Agnus Dei: Who Takes Away The Sins Of The World?

This thesis documents the journey of Meghan Rose Shea struggling to find the character, Dr. Martha Livingstone, in the play Agnes of God. Meghan focused on the Meisner technique as a guideline for her acting approach. She explores past performances, the playwright, and thoroughly journals the trials and triumphs of the production process

Is There a Difference Between Regionally-Estimated BRFSS Health Indicators and those Calculated through Community Health Assessments led by County Health Departments?

Community Health Assessments (CHAs) have been emphasized in recent years due to changes in accreditation and funding standards after the 2011 passing of the Affordable Care Act. Local health departments (LHDs) often adapt methodologies from The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in their primary data collection. As BRFSS moves to provide more locality-specific estimates and low-resource LHDs are required to collect primary data, it is necessary to determine whether BRFSS regional estimates could be a sound substitute for CHA-collected data. This study aims to determine if a difference exists between health indicators that are calculated through Ohio BRFSS regional-estimates and those calculated through CHAs led by 3 county health departments. Using two-sample z-tests, percent prevalence of chronic illness, as reported in each county’s CHA, was compared to its respective BRFSS regional estimate. 6 (27.3%) of the indicators were found to be statistically significantly different. Each county had 2 indicators that were statistically different from the regional estimate; no specific chronic illness was found to statistically significant in more than one county/regional comparison. Although the majority of indicators were statistically insignificant, further research must be done in order to fully understand the potential overlap between BRFSS regional estimates in CHA data. More transparency and collaboration in locality-specific data is needed, especially in low-resource, rural settings.A one-year embargo was granted for this item.Academic Major: Public Healt

Plenary Session III – Policy Track: Focus on Innovation

Dr. Cicchini will describe the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and how its work can inform efforts in Massachusetts to promote older driver road safety. Dr. Reimer will describe innovations in research and the implications for policy. Nora Moreno Cargie will discuss how corporate and philanthropic partners can support innovative policy developments. Meghan Verona Joyce will describe Uber’s innovative partnership with government partners as a model for other entities to consider as they face regulatory challenges. Betsey Crimmins will discuss the legal and elder justice innovations needed to keep older MA adults safe and mobile

\u3ci\u3eEscherichia coli\u3c/i\u3e Surface Display of Single-Chain Antibody VRC01 against HIV-1 infection

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transmission and infection occur mainly via the mucosal surfaces. The commensal bacteria residing in these surfaces can potentially be employed as a vehicle for delivering inhibitors to prevent HIV-1 infection. In this study, we have employed a bacteria-based strategy to display a broadly neutralizing antibody VRC01, which could potentially be used to prevent HIV-1 infection. The VRC01 antibody mimics CD4-binding to gp120 and has broadly neutralization activities against HIV-1. We have designed a construct that can express the fusion peptide of the scFv-VRC01 antibody together with the autotransporter β-barrel domain of IgAP gene from Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which enabled surface display of the antibody molecule. Our results indicate that the scFv-VRC01 antibody molecule was displayed on the surface of the bacteria as demonstrated by flow cytometry and immunofluorescence microscopy. The engineered bacteria can capture HIV-1 particles via surface-binding and inhibit HIV-1 infection in cell culture

Systematic review of marine environmental DNA metabarcoding studies: toward best practices for data usability and accessibility

The emerging field of environmental DNA (eDNA) research lacks universal guidelines for ensuring data produced are FAIR–findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable–despite growing awareness of the importance of such practices. In order to better understand these data usability challenges, we systematically reviewed 60 peer reviewed articles conducting a specific subset of eDNA research: metabarcoding studies in marine environments. For each article, we characterized approximately 90 features across several categories: general article attributes and topics, methodological choices, types of metadata included, and availability and storage of sequence data. Analyzing these characteristics, we identified several barriers to data accessibility, including a lack of common context and vocabulary across the articles, missing metadata, supplementary information limitations, and a concentration of both sample collection and analysis in the United States. While some of these barriers require significant effort to address, we also found many instances where small choices made by authors and journals could have an outsized influence on the discoverability and reusability of data. Promisingly, articles also showed consistency and creativity in data storage choices as well as a strong trend toward open access publishing. Our analysis underscores the need to think critically about data accessibility and usability as marine eDNA metabarcoding studies, and eDNA projects more broadly, continue to proliferate