Fugitive Slave Advertisements and the Rebelliousness of Enslaved People in Georgia and Maryland, 1790-1810

This dissertation is a systematic investigation of fugitive slave advertisements aiming to understand the nature of fugitives’ rebelliousness in Georgia and Maryland between 1790 and 1810. Hitherto, historical inquiry pertaining to slave fugitivity has focused on other states and other times. This study provides a close reading of 5,567 advertisements pertaining to runaway slaves and analyses extracted data pertaining to the prosopography of 1,832 fugitives and their fugitivity. Its main research questions focus on advertisements as manifest records of rebellion. Who were the fugitives? What do the fugitive slave advertisements reveal about enslaved people’s contestation of slaveholders’ authority? The principal findings are as follows. First, the typography and iconography of fugitive slave advertisements were expressly intended to undermine the individualism and agency of enslaved people. Second, with regard to Georgia and Maryland, while there were spikes between 1796 and 1798 and 1800 and 1801, fugitivity was a daily occurrence, and thus a normative act of rebellion distinct from insurrection. Third, quantitative analysis indicated fugitives were typically young males, in their twenties, likely to escape at any time of the year; Georgia fugitives were more likely to escape in groups. Fourth, qualitative analysis of advertisers’ descriptions of fugitives revealed evidence of challenges to their authority. Depictions of fugitives’ character and remarks or notes on their behaviour constitute evidence of observed characteristics. From the advertisers’ perspective slaves were at their most dangerous when they could read and write or when they were skilled in deception. The “artful” fugitive in particular possessed many skills, sometimes including literacy, which could be used to defy the power that kept him or her in subjection. Fifth, further investigation established clear linkages between literacy and fugitives’ rebelliousness. Qualitative studies to date speak of slave literacy’s theoretical liberating and empowering effects but do not provide tangible accounts of who the literate slaves were or consider literacy as a factor in rebelliousness. The dissertation identified 36 literate slaves in Maryland and 9 in Georgia, and statistical analysis suggested 3.6 percent of US fugitive slaves were literate. Finally, it was evident that literacy was part of a larger contest to circumvent slaveholder authority and attain self-empowerment. Fugitivity itself was the outcome of a history of contestation that might be hidden from history were it not for the advertisements themselves

Wet Age Related Macular Degeneration services in the community: A pathfinder evaluation - Final Report

This report summarises our evaluation of four different pathfinder services for people with wet Age Related Macular Degeneration (wet AMD). They are provided in the community setting rather than the hospital. Based on our findings we make recommendations about the delivery and sustainability for the future of such community based services for people with wet AMD in Wales

Protection of Threatened Species in New Zealand

The need to protect threatened species and facilitate their recovery to viable population levels enjoys widespread international support, but it is the domestic legal rules of individual nations that will implement international calls for protection and recovery. New Zealand purports to protect threatened species primarily with the Wildlife Act 1953, a statute whose purpose is more concerned with wildlife management than implementing a legal framework to protect threatened species. The consensus is that the Wildlife Act 1953 and other applicable legislation such as the Resource Management Act 1991 is not up to the task of protection and recovery of threatened species in New Zealand. In this article we explore how dedicated threatened species legislation in New Zealand might improve on the existing legal framework, and in particular with respect to the designation and planning on threatened species, recovery programmes and habitat protection. For an illustration of how these components may contribute to the threatened species problem we look to Canada as a nation which enacted dedicated threatened species legislation in 2002. The story thus far in Canada suggests legal rules are not a panacea for species decline, but nonetheless dedicated legislation can offer substantial benefits such as transparency and a systematic approach to species planning, better integration with resource development, and a measure of accountability in law to hold public officials to their promises on threatened species protection

Making Problems in Design Research: The Case of Teen Shoplifters on Tumblr

HCI draws on a variety of traditions but recently there have been calls to consolidate contributions around the problems researchers set out to solve. However, with this comes the assumption that problems are tractable and certain, rather than constructed and framed by researchers. We take as a case study a Tumblr community of teen shoplifters who post on how to steal from stores, discuss shoplifting as political resistance, and share jokes and stories about the practice. We construct three different “problems” and imagine studies that might result from applying different design approaches: Design Against Crime; Critical Design and Value Sensitive Design. Through these studies we highlight how interpretations of the same data can lead to radically different design responses. We conclude by discussing problem making as a historically and politically contingent process that allow researchers to connect data and design according to certain moral and ethical principles

Vision in the Southern Hemisphere Lamprey Mordacia Mordax: Spatial Distribution, Spectral Absorption Characteristics, and Optical Sensitivity of a Single Class of Retinal Photoreceptor

