Edward Bliss Emerson: The Blazing Star of a Complex Constellation

Edward Bliss Emerson, a younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson and a promising scholar in his own right, traveled to the West Indies at the age of 26 hoping to alleviate his pulmonary afflictions. While in the islands, from January 1831 to July 1832, he logged his daily activities in a pocket journal. The journal falls short in revealing Edward’s childhood, his years at Harvard, and his brief time as teacher and lawyer. This biographical essay aims to enhance the understanding and enjoyment of the journal. It unveils defining stages in Edward’s life. Using a wide variety of archival documents, the author illustrates how Edward adapted to new circumstances and places, while renewing his quests for health, education and purpose

Self-Reflection, Politics, Art, and Qualitative Research: A Review of Denzin and Lincoln’s Third Edition of Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials

The third edition of Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, illustrates the varied perspectives of twenty five experienced qualitative researchers focusing on collecting, analyzing, and interpreting empirical materials. New topics are introduced in this third edition capturing the dynamic nature and emerging trends in the field such as arts-based approaches. It is a great reference book and a resource of unlimited possibilities. It provides a window for further inquiry for beginners, intermediate and experienced qualitative researchers. Many of the chapters read as powerful essays provoking self-reflection, political involvement, activism, and alternate ways of looking at the world around us

How I Learned to Design and Conduct Semi-structured Interviews: An Ongoing and Continuous Journey

Qualitative interviewing is a flexible and powerful tool to capture the voices and the ways people make meaning of their experience Learning to conduct semi-structure interviews requires the following six stages: (a) selecting the type of interview; (b) establishing ethical guidelines, (c) crafting the interview protocol; (d) conducting and recording the interview; (e) crafting the interview protocol; and (f) reporting the findings. A researcher\u27s personal journey in crafting an interview protocol to interview HIV researchers is summarized. She highlights that training and experience are crucial and identifies some readings that can help in the process

How I Learned to Design and Conduct Semi-structured Interviews: An Ongoing and Continuous Journey

Qualitative interviewing is a flexible and powerful tool to capture the voices and the ways people make meaning of their experience Learning to conduct semi-structure interviews requires the following six stages: (a) selecting the type of interview; (b) establishing ethical guidelines, (c) crafting the interview protocol; (d) conducting and recording the interview; (e) crafting the interview protocol; and (f) reporting the findings. A researcher’s personal journey in crafting an interview protocol to interview HIV researchers is summarized. She highlights that training and experience are crucial and identifies some readings that can help in the process

Travel diaries as a source for creative constructions of thepast and the present: The Edward Bliss EmersonCaribbean diary (1831-1832)

The panelists will describe their particular encounters with Edward B. Emerson‟s travel diary, emphasizing their approaches to analyzing its content. They will describe the resources and techniques they employed to expand and contextualize Edward‟s account. They will offer the audience a truly interdisciplinary and creative interpretation of Edward‟s diary that could serve as an example of how to approach other travel diaries. Its diversity of subject and tone will be addressed by a group of scholars from different backgrounds. Collectively, the panelists represent 15 disciplines that provide different viewpoints in the analysis

Qualitative Research by a Non-Hierarchical Team

In this and subsequent issues, The Qualitative Report will publish eight articles about a journal written by Edward B. Emerson (1805-1834), a younger brother of American philosopher and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. This introduction will describe the origins of the project, the sources, the process and the outcomes of the collaboration. The authors hope to document and illustrate the richness and value of interdisciplinary qualitative inquiry, while providing specifics of how the Emerson Journal Project evolved. We provide examples to illustrate the characteristics of effective teamwork, but also present the challenges along the way and how they were surmounted. The breadth of the topics in the journal and the range of expertise within the team have resulted in the use of different approaches to examine Emerson’s text. It is the authors’ goal that these essays will enhance the reading of Emerson´s journal, while contributing to the social and historical understanding of the Caribbean

The Edward Bliss Emerson Journal Project: Qualitative Research by a Non-Hierarchical Team

Edward Bliss Emerson (1805-1834), a younger brother of the renowned essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, lived in the Caribbean for the final three years of his life. His journal and letters are a rich manuscript source for the history of the Danish Virgin Islands (1831-1832) and Puerto Rico (1831-1834). The texts also reflect the contemporary political and cultural situation in the United States, and Edward\u27s search for health, economic independence, intellectual stimulation and metaphysical fulfillment. These writings ignited an intellectual passion in José G. Rigau-Pérez, a physician, medical epidemiologist, and historian in Puerto Rico. Furthering access to these unique resources he produced a digital version of the journal from the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association deposit at the Houghton Library (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and the letters kept at Houghton Library, the Emerson Family Papers at Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston), and other locations. (See http://edicionesdigitales.info/biblioteca/Emerson.pdf for the full online text of the journal and letters). Dr. José G. Rigau-Pérez also organized a community of scholars who share a sense a common purpose even in the absence of propinquity. The group includes Silvia E. Rabionet, an associate professor in health education at the University of Puerto Rico School of Public Health and Nova Southeastern University College of Pharmacy; Annette B. Ramírez de Arellano, a planner and policy analyst whose work focuses on public health; Wilfredo A. Géigel, a trial lawyer by profession, an independent scholar, member and past president of the Society of Virgin Islands Historians, and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix Campus; Raúl Mayo-Santana, an Ad-Honorem Professor at the School of Medicine, University of Puerto Rico; and Alma Simounet, a Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico. They explore the Emerson journal and letters from multidisciplinary perspectives to bring forth historical, medical, legal, sociological, and geographical insights of the people, times, and places of the mid 1830s in the Caribbean and United States. The work of this talented team resulted in a series of essays we at The Qualitative Report (TQR) are pleased to present as our first book -The Edward Bliss Emerson Journal Project: Qualitative Research by a Non-Hierarchical Team! Under the editorial guidance of TQR Editor Dan Wulff, Dr. Rigau-Pérez and the other members of the team have produced these unique accounts as a transdisciplinary examination of Emerson\u27s world.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr_books/1001/thumbnail.jp

Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

ience, this issue p. eaap8757 Structured Abstract INTRODUCTION Brain disorders may exhibit shared symptoms and substantial epidemiological comorbidity, inciting debate about their etiologic overlap. However, detailed study of phenotypes with different ages of onset, severity, and presentation poses a considerable challenge. Recently developed heritability methods allow us to accurately measure correlation of genome-wide common variant risk between two phenotypes from pools of different individuals and assess how connected they, or at least their genetic risks, are on the genomic level. We used genome-wide association data for 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants, as well as 17 phenotypes from a total of 1,191,588 individuals, to quantify the degree of overlap for genetic risk factors of 25 common brain disorders. RATIONALE Over the past century, the classification of brain disorders has evolved to reflect the medical and scientific communities' assessments of the presumed root causes of clinical phenomena such as behavioral change, loss of motor function, or alterations of consciousness. Directly observable phenomena (such as the presence of emboli, protein tangles, or unusual electrical activity patterns) generally define and separate neurological disorders from psychiatric disorders. Understanding the genetic underpinnings and categorical distinctions for brain disorders and related phenotypes may inform the search for their biological mechanisms. RESULTS Common variant risk for psychiatric disorders was shown to correlate significantly, especially among attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia. By contrast, neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders, except for migraine, which was significantly correlated to ADHD, MDD, and Tourette syndrome. We demonstrate that, in the general population, the personality trait neuroticism is significantly correlated with almost every psychiatric disorder and migraine. We also identify significant genetic sharing between disorders and early life cognitive measures (e.g., years of education and college attainment) in the general population, demonstrating positive correlation with several psychiatric disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder) and negative correlation with several neurological phenotypes (e.g., Alzheimer's disease and ischemic stroke), even though the latter are considered to result from specific processes that occur later in life. Extensive simulations were also performed to inform how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity influence genetic correlations. CONCLUSION The high degree of genetic correlation among many of the psychiatric disorders adds further evidence that their current clinical boundaries do not reflect distinct underlying pathogenic processes, at least on the genetic level. This suggests a deeply interconnected nature for psychiatric disorders, in contrast to neurological disorders, and underscores the need to refine psychiatric diagnostics. Genetically informed analyses may provide important "scaffolding" to support such restructuring of psychiatric nosology, which likely requires incorporating many levels of information. By contrast, we find limited evidence for widespread common genetic risk sharing among neurological disorders or across neurological and psychiatric disorders. We show that both psychiatric and neurological disorders have robust correlations with cognitive and personality measures. Further study is needed to evaluate whether overlapping genetic contributions to psychiatric pathology may influence treatment choices. Ultimately, such developments may pave the way toward reduced heterogeneity and improved diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders

Genomic Relationships, Novel Loci, and Pleiotropic Mechanisms across Eight Psychiatric Disorders

Genetic influences on psychiatric disorders transcend diagnostic boundaries, suggesting substantial pleiotropy of contributing loci. However, the nature and mechanisms of these pleiotropic effects remain unclear. We performed analyses of 232,964 cases and 494,162 controls from genome-wide studies of anorexia nervosa, attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and Tourette syndrome. Genetic correlation analyses revealed a meaningful structure within the eight disorders, identifying three groups of inter-related disorders. Meta-analysis across these eight disorders detected 109 loci associated with at least two psychiatric disorders, including 23 loci with pleiotropic effects on four or more disorders and 11 loci with antagonistic effects on multiple disorders. The pleiotropic loci are located within genes that show heightened expression in the brain throughout the lifespan, beginning prenatally in the second trimester, and play prominent roles in neurodevelopmental processes. These findings have important implications for psychiatric nosology, drug development, and risk prediction.Peer reviewe

The Educational Legacy of the UPR School of Tropical Medicine: Curricula, Faculty, Students (1926-1949).

This essay discusses the educational evolution of the University of Puerto Rico-School of Tropical Medicine (UPR-STM) under the auspices of Columbia University. It takes a closer look to what was taught, who taught it and who were the students benefitting from the educational, learning and advanced research activities. It highlights some characteristics of the educational environment that aimed to harvest a well-trained group of scientists, academicians, and practitioners. It examines the characteristics of the faculty and graduates and their role in the teaching and dissemination of knowledge in tropical medicine and closely related fields. The curricula was characterized for its flexibility to accommodate the students\u27 clinical and research interests. With the advent of the 1940s the School started offering public health professionals degrees in addition to the former research-based training. This brought tensions associated to professionalization, the diversification of purposes, the expansion without sufficient resources, and the opening to different levels of students. Maintaining a cadre of well-trained prestigious faculty was always a struggle. Strategies such as visiting professors and joint and ad-honorem appointments were used. Agreements with universities around the world, philanthropic institutions, professional associations, and with different branches of the local and federal government supplemented the resources of the School. In return, the School offered an environment committed to educational standards, networking and a wealth of data for study and discovery