The Medical Ethics of HeLa Cells (2020-2021)

Pratt’s research inquiry essay focuses on the medical ethics issues involved in the case of Henrietta Lacks and her cancer cells (known as HeLa,) which have been used and reused in medical research without hers or her family’s consent. Throughout this essay, Pratt moves between several areas for concern including medical agency and patients’ rights to their own bodies, financial implications, legal definitions, and issues for privacy. Pratt concludes with a call for future regulations and focus on medical ethics.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/rhetdragonsresearchinquiry/1007/thumbnail.jp

On The Geometry Of Elliptic Pairs

An elliptic pair $(X, C)$ is a projective rational surface $X$ with log terminal singularities, and an irreducible curve $C$ contained in the smooth locus of $X$, with arithmetic genus one and self-intersection zero. They are a useful tool for determining whether the pseudo-effective cone of $X$ is polyhedral, and interesting algebraic and geometric objects in their own right. Especially of interest are toric elliptic pairs, where $X$ is the blow-up of a projective toric surface at the identity element of the torus. In this paper, we classify all toric elliptic pairs of Picard number two. Strikingly, it turns out that there are only three of these. Furthermore, we study a class of non-toric elliptic pairs coming from the blow-up of $\mathbb{P}^2$ at nine points on a nodal cubic, in characteristic $p$. This construction gives us examples of surfaces where the pseudo-effective cone is non-polyhedral for a set of primes $p$ of positive density, and, assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis, polyhedral for a set of primes $p$ of positive density.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure

Development of methods for investigating settlement and land-use using pollen data : a case study from north-east England circa 8000 cal. BC - cal. AD 500.

In 3 vols.SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN0106091 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Be prepared. The Importance of crisis planning in the Schools.

More often there are events occurring in society that leave children in a crisis state which affects them both emotionally and intellectually. School staff are prominent figures in the lives of children, and must be both prepared and knowledgeable in order to help during times of crisis. School Psychologists, in particular, are specifically trained in counseling and consultation necessary for effective crisis intervention. School Psychologists must be the leaders in creating and implementing crisis intervention plans in the schools. The following project contains a literature review of crisis intervention, and a detailed crisis intervention plan for a small, rural district in upstate New York

Is cue-based memory retrieval \u27good-enough\u27?: Agreement, comprehension, and implicit prosody in native and bilingual speakers of English

This dissertation focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish-English bilingual (L2) speakers. I consolidate research from three distinct areas of inquiry\u27cognitive processing models, development of reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing strategies\u27and outline a cohesive and comprehensive processing model that can be applied to speakers regardless of language profile. This model is characterized by three critical components: a cognitive model of memory retrieval, a processing paradigm that outlines how resources may be deployed online, and the role of factors such as prosody in parsing decisions. The general framework of this integrated \u27Good-enough Cue\u27 (GC) model assumes the \u27Good-Enough\u27 Hypothesis and cue-based memory retrieval as central aspects. The \u27Good-Enough\u27 Hypothesis states that all speakers have access to two processing routes: a complete syntactic route, and a \u27good enough\u27 heuristic route (Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002; Ferreira, 2003). In the interest of conserving resources, speakers tend to rely more on heuristics and templates whenever the task allows, and may be required to rely on this fallback route when task demand is high. In the proposed GC model, cue-based memory retrieval (CBMR) is the instantiation of the complete syntactic route for agreement and long-distance dependencies in particular (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; Wagers, Lau, & Phillips, 2009; Wagers, 2008). When retrieval fails using CBMR (due to cue overlap, memory trace decay, or some other factor), comprehenders may compensate by applying a \u27good-enough\u27 processing heuristic, which prioritizes general comprehension over detailed syntactic computation. Prosody (or implicit prosody) may reduce processing load by either facilitating syntactic processing or otherwise assisting memory retrieval, thus reducing reliance on the good-enough fallback route. This investigation explores how text presentation format interacts with these algorithmic versus heuristic processing strategies. Most specifically, measuring whether the presentation format of text affects readers\u27 comprehension and ability to detect subject-verb agreement errors in simple and complex relative clause constructions. The experimental design manipulated text presentation to influence implicit prosody, using sentences designed to induce subject-verb agreement attraction errors. Materials included simple and embedded relative clauses with head nouns and verbs that were either matched or mismatched for number. Participants read items in one of three presentation formats: a) whole sentence, b) word-by-word, or b) phrase-by-phrase, and rated each item for grammaticality and responded to a comprehension probe. Results indicate that while overall comprehension is typically prioritized over grammatical processing (following the \u27Good-Enough\u27 Hypothesis), the effects of presentation format are differentially influential based on group differences and processing measure. For the L1 participants, facilitating the projection of phrasal prosody (phrase-by-phrase presentation) onto text enhances performance in syntactic and grammatical processing, while disrupting it via a word-by-word presentation decreases comprehension accuracy. For the L2 participants however, phrase-by-phrase presentation is not significantly beneficial for grammatical processing\u27even resulting in a decrease in comprehension accuracy. These differences provide insight into the interaction of cognitive taskload, processing strategy selection, and the role of implicit prosody in reading fluency, building toward a comprehensive processing model for speakers of varying language profiles and proficiencies

