me vs. myself vs. I (Honors)

Sigmund Freud, father of modern day psychology had a theory that the mind was divided into three sections. Two of these sections were subconscious, and the other was our conscience. He divided the subconscious into the Super Ego and the Id, and he labeled our conscience the Ego. The Super Ego represents our closed-minded pessimistic side often instilled upon us by our parents and society. This is not necessarily a bad thing; rather it is what makes us do things in a proper, rational, and secure fashion. The Id is our primal side. It is often the drive behind our sexual urges. This is a bad thing if not controlled in a proper (hence the Super Ego) fashion, but it is often the side that encourages us to take that leap of faith every once in a while. The Ego can be looked at as our balance point. It weighs the influence of the Super Ego and the Id before making a decision. Since life does not turn out perfectly, neither does this piece. In order to represent the unpredictability of life I have written three different codas. The first one represents when we give into our primal and sexual urges and ignore our rational side. The second coda represents when we give into our rational side and don\u27t bother taking that adventurous step that needs to be taken once in a while. The third coda represents when we are able to balance our rationale with our primal urges and come to a harmonious conclusion. The choice of the coda to be played can be up to the conductor, the ensemble, or the audience, as long as the choice of coda is determined before the performance is started

A Systematic Study of Hidden Sector Dark Matter: Application to the Gamma-Ray and Antiproton Excesses

In hidden sector models, dark matter does not directly couple to the particle content of the Standard Model, strongly suppressing rates at direct detection experiments, while still allowing for large signals from annihilation. In this paper, we conduct an extensive study of hidden sector dark matter, covering a wide range of dark matter spins, mediator spins, interaction diagrams, and annihilation final states, in each case determining whether the annihilations are s-wave (thus enabling efficient annihilation in the universe today). We then go on to consider a variety of portal interactions that allow the hidden sector annihilation products to decay into the Standard Model. We broadly classify constraints from relic density requirements and dwarf spheroidal galaxy observations. In the scenario that the hidden sector was in equilibrium with the Standard Model in the early universe, we place a lower bound on the portal coupling, as well as on the dark matter's elastic scattering cross section with nuclei. We apply our hidden sector results to the observed Galactic Center gamma-ray excess and the cosmic-ray antiproton excess. We find that both of these excesses can be simultaneously explained by a variety of hidden sector models, without any tension with constraints from observations of dwarf spheroidal galaxies.Comment: 40 pages, 11 figures, matches the JHEP version, references adde

Quantitative PET reporter gene imaging of CD8+ T cells specific for a melanoma-expressed self-antigen

Adoptive transfer (AT) T-cell therapy provides significant clinical benefits in patients with advanced melanoma. However, approaches to non-invasively visualize the persistence of transferred T cells are lacking. We examined whether positron emission tomography (PET) can monitor the distribution of self-antigen-specific T cells engineered to express an herpes simplex virus 1 thymidine kinase (sr39tk) PET reporter gene. Micro-PET imaging using the sr39tk-specific substrate 9-[4-[18F]fluoro-3-(hydroxymethyl)-butyl]guanine ([18F]FHBG) enabled the detection of transplanted T cells in secondary lymphoid organs of recipient mice over a 3-week period. Tumor responses could be predicted as early as 3 days following AT when a >25-fold increase of micro-PET signal in the spleen and 2-fold increase in lymph nodes (LNs) were observed in mice receiving combined immunotherapy versus control mice. The lower limit of detection was ∼7 × 105 T cells in the spleen and 1 × 104 T cells in LNs. Quantification of transplanted T cells in the tumor was hampered by the sr39tk-independent trapping of [18F]FHBG within the tumor architecture. These data support the feasibility of using PET to visualize the expansion, homing and persistence of transferred T cells. PET may have significant clinical utility by providing the means to quantify anti-tumor T cells throughout the body and provide early correlates for treatment efficacy

Enhancing Lay Counselor Capacity to Improve Patient Outcomes with Multimedia Technology

