Form in the Manner of Landscape: Distillation of a Concept through Language and Literature

Past work on the concept of landscape developed the idea that landscape should be viewed less as a noun than as a verb. This develops the idea that ―landscape‖ can be explored as a concept through the fabric of the word itself. This thesis explores through the ambiguity of language, the potential of a landscape idea that considers landscape a verbal action and practice, but also something that retains the objective sense of a noun in abstract representational terms. The potential in landscape to embody paradoxical ideas of movement and substance brings about the consideration of landscape as a relationship of tensions. The visibly apparent expression of a landscape product is the result of their negotiation. There is no correct ―way‖ of doing landscape but the ways in which it is done may be read as apparent propositions towards an unapparent abstract ideal. Through circumstances in time and experience the proposition is renewed and transformed to express a new proposition. This cycle is at the core of a relationship between human and land. The coherence of diversity is its self-preservation. The idea of diversity ordinarily indicates an idea of landscape framed by deductive thought processes in the sense that disparate branches and off-shoots spread the concept so thinly that it can struggle to find conceptual significance. Considering an inductive approach that draws these disparate branches back into one idea of landscape prompts a renewal in focus, outlining a basic idea or form to which circumstantial performance relates. The thesis moves from the observation of a theoretical outline to the interpretation of that theory in lived experience and finally to its articulation in a particular way through personal reflection. This study seeks a form of landscape, finds meanings in its use, and then lives the form in a meaningful manner

BIOETHICS: Ethical Considerations of Ventilator Triage During a Pandemic

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals across the country faced unprecedented volumes of patients seeking treatment related to the respiratory complications of the virus. As a result, states were forced to reassess existing scarce resource allocation guidelines to appropriately accommodate the high demand. This Peach Sheet analyzes the ethical considerations implicated in enacting and following these guidelines when treating patients, specifically in the context of ventilator triage in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Oral History Conversation with Tyler Norris (SOULR)

This is an oral history interview with Tyler Norris conducted on March 28, 2017

Detection of Provasopressin in Invasive and Non-invasive (DCIS) Human Breast Cancer Using a Monoclonal Antibody Directed Against the C-terminus (MAG1)

The provasopressin protein (proAVP) is expressed by invasive breast cancer and non-invasive breast cancer, or ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Here we demonstrate the ability of the monoclonal antibody MAG1 directed against the C-terminal end of proAVP to identify proAVP in all cases examined of human invasive cancer and DCIS (35 and 26, respectively). Tissues were chosen to represent a relevant variation in tumor type, grade, patient age, and menopausal status. By comparison, there was 65% positive staining for estrogen receptor, 61% for progesterone receptor, 67% for nuclear p53, and 39% for c-Erb-B2 with the invasive breast cancer sections. Reaction with the normal tissue types examined (67) was restricted to the vasopressinergic magnocellular neurons of the hypothalamus, where provasopressin is normally produced, and the posterior pituitary, where these neurons terminate. The breast epithelial tissue sections on the tissue microarray did not react with MAG1. Previously, we demonstrated that polyclonal antibodies to proAVP detected that protein in all breast cancer samples examined, but there was no reaction with breast tissue containing fibrocystic disease. The results presented here not only expand upon those earlier results, but they also demonstrate the specificity and effectiveness of what may be considered a more clinically-relevant agent. Thus, proAVP appears to be an attractive target for the detection of invasive breast cancer and DCIS, and these results suggest that MAG1 may be a beneficial tool for use in the development of such strategies

IL-4 engagement of the type 1 IL-4 receptor complex enhances mouse eosinophil migration to eotaxin-1 in vitro

Background Previous work from our laboratory demonstrated that IL-4Rα expression on a myeloid cell type was responsible for enhancement of Th2-driven eosinophilic inflammation in a mouse model of allergic lung inflammation. Subsequently, we have shown that IL-4 signaling through type I IL-4 receptors on monocytes/macrophages strongly induced activation of the IRS-2 pathway and a subset of genes characteristic of alternatively activated macrophages. The direct effect(s) of IL-4 and IL-13 on mouse eosinophils are not clear. The goal of this study was determine the effect of IL-4 and IL-13 on mouse eosinophil function. Methods Standard Transwell chemotaxis assay was used to assay migration of mouse eosinophils and signal transduction was assessed by Western blotting. Results Here we determined that (i) mouse eosinophils express both type I and type II IL-4 receptors, (ii) in contrast to human eosinophils, mouse eosinophils do not chemotax to IL-4 or IL-13 although (iii) pre-treatment with IL-4 but not IL-13 enhanced migration to eotaxin-1. This IL-4-mediated enhancement was dependent on type I IL-4 receptor expression: γC-deficient eosinophils did not show enhancement of migratory capacity when pre-treated with IL-4. In addition, mouse eosinophils responded to IL-4 with the robust tyrosine phosphorylation of STAT6 and IRS-2, while IL-13-induced responses were considerably weaker. Conclusions The presence of IL-4 in combination with eotaxin-1 in the allergic inflammatory milieu could potentiate infiltration of eosinophils into the lungs. Therapies that block IL-4 and chemokine receptors on eosinophils might be more effective clinically in reducing eosinophilic lung inflammation

Global Software Innovators Strengthening the Software Innovation Capacity of Europe and Korea

Global entrepreneurial talent management is a key challenge for the software sector internationally where competition for high-end skills is intense. SMEs are at a significant disadvantage when competing with major multinationals to access these skills. The Information and Communications Technology sector accounts for 5% of all employment in the EU and there are 900,000 vacancies in this sector in 2017 [1], however over 50% of senior ICT managers believe graduates lack the necessary combination of technical, business and interpersonal skills [2]. In addition, only 4 in 1000 women work in the ICT sector [3]. To address these challenges, HubLinked, an EU-funded Knowledge Alliance partnership of 11 industry and HE partners in the EU and Korea, is developing an integrated curriculum for industry-oriented, internationalised, innovation focused and interdisciplinary Computer Science degrees (“CSI4”). CSI4 features Global Labs, where teams of students work across timezones to prototype software, an internationalization-at-home experience which mimics working in a global ICT campany

A Platform-Independent Method for Detecting Errors in Metagenomic Sequencing Data: DRISEE

We provide a novel method, DRISEE (duplicate read inferred sequencing error estimation), to assess sequencing quality (alternatively referred to as “noise” or “error”) within and/or between sequencing samples. DRISEE provides positional error estimates that can be used to inform read trimming within a sample. It also provides global (whole sample) error estimates that can be used to identify samples with high or varying levels of sequencing error that may confound downstream analyses, particularly in the case of studies that utilize data from multiple sequencing samples. For shotgun metagenomic data, we believe that DRISEE provides estimates of sequencing error that are more accurate and less constrained by technical limitations than existing methods that rely on reference genomes or the use of scores (e.g. Phred). Here, DRISEE is applied to (non amplicon) data sets from both the 454 and Illumina platforms. The DRISEE error estimate is obtained by analyzing sets of artifactual duplicate reads (ADRs), a known by-product of both sequencing platforms. We present DRISEE as an open-source, platform-independent method to assess sequencing error in shotgun metagenomic data, and utilize it to discover previously uncharacterized error in de novo sequence data from the 454 and Illumina sequencing platforms.</p