Investigating the tourism experience of Thai cooking classes: An application of Larsen's three-stage model

Cooking classes have emerged as popular activities for international tourists seeking to learn and participate in Thai culinary culture. Applying Larsen’s psychological three-stage model for understanding the tourism experience, this study identifies motivational and experiential factors of tourists’ participation in cooking classes, and their subsequent behavioral intentions. Drawing on functional motivational theory and Pine and gilmore’s experience economy concept, a quantitative instrument is developed to survey 300 tourist participants in cooking classes in Chiang Mai, Thailand. results suggest that the top-most motivational factor for participation in cooking classes is socioutilitarian needs—a combination of social and utilitarian items, whereas the top-most experiential factor is “Ent-escapist”—a combination of Pine and gilmore’s entertainment and escapist realms. The results indicate that both the motivational and the experiential facets of cooking clases are influenced by a combination of factors. These findings offer implications for the marketing of cooking class products by destination management organizations

DD-Module Techniques for Solving Differential Equations in the Context of Feynman Integrals

Feynman integrals are solutions to linear partial differential equations with polynomial coefficients. Using a triangle integral with general exponents as a case in point, we compare $D$-module methods to dedicated methods developed for solving differential equations appearing in the context of Feynman integrals, and provide a dictionary of the relevant concepts. In particular, we implement an algorithm due to Saito, Sturmfels, and Takayama to derive canonical series solutions of regular holonomic $D$-ideals, and compare them to asymptotic series derived by the respective Fuchsian systems.Comment: 35 pages, 2 figures, 2 appendices; comments welcom

Analytical Validation of Variants to Aid in Genotype-Guided Therapy for Oncology

The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) of 1988 requires that pharmacogenetic genotyping methods need to be established according to technical standards and laboratory practice guidelines before testing can be offered to patients. Testing methods for variants in ABCB1, CBR3, COMT, CYP3A7, C8ORF34, FCGR2A, FCGR3A, HAS3, NT5C2, NUDT15, SBF2, SEMA3C, SLC16A5, SLC28A3, SOD2, TLR4, and TPMT were validated in a CLIA-accredited laboratory. As no known reference materials were available, DNA samples that were from Coriell Cell Repositories (Camden, NJ) were used for the analytical validation studies. Pharmacogenetic testing methods developed here were shown to be accurate and 100% analytically sensitive and specific. Other CLIA-accredited laboratories interested in offering pharmacogenetic testing for these genetic variants, related to genotype-guided therapy for oncology, could use these publicly available samples as reference materials when developing and validating new genetic tests or refining current assays

Dynamics of Rydberg States of Nitric Oxide Probed By Two-Color Resonant Four-Wave Mixing Spectroscopy

Two-color resonant four-wave mixing (TC-RFWM) spectroscopy has been used to probe highly excited v = 0 and v = 1 Rydberg states of nitric oxide. Transitions to n = 16-30, v = 0, Rydberg states, and the 8p, 9p, 7f, 8f, 8s, and 9s, v = 1 Rydberg states from the A (2)Sigma(+), v\u27 = 0 and 1 states have been recorded. The decay rate of the 8p and 9p, v = 1 states has been extracted from the observed line profiles by using a recently developed model for the excitation of quasibound resonances in TC-RFWM spectroscopy. Transitions from the A (2)Sigma(+), v\u27 = 1 state to the X (2)Pi(3/2), v = 10 state have also been observed, allowing an absolute calibration of the TC-RFWM signal intensity. This calibration is used to determine an excited-state absorption cross section for the 9p, v = 1 Rydberg state. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(98)01625-0]