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How to Introduce a Culture Without Talking About It or Why Mockumentary Works
No full textM.F.A.In this thesis, I explore the uses of the mockumentary genre in popular culture and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness as social commentary and critique. Many authors (e.g. Doherty, 2003) agree that mockumentary is a "soothing" genre that makes fun of the silliest human traits and allows the audience to be in a "superior" position. Mockumentary is also an increasingly popular form of narrative that employs the traditions and tools of the documentary genre to (1) parody archetypal characters present in popular culture and the media; (2) provide a critique of both characters in the film and the documentary genre; or (3) deconstruct the documentary genre itself and undermine the principles of the documentary. These three types of mockumentary are characterized by the degree of appropriation from the documentary genre, determined by how closely a mockumentary follows the rules and standards of documentary film. I use examples such as Best in Show (2000), The Office (2005), Borat (2006) and others to better understand mockumentary theory and analyze the specificities of the genre that work most effectively to deliver meaning and humor. I also discuss my thesis film project, its premise, and the events that led to its creation. I analyze the process of production and the challenges related to the chosen mockumentary genre. I use this particular form in order to attract the audience's attention and arouse their interest in the subject of the film.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Memories of Asylums: A Narrative Examination of Postwar State Hospital Experiences
No full textPh.D.This dissertation examines the memories of former asylum residents who were committed to American state-run psychiatric hospitals as patients between the 1940s and 1970s, the period characterized by the deinstitutionalization of asylum residents. In doing so, I introduce and examine two different modes of memories, collective and personal. The former asylum residents and patient liberation activists—who identify as consumers/survivors/ex-patients of psychiatry—used these two kinds of memory either as a platform to advance their political agendas or to navigate their lives in the community as former asylum residents. I demonstrate how they interacted with these two different modes of memory and explain how they shaped the history of state hospitals during that period. This dissertation considers former asylum residents as vibrant and essential, albeit not always equally empowered, political actors in the process of deinstitutionalization. The first-person narratives of asylum residents were excluded from historical inquiry because their testimony was regarded as unreliable, a stigma that stemmed from their diagnostic labels. However, historians of disability and madness have argued that scholars need to re-evaluate disabled or mad people’s first-person accounts as historical sources. In doing so, I investigate the memories of postwar asylums in the context of the postwar historic shift where an increasing number of former residents began re-examining their asylum experiences as a part of a larger story of liberation and empowerment of oppressed groups. This dissertation employs six oral interviews with former asylum residents. In addition to print and online sources, I have used a number of archival collections belonging to religious conscientious objectors, psychiatrists, journalists, and consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) of psychiatry activists.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
The Mechanisms of Manganese Trafficking Across the Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cell Barrier
No full textPh.D.Manganese (Mn) is a fundamental co-factor required for numerous biochemical reactions. In the brain, this requirement is expanded to aid in glutamine synthetase reactions and in synaptic neurotransmission. Although essential, if not regulated properly, manganese can be toxic to cell biology and whole-body systems. This is particularly true in the case of brain Mn accumulation that is associated with neurologic diseases that resemble Parkinson's disease. This brain Mn toxicity can arise from chronic exposure of inhaling Mn-rich fumes in occupations like welding or ingesting Mn-contaminated drinking water. Additionally, manganese dysregulation may be inherited by influencing the proteins involved in normal Mn trafficking mechanisms. In this circumstance, hyperaccumulation of Mn in the brain stems from high Mn levels in the systemic circulation, which crosses into the brain interstitium. It is not clear whether the mismanagement of Mn is occurring at the endothelial barrier cells, or whether brain Mn entry is a secondary effect of high liver and blood Mn concentrations. In this thesis, the former possibility is examined. Circulating Mn enters into the brain via transcellular passage through brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMVEC), which make up the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The mechanisms of Mn trafficking in this context remain largely unexplored. The intention of this dissertation is to describe the current advancement of the overall understanding of Mn trafficking at the BBB via BMVEC. Specifically, I outline the proteins involved in Mn uptake and efflux in BMVEC, and furthermore the factors influencing the regulation of its distinguished flux at this barrier. These regulatory mechanisms highlight the importance of these transport pathways in maintaining a healthy brain Mn balance.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Deposition and Fracture Patterns Within the Herkimer Quadrangle, NY: Implications for the Location and Character of the Herkimer Fault
