Journey to Kentucky: A Look at Migration Patterns from the Middle East to American and Kentucky

The study of migration provides valuable insight to many different disciplines. The migration patterns of people from the Middle East to the United States began in the late 1800s and continues even today. Looking specifically at the case of people migrating from the Middle East to Kentucky provides a unique perspective in understanding the history of an ethnic group. Using migration theories such as migrant network theory, and forced migration theory, along with migration history to provide insight to a complex subject this paper brings a deeper comprehension to exactly what makes people choose to migrate to Kentucky from the Middle East. This paper focuses on the migration pattern of people from the Levant (Israel, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon), Egypt, and Iran

Examining Neighbourhood Plans in England: the experience so far

The planning system in England has undergone serial and far-reaching reforms over the past two decades with a number of notable changes reflecting a drive to speed-up planning, rescale it and look towards the neighbourhood as a unit of planning governance. An expression of the serial changes has been the establishment of neighbourhood planning (NP) as a part of the statutory land use planning system and the production of Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs). This iteration of local planning has brought its own set of procedural arrangements and regulations. One feature of neighbourhood planning process is the examination of the NDP. For this, an independent examiner is appointed who considers the Plan and whether it passes the required ‘tests’ (see Parker, Salter and Hickman, 2016). Drawing on data collected from the cadre of active NP examiners we reflect on how this stage has been experienced by examiners and places this new set of arrangements into the ongoing consideration of how knowledge and epistemic boundaries are maintained or reconciled as planning in England moves towards a co-production model

Viral Marketing in the Nonprofit Sector: Crafting Messages that Create Awareness and Call an Audience to Action

The nonprofit (NPO) sector has seen immense growth in recent years. With this growth has come an increased need for any particular nonprofit to compete and differentiate itself from the vast number of other nonprofits also looking for clients, volunteers, and donors. Unfortunately, nonprofits often lack the resources needed to develop and execute a successful marketing campaign. The emergence of controlled viral marketing offers a number of possibilities for these NPOs looking to spread awareness and increase involvement. The purpose of this research was to explore common themes among previous viral marketing campaigns and identify factors that are likely to lead to virality. Both qualitative and quantitative research was conducted in the form of content analyses and a survey collected via convenience sample to 132 participants. The results of the analyses indicated that several factors are at work when nonprofit marketing material goes viral. The primary factor identified was the level of emotion that the content stimulated among viewers. Other factors included the credibility of the source, social relevance to the viewer, and the ease of distribution. NPOs would stand with much to gain if they began to work toward developing compelling online content with the potential to go viral

A computational investigation on how visitation affects the reproduction number in a dengue fever model

Dengue fever is transmitted by day-biting mosquitoes in tropical climates and is a major public threat for many countries. Ordinary differential equation models can be used to describe how infectious diseases move throughout populations, and predictions from these models may help in the development of effective treatment strategies. In order to investigate the spread of dengue fever in neighboring communities, a previously developed SIR/SI model of dengue transmission in neighboring communities in Sri Lanka was used to generate the basic reproduction number, R0. Parameters for time spent in neighboring communities were varied in order to investigate how time spent in communities of different sizes affects the reproduction number. Results suggest that movement of individuals among communities increases the reproduction number, especially if people are traveling to a population of greater size

