Try not to worry & the people pictured here

The non-fiction collection, Try Not to Worry, follows the Wolf family through the mental and physical decline of Alex Wolf, the family\u27s third child. As Alex enters adolescence, he struggles increasingly with clinical anxiety, made worse by his perception of himself as inadequate. The third of four children, and the second son, he feels himself to be an appendage to what could be a complete family unit without his presence. Alex\u27s troubles are seen only through others\u27 eyes. His parents surprisingly are not given an essential role in Try Not to Worry. Even as they seek to solve Alex\u27s problems through therapy and intervention, in his point of view they seem to disappear. Rachel, the eldest child, feels increasingly pulled back to the family circle even as she attempts to find her adult identity. Evan, the second child, empathizes with Alex\u27s feelings of anxiety, an emotional investment that prevents Evan from leaving home, and Bridget, the youngest child, is left to quietly rebel against rules that no one has remembered to set for her. Try Not to Worry is the story of a family whose only defense against loss is to hold on to each other as tightly as possible, which is not always a good idea. Try Not to Worry\u27s companion piece, The People Pictured Here, is a fictional imagining of a family much like the Wolfs, but years farther along in their construction of an interdependent family dynamic. The Barlowe siblings are physically adults, yet their reliance on each other for affection, affirmation, and guidance holds them in a suspended state of emotional adolescence. The People Pictured Here revolves around Dominick Barlowe, who is locked in an unsettling intimacy with his sister Trisha, and her best friend Angela. Their triangle is physically manifested when Angela becomes pregnant with Dominick\u27s child, and all three adults must decide what role they will play in the child\u27s life. Macy and Christopher Barlowe, the eldest Barlowe siblings, watch the actions of Dominick and Trisha with both amusement and trepidation, understanding that their siblings\u27 lack of boundaries reflects Macy and Christopher\u27s own unhealthy dependence. Both Try Not to Worry and The People Pictured Here present families that are ensnared in patterns of emotional incest, in which loyalty and concern for each other often means self-neglect. The characters in these two pieces must ultimately decide how, and if, they can break away from their tangled family webs. Separation may be successful or disastrous, yet the siblings in these works are all traveling towards a time when severing their ties to each other will be the only way they can grow up

Dermatitis Herpetiformis

The main sign that accompanies DH is the eruption of intensely pruritic papulovesical lesions that typically present bilaterally on the elbows, knees, buttocks, neck, and scalp (Criado et al., 2012). They may appear on the upper back, abdomen, groin, and face as well. The lesions are small blisters that resemble those that are caused by the herpes simplex virus. By the time a patient seeks evaluation by a care provider, the lesions have often been scratched so much as to cause erosions, excoriation, and or crusted papules (Junkins-Hopkins, 2010). The surrounding area may have erythema and or urticarial plaques. Patients may have areas of hyperpigmentation from previous outbreaks (Bonciani et al., 2012). The breakouts are of a chronic nature and will have periods of flare ups and remission. The periods of remission do not typically last long than several weeks (Criado et al., 2012). The hallmark symptom that patients with DH report is extremely intense itching. They may report experiencing the itching, a burning and or a stinging sensation up to 12 hours prior to eruptions on the skin

Supernova Cosmology And How To Talk About It: New Approaches To Cosmological Parameter Inference With Type Ia Supernovae And An Assessment Of The Education And Public Outreach Program Of The Dark Energy Survey

The discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe launched a new chapter in modern cosmology. Evidence for this accelerating expansion was first observed using Type Ia supernovae, which are brilliant, standardizable explosions that can be detected at large distances and used to infer cosmological parameters. New surveys are being designed to detect thousands of Type Ia supernovae, ushering in an era where parameter inference is no longer limited by statistics, but by systematic uncertainties. One of these systematics which is not well understood is the progenitor and progenitor environment, which can be investigated by studying properties of the supernova host galaxy. In this dissertation, I use the three-year sample of photometrically-classified and spectroscopically-confirmed Type Ia supernovae from Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey to explore correlations between supernova luminosity and host-galaxy mass, metallicity, and star-formation rate. Observations suggest that such correlations should be incorporated to improve the standardization of Type Ia supernova luminosities. As such, new techniques for parameter inference will need to accommodate increasingly large samples of supernovae and a variety of standardization models. In this dissertation, I also introduce the BAyesian hierarchical Modeling with BIased Simulations (BAMBIS) algorithm, a novel approach to parameter inference using Type Ia supernovae which can, in principle, include systematics such as host-galaxy correlations in a robust statistical framework. In addition to offering new scientific research opportunities, the quest to understand the evolution of the cosmos brings excellent opportunities for astronomers to engage in science education and public outreach (EPO). I present an analysis of the Dark Energy Survey EPO program, a unique large-scale astronomy EPO initiative organized and led entirely by professional astronomers. In this analysis, I detail the development of the EPO program as well as analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a subset of specific initiatives. I also discuss scientists\u27 reported methods of communicating science with the public