No full textM.S.The Herkimer fault is a poorly understood structural feature in the Mohawk Valley of NY with no published information regarding it except for its appearance on the NYS geologic map in 1970 (Rickard et al., 1970). My study sought evidence for the fault boundary, including offset, fracturing, thickening on the hanging wall, and surficial lineaments. A combination of core and field data were used. I propose that a NE-striking fault passes in close proximity to the Farber Lane field site just north of the town of Herkimer where intensified fracturing occurs. Fracturing to the northeast of that site indicated the fault's trajectory switched from northeast to north or east. North of that fracturing, offset was found between two cores north of North Creek, as well as between Stony Creek and a core sample less than a kilometer south of it. Core 76NY-11 displayed complex deformation, brecciation, soft sediment deformation, and oblique slickenlines directly east of that offset. I concluded that the Herkimer fault is indeed present, but its trace requires minor revision and there is still uncertainty over its internal connectivity and dip. The southern portion of the fault trace needs to be oriented more to the northeast and its northern portion more to the east. I was not able to constrain the middle portion of the fault trace and it is open to more interpretation. That portion can be oriented possibly more to the north and moved to the east to reflect thickening on the hanging wall or removed to create two separate faults: a NE-striking fault in the south and an E-striking fault in the north. I also found that fault motion was syndepositional, oblique, variable through time. Future studies concerning the Herkimer fault should address its relationship to the other Mohawk Valley faults; its complex fault trace with a probable cross fault can serve as a model to consider for other faults in the region, such as NE-striking faults to the northwest and NNE-striking faults to the east.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Differential Changes in Electrophysiological Event-Related Oscillations Following Adaptive Working Memory and Visual Search Training
No full textM.A.In the past 15 years, a growing body of literature has examined the possibility that working memory (WM) can be improved with targeted training; however, disagreement remains regarding the effectiveness of WM training. Several studies have examined the neural correlates of WM, using methods that include Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). The present study examined the effects of two training protocols on measures of cognitive and behavioral performance, and neurophysiological functioning, as indexed by event-related oscillatory activity (event-related synchronization; ERS; and event-related desynchronization; ERD). The primary measures of interest were midfrontal ERS in the theta frequency band (4 – 8 Hz) and midline parietal ERD in the alpha frequency band (8 – 15 Hz). Participants underwent training on one of two different possible training protocols, either verbal WM or perceptual search training. Training was adaptive and consisted of 20 sessions completed over the course of four weeks for five days per week. Participants visited the laboratory both prior to and following training, during which time they performed several tasks while electroencephalogram (EEG) data was recorded. They also underwent neuropsychological/psychometric testing. The tasks performed before and after training included versions of the two training tasks, as well as another WM task. Oscillatory activity was extracted from each participant's EEG data using a complex Morlet wavelet convolution, implemented using the fast Fourier transform (FFT). ERS/ERD values were then extracted from the theta (ERS values) and alpha (ERD values) frequency bands. ERS was computed as the maximum increase in power compared to baseline (pre-stimulus) whereas the ERD was computed as the maximum decrease in power. Data were extracted from both frontal (Fz) and parietal (Pz) electrode clusters. These values were examined to determine whether there were differences between training groups (n-back or search), session (pre-test, post-test) and electrode cluster (Fz, Pz) for each task. Correlational analyses were used to assess the relationship between ERS/ERD and task performance at pre- and post-test, as well as changes in neuropsychological/psychometric test performance from pre- to post-test. Overall, results indicated that n-back training was unique in producing increased theta ERS during a Verbal 3-back task. Both n-back and search training resulted in increased theta ERS during an untrained spatial WM task. Both training protocols produced increased alpha ERD during a Search task. Further, there were specific associations between these ERS/ERD measures and behavioral measures. There was generally more variability between individuals in terms of performance at pre-test compared to post-test, which affected the strength of the correlations with ERS/ERD measures. Increased frontal theta ERS during the trained perceptual task was associated with improvement on a task of fluid intelligence, and during the untrained spatial WM task was associated with improvement on a task of WM/PS. As well, decreased parietal alpha ERD during the untrained spatial WM task was associated with improvement on a task of fluid intelligence. These results suggest that examination of oscillatory activity before and after cognitive training can provide unique insights about changes in brain processes that result from cognitive training.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
