A Monument to Culture and Achievement: The Samurai Suit of Armor and Katana at Gettysburg College

Of the many artifacts found in Gettysburg College’s Musselman library, perhaps the most unusual and seemingly out of place may be the centuries-old replica of a samurai suit and katana standing guard over visitors and students from an oversized glass case on the first floor. Though hard to miss, their connection with Gettysburg College is not so obvious. A plaque located below the suit reads, “Samurai Armor and Warrior Katana; Late 19th Century; Gift of Major General Charles A. Willoughby; Class of 1914.” These artifacts represent hundreds of years of the ancient Samurai tradition in Japan, a crucial element of traditional Japanese culture and history that experienced a resurgence even within the twentieth century. They also symbolize relations between the United States and Japan during and after World War II as narrated by Major General Charles A. Willoughby, Chief of Intelligence under Douglas MacArthur. How and why Major General Willoughby acquired such artifacts is unclear; however, a character study set against the backdrop of this period in history allows us to extrapolate potential theories. Documents within the Gettysburg Special Collections & College Archives offer insights into the man Willoughby was and posit deeper questions about the suit and katana’s journey to the college. This essay illuminates the connection between the college and an ancient culture half way around the globe as well as one of the murkiest mysteries at Gettysburg College

THE INFLUENCE OF TEACHERS WITH DISABILITIES

This meta-synthesis of the literature on K-8 teachers with disabilities examines the profound influence that teachers with disabilities can have in our classrooms. Teachers with disabilities act as valuable and realistic role models for all students and bring unique qualities to the classroom, including a passion for inclusive education and creative methods of instruction. However, prejudicial barriers to success often restrict these exceptional teachers from access to our classrooms, undermining the inclusion movement present in most special education programs and schools today. When these teachers are denied employment, students with disabilities suffer in and out of the classroom from a lack of identity construction, reduced self-esteem, and nonexistent advocacy skills

Evaluation of an Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy Program in a Specialty Clinic Setting

Introduction: Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) has gained popularity since its first description in 1974. At Community Health Network (CHN), the OPAT clinic was developed three years ago by an ambulatory care clinical pharmacist and includes pharmacist driven monitoring for all patients receiving OPAT. The pharmacist ensures labs are drawn weekly to assess for renal or hepatic function changes, medication levels are drawn and adjusted as needed, and repeat labs and levels are ordered to continue assessing therapy. There have not been any studies to date to investigate CHN’s OPAT program both demographically and clinically. Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to qualitatively determine the number of patients, types of infections, source organism, antibiotics utilized, duration of therapy, adverse effects, and number and types of interventions made to therapy by the OPAT clinical pharmacist. Methods: This study was conducted via retrospective chart analysis and included both demographic and clinical information such as infection type, source organism(s), antibiotic, duration of therapy, adverse effects, and successful completion of OPAT regimen. Information regarding number and type of pharmacist intervention were also recorded. Patients who received OPAT from January 2017 to January 2018 were included in the study. Results: 226 patients were included in the study. Over ten different types of infections were identified with osteomyelitis being most common (n=65). The majority of infections were attributed to Staphylococcus aureus both methicillin sensitive and methicillin resistant organisms with another large portion deemed culture negative. Antibiotics used in the OPAT program primarily consisted of vancomycin (n=67), ceftriaxone (n=60), and cefazolin (n=52). The mean total duration of treatment was 42.7 days and a mean of 33.45 of those occurred via OPAT once the patient was discharged. The pharmacist made a total of 138 interventions equaling about 0.6 interventions per patient. 93.4% of patients included successfully completed the OPAT program. Conclusion: CHN’s OPAT program involved a wide variety of patients with diverse infections and antibiotic therapy. This study helped to successfully determine the demographic and clinical information from January 2017 to January 2018. High rates of success in CHN’s OPAT program provides support for continued use in the future with pharmacist involvement

The McLean House: Symbol of Reunification or Surrender Grounds?

This post is part of a series featuring behind-the-scenes dispatches from our Pohanka Interns on the front lines of history this summer as interpreters, archivists, and preservationists. See here for the introduction to the series. While enjoying live music in a small coffee shop nestled in historic Appomattox, Virginia, a local asked me where I was from and what had brought me here this summer. Mine was a new face among the Friday night crowd and I expected some curious glances. However, when I explained that I was working at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, I was surprised to hear in return, “Oh, the Surrender Grounds”. This reference to the park – and the McLean House in particular – revealed one of the long-standing interpretations of the town’s events that still lives on today. Here, on April 9th, 1865 met two of the most skilled generals that ever led men into battle – with lasting implications for the nation’s future. [excerpt

Leaving the prison: A discussion of the Iterated prisoner`s dilemma under preferential partner selection.