Cutting the trees to save the forest: The Finch Pruyn working forest

The past two decades have seen sales of millions of acres of commercial forest land in the United States. Changed ownership often results in altered forest management, parcelization or development. Such changes have profound implications for forest species and ecosystems, as well as the timber industry, recreational opportunities, and local and regional economies. An emerging strategy seeks to protect lands through complex public-private partnerships involving state agencies, conservation organizations, and commercial investors. By definition, these partnerships have both environmental and socioeconomic goals; as such, they represent contemporary experiments in sustainable development applied to forested landscapes. As this approach is a recent innovation, its benefits for nature and people have yet to be demonstrated, and the general applicability of this integrated approach to conservation is unknown. Our objective is to identify context-specific objectives and indicators to support integrated monitoring and adaptive management for the former Finch Pruyn lands, which encompass 161,000 acres in the Adirondack region of New York State. This interdisciplinary project involves social science faculty and students from Cornell University and cooperation from conservation scientists from The Nature Conservancy. Through a review of the literature on criteria and indicators for sustainable forestry, we developed an analytical framework for measuring ecological, social, and economic implications of forest management practices. Through key informant interviews, we identified context-specific objectives and indicators for the Finch Pruyn lands, including forest health, species protection, expanded recreation opportunities and community economic vitality. Our approach allows us to compare existing commitments to collection of monitoring data to ideal data sets as defined by actors occupying various structural positions. Identification of potential gaps in monitoring represents an opportunity for dialogue, reallocation of resources and enrollment of new strategic partners. Over time, these global and local indicators can support an adaptive framework through which flows of information inform management in an iterative process. Preliminary results indicate that this project entails several innovations that may contribute to its success, including the development of a comprehensive ecological baseline and the explicit engagement of local claims to livelihoods and access. We make several recommendations for future working forest agreements, such as the need to define clear environmental and socioeconomic goals at the outset, and, when private philanthropy is central to project viability, the incorporation of monitoring costs into initial fundraising targets. We believe these lessons are applicable to conservation development projects in the Northern Forest region and beyond

Unconventional superconductivity in the extended Hubbard model: Weak-coupling renormalization group

We employ the weak-coupling renormalization group approach to study unconventional superconducting phases emerging in the extended, repulsive Hubbard model on paradigmatic two-dimensional lattices. Repulsive interactions usually lead to higher-angular momentum Cooper pairing. By considering not only longer-ranged hoppings, but also non-local electron-electron interactions, we are able to find superconducting solutions for all irreducible representations on the square and hexagonal lattices, including extended regions of chiral topological superconductivity. For the square, triangular and honeycomb lattices, we provide detailed superconducting phase diagrams as well as the coupling strengths which quantify the corresponding critical temperatures depending on the bandstructure parameters, band filling, and interaction parameters. We discuss the sensitivity of the method with respect to the numerical resolution of the integration grid and the patching scheme. Eventually we show how to efficiently reach a high numerical accuracy.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figure

The merger rate of massive galaxies

We calculate the projected two point correlation function for samples of luminous and massive galaxies in the COMBO-17 photometric redshift survey, focusing particularly on the amplitude of the correlation function at small projected radii and exploring the constraints such measurements can place on the galaxy merger rate. For nearly volume-limited samples with 0.4<z<0.8, we find that 4+/-1% of luminous M_B<-20 galaxies are in close physical pairs (with real space separation of <30 proper kpc). The corresponding fraction for massive galaxies with M_*>2.5e10 M_sun is 5+/-1%. Incorporating close pair fractions from the literature, the 2dFGRS and the SDSS, we find a fairly rapid evolution of the merger fraction of massive galaxies between z=0.8 and the present day. Assuming that the major merger timescale is of order the dynamical timescale for close massive galaxy pairs, we tentatively infer that ~50% (70%) of all galaxies with present-day masses M_*>5e10 M_sun (remnants of mergers between galaxies with M_*>2.5e10 M_sun) have undergone a major merger since z=0.8(1): major mergers between massive galaxies are a significant driver of galaxy evolution over the last eight billion years.Comment: ApJ, in press. 8 pages, 3 figures. Expanded discussion section with explicit discussion of merger fraction vs. close pair fraction. Change of typical close pair timescale results in increased inferred merger rat

Nuclear-encoded splicing factors for yeast mitochondrial introns

textHypothesized to be ancestors of eukaryotic spliceosomal introns, extant group II introns are found in bacteria, archaea, and in the mitochondria and chloroplast genomes of some eukaryotes. While some of these catalytic intron RNAs encode an intron-encoded maturase to assist in their splicing, not all do, eliciting the question of how these introns are spliced out. Two such introns are the mitochondrial introns aI5 [gamma] and bI1 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Previous in vitro studies on the self-splicing activity of these introns revealed requirements for non-physiologically high salt concentration and temperature for catalytic activity, suggesting a dependence upon proteins in vivo. With most mitochondrial proteins known to be encoded by the nucleus, it seems likely that some exist to assist, either directly or indirectly, in the correct splicing of these introns. Previous searches for such proteins relied on a combination of two genetic screens: looking for a mutant's inability to grow on the non-fermentable carbon source glycerol-(Gly⁻ phenotype)- in the presence of a given intron, and a Gly⁺ phenotype in the intron's absence. In contrast, this study employs Northern hybridization to identify splicing defects in a series of mutants constructed by targeted gene deletion, allowing for identification of proteins required for splicing that would not have been otherwise detectable. In order to identify associated proteins, this method is complemented by Tandem Affinity Purification of Mss116, the DEAD-box RNA chaperone required for splicing of all the yeast mitochondrial introns. In addition to Mss116, special attention was given to the insertase Oxa1, found to be required for aI5 [gamma] and bI1splicing specifically; and to Mne1, found to be required for splicing group I intron aI5 [beta]. The results point to distinctly different auxiliary protein requirements for group I introns, group II introns that encode their own maturases, and group II introns that do not encode maturases. My findings are consistent with the possibility that the splicing of aI5 [gamma] and bI1, group II introns that do not encode maturases, is coordinated by multiple proteins comprising a splicing complex situated at the surface of the mitochondrial inner membrane in close association with the mitoribosomes.Cellular and Molecular Biolog