William Blake: The Misunderstood Artist of the 19th Century

The purpose of this project is to examine the artistic vision of William Blake as well as his impact on literature. William Blake was one of the most misunderstood artists of his time, which led to a life of isolation and poverty. Determined to follow his “Divine Image,” Blake remained unappreciated until his twilight years, although he was still virtually unknown except for a small group of followers. William Blake is important today because of his innovative work stemming from his frustration with standard poetic tradition and techniques. This project explores Blake’s collection of poems entitled Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The two groups of lyrics depict, as Blake stated, “the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” Although written a few years apart, Blake intended the two volumes to be read together. Each poem from Songs of Innocence stands as an independent poem, but also has a matched counterpart or contrary in Songs of Experience. In addition, Blake expressed many of his conceptions visually and each poem is accompanied by a design and illustration that make up an integral part of the text

STUDENTS ON THE MARGINS: INTERSECTIONALITY AND COLLEGE CAMPUS SEXUAL ASSAULT

This three-paper dissertation quantitatively identifies and examines three different substantive areas using data from the American College Health Association’s Fall of 2016 National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA). Specific areas of inquiry include, marginalized populations and college campus sexual assault, intersectional analyses of risk factors for college campus sexual assault, and drinking protective behavioral strategies as prevention tools for college campus sexual assault. Paper one, titled, “College Campus Sexual Assault and Students with Disabilities,” explores a particular marginalized group of students that have been largely left out of college campus sexual assault studies: female college students with disabilities. The logistic regression analyses find that having any disability increases risk for any type of college campus sexual assault more than other commonly cited risk factors such as binge drinking, or Greek affiliation. Moreover, the study indicates that odds for female students with disabilities are varied depending on the type of assault, completed, attempted, or relationship, as well as the specific type of disability. Results are discussed, and policy implications, limitations, and opportunities for future research are delineated. Paper two, titled, “College Campus Sexual Assault: Moving Toward a More Intersectional Quantitative Analysis,” is guided by an intersectional theoretical framework. The study employs classification and regression tree analyses (CART) to identify more specific groups of students that are at disproportionate risk for sexual assault beyond singular variables or even interaction effects. Unlike traditional regression techniques, CART does not assume a linear relationship, and can simultaneously account for independent variables relationship to one another while determining which variables have the most explanatory power for the dependent variable and for which unique groups of students. The study discusses results of analyses in relationship to intersectional research both theoretically and methodologically, as well as future research, and policy implications. Alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking, has been consistently linked to greater risk for college campus sexual assault victimization. However, there is a lack of college campus violence prevention and intervention programming that addresses alcohol consumption in relation to campus sexual assault. As such, paper three, titled, “Drinking Protective Behavioral Strategies and College Campus Sexual Assault,” uses logistic regression to explore whether or not the use of drinking protective behavioral strategies (PBS) lowers risk for sexual assault in female college students that drink alcohol. The study examines both the main effects of drinking PBS on sexual assault risk, as well as whether or not the use of drinking PBS moderates the risk of frequent alcohol consumption, and binge drinking on college campus sexual assault. The paper discusses findings, limitations, policy implications, and avenues for future research

making sense of concepts, research frameworks and results

Transnational public-private partnerships have become a popular theme in International Relations (IR) research. Such partnerships constitute a hybrid type of governance, in which non-state actors co-govern along with state actors for the provision of public goods, and thereby adopt governance functions that have formerly been the sole authority of sovereign states. Their recent proliferation is an expression of the contemporary reconfiguration of authority in world politics that poses essential questions on the effectiveness and the legitimacy of global governance. Significant issues are at stake concerning whether transnational public-private partnerships can in fact deliver public goods in an effective and legitimate way. This article surveys the literature with regard to three central issues: It addresses the questions why transnational public-private partnerships emerge, under which conditions they are effective, and under which conditions they are legitimate governance instruments. The article demonstrates that, at present, research on transnational public-private partnerships is theoretically under-informed and suffers from poor research designs. As is pointed out in the course of the article, future research on transnational public-private partnerships could benefit from well-known IR theories on international institutions, from compliance theories in particular. Applying these IR theories to partnerships opens up the possibility for the systematic comparative research that is necessary to obtain conclusive knowledge about transnational public-private partnerships

Invited review: Examining farmers' personalities and attitudes as possible risk factors for dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and farm management: A systematic scoping review.