Outside prison agents do not only ehoose a game strategy but also a game partner. In this paper players are finite automata and willing to interaet only if their expected payoff exeeeds an endogenously evolving aeeeptable minimum. In the resulting behavioural strueture the initial population is subdivided aeeording to players' degree of exploitiveness. If the number of eooperators is at least two, eooperators will be better off than defeetors. If more sueeessful automata reproduce, simulations show that due to partner seleetion eooperative behaviour is irnmune to invading mutants even if the life-span of generations is short.Prisoner`s dilemma; Partner selection; Finite automata; Matching;

Democracy and the curse of natural resources

We propose a theoretical model to explain empirical regularities related to the curse of natural resources. This is an explicitly political model which emphasizes the behavior and incentives of politicians. We extend the standard voting model to give voters political control beyond the elections. This gives rise to a new restriction into our political economy model: policies should not give rise to a revolution. Our model clarifies when resource discoveries might lead to revolutions, namely, in countries with weak institutions. Natural resources may be bad for democracy by harming political turnover. Our model also suggests a non-linear dependence of human capital on natural resources. For low levels of democracy human capital depends negatively on natural resources, while for high levels of democracy the dependence is reversed. This theoretical finding is corroborated in both cross section and panel data regressions

On the cultural transmission of corruption

We provide a cultural explanation to the phenomenon of corruption in the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of values. We show that under reasonable parameters the economy has two steady states which differ in their levels of corruption. The driving force in the equilibrium se1ection process is the education effort exerted by parents which depends on the initial distribution of ethics in the population and on expectations about policies in the future. We propose sorne policy interventions which via parents' efforts have long lasting effects on corruption and show the success of intensive education campaigns. We argue that our model exp1ains the differecnes which are observed across countries with similar degrees of economic development and that educating the young is a key element in reducing corruption successfully

Civil War and Foreign Influence

We study a symmetric information bargaining model of civil war where a third (foreign) party can affect the probabilities of winning the conflict and the size of the post conflict spoils. We show that the possible alliance with a third party makes peaceful agreements difficult to reach and might lead to new commitment problems that trigger war. Also, we argue that the foreign party is likely to induce persistent informational asymmetries which might explain long lasting civil wars. We explore both political and economic incentives for a third party to intervene. The explicit consideration of political incentives leads to two predictions that allow for identifying the influence of foreign intervention on civil war incidence. Both predictions are confirmed for the case of the U.S. as a potential intervening nation: (i) civil wars around the world are more likely under Republican governments and (ii) the probability of civil wars decreases with U.S. presidential approval rates.

Parents, Television and Cultural Change

This paper develops a model of cultural transmission where television plays a central role for socialization. Parents split their free time between educating their children which is costly and watching TV which though entertaining might socialize the children to the wrong trait. The free to air television industry maximizes advertisement revenue. We show that TV watching is increasing in cultural coverage, cost of education, TV's entertainment value and decreasing in the perceived cultural distance between the two traits. A monopolistic television industry captures all TV watching by both groups if the perceived cultural distance between groups is small relative to the TV's entertainment value. Otherwise, more coverage will be given to the most profitable group where profitability increases in group size, advertisement sensitivity and perceived cultural distance. This leads to two possible steady states where one group is larger but both groups survive in the long run. Competition in the media industry might lead to cultural extinction but only if one group is very insensitive to advertisement and not radical enough not to watch TV. We briefly discuss the existing evidence for the empirical predictions of the model.television, socialization, cultural trait dynamics, media coverage.

The quality of political institutions and the curse of natural resources.

We propose a theoretical model to explain empirical regularities related to the curse of natural resources, which emphasises the behaviour and incentives of politicians. We extend the standard voting model to give voters political control beyond the elections. This gives rise to a new restriction that policies should not give rise to a revolution. Our model clarifies when resource discoveries might lead to revolutions, namely, in countries with weak institutions. It also suggests that for bad political institutions human capital depends negatively on natural resources, while for high institutional quality the dependence is reversed. This finding is corroborated in cross-section regressions.Recursos naturales; Desarrollo económico; Sistema político;