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Determining the Optimal Retirement Age
Get PDFThis research analyzes the differences in potential financial stability of retired individuals based on the timing of their retirement and accumulated savings. Key factors such as retirees’ average expenses, average income, social security benefits, and savings are used to create a model suggesting an optimal time to retire with sufficient funds to maintain an expected lifestyle. This research seeks to offer a starting point in determining whether it would be beneficial to retire prior to or post the standard age of 65 based on an individual’s financial situation. The results found in this study provide conclusions drawn from an analysis based on national average data and a literature review. This study shows that the optimal age to retire is 64 years and 4 months of age. In addition, the literature suggests individuals with higher wealth accumulated by the time of retirement may find delaying retirement less attractive than an individual with more dependence on social security. The overall conclusion drawn from this research is that individuals who will be using accumulated savings as a higher proportion of their post-retirement income can optimize their wealth by retiring early, and those who will be more dependent on social security and accumulating less retirement savings may have to delay retirement
Pan-Arabism: Origins and Outcomes of Postcolonial Unions
Get PDFThis senior thesis examines Pan-Arab Nationalism in practice by analyzing the rise and fall of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria and the Arab Federation between Jordan and Iraq. The study concludes that the downfall of the Pan-Arab experiments lies in the differing interpretations of the ideology and political and philosophical disconnects between political elites and the people they govern
A Walk Through History
No full textScholarship and Creative Arts Day (SCAD)https://jayscholar.etown.edu/com130/1000/thumbnail.jp
“You have fixed my life- however short”- Wilfred Owen’s Homosexuality in His Poetry and Prose
Get PDFFamed World War One poet Wilfred Owen is perhaps best known for his poems that provide insight into the minds of men who suffered from PTSD, or “shell shock” caused by fighting in the Great War. Owen, along with being an incredible poet, was likely a gay man, but many critics have glossed over these unproven aspects of his history for myriad reasons. While the sexuality of Wilfred Owen cannot be posthumously confirmed, the evidence pointing away from heterosexuality cannot be ignored. Several of his poems support this idea, namely a few unfinished snippets from his youth and “Greater Love,” a World War One poem with vivid homoerotic imagery. His sexuality also bleeds through many letters of his, most of them written to his probable lover Siegfried Sassoon. Owen died tragically young leaving critics with little writing and life experience to extrapolate from. However, his relationships and writings make it clear that his feelings toward his fellow soldiers surpassed camaraderie
Synthesis of Modified Isoorotic Acid Nucleobases to Compare Pi-stacking and Hydrogen Bonding Interactions in PNA:RNA2 Triple Helix Formation
Get PDFCoding RNA has been studied extensively, yet comprises only 2% of transcribed DNA, leaving a vast amount of non-coding RNA virtually unexplored. Peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) are excellent biotechnological molecules that allow for exploration of RNA structure and function. This project focuses on comparing the binding affinity of hydrogen bonding and pi-stacking interactions within nucleobase modified PNAs to target double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) sequences through triple helix formation. Hydrogen bonds are favorable dipole interactions between an acidic proton and another electronegative atom, and pi-stacking interactions result from electronic stacking of electron-dense and electron-poor sections in aromatic rings. Synthesis of previous extended nucleobases involved the alkylation of isoorotic acid, followed by coupling to an amino-containing arene such as 3-amino-2-pyrazinecarboxamide, where the carboxamide provides a proposed third source of hydrogen bonding. The pi-stacking control designed in this project lacks the carboxamide while retaining the aromatic pyrazine. It is hypothesized that the 2-aminopyrazine PNA monomer will produce similar binding affinity to the 3-amino-2-pyrazinecarboxamide monomer and once incorporated into PNA will be tested for RNA binding. Pi-stacking will be further explored using 2,3,4,5,6-pentafluoro arenes as the fluorine atoms draw electron density from the aromatic ring allowing for potential stacking with electron-rich anilines
Public Journalism Without the Public: Problematizing the Public Sphere and Press Credibility in Academic Journals, 1991–2018
No full textA review of public journalism journal articles from 1991 through 2018 revealed significant gaps in (a) conceptualizing the public sphere, and (b) ascertaining the credibility of public journalism efforts. These gaps have implications for a press that is becoming increasingly challenged in an era of self-curated news selection and polarization. This work offers conclusions regarding how journalistic engagement efforts can better consider audience perspectives and thereby examine more sustainable footings for a citizen-engaged press
Constraints on Localization and Decomposition as Explanatory Strategies in the Biological Sciences 2.0
No full textThis paper is a follow up to Silberstein and Chemero (2013), wherein it was argued that contra the new mechanist philosophy, localization and decomposition often fail to obtain in complex biological systems. Herein it is argued that: (1) Mechanistic explanation is historically and still often defined exhaustively by the new mechanists in terms of localization and decomposition; and (2) There are several key features of most complex biological systems related to contextuality and global constraints that violate localization and decomposition, and this fact is not an artifact of network approaches or formal models. Thus, new mechanists must either concede that there are many such cases wherein complex biological systems fail to be fully explicable via mechanistic explanation or, they must reject the claim that localization and decomposition are both necessary and sufficient for mechanistic explanation. Either horn of the dilemma creates problems for the new mechanists. On the first horn, the mechanistic philosophy is often false because, localization and decomposition generally fail to obtain and definitely fail to obtain in crucial cases such as systems neuroscience and systems biology. On the second horn, giving up the claim that localization and decomposition are both necessary and sufficient for mechanistic explanation, threatens to make the new mechanist philosophy too broad, non-unique or downright trivial. The essence of mechanistic explanation, what distinguishes it from mere causal or dynamical explanation, is its compositional or constitutive character. If the new mechanists jettison this feature of mechanistic explanation, if they fully acknowledge the essentially dynamical nature of such explanations and systems, it is not clear what if anything is unique about mechanistic explanation. Indeed, it is argued that many of the more liberal approaches to mechanistic explanation, suggest a picture of complex biological systems that comports more with contextual emergence than with the compositional and constitutive origins of the new mechanist philosophy. Thus, the new mechanistic philosophy is either largely false, non-unique or retreats to being just a description of scientific methodology
“Death of the Author” in the Literature Classroom and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars
No full textStudents in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students’ engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students’ own interpretations of the authors’ texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of Roland Barthes’s the Death of the Author manifesto to their students. Barthes’s concept helps students to recalibrate the value of an author’s biography and the author’s interpretation when analyzing a text. Just such a power recalibration takes place for teen characters in Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Hazel, the protagonist, demonstrates sharp literary critique informed by Barthes’s theory when she engages with most texts. However, she initially rejects the Death of the Author approach when it comes to interpreting one idolized piece of literature: her favorite novel. During the novel’s emotional climax, Hazel repositions herself in the author-reader relationship and takes a more empowered position. She then discovers a new parallel text that helps her to find solace and to reclaim authority from the Author-god