Control of poly(A) tail metabolism during inducible gene expression

In gene regulation, mRNA polyadenylation, deadenylation and decay are closely linked processes whose full biological importance is only starting to emerge. Using thiouridine labelling as a method of capturing newly synthesised mRNAs, we have been able to measure poly(A) tail sizes of newly synthesised individual and total mRNAs in mouse NIH3T3 cells and global changes in mRNA turnover during the loss of pluripotency in human embryonic stem cells. These two systems, although very different, allow us to study changes in individual mRNAs during inducible gene expression. In order to track changes of poly(A) tail length during rapid gene induction we have used the serum response as a model in NIH 3T3 cells. Using poly(A) fractionation technique (Meijer et al, 2007), we have been able to study global changes of the poly(A) tail length during the serum response and have observed striking increases in rapidly induced mRNAs compared to control levels. Functional analysis reveals that these mRNAs are involved in transcriptional regulation, indicating that they are involved in reprogramming gene expression. Further analysis of the poly(A) fractionation microarray data, also indicates that certain mRNAs, such as Akt2, change in poly(A) tail length but are either down regulated of have no change in abundance. This group of genes areis enriched in regulators of signal transduction. When treated with Actinomycin D, some of these mRNAs still retain the increased poly(A) tail length during the serum response. This suggests a role for cytoplasmic polyadenylation, as inhibiting transcription has no effect on the elongation of the poly(A) tail. We also established by Western blotting and immunohistochemistry, that despite reduced mRNA levels, protein levels of Akt2 increase during the serum response. We conducted microarray analysis to determine whether miRNA regulation contributes to the changes we observed in poly(A) tails during the serum response. However, no major changes in abundance are found after 30 minute treatment, indicating that all changes in microRNA abundance are slow and unlikely to play a role in this system. As a second system, we studied the role of RNA binding proteins and mRNA stability in the early neuronal differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, when pluripotency is lost. The role of mRNA processing and stability on the maintenance and establishment of pluripotency is poorly studied, despite the fact that these processes are important in germline development and early embryogenesis. We therefore studied the differential expression of RNA binding proteins involved in the regulation of polyadenylation and mRNA stability during early differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into neuronal precursors. Over an 8 day time period we have found large changes in mRNAs belonging to the CELF, CPEB, PUM and MSI families, which start early after the indication of differentiation, when pluripotency is lost. Using thiouridine labelling and microarray analysis on differentiating and pluripotent cells we were able to identify a group of mRNAs which appear to be destabilised during differentiation. This group includes known pluripotency factors such as OCT4 and LIN28B. Functional analysis showed that many ribosomal protein mRNAs also are within this group and also genes involved in the regulation of translation elongation, further exposing an important role for post-transcriptional regulation in the maintenance and loss of pluripotency. Our data indicate that the initial poly(A) tail size and mRNA turnover rate can vary greatly depending on both the individual mRNA and the state of the cell. Overall, our investigations give intriguing glimpses in the role of poly(A) tail metabolism and mRNA stability in two different models of inducible gene expression

The Resilient Families Project @ Wayside’s Hotel Louisville: Strategies for Building Resilience, Mindfulness & Happiness in At-Risk Adults

The Resilient Families Project (RFP) provides educational experiences to strengthen evidence-based habits of resilience, mindfulness, and happiness in at-risk individuals. RFP holds programs for adults facing homelessness and women in drug/alcohol recovery who are housed by Wayside Christian Mission in their Emergency Shelter or Hotel Louisville. RFP programs work to promote healthy attachment relations, a sense of belonging/purpose, and interactive reading, and children’s storybooks serve as the foundation for designing programs. The book “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse\u27\u27 was reviewed through content analysis to emphasize diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as RFP Core Ideas. Thanks to the Gheen’s Foundation Grant awarded by UofL’s Office of Community Engagement, we were able to provide this book, as well as program T-shirts and other materials for participants. This presentation will describe the partnership between our department, key Wayside staff, and our RFP team (composed of current UofL students, alumni, faculty, and community volunteers). Feedback received via participant surveys where we discuss the program, troubleshoot challenges/issues, and work to best meet the needs of participants will be included. Connections of our work to Little Free Libraries (LFL) will also be addressed, as RFP is steward to five LFL’s in Louisville. RFP established the first LFL on UofL’s campus and we are proud to be celebrating the grand opening of UofL’s first diversity, equity, and inclusion focused LFL, to be housed in our department. Finally, lessons learned, current project needs, recruitment efforts, and directions for the future will be described

History in Public:Power and Process, Harm and Help

This introductory piece explains the choice of public history as a focus for this special issue of History, and its emphasis on the work of early-career historians. ‘Public history’ is a notoriously nebulous concept. We outline some of the most common ways in which it is understood, and discuss why we believe that its methods and approaches are of enormous value to all those involved in historical work, whether they would consider themselves to be ‘public historians’ or not. We also introduce the contributions making up the rest of this issue, which features the work of twenty-five mostly early-career historians and moves from Greece to England, India, Tobago, the United States, Norway, Northern Ireland, and online. The introduction provides an appetiser for some of the approaches, ideas and struggles emerging from public history, and the richness of this constantly evolving field