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HIV testing and consent policy evaluation for a healthcare system
No full textPurpose of Project: The purpose of this project was to identify current evidenced-based recommendations for HIV testing and consent in the literature. A review and practice gap analysis were completed at the project site, and reported to the key stakeholders, to form a discussion on ways to improve HIV testing. Methodology: The project comprised of a focused literature review, a synthesis of the literature with thematic identification, presentation of findings and structured discussion. The literature review included 19 articles and 10 governmental website sources. The literature was synthesized into a PowerPoint presentation and presented to 5 key stakeholders. Following the presentation there was a discussion and post presentation survey evaluation. Results: The results from the literature review identified three main themes: barriers, facilitators, and recommendations for HIV testing. Barriers included lack of education among providers, lack of support from policies, lack of responsibility, and stigma. Facilitators included policies following evidence-based guidelines and removing stigma. Recommendations include having evidence-based policies, more healthcare provider training, and strong networks for linkage to care.The presentation and survey were used to start a discussion on ways to increase HIV testing at the site. The discussion and survey results also gave insight into potential issues at other New Jersey healthcare facilities. The discussion determined that having stronger evidence-based guidance and support from the state would help encourage updated policies on HIV testing and consent. The post discussion survey showed 100% of the participants felt HIV testing in healthcare facilities was important. 40% of the participants felt separate written consent for HIV testing should be required, while 60% thought it should not, which is what the CDC has recommended. Implications for Practice: This project showed the need for increased HIV testing at the practice site. Quality and safe care should include having updated policies related to evidence-based recommendations for HIV testing. This project started dialogue on ways to review HIV testing and consent policies. It also identified barriers needed to overcome to increase routine HIV testing. The literature review revealed increasing HIV testing would be cost effective.D.N.P.Includes bibliographical reference
Associating fish tag detections to satellite derived water masses and ocean front gradients
No full textMarine fish habitats are defined by both dynamic water column properties and static benthic features. Fish move to stay within suitable oceanographic conditions, making it crucial to track water masses due to shifting habitat ranges. Ocean characteristics like temperature and color that differentiate water masses and the boundaries between them can track these dynamic habitats. This analysis investigates the distribution of fish and species by water mass and the fronts between them, examining their relationship in terms of stratified versus unstratified water column conditions. Acoustic tag detections of fish from 10 separate Slocum glider missions between 2020 – 2022 are compared to water masses and ocean fronts. Biological data, for the tags detected, was compiled by requested information from tag owners. The concurrent temperature, density, salinity, O2 concentration and saturation, water depth, chromatic dissolved organic materiel (CDOM), and chlorophyll-a from the glider sensors provide context for interpreting the movement and distribution of the tagged fish in relation to evolving water column properties. Additionally, water mass and ocean fronts matched to the glider-based fish detections, were derived from NASA’s MODIS-Aqua satellite data between 2020 – 2022 in 1-day composites. This product defines water masses and fronts between them based on observed SST and OC[1, 2]. A water gradient strength/distance index score was created by taking the water gradient strength score and dividing by the distance between the detection and the front. The index score is used to determine if there is an association between fish and ocean fronts.
Future research will require more detections and filling in the gaps of satellite coverage loss to better understand fish distribution across a wider range of ocean conditions. While lack of available data constrained this study in producing viable results, it served as a proof of concept that this method can be employed. Incorporating species' associations with water masses and ocean fronts into biomass estimates during stock assessments could improve the accuracy.M.S.Includes bibliographical reference
Cumulative early childhood exposure to poverty: measures, consequences, mitigation
No full textAcross several disciplines, there is a growing consensus that early childhood exposure to poverty causes adverse adult outcomes proportionate to its timing, duration, and intensity. Drawing from the SIPP, the first paper in this series proposes a cumulative measure that incorporates these dimensions of cumulative risk, duration, and intensity of poverty in the first thirty-six months of childhood. It shows that the risks of chronic poverty are high, the cumulative deficits among chronically poor children are substantial, and the population of chronically poor families is more demographically diverse than sometimes portrayed. The clearest risk factors are the constrained earnings capacities of parents who are unmarried or have less than a high school education. Drawing from the PSID, the second paper identifies small but significant associations between cumulative exposure and both the levels and growth in reading and math skills during school ages. These associations are robust to controls for current family income at the time of the standardized tests or variations in deficits among sibling pairs exposed at different times or to different degrees.
