Beautiful People: The Past, Present, and Future of the Fashion Industry\u27s Thin Ideal

Negative body image among women has become an extremely relevant topic in the last decade. The “ideal” female body image and what a person should look like according to marketing and advertising has become a highly controversial issue. This project seeks to show how the fashion industry has, over centuries, shaped how people think they need to look and in today’s time and show how it has been a root cause of issues like body image complexes leading to negative self-perception, eating disorders, mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and addiction, and even suicide. Over the last three to four decades, the problem has grown exponentially worse. However, there are organizations popping up that are celebrating people as they are. One of these organizations is the Northwest Arkansas Fashion Week. The people involved are separating fashion from what the ideal body is supposed to look like and bringing people of all shapes, sizes, colors and mentalities to the front of the line and showing the rest of the world that its ok to just be you

Social media and fear: social media as a catalyst for political fear in the United States.

Abstract: Using the American National Election Study data from the 2012 and 2016 surveys I explore how social media usage shapes fear. This is likely caused by the nature of social media leading to oversharing of sensationalized articles likely to elicit an emotional and fearful response. My findings suggest first that social media usage has a statistically significant effect on whether they would say they are afraid of a candidate (2012) and how afraid they say they are of the candidates (2016). Second, social media has little effect on economic fear, and may actually make people more hopeful about the economy. Third, that this effect is strongest amongst millennial voters

A Culture Shaped by Immigrants: Examining the Consequences of U.S. Immigration Policy

We examine U.S. immigration history both by recounting the related legislative history and by examining data on immigrant inflows and inflow shares during the period from 1820 through 2013. A descriptive analysis of the cultural differences between the U.S. and several cohorts of countries suggests that U.S. culture has been shaped by the pattern of immigrant arrivals. Broadly stated, American culture has evolved to be similar to those of European societies (predominantly, countries in Northern and Western Europe) and to largely be dissimilar to the cultures of other regions. Following the enactment of the Hart-Celler Act in 1968, the primary source regions of U.S. immigrant arrivals shifted to Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, and (to a lesser degree) Africa. We find some evidence that the U.S. has become more similar to the cultures of the recent arrivals’ source countries. Our econometric analysis tests for structural breaks in the level of the immigrant inflow and inflow share series. The results support our general findings. We find clear evidence of significant breaks in the immigrant inflow series and in the immigrant inflow share series. The detected structural breaks correspond with key pieces of legislation that have significantly influenced U.S. immigration policy

W. A. R. is Worth It

This study is evaluating how much a Major League Baseball player should earn in salary based on their WAR (Wins Above Replacement) metric while controlling for a player’s veteran status and their current team’s market size. All data analyzed in this study was collected from the 2021 baseball season. The population of this study consisted of 213 MLB players that played in at least eighty games throughout the 2021 season. We hypothesized that if a player has veteran status, their team has a large market size, and they produce a high WAR metric that it will result in the player earning a larger salary. Our results did in fact support our hypothesis, and the strongest correlation within our regression analysis was between WAR and the market size of a Major League Baseball team

Patient-centered endodontic outcomes: a narrative review.

IntroductionRoot canal treatment (RCT) success criteria inform us of the path to bony healing and of prognostic factors, but tell little about how the patient perceives, feels, or values RCT. Patients choose, undergo, and pay for RCT, they live with the result, and inform their community. The purpose of this narrative review was to appraise patient-centered outcomes of initial non-surgical RCT and nonsurgical retreatment, in adults.Materials and methodsPatient-centered RCT outcome themes were identified in the extant literature: quality of life, satisfaction, anxiety, fear, pain, tooth survival and cost. Narrative review was applied because the disparate themes and data were unsuited to systematic review or meta-analysis.ResultsApplication of the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) demonstrated that disease of pulpal origin affects quality of life with moderate severity, primarily through physical pain and psychological discomfort, and that RCT results in broad improvement of quality of life. Satisfaction with RCT is extremely high, but cost is the primary reason for dissatisfaction. Anxiety and fear affect RCT patients, profoundly influencing their behaviors, including treatment avoidance, and their pain experience. Fear of pain is "fair" to "very much" prior to RCT. Pain is widely feared, disliked, and remembered; however, disease of pulpal origin generally produces moderate, but not severe pain. RCT causes a dramatic decrease in pain prevalence and severity over the week following treatment. Survival rates of teeth after RCT are very high; complication rates are low. Cost is a barrier to RCT, but initial costs, lifetime costs, cost effectiveness, cost utility, and cost benefit all compare extremely well to the alternatives involving replacement using implants or fixed prostheses.ConclusionDentists must strive to reduce anxiety, fear, experienced and remembered pain, and to accurately inform and educate their patients with respect to technical, practical and psychosocial aspects of RCT

