Fatemeh Ebtehaj, Jonathan Herring, Martin H Johnson and Martin Richards (eds): Birth Rites and Rights

Oxford, Hart, 201

African American and Non-Hispanic White Births in Enhanced Prenatal Care Programs and WIC

North Carolina uses Maternity Care Coordination (MCC), an enhanced prenatal care program, to improve birth outcomes for high risk women. The WIC program provides similar services to achieve the same goal. Women in North Carolina Medicaid can choose to participate in either, both, or neither the MCC and WIC programs. The study compares the percentages of low birth weight (LBW)—less than 2500 grams—births and maternal risk characteristics of women: (1) participating in the MCC program only, (2) participating in WIC only, or (3) participating in both programs, to those women who receive conventional Medicaid prenatal care. The analysis is further stratified to compare the percentage of LBW births and maternal risks between and among African American and non-Hispanic white women. The study finds that women participating in WIC only had the lowest percentage of LBW births. African American women participating in the MCC and/or WIC programs had significantly fewer LBW births than their non-participating counterparts. Among non-Hispanic whites, however, the percentage of LBW births for women participating in MCC or MCC/WIC were similar to women receiving conventional Medicaid prenatal care

Bacterial Forensics: Revolutionizing Biochemical Analysis

Eva Childrey is a junior forensic science and chemistry double major working in Dr. Eh- rhardt’s research laboratory at VCU. The main goal of the research conducted in this laboratory is to explore the lipid profiles of different bacterial species

‘This growing genetic disaster’: obesogenic mothers, the obesity ‘epidemic’ and the persistence of eugenics

In this era of ever-increasing emphasis on personal responsibility the 'obesity epidemic', officialised in global health warnings, threatens to swamp the West with the consequences of overindulgence. With childhood obesity identified as a particular threat, maternal feeding behaviour from conception onwards has come under scrutiny for its obesogenic potential. Epigenetic research now suggests that the mother's poor diet and excessive intake of calories can permanently damage not only the fetus itself but the genetic coding it carries, thus (re)creating a narrative of degeneration which performs complex cultural and social functions. While mothers have always been associated with the weakening and/or poisoning of children and the national body, the new narrative of degenerative uterine toxicity focuses attention on poor maternal choice as productive of a 'bio-underclass', and thus diverts attention from the many structural and socioeconomic associations of obesity with poverty, and particularly inequality. As government and child protection agencies in the UK and US attempt to discipline parents through surveillance and prosecution and the austerity agenda lends moral weight to discourses of 'waste' and necessary 'belt-tightening', the contradictions and implications of obesity as a 'disease' of 'overindulgence' in consumer cultures founded on 'indulgence' are too easily avoided by political and scientific focus on the abject body of the obesogenic 'underclass' mother

A comparative survey of integrated learning systems

This paper presents the duction framework for unifying the three basic forms of inference - deduction, abduction, and induction - by specifying the possible relationships and influences among them in the context of integrated learning. Special assumptive forms of inference are defined that extend the use of these inference methods, and the properties of these forms are explored. A comparison to a related inference-based learning frame work is made. Finally several existing integrated learning programs are examined in the perspective of the duction framework

Geospatial Validation and Topographic Map Revision of the Castner Glacier Area

Mapping in the interior of Alaska has always been a challenge due to the vast and remote aspects of the region. One contemporary method that has been used to map certain areas of the state has been the application of optical satellite data such as the Panchromatic Remote Sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM). PRISM imagery, with the use of JAXA software, can produce a Digital Surface Model (DSM) and Orthorectified Image (Ortho). The use of these two products allows for a large area to be mapped. However, the quality of the DSM and Ortho are inherently affected by the lack of applied ground control points which georeference the image and provide greater accuracy. The objective of this project is to use a Trimble R7 GPS to acquire ground control points (GCPs) around the Castner Glacier area. The ground control points will provide a means to produce an accurate DSM and Ortho from a PRISM image of the chosen study area.Scott A. Arko, Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF

Aesthetic, Ethical, and Cognitive Value

This paper addresses two recent debates in aesthetics: the ‘moralist debate’, concerning the relationship between the ethical and aesthetic evaluations of artworks, and the ‘cognitivist debate’, concerning the relationship between the cognitive and aesthetic evaluations of artworks. Although the two debates appear to concern quite different issues, I argue that the various positions in each are marked by the same types of confusions and ambiguities. In particular, they demonstrate a persistent and unjustified conflation of aesthetic and artistic value, which in turn is based on a more general failure to explicitly tackle the demarcation of aesthetic value. As such, the claims of each side are rendered ambiguous in respect of the relation that is supposed to hold between all these types of value and artistic value. These issues are discussed in light of a recent argument proposed by Matthew Kieran, to undermine, to some extent, the conceptual distinction between aesthetic, cognitive-ethical, and artistic values in our appraisal of art works. In rejecting his argument, I defend the conceptual distinction and a pluralistic conception of artistic value that allows for cognitive and ethical values to count as artistic, but not aesthetic, values

Chomsky, Knowledge of Language and the Rule-Following Considerations

According to Noam Chomsky, speakers of a language have a substantial body of propositional knowledge of that language that they draw upon in language production and comprehension. Since the late 1950s Chomsky"s project has been to characterise that knowledge and give an account of its acquisition. Arguably, one of the most powerful philosophical challenges to Chomsky"s output is generated by the rule following considerations of Philosophical Investigations §§ 138-242. My aim in this paper is to characterise the nature of this challenge, a topic that, rather surprisingly, has received relatively little attention in the philosophical literature