The third paper assesses the extent to which the three largest U.S. federal income supports—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC)—reduce cumulative exposure, separately and in combination. The pandemic expansions to these supports demonstrated the potential to substantially mitigate cumulative exposure for most children. Income supports are treatments, however, not cures, and when the expansions expired higher cumulative exposure returned.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Diversity-valuing signals – the strength of specificity
No full textWhen is a corporate diversity statement beneficial to an organization’s employer reputation? Do organizations see more benefits from more specific diversity statements, or from being diversity-valuing in non-diversity-valuing industries as a way to stand out from the crowd? Based on signaling theory, I test a model that looks at the relationship between diversity statement specificity, executive diversity, organizational diversity reputation, industry diversity reputation, and an organization’s employer reputation. Using publicly available archival data looking at the Fortune 500 companies, their diversity statements and executive teams, and the Forbes lists for best employers and best places for diversity, I show that more specific diversity statements improve an organization’s employer reputation through its impact on diversity-valuing reputation, but only when the firm’s executive diversity is low or moderate, but not when it is high. When executive diversity is high, the diversity statement specificity no longer matters, but rather the executive diversity improves employer reputation through diversity-valuing reputation. I also provide results indicating that the diversity-valuing reputation of the industry makes a difference, with the effect stronger in industries with lower reputations for valuing diversity. These results have implications for both theory and organizations.M.S.Includes bibliographical reference
The effect of affirming stigmatized identity on identity mobilization and positive work outcomes
No full textThe proliferation of anti-LGBTQ bills and persistent workplace discrimination highlight the unique challenges faced by LGBTQ employees in affirming their identities. This dissertation aims to explore how identity affirmation can positively shape the work experiences of LGBTQ employees. By integrating self-verification theory with identity mobilization framework, I propose that identity affirmation aids LGBTQ employees in cultivating a positive perception of their identities, motivating them to use identity mobilization tactics to achieve work goals. To rigorously examine this theoretical model, I first employed a qualitative approach to explore LGBTQ identity mobilization by collecting open-ended responses from LGBTQ employees and conducting a theme analysis. Second, I developed a scale of identity mobilization tactics to measure how LGBTQ employees draw on their identity at work with samples of people with various concealable stigmas. Finally, I collected two waves of survey data from LGBTQ employees and their supervisors to test the theoretical model. Based on a sample of 183 working adults and 72 supervisors, the results indicate that coworker identity affirmation is positively related to LGBTQ employees' social selfesteem, which in turn is positively related to crafting tactics. Identity mobilization tactics are also linked to positive career and work outcomes, including career satisfaction, career sponsorship, experienced organizational citizenship behavior, and affective commitment. These findings have implications for self-verification and identity mobilization theories and contribute to the literature on concealable stigma and diversity. Practically, organizations should focus on fostering environments that encourage interpersonal support and recognition, and HR professionals should develop training programs to facilitate LGBTQ employees’ use of identity mobilization tactics.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Reading the voices in and of new songs from a jade terrace
No full textThis dissertation uses “voice” as the analytical framework to study the sixth-century Chinese poetry anthology Yutai xinyong 玉臺新詠 (New Songs from a Jade Terrace). It provides original analyses of the anthology’s preface and the anthologized poems, some of which have been long overdue in the study of Yutai. In my analyses, prominent yet thorny themes, such as gender identities, authorship, musicality, and cultural inheritance, are treated without the usual moral criticism directed at the anthology. At the core of the project is the complex relation between textuality and materiality, which renders voice, that which bears connection with both meaning-making and bodily practices, an illuminating perspective to study Yutai xinyong.The introduction lays the groundwork and explicates the pertinence of various theories of voice in this study. Chapter One, “The Feminine Voice,” examines the multifarious relation between women and the anthology. In addition to addressing the evidence of female readership, authorship, and editorship provided by Yutai xinyong, this chapter brings the feminine voice—a device used in allegorical interpretations—into question, as it reveals several parallel relations: object and owner, wife and husband, courtier and emperor, and voice and writing. Insofar as voice itself does not seem to
