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Comparing Subjective Versus Objective Measures of Sleep
Get PDF2025 Spring Expo Poster Presentation Biological & Life Scienceshttps://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/sp-expo/1088/thumbnail.jp
Family Narratives Of Immigration And Identity
Get PDFThis study investigates themes and lessons present in diverse intergenerational family stories of immigration. Effects of participant perceptions of lesson valence on resilience and relational closeness were observed in an emerging adult sample (N = 42), using the lens of Communicated Narrative Sensemaking Theory (CNSM). Additionally, participant perception of lesson utility was observed in relation to emerging adults’ prior thought and intent to share their family stories. Lastly, with whom emerging adults share their family stories was considered. A mixed methods approach was employed, utilizing an online survey with scales and open-ended text boxes. Findings revealed thirty-three distinct themes and fifteen separate lessons. Further, there was a positive correlation between lesson valence and relational closeness, but not between lesson valence and resilience. Lesson utility was found to be positively correlated with intent to share. Lastly, the two most common groups emerging adults shared their family stories with were friends and lovers. Based on these results, this study concludes that sensemaking is present and observable in narrative, in accordance with CNSM. Thus, this study calls for the continued observation of emerging adults’ intent to share stories, a move to measuring participant perceptions of valence instead of researcher assigned tone, and the continued sharing of such stories in the general population
Co-Creating A Social, Emotional, And Mental Health Well-Being Group For College Students With Disabilities And/Or Chronic Health Conditions And Are Registered With Disability Support Services
Get PDFABSTRACT Nearly one in four adults in the United States report living with a disability (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024). According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (2023), approximately 21 percent of undergraduate students and 11 percent of postbaccalaureate students report having a disability. Students with disabilities in college encounter considerable obstacles that can adversely affect their mental health, academic performance, and general well-being. These obstacles encompass social isolation, stigma, and insufficient personalized support services, resulting in increased levels of anxiety, depression, and dropout rates compared to students without disabilities. Despite the critical need, there is a gap in the availability of programs specifically designed to address the social-emotional-mental well-being of college students with disabilities. To address this gap, this dissertation sought to co-create a well-being program tailored to the unique needs of college students with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions. The aims of this research were: • Aim 1: To systematically identify the social, emotional, and mental well-being needs and preferred support strategies of college students with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions through participatory research approaches. We administered an anonymous survey to 132 undergraduate and graduate students and conducted qualitative interviews and focus groups with college students with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions to explore their experiences, challenges, and needs related to social-emotional-mental well-being. Initially, the university Disability Support Services (DSS) disseminated the survey to registered students. To increase participation, we administered the survey to 14 students who were taking an undergraduate honors seminar focused on disabilities, chronic health conditions, and social-emotional-mental well-being promotion, taught by the doctoral student’s dissertation chair and the doctoral student who served as Teaching Assistant (TA). This group of students became the core group of students to help co-create the program. The students initially helped to refine the survey to ensure that it was user-friendly and engaging for students to complete. • Aim 2: To co-design a social-emotional-mental well-being program for college students with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions. We utilized participatory design methods to engage college students with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions in the co-creation of the well-being program. This process involved iterative feedback and prototyping to refine the program components. Specifically, we conducted six focus group sessions with three different groups. One group became the core group of students who helped to co-create the program. The three groups included: 1. Core Group (n=14 students): students who were taking an undergraduate honors seminar focused on disabilities, chronic health conditions, and social-emotional-mental well-being promotion, taught by the doctoral student’s dissertation chair and the doctoral student who served as Teaching Assistant (TA) February 13, 2025: Students completed the initial draft of the survey and provided feedback on the survey construction, and then provided qualitative feedback on SwDC social-emotional-mental well-being needs and preferences for the program. February 20, 2025: Students completed the final version of the survey and shared their insights and reflections on what they thought should be in the program. March 6, 2025: Students further shared their thoughts on what students would like for the program to be and how it could be structured and implemented. March 18, 2025: Shared themes and drafted curriculum components, received feedback, and incorporated feedback for final components. 