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Penn Library\u27s LJS 322 - [Fragments from Books III-V of Qānūn fī al-ṭibb] (Video Orientation)
No full texthttps://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1114/thumbnail.jp
Perceptual Consequences and Neural Mechanisms of Auditory Adaptation
No full textDuring everyday listening, we seldom hear sounds in isolation. Whether listening to someone speak over the hum of an air conditioner, or in the bustle of traffic, the things we hear are commonly embedded in background sounds. In the previous example, the acoustic backgrounds, or contexts, have very different statistics. The sound of an air conditioner is composed of sounds that are not very loud nor very quiet; as such, its volume does not vary much over time. On the other hand, the sound of traffic can vary greatly over time, from relatively quiet periods when not many cars are present to very loud sounds such as a car horn or truck engine. In this example, the dynamic range, or contrast, of the sound of the air conditioner is low, while the contrast of the sound of traffic is high. Changes in contrast pose a unique challenge to the auditory system, which is composed of neurons with limited dynamic range. In order to consistently encode changes in volume within these two contexts, auditory neurons adapt the sensitivity of their response to compensate for the change in contrast, a process known as contrast gain control. In this thesis, we test whether contrast gain control affects the way mice hear target sounds (Chapter 2), examine the neural substrates of this behavior (Chapter 3) and explore neural mechanisms for contrast gain control (Chapter 4). We found that stimulus contrast shapes perception and neural encoding of target sounds, that auditory cortex is necessary for this process, and identified a specific inhibitory cell-type that controls gain. Taken together, this body of work demonstrates that the things we hear are shaped by efficient neural encoding of incoming information, and points towards neural mechanisms that would allow targeted manipulation of the process of perception
BLUE-LINED COMMUNITIES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXPANSION OF THE NASSAU COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT DURING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, 1954-1971
Get PDFThis thesis explores the social and operational expansion of the Nassau County Police Department on Long Island, New York from the years 1954 to 1971, illustrating the different articulated goals of the department during transitions such as police professionalization, the War on Crime, desegregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. It shows how the Department accumulated social and economic capital in Nassau County, especially during the 1960s, and earned its reputation as an essential institution during and after the Civil Rights Movement. This thesis also provides some social history of Black suburbanization and the how Black Nassau County residents understood and expressed their desires for political, social, and economic enfranchisement within the boundaries of suburban space during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s
The Law of the Other: Converts and Gentiles in the Eyes of Seventeenth-Century Istanbul Rabbis
Get PDFThe Jewish communities of seventeenth-century Istanbul comprised coherent societies featuring religious and judicial structures apart from Ottoman administration. Members of these Jewish enclaves typically interacted with members of the surrounding Ottoman society in their everyday lives. Using the available responsa literature, documents comprising anonymous questions to which notable rabbis would issue responses rooted in Jewish law, this paper explores financial, legal, and ethical conflicts between Jews and Muslims, including new Muslims who had converted from Judaism. The paper argues for a conceptualization of Jewish society in the Ottoman world as fluid and open to exchange with neighboring Ottoman and Muslim identities. Furthermore, the paper also argues for the conceptualization of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire as a network of smaller enclaves with nuanced differenced that maintained interaction with each other, rather than as a singular, monolithic community. The conclusions and conjectures found in the paper, based on this argument, produce material for further research on the relationship between a governing society and a network of communities within the Ottoman Empire and the broader early modern world
Building the Battle, Losing the War: The Defense Economy, Industrial Capitalism, and the Cold War’s Fallout in Alabama’s ‘Model City’
Get PDFThroughout the early twentieth century, Anniston, Alabama was a stronghold of military-industrial power in the United States. Due to its beginnings as a planned, industrial city, Anniston easily attracted formidable capital in the soil pipe, textile, and chemical industries, sparking economic and infrastructural development. Concurrently, the establishment of Fort McClellan and the Anniston Army Depot by the United States Army fused the manufacturing powers of the region with the Army\u27s military conquests. Throughout WWI, WWII, and the Cold War years, military brigades such as the Women’s Army Corps, Military Police Corps, and Army Chemical Corps trained at McClellan, infusing the local economy with capital through job creation, contracts to local companies, and money spent off-base. Confounding phenomena of U.S. military deescalation in the late Cold War era, deindustrialization in the American manufacturing sector, and the increasingly technological orientation of global warmaking rendered much of Anniston\u27s economy obsolete by the early 1970s. Despite wide-ranging activism from local boosters and politicians, the end of the twentieth century in Anniston would be marked by factory closings and military downsizing, culminating in the shuttering of Fort McClellan by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) in 1995. This thesis seeks to follow how the military, private corporations, governing bodies, and everyday Americans in Anniston interacted in a political economy driven by capitalist profit incentives and a military industrialism. It seeks, ultimately, to trace Anniston\u27s tumultuous history in order to understand the impacts of the military-industrial complex on everyday American life in the twentieth century
Get Loony with Play and Other Positive Interventions: Positive Psychology Recommendations and Interventions for the Great Lake Loons
Get PDFThe Great Lakes Loons nonprofit minor league baseball team is built on high quality connections among its staff and between its staff and fans. But after a year of stress and uncertainty resulting from Covid-19 and its consequences, the organization confronted challenges including workplace stress and lingering negative emotions and cognitions related to employee downsizing. The organization may benefit from recommended interventions at the individual, organizational, and community level. At the individual level, the Loons may benefit from supporting staff to develop coping mechanisms for stress and positive psychology strategies for increasing hope, optimism, and other aspects of wellbeing. At the organizational level, the Loons may benefit from increasing play and humor within their workplace culture to build on their strong foundation of high quality connections. And at the community level, the organization may benefit from hosting an Appreciative Inquiry summit to reconnect with the community and reinvigorate the meaning staff derive from their work. A full intervention, including development of the Get Loony Playbook, to assist the organization with increasing playfulness and fun at work is included. Organizations that seek to increase positive emotions and high quality connections can look to this intervention for inspiration
Penn Library\u27s Ms. Codex 1656 - Memorial [manuscript] (Video Orientation)
No full texthttps://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1124/thumbnail.jp
Physics 516: Electromagnetic Phenomena (Spring 2023)
Get PDFThese course notes are made publicly available in the hope that they will be useful. All reports of errata will be gratefully received. I will also be glad to hear from anyone who reads them, whether or not you find errors: [email protected]
The Antifederalists Were (Mostly) Right: An Analysis of Modern American Public Opinion on the Concerns of the Antifederalists
Get PDFThis thesis analyzes the connection between Antifederalist objections to Constitutional ratification and modern-day public opinion on related topics to see the long-term validity of the Antifederalist claims. Using Pew Research Center data, this study focuses on topics of rural consciousness, nationalism, presidential identity, governmental distance from constituency, and the Electoral College as proxies through which to consider Antifederalist claims. The use of proxies is meant to allow the contextualization of Antifederalist attitudes within a context that will produce meaningful public opinion data. This paper also seeks to find explanatory variables for the trends discovered in the data. The results show that the core ideas behind Antifederalist concerns are still largely present within the American public, specifically related to nationalism, congress being too distant from the constituency, and the Constitution being too difficult to amend. The growth of presidential power making presidential identity unimportant, though, is not present and thus contradict part of Antifederalist claims. This study adds to the field of American politics by taking a novel approach in considering the long-lasting impact of Antifederalism. This group is frequently overlooked and discounted, but this study shows that, perhaps, they deserve to be given more credit for their anxieties than they often are