contribute to making meaning, it is relegated to a feminine position in contrast to writing, the technique that claims to transcribe the spoken. The following chapter, “The Framed Voice” analyzes Yutai xinyong in relation to Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503-551) and Palace Style poetry—both are traditionally associated with the anthology. Each of these three elements functions as an interpretative frame for the remaining two. In particular, the poet Xiao Gang’s voice is always already framed in the criminal sense because of his deviance from the literary tradition. Otherness emerges as a central theme in Yutai’s reception. Therefore, Chapter Three, “The Singing Voice,” focuses on a genre that is also associated with otherness: Music Bureau poetry (yuefu shi 樂府詩). By analyzing the Music Bureau poems collected in the anthology, I demonstrate that as integral parts of the written tradition, Music Bureau poetry and Yutai xinyong, despite their musical and oral associations, are not the absolute other, but the other self of the written tradition. The last chapter “Against the Voice” examines imitations of “old poems” (gushi 古詩) in the Six Dynasties (222-589) that are anthologized in Yutai. This chapter casts light on different modes of imitating “old poems” in the period and highlights the idiosyncrasies of the imitation poems by Qi-Liang (479-557) poets, who, likely influenced by Buddhist doctrines, consciously wrote imitations against the grain.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Physical drivers of food web focusing in marine ecosystems
No full textFood resources (plankton) in the ocean are notoriously patchy, being concentrated in some areas and sparse in others. Such heterogeneity ripples up to the food web to the distribution of higher trophic-level creatures who utilize these patches to increase their foraging efficiency. This bottom-up control on spatial ecology is known as food web focusing. My dissertation has analyzed the role of horizontal advection in the creation and maintenance of these large patches from daily to seasonal scales.To quantify advective transport and concentration, Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) were used. LCS analysis applied to velocity fields will detect distribution patterns of attracting features accumulating simulated plankton (passive drifters) - features that cannot be identified and tracked from the velocity fields alone. Two LCS techniques were tested, (1) a single particle tracking technique based on integrated movement of all particles, Relative Particle Density (RPD) and (2) a paired particle tracking technique based on the relative motion of two particles, Finite Time Lyapunov Exponent (FTLE). Both techniques quantify attracting features, but with different approaches. To observe the connection between advective transport and food web focusing in coastal biological hotspots, Palmer Deep Canyon, Antarctica was used as an ecological laboratory. The SWARM field team and I deployed three High Frequency Radars (HFR) around this known penguin foraging area. We then used gliders, small boat towed surveys, and GPS tagged penguins to map the distribution of phytoplankton, krill swarms, and penguin foraging behavior onto HFR observed surface currents. LCS techniques were applied to HFR observed surface currents, assigning scalar quantities to areas of attraction within the study region. These scalar quantities vary in space and time with the ocean currents.
It was found that (i) phytoplankton patches and krill swarms are often association with strong LCS features; (ii) this association is stronger when the water column is stratified; (iii) krill both above and below the mixed layer depth are often associated with strong LCS and (iv) penguins forage along strong LCS features, suggesting food web focusing is occurring in the system initiated by coastal ocean transport of phytoplankton. These conclusions show the importance of horizontal advection in the spatial ecology of coastal ecosystems.
It was also found that (v) paired particle FTLE more accurately quantify the attractive features associated with food web focusing than single particle RPD. These results clarify the ecological relevance of the different classes of LCS techniques, and suggest that the use of the more computationally complex paired particle technique may be necessary to identify physical mechanisms of food web focusing.
To explore the utility of FTLE in understanding more complex food webs over larger scales, I used a 10-year HFR time series covering the continental shelf from North Carolina to Massachusetts provided by the Mid-Atlantic Region Association Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS). FTLE applied to these data produce a climatology of attractive ocean features that bear the seasonality and interannual variability of the Mid-Atlantic Bight.
Results suggest that (i) strong attracting features are more common in spring and summer than fall and winter. This is likely because fall and winter experience more storm/high wind events where most of the surface ocean is flowing in the same direction. Such uniformity of flow in winter and fall does not lend to strong attracting features, creating fewer attracting features in these seasons comparatively. These seasonal patterns in hydrography could be synchronized with local phenology that rely on attracting features to concentrate prey or transport planktonic larvae. Additionally, (ii) Nantucket Shoals region consistently had a high occurrence of strong attracting features throughout each season, which may be a reason why this region is known to be a foraging ground for whales.
