“The experience of illness in all of its complexity”: breast cancer, healthy-mindedness, and new momism movements at work in the illness narratives of Rosalind MacPhee and Kathlyn Conway

Picasso’s Woman: A Breast Cancer Story (1994) and Ordinary Life: A Memoir of Illness (1997) tell of the breast cancer experiences of Rosalind MacPhee and Kathlyn Conway, respectively. This thesis examines how three particular social movements—the breast cancer, healthy-mindedness, and “new momism” movements, all described in Chapter One—affect how MacPhee and Conway experience breast cancer and then write about it in the 1990s. Chapter Two examines the language of war that MacPhee and Conway adopt to describe illness and how such language leads them to examine the possibility proposed by the healthy-mindedness movement: that they are personally responsible for bringing a “determined killer” (Conway 125) into their lives. Chapter Three studies their active patient behaviours, as advocated by the breast cancer movement, as well as their more passive ones. I consider the relation between these active and passive behaviours in light of the severe nature of mastectomies and the presentation of post-surgical options. Chapter Four investigates how MacPhee and Conway struggle to maintain their roles as supermoms, busily attending to responsibilities at home and work, while simultaneously managing their recoveries. In each Chapter, the influence of the social movements named above becomes apparent as MacPhee and Conway attempt to move themselves and others out of the breast cancer experience and back into “a sense of normality” (MacPhee 106)

A Strategy to Increase Outpatient Palliative Care Referrals in Heart Failure Patients

The purpose of this project was to determine if using the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ) as a screening tool for heart failure patients leads to an increase in outpatient palliative referrals. Heart failure is a prevalent disease with both high symptom burden and mortality. Outpatient palliative care could improve quality of life for these patients, but research on outpatient palliative care is new and there is ambiguity surrounding the timing of referral. The project utilized a convenience sample of 21 adult patients in an outpatient facility over a 12-week timeframe. Participants self-completed the short form version of the KCCQ during an initial visit or hospital follow-up. Of the 21 participants, none received a palliative care referral. Ultimately, new patient visits were examined because it was unexpectedly found that no-shows dropped off the palliative clinic schedule, so retaining referral data is one paramount issue to address. Use of a screening tool did not lead to increased referrals in this project, suggesting further research is needed to identify innovative practices that will impact utilization of outpatient palliative services

GOP Powers Bring Consumer Data Showers: How Congress Just Sold Your Browsing History to the Highest Bidder

The American news cycle has certainly been filled with its fair share of craziness in the past couple weeks. Did Russia hack the U.S. election? Is the battle for healthcare over? Was President Trump really wiretapped? Did you hear Beyoncé’s surprise new single? Most importantly: did Congress just put a price tag on your Internet privacy? This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on April 18, 2017. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

Healthy living skills education: A 12-module group intervention for individuals with serious mental illness

Serious mental illness often strikes during adolescence, a time of life when individuals typically prepare to navigate society as independent adults. Due to its symptoms and this crucial developmental interruption, people with serious mental illness often experience difficulties with acquiring and developing life skills. They often struggle to maintain financial independence or their physical health suffers as a result of poor diet and medication side effects. Most commonly, they struggle to develop competency in navigating the social demands of life and relationships. This project is a 12-module life skills group to provide support and group interventions regarding three life areas significantly affected by SMI: personal finances, nutrition and social skills. Each area consists of four individual hour-long groups to address more specific aspects. Research regarding the impact of serious mental illness on the development of these skills and factors that led to the selection of particular curriculum are described

Dynamics and bifurcations of the adaptive exponential integrate-and-fire model

Recently, several two-dimensional spiking neuron models have been introduced, with the aim of reproducing the diversity of electrophysiological features displayed by real neurons while keeping a simple model, for simulation and analysis purposes. Among these models, the adaptive integrate-and-fire model is physiologically relevant in that its parameters can be easily related to physiological quantities. The interaction of the differential equations with the reset results in a rich and complex dynamical structure. We relate the subthreshold features of the model to the dynamical properties of the differential system and the spike patterns to the properties of a Poincaré map defined by the sequence of spikes. We find a complex bifurcation structure which has a direct interpretation in terms of spike trains. For some parameter values, spike patterns are chaotic

Characteristics and Achievement Patterns of 3-Year-Old Preschoolers\u27 Evolving Mathematical Knowledge to Inform Preschool Instructional Practices

The NAEYC recommends that early childhood mathematics education be research-based and developmentally appropriate. Currently, research indicates that early number sense predicts later mathematics achievement. Because of this, teachers see the importance of ensuring young students meet specific mathematics benchmarks. An in-depth look at actual students’ development in the context of their classrooms is warranted. Specifically, we studied five cases of 3-year-olds’ mathematical understanding. Research Question: What are the characteristics and achievement patterns of 3-year-old preschoolers mathematical knowledge over a year

Impact of Fast Sodium Channel Inactivation on Spike Threshold Dynamics and Synaptic Integration

Neurons spike when their membrane potential exceeds a threshold value. In central neurons, the spike threshold is not constant but depends on the stimulation. Thus, input-output properties of neurons depend both on the effect of presynaptic spikes on the membrane potential and on the dynamics of the spike threshold. Among the possible mechanisms that may modulate the threshold, one strong candidate is Na channel inactivation, because it specifically impacts spike initiation without affecting the membrane potential. We collected voltage-clamp data from the literature and we found, based on a theoretical criterion, that the properties of Na inactivation could indeed cause substantial threshold variability by itself. By analyzing simple neuron models with fast Na inactivation (one channel subtype), we found that the spike threshold is correlated with the mean membrane potential and negatively correlated with the preceding depolarization slope, consistent with experiments. We then analyzed the impact of threshold dynamics on synaptic integration. The difference between the postsynaptic potential (PSP) and the dynamic threshold in response to a presynaptic spike defines an effective PSP. When the neuron is sufficiently depolarized, this effective PSP is briefer than the PSP. This mechanism regulates the temporal window of synaptic integration in an adaptive way. Finally, we discuss the role of other potential mechanisms. Distal spike initiation, channel noise and Na activation dynamics cannot account for the observed negative slope-threshold relationship, while adaptive conductances (e.g. K+) and Na inactivation can. We conclude that Na inactivation is a metabolically efficient mechanism to control the temporal resolution of synaptic integration

The Brian Simulator

“Brian” is a simulator for spiking neural networks (http://www.briansimulator.org). The focus is on making the writing of simulation code as quick and easy as possible for the user, and on flexibility: new and non-standard models are no more difficult to define than standard ones. This allows scientists to spend more time on the details of their models, and less on their implementation. Neuron models are defined by writing differential equations in standard mathematical notation, facilitating scientific communication. Brian is written in the Python programming language, and uses vector-based computation to allow for efficient simulations. It is particularly useful for neuroscientific modelling at the systems level, and for teaching computational neuroscience

Brian: A Simulator for Spiking Neural Networks in Python

“Brian” is a new simulator for spiking neural networks, written in Python (http://brian. di.ens.fr). It is an intuitive and highly flexible tool for rapidly developing new models, especially networks of single-compartment neurons. In addition to using standard types of neuron models, users can define models by writing arbitrary differential equations in ordinary mathematical notation. Python scientific libraries can also be used for defining models and analysing data. Vectorisation techniques allow efficient simulations despite the overheads of an interpreted language. Brian will be especially valuable for working on non-standard neuron models not easily covered by existing software, and as an alternative to using Matlab or C for simulations. With its easy and intuitive syntax, Brian is also very well suited for teaching computational neuroscience