harm and suicide-related incidents. High rates of overlap among different services responding to self-harm suggest the need for cross-agency strategies to prevent suicide in young people.</p

Where Do We Go From Here? The Need for Genetic Referrals in Patients who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing: Findings from a Regional Survey

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess primary health care providers’ knowledge and use of genetic services for children whose hearing screening indicates they may be deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) and identify areas in which health care providers can be supported to increase family education and referral of families for genetic consultation. Methodology: A survey was developed on current practices, knowledge, and perceived beliefs regarding genetic education and referrals for deafness. The surveys were distributed to pediatricians, family medicine physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA, VA, and WV. Results: Among 266 respondents, 80% were uninformed about Early Hearing Detection Intervention (EHDI) 1-3-6 guidelines prior to taking the survey. Approximately 55% were not confident about the genetic causes of deafness, 44% rarely consulted genetics professionals, 41% had not referred families to genetics, and 37% were not confident about the importance of genetic referrals. Conclusions: Integrated, targeted, and user-friendly genetics education strategies in the existing EHDI framework are needed to ensure adequate awareness and delivery of genetics services for D/HH children

Unusual Intron Conservation near Tissue-Regulated Exons Found by Splicing Microarrays

Alternative splicing contributes to both gene regulation and protein diversity. To discover broad relationships between regulation of alternative splicing and sequence conservation, we applied a systems approach, using oligonucleotide microarrays designed to capture splicing information across the mouse genome. In a set of 22 adult tissues, we observe differential expression of RNA containing at least two alternative splice junctions for about 40% of the 6,216 alternative events we could detect. Statistical comparisons identify 171 cassette exons whose inclusion or skipping is different in brain relative to other tissues and another 28 exons whose splicing is different in muscle. A subset of these exons is associated with unusual blocks of intron sequence whose conservation in vertebrates rivals that of protein-coding exons. By focusing on sets of exons with similar regulatory patterns, we have identified new sequence motifs implicated in brain and muscle splicing regulation. Of note is a motif that is strikingly similar to the branchpoint consensus but is located downstream of the 5′ splice site of exons included in muscle. Analysis of three paralogous membrane-associated guanylate kinase genes reveals that each contains a paralogous tissue-regulated exon with a similar tissue inclusion pattern. While the intron sequences flanking these exons remain highly conserved among mammalian orthologs, the paralogous flanking intron sequences have diverged considerably, suggesting unusually complex evolution of the regulation of alternative splicing in multigene families

Affy exon tissues: exon levels in normal tissues in human, mouse and rat

Summary: Most genes in human, mouse and rat produce more than one transcript isoform. The Affymetrix Exon Array is a tool for studying the many processes that regulate RNA production, with separate probesets measuring RNA levels at known and putative exons. For insights on how exons levels vary between normal tissues, we constructed the Affy Exon Tissues track from tissue data published by Affymetrix. This track reports exon probeset intensities as log ratios relative to median values across the dataset and renders them as colored heat maps, to yield quick visual identification of exons with intensities that vary between normal tissues

On the potential of Google AMP to promote local content in developing regions

The Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project has gained lot of interest from content providers as a means to improve user experience. It introduces a number of innovations to streamline the downloading, parsing and rendering of pages. Google recently announced the hosting of more than 2B+ web pages, covering more than 900K domains. Due to the constrained nature of Internet connectivity in developing regions, AMP offers particularly exciting potential for improving web user experience in these countries. This paper provides a first look at Google’s AMP performance in Africa. We start by outlining the current web infrastructure provisioning in Africa, using local news websites as a case study. Discovering a sparse and low performance environment, we then evaluate the benefits that AMP can introduce in terms of accessibility to local content in developing regions. This study reveals that in Africa, AMP is able to reduce page load time and page size by a factor of 3 and 8 respectively. However, AMP is not a neutral technology as the search engine favours content that is using Google AMP. This raises an important question of search neutrality