These conclusions provide a deeper understanding of the role of ocean currents in the maintenance coastal biological hotspots and set the groundwork for the use of LCS to understand food web focusing in larger food webs such as the Mid-Atlantic Bight.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
GSX1 and NKX6.1 induced transcriptomic changes in the injured spinal cord at the acute and chronic phases
No full textSpinal cord injury (SCI) is a complicated pathophysiological condition resulting in locomotor impairment that hinders long-term quality of life. Recent work by our lab used lentiviral mediated expression of transcription factors, which promote key cellular and injury site changes after injury toward functional recovery. Gsx1 expression enhanced recovery post SCI, while Nkx6.1 treated failed to have the same effect. This study compares Gsx1 and Nkx6.1 induced transcriptomes and identifies gene sets, pathways, and biomarkers implicated in functional recovery. The Cai lab has generated and published bulk RNA sequencing datasets from forced Gsx1 and Nkx6.1 expression post hemisection spinal cord injury model mice. Differential expression analysis was carried out using the R package DESeq2 comparing Gsx1 and Nkx6.1 treatments at 3 and 35 days post-injury (DPI). Gene set enrichment (GSE) analysis and weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to identify gene, pathway, and molecular function level differences among treatment groups. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between Gsx1, Nkx6.1, and control treatments at 3 and 35 DPI. GSE analysis of transcriptomic differences revealed three novel insights into the behavior of Gsx1 and Nkx6.1 as SCI therapeutic agents (p-value < 0.05). Gsx1 was found to enhance gene sets related to axonogenesis throughout acute (3 DPI) and chronic (35 DPI) phases of injury as well as chronic phase neurogenesis and differentiation. Nkx6.1 was found to enhance cellular proliferation and immune response related gene sets in the acute phase of injury, while Gsx1 activated similarly related gene sets in the chronic phase of injury compared to Nkx6.1. WGCNA hub gene identification revealed 32 potential biomarkers associated with functional recovery in Gsx1 treated animals during the acute stage of SCI. These findings suggest that Gsx1 can enhance functional recovery in treated subjects through enhancement of axonogenesis, chronic phase neurogenesis, cellular proliferation and differentiation, and attenuation of acute phase immune response compared to Nkx6.1. Additionally, potential novel biomarkers were identified and implicated in acute phase functional recovery post SCI warranting further analysis as potential targets for future SCI therapeutics.M.S.Includes bibliographical reference
Neural dynamics and similarity matching: a computational approach inspired by hippocampal mechanisms
No full textThis dissertation explores the processes of similarity matching within the context of the mammalian hippocampus. The research delves into the fundamental mechanisms of learning and memory, emphasizing the time scales and fidelity associated with these processes. The study quantifies the dynamics of neural activity and information retention by utilizing techniques in neural data analysis, such as manifold learning and spectral embedding. In addition, a biologically inspired algorithm is developed, aligning computational models more closely with natural biological learning processes. The algorithm’s online formulation is adapted for semi-supervised learning, mirroring the natural progression of learning observed in the hippocampus. Further, the research extends the concept of ring attractor networks to more complex manifold networks, allowing for the representation of information on arbitrary compact Riemannian manifolds. This work advances our understanding of neural dynamics and offers insights into the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory. The culmination of these explorations provides a comprehensive discussion and highlights future research directions, presenting open-ended questions and challenges for further investigation.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
The modernization of the Rutgers Photochemical Assessment Monitoring Site and analysis of its multi-decadal boundary layer wind record
No full textOperating since 1994, the Rutgers Photochemical Assessment Monitoring Station (PAMS) at Rutgers University is the nation’s first permanent PAM Site. Due to New Jersey’s non-attainment for ozone, it is required that the state measure ozone and precursors. Over the course of the past 8 years, all of the equipment at the site has been upgraded or retrofitted to modern standards. Standard operating procedures and quality assurance guidelines have now been established which comply with the 2015 EPA Review of Ozone ambient air quality standards. An analysis of the dataset longest continuously operating instrument at the PAM Site, the 915 Mhz Wind Profiler, was performed. Analysis of the low mode data found the average wind speeds over NJ range from 6 m/s at 200 meters above ground level to around 10 m/s at 1km. Wind speed averages were higher in fall and winter, with springtime nearly aligning perfectly with overall yearly average. Wind direction, except for the lowest 300 m, averaged between 270-280 degrees, which is what was expected given the prevailing wind patterns in Central New Jersey. Overall, the profiler’s long-term analysis provides important insight for long term average wind values for NJ, an especially useful quantity for future offshore wind evaluation. This all culminates in the Rutgers PAM Site being the best condition that it has been in, the most comprehensive in terms of measurements, and thus keeping the future bright for this extensive atmospheric and photochemical assessment monitoring station.M.S.Includes bibliographical reference