A Crow and a Hanger

A Crow and A Hanger is a body of work that explores and illustrates the nature of life and death through the use of mixed-media drawing and printmaking techniques. My intention for this work, and this thesis paper, is to explain my thought process and how the imagery came to be. For me it is not at all important for every viewer to fully understand each image and the thoughts that went into the body as a whole. I let the images and their titles lead the viewer in a general direction and allow for their personal history and biases to fill in the gaps. That being stated, the work for me is a kind of catharsis and coming of age tale. It is a metaphor for my acceptance and interpretation of our place in the cosmic scene. I sum up my thoughts with the affirmation that: You are potential…you are ephemeral…you are permanent

Establishing Privacy Advisory Commissions for the Regulation of Facial Recognition Systems at the Municipal Level

As facial recognition systems (FRS) become widely available, a growing number of local governing bodies across the country have adopted these technologies. Without regulating how and when these technologies are used, the adoption of FRS by municipal governments has the potential to violate civil liberties and disproportionately harm marginalized groups. FRS may be an invaluable tool for law enforcement; however, best practices must be adopted to curb their misuse, specifically at the municipal level. We propose that cities considering procurement of FRS create an independent privacy advisory commission with a clear mandate, guaranteed cooperation from local government, technology expertise, and community stakeholder input

Man-eating teddy bears of the scrub: exploring the Australian drop bear urban legend

Urban legends are contemporary forms of folklore that are often used to provide lessons in morality or explicate local beliefs, dangers, or customs. In Australia, one such tale describes fiendish, carnivorous, blood-sucking koala-like animals that launch themselves from trees at unsuspecting tourists in the Australian scrub. The drop bear (also known as Thylarctos plummetus or Thylarctos plummetus vampirus) is an urban legend common to tropical Australian scrub regions that serves as a cautionary tale intended to warn against the dangers associated with traversing the Australian bush. As such, the figure of the drop bear represents a uniquely Australian manifestation of the vampire motif. This article examines representations of the drop bear urban legend as provided in contemporary pseudo-scientific, satirical, and popular media sources by means of critical discourse analysis, in addition to exploring how archaeological evidence has been mobilised in support of drop bear narratives. Through a critical review of drop bear tales in accordance with established folklore typologies the paper posits a categorisation of drop bear narratives as urban legend, while also explicating the impacts of social media and the internet on the perpetuation and dissemination of the drop bear legend

The Determination of Carbon Monoxide in Atmospheric Air.

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Substance use and sight loss

A guide for substance use and sight loss professionals

Alcohol, other drugs and sight loss: a scoping study.

The research team and Thomas Pocklington Trust have produced a guide for professionals working in substance use and sight loss

Inhibition of HOX/PBX dimer formation leads to necroptosis in acute myeloid leukemia cells.

The HOX genes encode a family of transcription factors that have key roles in both development and malignancy. Disrupting the interaction between HOX proteins and their binding partner, PBX, has been shown to cause apoptotic cell death in a range of solid tumors. However, despite HOX proteins playing a particularly significant role in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the relationship between HOX gene expression and patient survival has not been evaluated (with the exception of HOXA9), and the mechanism by which HOX/PBX inhibition induces cell death in this malignancy is not well understood. In this study, we show that the expression of HOXA5, HOXB2, HOXB4, HOXB9, and HOXC9, but not HOXA9, in primary AML samples is significantly related to survival. Furthermore, the previously described inhibitor of HOX/PBX dimerization, HXR9, is cytotoxic to both AML-derived cell lines and primary AML cells from patients. The mechanism of cell death is not dependent on apoptosis but instead involves a regulated form of necrosis referred to as necroptosis. HXR9-induced necroptosis is enhanced by inhibitors of protein kinase C (PKC) signaling, and HXR9 combined with the PKC inhibitor Ro31 causes a significantly greater reduction in tumor growth compared to either reagent alone

Perceptions of the risks and benefits of Internet access and use by people with intellectual disabilities

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Wiley in British Journal of Learning Disabilities on 15 July 2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1111/bld.12170 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Accessible summary Both good and bad things can happen when people use the Internet, and people with learning disabilities are not using the Internet as much as other people. Worry about the bad things that can happen online might be one reason people with learning disabilities are not supported to access the Internet as much as other people. We wanted to find out what people without learning disabilities believe about these good and bad things for people with learning disabilities. We wanted to find this out because the way people without disabilities think about the good and bad things online might affect how people with learning disabilities are treated. We found out that people without learning disabilities think that both the good and bad things are more likely to happen to people with learning disabilities when they use the Internet. Abstract Background: Information and communication technologies, with the Internet at the forefront, have the potential to enhance the knowledge, service, employment, development and social interactional opportunities available to people with intellectual disabilities. Despite this, people with intellectual disabilities are not accessing the Internet to the same degree as people without intellectual disabilities. Issues of safety, risk and protection online for people with intellectual disabilities have yet to be adequately investigated, and these currently serve as reasons given for hindering people from gaining online access. Materials and Method: This survey aimed to gauge the views people without intellectual disabilities have of risks and benefits of using the Internet for themselves and for people with intellectual disabilities and to compare self-ratings of risk and benefits to ratings for people with intellectual disabilities. Results: The survey findings indicate that, with only a small number of exceptions, both the risks and benefits of being online were believed to be greater for people with intellectual disabilities compared with those without intellectual disabilities. Greater use of the Internet was associated with increased perception of benefits to being online for both people with intellectual disabilities and for participants. Conclusions: Perceptions of increased benefits suggest more needs to be performed to improve online access whilst a perception of increased risk may help to explain the reduced inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in the online world

Describing semigroups with defining relations of the form xy=yz xy and yx=zy and connections with knot theory

We introduce a knot semigroup as a cancellative semigroup whose defining relations are produced from crossings on a knot diagram in a way similar to the Wirtinger presentation of the knot group; to be more precise, a knot semigroup as we define it is closely related to such tools of knot theory as the twofold branched cyclic cover space of a knot and the involutory quandle of a knot. We describe knot semigroups of several standard classes of knot diagrams, including torus knots and torus links T(2, n) and twist knots. The description includes a solution of the word problem. To produce this description, we introduce alternating sum semigroups as certain naturally defined factor semigroups of free semigroups over cyclic groups. We formulate several conjectures for future research