Russian Federation: Alcoholism

The Russian Federation, better known as Russia, is the largest nation in the world. While the country faces numerous internal and external challenges, one of the most prevalent public health issues is alcoholism and excessive alcohol use. This is particularly concerning since, in addition to direct mortalities, alcoholism leads to Russia’s leading cause of death, coronary heart disease. The research compiled in this brief examines general information about the country, a few common public health issues faced, basic epidemiology, and previous interventions targeted at reducing alcoholism and excessive alcohol use. The project then proposes a future intervention aimed at resolving this public health issue

Health for All: Using Utilitarianism to Require Childhood Vaccinations

In the last few decades, many parents have chosen not to vaccinate their children against serious infectious diseases. In seeking exemptions, they often cite conflicting religious beliefs and fear of risks. Using the principle of utilitarianism, this paper argues that despite parents\u27 cited religious beliefs and concerns about risks, state laws should require all children to get vaccinated unless doing so would cause direct harm to the child’s health. Adopting this mandate would ensure that the maximum number of people would benefit from immunity to serious and deadly diseases

THE LONG ROAD TO POWER FOR WOMEN IN POLITICS

A century after women won the right to vote they remain significantly under-represented in federal and state elected office in the United States. Why do women, who comprise more than half of the population in the United States, still fall far short of that proportion in Congress and in state governorships? Political science research suggests there are multiple explanations, ranging from women’s views on whether they are prepared to run to institutional and social constraints. The situation may be changing, however, given the record-setting number of women who ran for federal and state offices in the 2018 election cycle. Women continue to make advances in American politics, even if the rate of progress is slower than many would prefer

Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency as Properties of Language Performance: The Development of Multiple Subsystems over Time and in Relation to Each Other

Applied linguists have identified three components of second language (L2) performance: complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) to measure L2 development. Many studies researching CAF found trade-off effects (in which a higher performance in one component corresponds to lower performance in another) during tasks, often in online oral language performance. Trade-off effects are attributed to the inability of the learner to simuletaneously attend to all components at the highest level possible. Although cross-sectional research has suggested that students at different proficiency levels sacrifice performance in one CAF area while improving in another, there has been little longitudinal research about CAF (Ortega & Iberri-Shea, 2005). As such, previous research could not address if CAF grows linearly over time nor if the rate of CAF growth is the same for all learners. The current study explicitly addresses how language performance in CAF changes over L2 development in an instructed environment. This longitudinal study analyzed English L2 oral data from sixty-six students from Arabic, Chinese, and Korean language backgrounds over 3-9 months in the English Language Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. Elicited speeches were transcribed, coded, and assessed with three measures of structural complexity, a measure of lexical variety, two measures of accuracy, and three measures of fluency. The scores were then analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling (Singer & Willett, 2003) to investigate how each student’s performance changed over time for each measure and to determine predictive variables. Although individual differences were found in initial scores (often proficiency differences, but not for all measures), growth trajectories were the same for all measures, except one grammatical complexity measure (length of AS unit) where slopes differed by gender. All measures showed growth, and only two measures (lexical variety and a mean length of fluent run) showed non-linear growth. Trade-off effects found in cross-sectional studies were not found in these longitudinal data even though within-individual and between-individual correlations were also calculated. Additionally, the results may suggest that instructed language performance growth is uniform, rather than along individual paths. The research also serves to evaluate the measures, which has research and pedagogical implications

How Our Life Experiences Affect Our Politics: The Roles of Vested Interest and Affect in Shaping Policy Preferences

Scholars investigating the role of self-interest in determining policy preferences find that self-interest has weak effects. However, researchers have refined their concepts of self-interest and are now finding a greater role for it (e.g., Crano 1995). We continue along this line of research, considering different mechanisms by which self-interest may come to be important. We argue that measuring people’s perceived self-interest in a policy (which we call vested interest) is important for understanding how people pursue their self-interest. We find that while life circumstances can cause people to endorse vested interest, emotion is an important mediator of this relationship. Finally, we test the notion that value change mediates between vested interest and support for a policy, and find evidence for a reciprocal relationship

What’s in a question? A Comparison of Student Questions in Two Learning Spaces

Active learning pedagogy is thought to allow more opportunities for student interaction. Given that students are more interactive, student questions may reveal how active learning pedagogy may enhance student learning outcomes. The purpose of this research was to investigate the frequency, distribution, and type of questions asked by students during class meetings in two instructional contexts: a traditional lecture classroom and an interactive learning space classroom. A neuroanatomy and neurophysiology for speech, language and hearing course was taught in the two spaces in subsequent semesters. A total of 99 enrolled students gave consent. Six 75-minute class meetings from each classroom were recorded; questions were transcribed, labeled for location and coded for depth: non-content, foundational knowledge, and application of knowledge questions. The results revealed that the frequency of student questions was similar in both spaces. However, the questions were more distributed in the interactive space. The highest proportion of questions posed were application questions in both spaces with more application questions in the traditional space but more non-content questions in the interactive space. Course design, immediacy, and student maturity may have influenced the types of questions observed. Instructors who implement active learning pedagogy may see more student engagement through questions

Bioarchaeology of Life and Death in Tuscany, Italy, AD 900–1900

Human remains from archaeological contexts provide a fund of information for addressing questions and hypotheses about what life was like in the past. These remains are especially important because they represent the individual and their life experiences from early childhood through adulthood, and especially those experiences relating to health and lifestyle. This paper presents an overview of health indicators documented in an ongoing bioarchaeological project involving the study of remains of people interred at the church of San Pietro a Pozzeveri, located near the village of Badia Pozzeveri in the province of Tuscany, northern Italy. Founded in the 11th century A.D., the church was in continuous existence until the mid-20th century. The church was part of a monastery during the 12th through 14th centuries, and was located on the Via Francigena, a strategic trade and pilgrimage route connecting Canterbury, England, with Rome. Archaeological excavations have produced numerous skeletons from the medieval, Renaissance, and modern (17th to 19th centuries) periods. Key events that impacted the people living in this region included the Black Death, which swept through Europe in the medieval period, and the local record of the global cholera epidemic in the mid-19th century. Study of skeletal and dental pathology (osteoperiostitis, osteoarthritis, dental caries), trauma, and other evidence of living conditions reveals the hardships of life in this setting. The record of infection and poor oral health speaks to both the poor circumstances of diet, including a focus on dietary carbohydrates, and poor health generally in the region in particular and Europe in general during this thousand-year period of history

Bone healing following different types of osteotomy: Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and three-dimensional SEM analyses

The aim of the present study was to compare dynamics of the bone healing process after different types of osteotomies. In total, 24 Wistar rats were subjected to different types of osteotomy performed with standard steel bur, piezosurgery, contact, and non-contact Erbium:yttrium-aluminum-garnet (Er:YAG) laser ablation. The animals were randomly divided into four groups, to be euthanized immediately after the procedure, or at 1, 2, or 3 weeks after surgery. The obtained bone samples were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Immediately after surgery, there were significant differences in the appearance of the bone defects, with presence of bone fragments and debris after standard steel bur preparation, compared with the clean smooth walls and relatively sharp edges in all other groups. The initial bone formation in defects prepared by piezosurgery was observed to be the most rapid. After 3 weeks, all bone defects were completely restored; although, differences in the healing pattern were noted, with a modest initial delay in healing after laser preparation. The first stage of the bone healing process was delayed when contact and non-contact Er:YAG laser modes were used and accelerated by piezosurgery; however, the results after 3 weeks demonstrated similar restitution of defects in all tested groups