Multimedia technologies offer powerful tools to increase capacity of health workers to deliver standardized, effective, and engaging antiretroviral medication adherence counseling. Masivukeni—is an innovative multimedia-based, computer-driven, lay counselor-delivered intervention designed to help people living with HIV in resource-limited settings achieve optimal adherence. This pilot study examined medication adherence and key psychosocial outcomes among 55 non-adherent South African HIV+ patients, on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for at least 6 months, who were randomized to receive either Masivukeni or standard of care (SOC) counseling for ART non-adherence. At baseline, there were no significant differences between the SOC and Masivukeni groups on any outcome variables. At post-intervention (approximately 5–6 weeks after baseline), -clinic-based pill count adherence data available for 20 participants (10 per intervention arm) showed a 10 % improvement for—participants and a decrease of 8 % for SOC participants. Masivukeni participants reported significantly more positive attitudes towards disclosure and medication social support, less social rejection, and better clinic–patient relationships than did SOC participants. Masivukeni shows promise to promote optimal adherence and provides preliminary evidence that multimedia, computer-based technology can help lay counselors offer better adherence counseling than standard approaches

Higher Education Exchange: 2012

This annual publication serves as a forum for new ideas and dialogue between scholars and the larger public. Essays explore ways that students, administrators, and faculty can initiate and sustain an ongoing conversation about the public life they share.The Higher Education Exchange is founded on a thought articulated by Thomas Jefferson in 1820: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."In the tradition of Jefferson, the Higher Education Exchange agrees that a central goal of higher education is to help make democracy possible by preparing citizens for public life. The Higher Education Exchange is part of a movement to strengthen higher education's democratic mission and foster a more democratic culture throughout American society.Working in this tradition, the Higher Education Exchange publishes interviews, case studies, analyses, news, and ideas about efforts within higher education to develop more democratic societies

Prognostic impact of urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) in cytosols and pellet extracts derived from primary breast tumours

Using a previously developed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), the levels of the receptor for urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPAR) were determined in cytosols and corresponding membrane pellets derived from 878 primary breast tumours. The levels of uPAR in the pellet extracts were more than 3-fold higher than those measured in the cytosols (P< 0.001). Moreover, the uPAR levels in the two types of extracts were weakly, though significantly, correlated with each other (rS= 0.20, P< 0.001). In Cox univariate analysis, high cytosolic levels of uPAR were significantly associated with reduced overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS). The levels of uPAR in pellet extracts appeared not to be related with patient survival. In multivariate analysis, elevated levels of uPAR measured in cytosols and pellet extracts were found to be independent predictors of poor OS, not RFS. The prediction of poor prognosis on the basis of high uPAR levels emphasizes its important role in plasmin-mediated degradation of extracellular matrix proteins during cancer invasion and metastasis. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

Masivukeni: Development of a Multimedia Based Antiretroviral Therapy Adherence Intervention for Counselors and Patients in South Africa

Effective medical treatment for HIV/AIDS requires patients’ optimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). In resource-constrained settings, lack of adequate standardized counseling for patients on ART remains a significant barrier to adherence. Masivukeni (“Let’s Wake Up” in Xhosa) is an innovative multimedia-based intervention designed to help people living with HIV in resource-limited settings achieve and maintain high levels of ART adherence. Adapted from a couples-based intervention tested in the United States (US), Masivukeni was developed through community-based participatory research with US and South African partners and informed by Ewart’s Social Action Theory. Innovative computer-based multimedia strategies were used to translate a labor- and training-intensive intervention into one that could be readily and widely used by lay counselors with relatively little training with low-literacy patients. In this paper, we describe the foundations of this new intervention, the process of its development, and the evidence of its high acceptability and feasibility

Selection of Resistant Bacteria at Very Low Antibiotic Concentrations

The widespread use of antibiotics is selecting for a variety of resistance mechanisms that seriously challenge our ability to treat bacterial infections. Resistant bacteria can be selected at the high concentrations of antibiotics used therapeutically, but what role the much lower antibiotic concentrations present in many environments plays in selection remains largely unclear. Here we show using highly sensitive competition experiments that selection of resistant bacteria occurs at extremely low antibiotic concentrations. Thus, for three clinically important antibiotics, drug concentrations up to several hundred-fold below the minimal inhibitory concentration of susceptible bacteria could enrich for resistant bacteria, even when present at a very low initial fraction. We also show that de novo mutants can be selected at sub-MIC concentrations of antibiotics, and we provide a mathematical model predicting how rapidly such mutants would take over in a susceptible population. These results add another dimension to the evolution of resistance and suggest that the low antibiotic concentrations found in many natural environments are important for enrichment and maintenance of resistance in bacterial populations