We aimed to determine how research regarding farmers' personalities and attitudes as risk factors is reported (methodological approaches to assessing, extracting, and processing data and analyzing risk factors) and to explore evidence for the effect of farmers' attitudes and personalities on dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and management. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of studies on personality and attitude as risk factors for dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and farm management. Database searches captured 1,144 records, and 38 were finally included in the review. Thirty-three manuscripts assessed farmers' attitudes, 1 assessed their personalities, and 4 assessed both as risk factors. These potential risk factors were checked for relationships with more than 50 different outcome variables regarding farm management (17 manuscripts), animal health (13 manuscripts), animal productivity (11 manuscripts), and animal welfare (4 manuscripts). The approaches to assessing risk factors and processing and interpreting data varied greatly; thus, drawing conclusions regarding the effects of attitude and personality as risk factors is impeded because manuscripts are difficult to compare. Our findings highlight the need for harmonization of attitudes and personality assessments in future research. Furthermore, researchers should carefully consider which depth of detail to apply when planning and evaluating related research. Nevertheless, results highlight the importance of the effect of personality and attitude on outcomes. Farmers' personality and attitudes are associated with dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and management. In general, attitudes indicating higher degrees of technical knowledge, affection with problems, perceived responsibility, perception of control of a situation, a better human-animal relationship, or a positive evaluation of the benefits of management decisions tended to affect outcomes in a beneficial way. "Agreeableness" and "conscientiousness" were shown to promote better farm performance, whereas "neuroticism" had a negative effect. Therefore, further research on attitude and personality and their consideration by professionals and decision-makers within the dairy sector and politics is strongly recommended. This might provide the chance to better understand the needs of dairy farmers and therefore develop tailored advice and support strategies to improve both satisfactory and constructive cooperation

How does a Latin American Music Initiative impact an American Charter School Community? Observations from El Sistema Boston [full paper]

Rooted in Venezuela, El Sistema is a visionary global movement that has transformed the lives of youth through music since 1975. A Boston public charter school restructured and invigorated its’ curriculum with the El Sistema music program in September 2010. The pedagogical focus of El Sistema is the orchestra, a model for an ideal community that advances the social and performance skills of students empowering their personal and musical development. Our project aimed to assess the impact of El Sistema, a Latin American education initiative, on an American urban charter school. Self-regulation, motivation, peer-respect and responsibility are the skills and behaviors that were of interest and markers for cognitive, emotional and social development beyond academic achievement. We observed and collected perceptions of social and behavioral changes in students and assessed the potential positive musical influence of El Sistema through a qualitative and quantitative music literacy test. In our observations, the El Sistema curriculum has been perceived as a positive influence on the students’ social and behavioral development. Participating in the program provides students with valuable social interactions, enabling them to engage in collaborative learning, as well as propelling their musical knowledge. Further assessment will determine the El Sistema curriculum’s impact outside of the music classroom. Through further observation of El Sistema programs throughout the U.S., we can observe and acknowledge the large scale impact of this Latin American music initiative in our country

Time-dependent density functional approach for the calculation of inelastic x-ray scattering spectra of molecules

7 páginas, 5 figuras.-- et al.We apply time-dependent density functional theory to study the valence electron excitations of molecules and generalize the typically used time-propagation scheme and Casida’s method to calculate the full wavevector dependent response function. This allows the computational study of dipole-forbidden valence electron transitions and the dispersion of spectral weight as a function of the wavevector. The method provides a novel analysis tool for spectroscopic methods such as inelastic x-ray scattering and electron energy loss spectroscopy. We present results for benzene and CF3Cl and make a comparison with experimental results.Acknowledge HPCEuropa2 program, Academy of Finland (1127462, Centers of Excellence Program 2006–2011, and National Graduate School in Materials Physics) for financial support, and CSC-IT Center for Science Ltd for computational resources. A.R. acknowledges Spanish MEC (FIS2007-65702-C02-01), ACI-Promociona (ACI2009-1036), Grupos Consolidados UPV/EHU del Gobierno Vasco (IT-319-07), the European Union through e-13 ETSF (Contract No. 211956), and THEMA (Contract No. 228539) projects, as well as the support by the Red Española de Supercomputación and ARINA.Peer reviewe

Simplified wound care and earlier wound recovery without closed suction drainage in elective total hip arthroplasty. A prospective randomized trial in 100 operations

Introduction: Evidence to support or refute closed suction drainage (CSD) in primary total hip replacement (THR) is not conclusive. Our anecdotical experience was that persistent ooze from the drainage hole often delayed wound recovery. We hypothesized that, without CSD, wound care would be simplified without short or long term disadvantage. Materials and methods: Hundred patients scheduled for primary THR were randomly assigned for CSD or non-drainage. Drains were withdrawn at day2. Pain, wound hematoma, number of dressing changes, time of persistent discharge from the operation site (skin incision and drain hole), total blood loss and number of blood transfusions were prospectively recorded. Hip function, presence of heterotopic ossifications (HTO) and complications were recorded at a follow visit 1year after surgery. Results: Wound sites managed without CSD needed significantly less wound dressings (P<0.001) and were dry at an earlier time (P<001). Despite a significant bigger subfascial hematoma in the non-drained group (P<0.05), in terms of pain, thigh swelling, total blood loss, number of transfusions needed, hip function and HTO no difference was recorded between the groups (P=0.2-0.82). Conclusion: To omit CSD in primary THR results in simplified and more rapid wound management without any disadvantage at short and long ter