“It Takes Two”: Horror and Laughter in the Monstrosity of the Medieval to Modern Loathly Lady

This thesis is an exploration of the humor and horror of the monstrous loathly lady viewed through a feminist lens. The loathly lady is a medieval figure who begins as an ugly, loathsome hag and ends the tale as a beautiful young woman as long as a man is able to solve a riddle of sovereignty. Through her transformation, much can be seen about attitudes about women and gender politics as she shifts from a monstrous woman to a normalized one. My goal is to examine her monstrosity as not only horrific but humorous. Traditionally, female monstrosity is only considered horrific, ultimately resulting in the same conclusion: that female monstrosity indicates an unfavorable view of strong and subversive females. However, in the case of the loathly lady, there is also an aspect of laughter to her monstrous appearance. I argue that depending on who the reader identifies with, this humor can often lead to the opposite conclusion. Furthermore, I broaden my analysis of the loathly lady to include examples from the Renaissance and modern day in order to see how these elements, and thus attitudes on female monstrosity, change over time

Dining In Diversity: An Exploration Of Variances In Chinese Cuisine

Food in China is often misconstrued as homogeneous, lacking in diversity. However, a closer look can expose an entire realm of unique cuisines. These foods represent the different peoples and cultures that reside in the vast expanse of land known as Greater China. This paper will look at five distinct cuisines: Shandong, Jiangsu, Szechuan, Cantonese, and Taiwanese cuisine. Through exploring the similarities and differences of cuisine in these areas, culture emerges along with a variety in food that the Western world would not expect

Automating A Home Snowmaking System Using An AVR Microcontroller

Since its invention in the 1950s, snowmaking has been vitally important to the ski industry, lengthening season length, and bringing skiing and snowboarding to areas where it would not previously have been possible. In the past decade and a half, snowmaking system automation has become widespread due to its potential for increased efficiency and decreased costs. Snowmaking has also gained a foothold in the personal market, with small-scale systems being sold by several companies for decoration and entertainment purposes. However, no home snowmaking system on the market today includes automation, despite automation’s potential to decrease the difficulty in operating these systems by eliminating the need for the user to constantly check weather conditions and to wake up at unreasonable hours to turn the machine on. Presented is a method to automate an existing home snowmaking system using an Atmega328p microcontroller with various sensors and control devices. A full-scale test was recently performed. There were issues with the method used to control the water supply to the system, but aside from those, the system performed flawlessly. A better method is necessary to allow the system to control the water supply

Witnesser

This series of paintings and drawings attempts to navigate personal and pandemic tragedy via the depiction of trauma as a collective experience. Within my work, publically accessible images of oil spills, human induced wild-fires, decomposing mental wards, nuclear bombings, etc., are used in combination with moments of personal hysteria, death, humiliation and loss to create a new landscape that explores the ties between how individuals navigate incidents based upon their own memories and experiences with the world. Using the physicality of drawn and painted collage to place the viewer into the experience, these works take on a sinister mythology that connects moments of small town tragedy to tragedy shared among mass society. Referencing large scale historical events and splicing it with modern intimate, and often private experiences, heightens the drama due to the vague and haunting undertones that the works evoke. Ambiguous ghostly limbs and misplaced objects within the scenes allow for a sense of uneasiness. The series elicits a sense of nostalgia and otherworldly encounters using realism combined with moments of juxtaposed tension due to the dislocated and precarious subject matter

Decadal-Scale Trends in Forest Succession and Climatic Sensitivity in a Red Spruce-Fraser Fir Forest at Roan Mountain, Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests

I used dendrochronological techniques to investigate the temporal stability of a climate signal in relation to successional processes and disturbance events in the heavily disturbed red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) and Fraser fir [Abies fraseri (Pursh) Poir.] forest of Roan Mountain, Tennessee and North Carolina. I collected increment cores from all trees within six 0.05 ha plots located in spruce-fir co-dominant stands. I developed a red spruce tree-ring chronology from cores collected in my sampling plots and from trees located elsewhere in the study area. To test the stability of the climate-tree growth relationship, I performed statistical correlation within moving intervals using DendroClim 2002 software. Changes in forest structure coincided with stand-wide disturbance events such as balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae Ratz.) infestation and widespread early twentieth-century logging. I detected shifts in climatic sensitivity during periods of changing forest composition following disturbances. Notably, a significant shift in red spruce temperature sensitivity occurred during the 1940s, coinciding with a period of aggressive logging. Red spruce climatic sensitivity was often sporadic and fluctuating in signal strength, leading to the hypothesis that stand dynamics may play a larger role than climate in limiting spruce tree growth in a frequently disturbed, closed canopy forest