The dorso-laterally located eyes of the southern hemisphere lamprey Mordacia mordax (Agnatha) contain a single morphological type of retinal photoreceptor, which possesses ultrastructural characteristics of both rods and cones. This photoreceptor has a large refractile ellipsosome in the inner segment and a long cylindrical outer segment surrounded by a retinal pigment epithelium that contains two types of tapetal reflectors. The photoreceptors form a hexagonal array and attain their peak density (33,200 receptors0mm2) in the ventro-temporal retina. Using the size and spacing of the photoreceptors and direct measures of aperture size and eye dimensions, the peak spatial resolving power and optical sensitivity are estimated to be 1.7 cycles deg21 (minimum separable angle of 34'7'' ) and 0.64 mm2 steradian (white light) and 1.38 mm2 steradian (preferred wavelength or lmax), respectively. Microspectrophotometry reveals that the visual pigment located within the outer segment is a rhodopsin with a wavelength of maximum absorbance (lmax) at 514 nm. The ellipsosome has very low absorptance (,0.05) across the measured spectrum (350-750 nm) and probably does not act as a spectral filter. In contrast to all other lampreys studied, the optimized receptor packing, the large width of the ellipsosome-bearing inner segment, together with the presence of a retinal tapetum in the photophobic Mordacia, all represent adaptations for low light vision and optimizing photon capture

Wet Age Related Macular Degeneration services in the community: A pathfinder evaluation - Final Report

This report summarises our evaluation of four different pathfinder services for people with wet Age Related Macular Degeneration (wet AMD). They are provided in the community setting rather than the hospital. Based on our findings we make recommendations about the delivery and sustainability for the future of such community based services for people with wet AMD in Wales

Blueprints physical to digital: curation of media to support ongoingness

Through describing ‘Blueprints’, a series of fabric collages, we detail a method for translating physical properties of objects into digital materialities of media compilations. This method has emerged within a piece of design research seeking to develop new ways to curate digital media to support ongoingness. The project context centres on working firstly with people who have a life limiting illness, secondly people living with an early stage of dementia and thirdly people who are bereaved. Ongoingness is a theoretical construct denoting an active dialogical component of ‘continued bonds’, which is an approach within bereavement care championing practices that enable a continued sense of connection between someone bereaved and a person who has died. ‘Blueprints’ are fabric collages made from scraps of fabric symbolising digital media (in this case photographs) from 2 people – one bereaved and one now deceased. The physical qualities that result from making the fabric collages (variation in layerings, thicknesses, stitching, fraying) each map onto directions for how the corresponding digital media will be composed in a compilation, and serves as a collaborative method of curating media in new ways. The ‘Blueprints’ method enables us to research if and how physical making of things can serve as a gentle way to engage with the complexities of media curation. It considers the potential value of indirect ways of curating digital media to enable ongoing connections between people through the unexpected compilations that the method creates

Systematic techniques for assisting recruitment to trials (START): study protocol for embedded, randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials play a central role in evidence-based practice, but recruitment of participants, and retention of them once in the trial, is challenging. Moreover, there is a dearth of evidence that research teams can use to inform the development of their recruitment and retention strategies. As with other healthcare initiatives, the fairest test of the effectiveness of a recruitment strategy is a trial comparing alternatives, which for recruitment would mean embedding a recruitment trial within an ongoing host trial. Systematic reviews indicate that such studies are rare. Embedded trials are largely delivered in an ad hoc way, with interventions almost always developed in isolation and tested in the context of a single host trial, limiting their ability to contribute to a body of evidence with regard to a single recruitment intervention and to researchers working in different contexts. METHODS/DESIGN: The Systematic Techniques for Assisting Recruitment to Trials (START) program is funded by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council (MRC) Methodology Research Programme to support the routine adoption of embedded trials to test standardized recruitment interventions across ongoing host trials. To achieve this aim, the program involves three interrelated work packages: (1) methodology - to develop guidelines for the design, analysis and reporting of embedded recruitment studies; (2) interventions - to develop effective and useful recruitment interventions; and (3) implementation - to recruit host trials and test interventions through embedded studies. DISCUSSION: Successful completion of the START program will provide a model for a platform for the wider trials community to use to evaluate recruitment interventions or, potentially, other types of intervention linked to trial conduct. It will also increase the evidence base for two types of recruitment intervention. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The START protocol covers the methodology for embedded trials. Each embedded trial is registered separately or as a substudy of the host trial

Spirometry use in patientswith sickle cell disease with and without asthma and acute chest syndrome: Amulticenter study

A de‐identified data repository of electronic medical record data, i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside), including four geographically diverse academic medical centers, was queried to determine the use of diagnostic spirometry testing in African American children and young adults 5‐34 years of age with sickle cell disease (SCD) with or without a documented history of asthma and/or acute chest syndrome (ACS). A total of 2749 patients were identified with SCD, of these 577 had asthma and 409 had ACS. Cross‐referencing the CPT code for diagnostic spirometry showed that for patients identified as having SCD, a history of ACS, and a diagnosis of asthma, only 31% across all four centers had spirometry. Having an asthma diagnosis was associated with ACS. Among SCD patients with asthma, the proportion with ACS for the four centers was 47%, 75%, 38%, and 36% respectively. The bivariate association between asthma and ACS for each Center was significant for each (P < .001). To summarize, only one third of patients with co‐morbid SCD, ACS, and asthma received the spirometry procedure as recommended in evidence‐based guidelines, suggesting limited testing for changes in pulmonary function. Future studies to determine barriers and facilitators to implementation of pulmonary testing in SCD are warranted