2. GROWTH Group: • Students and staff (n=5) who have a disability and/or chronic health condition and work together with the doctoral student and dissertation chair on co-creating and implementing GROWTH: Growing Resilience Out of Wellness and Thoughtful Habits, a social-emotional-mental well-being program for people living with mobility limitations. • 5 participants; 1 session • Note: one group member participated in two separate in-depth interviews to further explore ideas. 2. Student Engagement and Enrichment (SEE) Group: • Students who participate in the UAB Student Engagement and Enrichment Program at UAB and identify as having a disability and/or chronic health condition • 3 participants; 1 session We conducted thematic analyses to identify preferences, common themes, and develop program structure, components, and implementation strategies. This research addresses a critical gap in the mental health and well-being support services available to college students with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions. By involving students in the co-creation process, the resulting program is tailored to self-identified specific needs, which we hope will lead to improvements in coping strategies and social connectedness as well as reductions in depression and anxiety. This dissertation is innovative in its use of participatory research methods to co-create a well-being program directly with students with disabilities and chronic health conditions for students with disabilities and chronic health conditions
Effects Of Single-Cell Dietary Protein Sources On Feeding, Growth, And Resource Allocation In The Juvenile Sea Urchin Lytechinus Variegatus
Get PDFAn understanding of nutrition can improve culture of sea urchins, whether as a research model or in the production of seafood products. Macronutrients, including dietary protein sources, can affect growth and reproductive profiles and alter resource allocation to somatic and gametic tissues. Although sea urchins in culture can be fed natural products, diet formulations using various ingredients can be developed to reliably produce desired outcomes. Single-cell protein sources represent a potential alternative to current industry standards of animal-derived protein sources such as fish and squid meal, which are becoming increasingly overfished and expensive. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of replacing fish and squid meal with commercially available single-cell protein sources in diets for juvenile Lytechinus variegatus. Juvenile L. variegatus (approx. 20 g whole-body wet weight, 39 mm diameter) were collected from Port St. Joe, FL and transported to UAB, where they were housed in recirculating aquaculture systems. Following a 10-day acclimation period, sea urchins were fed one of 7 randomly assigned formulated diets for 8 weeks. Four diets contained protein from only one source: fishmeal (FP), squid meal (SP), bacteria (BP), or yeast (YP). Three additional diets contained 50% protein from fishmeal and 50% protein from either squid meal (FP/SP), bacteria (FP/BP), or yeast (FP/YP). All diet treatments supported growth and 100% survival. Somatic growth was equivalent among all treatments except BP, which showed reduced somatic growth. Decreased gonad production was observed in sea urchins fed the YP or BP diets. All sea urchins, except one in the FP treatment, readily spawned and expressed gametes at termination. All gonad samples analyzed histologically (a random subset of males and females from the FP/SP, YP, and BP treatments) were in the growing stage of the reproductive cycle, with several exhibiting high proportions of germ cells relative to nutritive phagocytes. Overall, this study indicates that the yeast and bacterial SCPs can fully or partially replace animal-derived dietary protein sources in L. variegatus formulated diets. Keywords: sea urchin, protein, single-cell protein, nutrition, gonadosomatic index, aquacultur
Shades Of Health: Examining The Relationship Between Skin Color And Mental And Physical Health Across Immigrant Generations
No full textPrior research in immigrant health has often documented the “immigrant advantage” where first-generation immigrants tend to exhibit better health outcomes than their U.S.-born counterparts. However, this advantage declines across generations, prompting scholars to call for more nuanced examinations of the social processes shaping this generational health gradient. One such process is skin color stratification, a key but often overlooked dimension of inequality in the United States. While race and ethnicity are commonly used in health research, they often overlook within-group heterogeneity, particularly in relation to phenotypic characteristics such as skin tone. Although skin color can shape immigrants’ and their descendants’ health trajectories by influencing exposure to discrimination, access to resources, and social mobility, few studies have examined how skin tone contributes to health disparities by immigrant generation and across the life course. To address these gaps, I use data from four waves (1997, 2000, 2017, and 2019) of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) reflecting key life stages – adolescence and mid-adulthood. Using Ordinary Least Squares regression, I examine how the relationship between skin color and two health outcomes – body mass index (BMI) and poor mental health- differs by immigrant generation and gender. Overall, I find that skin color is significantly associated with both physical (measured by BMI) and mental health, though in