Effects of Periodic and/or a Single Exposure to an Enriched Environment on Neural C-fos Expression in Adolescent Rats

Environmental enrichment of laboratory animals consists of cognitive, social and physical enhancement of the subjects’ life experiences. Enrichment produces improved performance on memory tasks. In the present study, 16 Long-Evans rats (8 male and 8 female) were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups on postnatal day 34 (n = 4 for each group). Animals were given periodic exposures to the enriched environment through adolescence, an acute expose just before sacrifice, both periodic and acute enrichment, or no enrichment. Rats were sacrificed on post-natal day 77-79, and 72 sagittal sections (50 µm) were taken from each brain, then processed for visualization of the c-fos protein. There were more c-fos positive neurons in the CA1 region, entorhinal cortex and subiculum of rats that received an acute enriching experience only, compared to controls. Additionally, more c-fos positive neurons were observed within these three structures in rats that only received an acute enriching experience compared to rats that received periodic enrichment and acute enrichment. These findings suggest that, in the mammalian brain, diversity of experience during adolescence produces changes in neural circuitry that may foster improved mental acuity in adulthood

Next Generation Sequencing Assay for Detection of Circulating HPV DNA (cHPV-DNA) in Patients Undergoing Radical (Chemo)Radiotherapy in Anal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (ASCC).

Background: Following chemo-radiotherapy (CRT) for human papilloma virus positive (HPV+) anal squamous cell carcinoma (ASCC), detection of residual/recurrent disease is challenging. Patients frequently undergo unnecessary repeated biopsies for abnormal MRI/clinical findings. In a pilot study we assessed the role of circulating HPV-DNA in identifying "true" residual disease. Methods: We prospectively collected plasma samples at baseline (n = 21) and 12 weeks post-CRT (n = 17). Circulating HPV-DNA (cHPV DNA) was measured using a novel next generation sequencing (NGS) assay, panHPV-detect, comprising of two primer pools covering distinct regions of eight high-risk HPV genomes (16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 45, 52, and 58) to detect circulating HPV-DNA (cHPV DNA). cHPV-DNA levels post-CRT were correlated to disease response. Results: In pre-CRT samples, panHPV-detect demonstrated 100% sensitivity and specificity for HPV associated ASCC. PanHPV-detect was able to demonstrate cHPV-DNA in 100% (9/9) patients with T1/T2N0 cancers. cHPV-DNA was detectable 12 weeks post CRT in just 2/17 patients, both of whom relapsed. 1/16 patients who had a clinical complete response (CR) at 3 months post-CRT but relapsed at 9 months and 1/1 patient with a partial response (PR). PanHPV-detect demonstrated 100% sensitivity and specificity in predicting response to CRT. Conclusion: We demonstrate that panHPV-detect, an NSG assay is a highly sensitive and specific test for the identification of cHPV-DNA in plasma at diagnosis. cHPV-DNA post-treatment may predict clinical response to CRT

A study of the songs and sonnets of John Donne as they show his reaction to the Elizabethan tradition

This study proposes to treat John Donne as a heretic of approach and idiom. It will show that his reaction against the Elizabethan traditions was sharp and complete. His approach to the theme of love in his Songs and Sonnets, circulated among his private friends, was radically different from the set, traditional treatment of love in the poetry of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This latter type of poetry had lost all traces of originality and freshness; idiom, mood, and often form corresponded to a constant pattern which had become insipid. Set phrases, invocations, and approach had been used too frequently. The Elizabethans preferred the sonnet as a form of expression; and many of the poets composed a series of sonnets in which the theme was most often that of undying, unrequited love