Collision Avoidance for Quadcopters

The purpose of our project is to design and implement an obstacle detection and avoidance system for use on multirotor drones. The system gathers information from two Arducam 5MP cameras, using stereoscopic vision as the primary obstacle detection source. It also uses an XL-MaxSonar-EZ3 ultrasonic sensor as a backup, in case the cameras fail to detect an obstacle. All three of these sensors will be mounted to the drone using a 3D printed mounting bracket, to ensure consistency of sensor information. The system will interface with the Naza-M v2 flight controller, overriding the user controls when the user attempts to steer the drone forward into an obstacle. At the same time, the system will light an LED to inform the user of the control override. The Zybo Zynq-7000 development board is the main processing system used in our project. We utilize the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) development scheme offered by this board, simultaneously developing software for the ARM-9 processor and hardware to implement on the FPGA fabric.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1186/thumbnail.jp

Unexpected Gallbladder Metastasis of Clear Cell Renal Carcinoma

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) commonly metastasizes to areas such as the lungs, liver, bone, brain, adrenals, and lymph nodes. We present a rare case of a 59-year-old female patient with RCC metastasis to the gallbladder. The patient had undergone right nephrectomy for RCC more than 6 years prior to the metastasis. During routine follow-up, a polypoid lesion of the gallbladder was identified. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy was performed, and pathologic examination of the specimen revealed metastatic RCC. The patient was completely asymptomatic, which reinforces the importance of postoperative follow-up. Renal cell carcinoma is one of the few common malignancies for which there is good evidence of survival benefit from surgical resection of the metastatic tumours

Alternative Methods to Traditional Written Exam-Based Assessment

Donnelly and Fitzmaurice (2005, p.14) suggest that “assessment methods should be in accord with the learning outcomes of the module and should foster a deep approach to learning”. While unseen written exams do develop skills such as “examination techniques, writing under pressure, recall” (Smyth, 2004), there are a number of alternative assessment methods that determine what students actually understand and what they can do, in contrast to what they can recall. As one student noted “I hate to say it, but what you have got to do is to have a list of “facts” …you write down the important points and memorise those, then you\u27ll do all right in the test…if you can give a bit of factual information… “so and so did that, and concluded that” for two sides of writing, then you\u27ll get a good mark” (Comment from student in Ramsden, 1984, p.144). Many modules are reliant on the written exams for the majority of their assessment methods. Brown (1999, p.8) states “the range of ways that students are assessed is extremely limited with around 80% of assessment being in the form of exam, essay and reports of some kind”. Race (2001) agrees when he says that 90% of assessments are unseen examinations and essay/reports and such assessments promote surface learning. Having a depository of alternative methods of assessment facilitates learners with more opportunity to demonstrate their understanding, knowledge and skills (Ramsden, 2003). Additionally, having diverse methods of assessment can provide more inclusive approaches to assessment design. They provide a means of collecting valuable information and skills that cannot be solely assessed with the traditional written exam. Brown and Race (2013) convey that using a range of diverse methods means that students are assessed across a range of abilities and skills and that everyone has some opportunity to play to strengths. Although this project outlines challenges to implementing alternative assessment methods such as preparation, cost, and time among other factors, they provide more authentic learning approaches that focus on the quality of students’ performance as an individual and within a team. These alternative methods of assessment can deepen understanding, enhance the learning environment and provide students with real-life transferable skills for future employability

Spatial and spectral photoluminescence characterisation of semiconductor wafers

This work describes the development of a facility for the spatial and spectral analysis of semiconductor wafers at cryogenic temperatures using photoluminescence (PL). Wafers of up to 50mm in diameter can be placed in the custom-designed cryostat and held at any temperature between 2 and 300K. A scanning optical table is used to scan the excitation beam across the wafer and collect the resulting PL signal. The spatial resolution of this arrangement was verified as 600(.im. Spectral analysis of the wafer is achieved using a CCD detector mounted on a grating spectrograph. Two separate detector/spectrograph systems were used during this project, both of which are described and compared. The maximum spectral resolution achieved was lnm at wavelengths in the range 800 to lOOOnm. From the spectral information such images as the peak intensity, peak wavelength and the full width at half maximum can be obtained. Several examples of peak wavelength and peak intensity maps of epilayer and quantum well structures grown on GaAs wafers recorded at room, liquid nitrogen and liquid helium temperatures are presented