distinct ways. In both adolescence and adulthood, darker skin is associated with higher BMI scores, with the strongest effects observed among second-generation immigrants in adolescence. In contrast, mental health findings reveal that medium- and dark-skinned individuals report better mental health than their light-skinned counterparts, with the generational moderation effect again most prominent in adolescence and among second-generation immigrants. By adulthood, skin color independently predicts mental health, regardless of immigrant generation. Notably, gender also moderates the relationship between skin color and health, with this effect strongest for women. These findings highlight the importance of considering skin tone and generational status as central axes of health stratification. Immigrant health research and policy must move beyond broad racial/ethnic categories to account for the within-group disparities that shape health trajectories across the life course
In Pursuit Of Sovereignty: Transformations Of Colonial Medicine From Wilhelmine To Nazi Germany
Get PDFAfter the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the Great Powers of Europe, including the newly-born German Empire, greatly expanded their influence and colonial possessions in Africa, with colonies in East Asia and the South Pacific quickly following suit. The German Empire, like its contemporaries, engaged with medicine as a necessary part of its colonial endeavors in order to keep both its native laborers and European settlers healthy. Using documents from the German Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive), including official reports made to the German Colonial Office and documenting of formally conducted expeditions, as well as the writings of colonial doctors, this research examines the various influences on and foundations of colonial medicine and the accompanying pushes for professional independence, medical sovereignty (the idea that doctors should have a leading role in societal improvements and policy decisions) and the creation of a medically suitable white settler space in the colonies. This research also explores how colonial medicine impacted the post-colonial imagination of German physicians and contributed to their sanitized colonial nostalgia and yearning for their former prestige. In doing so, this research helps illuminate the unique role of colonialism in shaping many of the foundations for modern German medicine and the continuities between the mentalities of colonial medicine and those of Nazi medicine
A Lament For The Perishing Barbarians Of Edith Wharton’S Summer
Get PDFThis thesis considers Edith Wharton’s Summer through a Darwinian perspective. Wharton studied Darwin’s works extensively, so applying The Descent of Man to Summer’s communities has merit. Specifically, I consider Darwin’s writings on evolution as evolution may be altered by feelings of sympathy. In Summer, it is sympathy, loyalty, and ultimate benevolence for one’s people that furthers community evolution as a whole. This relationship between sympathy and community evolution seems to be one Wharton focuses on in Summer. The urban communities of Wharton’s novel pretended to be the most civil and therefore the most evolved, but it is their Mountain neighbors – supposedly rural savages – that are Wharton’s actual most evolved characters. Moreover, these “savages,” including mountain-born protagonist Charity, represent a threat to their “civil” down-the-Mountain neighbors. With the second industrial revolution doubly expanding urban communities and shrinking rural ones, Summer’s Mountain is closer to civilization than it once was. Proximity incites fear of that wild Mountain other in civilized communities like North Dormer, bringing two responses: First, reiterate the boundary. Second, if the boundary between civil and savage, order and disorder weakens, just eliminate the other by incorporation, absorption, or assimilation
Maternal Immune Activation Causes Oligodendrocyte Deficits in the Hypothalamus
Get PDFMaternal immune activation (MIA) refers to the occurrence of an inflammatory immune response during any stage of pregnancy. This manifests as the upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines and can be caused by air pollution, obesity, or viral infection. When this occurs during the first trimester in humans, it increases the offspring’s susceptibility to developing neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism (ASD) and schizophrenia (SZ), in males more commonly than females. In addition to behavioral manifestations of neuropsychiatric disorders, metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a common comorbidity, defined as the co-occurrence of three or more symptoms including but not limited to hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance. While this may be the result of neuronal dysfunction in the hypothalamus, which regulates the body’s response to nutrients, the mechanism by which this may occur remains unclear. In this study, we explored oligodendrocyte precursors (OPCs) as potential mediators of neuronal function in the hypothalamus, as oligodendrocyte (OL) and myelin pathology have emerged as hallmarks of the impaired neural communication seen in ASD and SZ. We aimed specifically to analyze OPCs, as myelinating OLs are not present in the brain at the time in development when MIA is induced, or during the first trimester of human pregnancy. Our hypothesis that MIA induces damage to OPCs in a sex and region-specific manner outlines one way in which MIA differentially affects male and female offspring, providing further evidence for the role of glial cells in neuropsychiatric disorders and their comorbidities