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The Playground: Redefining the Artistic Experience and Expression with Technology
Full text linkThroughout the artistic community, many creators are exploring new ways to generate innovative works for growing audiences. With the emergence of endless technology, dance makers are searching for mediums to include new lighting techniques and music composition. Across this past year, I have researched and explored new frontiers of artistic mediums to further my project’s artistic expression. By developing and investigating new systems of lighting and musical composition, I created a fifteen-minute work called “Metaphysical Mindscape”. When solidifying the through-line that carried the expression of my piece, I uncovered a piece of myself. The themes that I explored were thoughts of division within oneself and how relationships play out as a result. The creation process was a collaboration at heart with the help of my advisors, peers, and dancers. It was a sharing of ideas and movement that led to an exploration and world-building for everyone involved. By sharing a part of myself on stage, I hope I made a new form of expression that inspired both the dancers and the audience
Gene expression signatures of response to fluoxetine treatment: systematic review and meta-analyses
Full text linkBACKGROUND: Genomic (and other ‘omic) data have provided valuable insights on the pharmacological signatures of antidepressant response, but results from individual studies are largely heterogeneous. In this work, we synthesized gene expression data for fluoxetine treatment in both human patients and rodent models, to better understand biological pathways affected by treatment, as well as those that may distinguish clinical or behavioral response.
METHODS: Following the PRISMA guidelines, we searched the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) for studies profiling humans or rodent models with treatment of the antidepressant fluoxetine, excluding those not done in the context of depression or anxiety, in an irrelevant tissue type, or with fewer than three samples per group. Included studies were systematically reanalyzed by differential expression analysis and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA). Individual pathway and gene statistics were synthesized across studies by three p-value combination methods, and then corrected for false discovery.
RESULTS: Of the 74 data sets that were screened, 20 were included: 18 in rodents, and two in tissue from human patients. Studies were highly heterogeneous in the comparisons of both treated vs. control samples and responders vs. non-responders, with 691
and 357 pathways, respectively, identifiedas significantly different between groups in at least one study. However, 18 pathways were identifiedas consistently different in responders vs. non-responders, including toll-like receptor (TLR) and other immune pathways. Signal transduction pathways were identifiedas consistently affected by fluoxetine treatment in depressed patients and rodent models.
DISCUSSION: These meta-analyses confirm known pathways and provide new hints toward antidepressant resistance, but more work is needed. Most included studies involved rodent models, and both patient studies had small cohorts. Additional large-cohort studies applying additional ‘omics technologies are necessary to understand the intricacies and heterogeneity of antidepressant response
Sociocultural Influence on Attitude Formation Toward Critical Race Theory
Full text linkThis study explores the influence of political and parental beliefs, location, and social upbringing on perceptions of critical race theory (CRT) among undergraduate college students above 18 years old. This study had 179 participants who submitted an online survey completing the Highly Sensitive Person Scale, Perceptions of Parents Scales: The College-Student Scale, Experience with Diversity Survey, Social and Economic Conservatism Scale, and Resistance to Change-Beliefs Scale. Participants were also asked questions about their perceptions of CRT, including their feelings about CRT, their support of teaching CRT, how they believed their parents felt about CRT, how confident they were in their understanding of CRT, if they were taught CRT in school, and what age they would prefer for CRT to be taught. Participants’ feelings toward CRT were significantly correlated with parental feelings of CRT. There is a significant correlation between the Social and Economic Conservatism Scale and participants’ perceptions of CRT. There is a significant correlation between the Resistance to Change Beliefs Scale and participants’ feelings toward teaching CRT, with the belief that CRT should be taught at the college level
Cognitive and Social Vulnerabilities: Adolescents’ Pragmatic Inferences of Leniency in Response to Minimization
Full text linkThe current study expands upon Luke and Alceste’s (2020) experiments to explore the effects of minimization via pragmatic implication on adolescents compared to adults in the context of police interrogations. Adolescent and adult participants read a police report and were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions (control, minimization, direct promise, and honesty) to gauge how differing perceived implications of leniency in interrogation tactics impact one’s perceptions of suspect outcomes. Drawing on empirical research on the social and cognitive vulnerabilities of minors (e.g., Bettens & Normile, 2023; Kassin & McNall, 1991; Kostelnik et al., 2006), I hypothesized that adolescents would be more likely to pragmatically infer leniency than adults. The results demonstrated that adolescents had higher expectations of leniency both in cases where the suspect confessed or denied their involvement, as well as lower perceived severity of the crime compared to adults. Regardless of age, participants who were presented with direct promise and honesty theme conditions endorsed more conditional leniency inferences than those in the moral minimization and control conditions. These results demonstrate that adolescents are not only vulnerable to inferring leniency via pragmatic implication, but also particularly susceptible to inferring direct promises from honesty-themed rhetoric
Disulfide-Cleavable Linkers in Antibody-Drug Conjugates for Targeted Cancer Therapy
Full text linkThis project aims to discover a way to improve the safety of and reduce adverse side effects of disulfide-linked antibody-drug conjugates. Disulfide-cleavable linkers for antibody-drug conjugates function by exploiting the differential concentrations of dominant thiol species in the blood plasma and in the cytosol of malignant cells. This project aimed to identify a relationship between the stability of disulfide cleavable linkers in the blood plasma and disulfide linker structure, to prevent premature release of the cytotoxic drug. Three disulfide linker analogs with varying carbon chain lengths were synthesized through reaction with 2,2’-dipyridyl disulfide. Each analog was conjugated to a fluorescent indicator to allow for visible determination of disulfide bond cleavage. Linker-fluorescein conjugates were assayed in both NaHS and DTT solutions of concentrations ranging from 0.422mM-10mM. The results of this study determined that linker length does influence bond stability and reduction kinetics by influencing the size of the cyclic byproduct, with the 4C linker proving to be the most effective in blood stability and drug release
