My Own Kind of Faith

William Casey explores questions of faith while explaining why his choice to practice atheism

Alien Registration- Casey, William H. (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/24425/thumbnail.jp

Drivers of Sustainable Agriculture in a Southern State

This Master’s Thesis establishes what motivates a group of Mississippi farmers to participate in sustainable agriculture instead of industrial agriculture. A database of sustainable farmers was constructed in collaboration with the Gaining Ground Sustainability Institute of Mississippi. This research project used social network analysis with 28 farmers and participant observation and semi-structured interviewing with a purposively selected sample of 14 farmers. This project also explores the sustainable agricultural practices of participants. A map of the social network of sustainable agriculturalists in Mississippi is presented and shows that some farmers are well connected, some moderately connected, and others are isolated. As well, grounded qualitative analysis of interviews identified 4 primary motivations among participants: economic, health, self-sufficiency and anti-government. Overall this project found that motivations are numerous, social networks are weak but growing, and diverse demographics are turning to a sustainable model for agriculture in Mississippi

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL EDUCATORS’ PERCEPTIONS OF DISCIPLINE POLICIES AND THE OVERREPRESENTATION OF DISCIPLINE OUTCOMES IN URBAN SETTINGS

Since the formation of schools, schools have developed ways of understanding discipline and ensuring a safe and orderly environment. Governmental personnel began to influence local school policies beginning in 1989, with United States President Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs campaign. This led to the creation and development of zero-tolerance policies. School districts implemented zero-tolerance policies, which helped lead to the overrepresentation of discipline outcomes (i.e., punishment) among certain demographics. Following the Critical Race Theory theoretical framework, I interviewed 12 participants to determine their perceptions of discipline policies and the overrepresentation of discipline outcomes in urban settings. My participants included elementary principals and teachers across two large urban school districts across Tennessee. After interviewing 12 participants, I determined two things: elementary school teachers perceived the success of discipline practices and outcomes based on support from their administrators and whether teachers believed schools were considered safe, and elementary school principals perceived successful discipline policies and their role in discipline as their ability to support students during their school career and to give support to teachers so that teachers could support students. From the teachers’ perspective, I determined that teachers viewed successful discipline policies depending on support provided by administrators and a safe environment. From the principals’ perspective, I determined that principals viewed successful discipline policies depending on their ability to support students and to support teachers

Social service functions with patients discharged against medical advice in a neuropsychiatric veterans administration hospital.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Investigating the role and regulation of human mitochondrial poly(A) polymerase

PhD ThesisPolyadenylation by the mitochondrial poly(A) polymerase (mtPAP) is a crucial step of post-transcriptional modification in mammalian gene expression. In human mitochondria, polyadenylation is required for completion of seven UAA stop codons following complete processing of the major polycistronic RNA unit. Patients homozygous for a 1432A>G mutation in the PAPD1 gene, which encodes mtPAP, suffer from symptoms consistent with mitochondrial disease including autosomal-recessive spastic ataxia and optic atrophy. The principal defect of the 1432A>G mutation is short adenylate tails on mt-mRNAs. Fibroblast lines from patients harboring the 1432A>G PAPD1 mutation were established, and analysis of mitochondrial gene expression showed non-uniform dysregulation. For mt-mRNAs and translation products, there is a mix of depletion, stabilization and no effect, leading to major deficits at steady-state protein levels and of respiratory complexes. To confirm the pathological nature of the mutation, a complementation experiment was performed, which showed that expression of the WT PAPD1 gene rescued the mutant phenotype. To assess whether catalytic activity was altered in the mutant enzyme, in vitro polyadenylation assays with WT and N478D recombinant mtPAP were undertaken. The N478D mtPAP was found to generate the short oligo(A) tails as observed in vivo. In addition, the presence of the LRPPRC/SLIRP complex increased the maximal poly(A) extensions generated by both WT and mutant mtPAP. Finally, experiments were undertaken to identify factors potential interacting with mtPAP. The major interacting factor was found to be ATAD3, a protein reported to be involved with multiple mitochondrial processes involving DNA and translation machinery in the form of nucleoids or mitoribosomes respectively. In summary, these investigations provide insights into the impact and regulation of mitochondrial polyadenylation, and contribute towards unraveling the complexities of post-transcriptional maturation in human mitochondrial gene expression.The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and Newcastle University

The Sum of the Parts Is Greater than the Whole: Why Courts Determining Subject Matter Eligibility Should Analyze the Patent-Eligible and Unpatentable Portions of the Claim Separately Instead of Treating the Claim as a Whole

For years, uncertainty has plagued the patent world regarding how to determine if claims are patent eligible. Recent Supreme Court decisions addressing patent eligibility, while resolving the eligibility of the claims before the Court, have not provided a general methodology for lower courts and the Patent and Trademark Office to follow. This note proposes a general method of analysis to determine patent eligibility. First, rather than treat the claim as a whole, the court or examiner should divide a claim into unpatentable and patent-eligible portions. Then the court or examiner should conduct a three-factor analysis to determine if the claim is patent eligible. The proposed three-factor analysis balances (1) the dependency of the invention on the patent-eligible portion of the claim for utility; (2) the amount of preemption of the unpatentable portion of the claim; and (3) the novelty/nonobviousness of the patent-eligible portion of the claim. Analyzing the patent-eligible and unpatentable portions of a claim separately, and disregarding the Court\u27s admonitions to treat the claim as a whole, allow for greater insight into patent eligibility