ST6GAL1 from the Blood to the Gut: Influence on Myelopoiesis and Gastrointestinal Radiation Sensitivity
No full textPh.D.The importance of protein glycosylation is becoming difficult to ignore, especially when studying how immune cells interact with their environment. An especially important glycan, built primarily by the sialyltransferase ST6GAL1, is α2,6-linked sialic acid occurring on N-linked glycan chains of cell surface and secreted proteins. α2,6-linked sialic acids have been shown to mediate numerous cellular events, from controlling hematopoiesis and inflammatory cell interactions, to influencing a cell's response to apoptotic signaling. Here we report novel roles for α2,6 sialylation: In mitigating death of gastrointestinal epithelial cells in response to high-dose total body irradiation and in preventing the maturation of monocytes into macrophages. Chapter 1 builds upon previous observations that, in vitro, several colon cancer cell lines exhibit increased radiation-induced apoptosis when ST6GAL1 is underexpressed, and that ST6GAL1 overexpression decreases radiation-induced apoptosis. Using an St6gal1-KO mouse model, we show that a lack of functional ST6GAL1 in vivo drastically increases the mouse's sensitivity to total body ionizing radiation, resulting in death that cannot be mitigated by bone marrow transplantation as it can in wild-type counterparts. Using various gross and histological observation methods, we observe that these St6gal1-KO mice experience severe damage to the gastrointestinal epithelium upon radiation exposure, resulting in a near-complete lack of functional GI crypt stem cells which are necessary to rebuild the epithelium after injury. Attempted rescue through inhibition of various cell death pathways, or the addition of recombinant ST6GAL1 back into St6gal1 KO animals was unable to rescue these mice. Finally, we speculate how future work could elucidate the exact mechanism at play in this phenotype, and how ST6GAL1 could be developed into a potential medical counter measure given directly after acute radiation exposure. In chapter 2 we identify a role for extrinsic sialylation of monocytes by ST6GAL1 in inhibiting their maturation into macrophages. We review the previously known roles of α2,6 linked sialylation, and glycosylation in general, in dictating myeloid cell development and function. We identify the MCSF receptor (CD115) as a target of sialylation by extracellular ST6GAL1 and show that sialylation diminishes MCSF signaling in the murine monocyte/macrophage cell line RAW 264.7. We show that extrinsic sialylation of primary monocytes inhibits their maturation into macrophages ex vivo, and that this results in diminished overall ability to respond to the inflammatory stimulant LPS. Furthermore, we show that sialylation of mature bone marrow derived macrophages does not influence the response to LPS. In chapter 3 we summarize the findings relating to the immune response in this thesis, and attempt to fit this into the overall view of ST6GAL1 and immunity. We discuss the influence of ST6GAL1 on myelopoiesis, the production and survival of B cells, and how this may impact the overall health of an organism. We review the sources of ST6GAL1 and sialic acids needed to facilitate the enzymatic addition of α2,6 linked sialic acids. We also provide evidence of ST6GAL1 involvement in disease states, especially cancer. Finally, we offer overall future directions and outstanding questions that may lead to the development of recombinant ST6GAL1, or the blocking of ST6GAL1 activity as potential therapies for disease states.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Large-Scale GW Quasiparticle Calculations for 3D and 2D Materials: Methodology Development and Applications
No full textPh.D.Understanding the excited states properties of materials has been and still is a central topic in condensed matter physics because of its fundamental and technological importance. Unfortunately, accurate and efficient theoretical calculations of the excited states properties of complex materials still pose significant challenges due to the unfordable scaling of the computational cost with respect to system size and complications of numerical convergence issues. Recently, two dimensional (2D) materials have attracted unprecedented research interest due to their extraordinary physical properties and potential uses in a wide-range of applications. Surprisingly, accurate calculations of the excited states properties of 2D materials poses far greater challenges compared with bulk (3D) solids. This thesis aims at developing computational methods for accurate and efficient calculations of complex bulk and 2D solids within the GW approximation, and the application of these new development to the understanding and prediction of the excited states properties of a wide range of 2D and 3D solids. Our methods promise a speed-up factor of up to two orders of magnitude for the GW quasiparticle calculations of large/complex 3D solids. For 2D materials, we have achieved a speed-up factor of up to three orders of magnitude. Using these newly developed methods, we have investigated the engineering of the near-edge electronic structure of layered material SnSe through Strains; we have also predicted the quasiparticle band structure of C3N and C3B, two recently discovered 2D materials, and those of 2D C2N and hexagonal BN (hBN). Finally, we investigate the possibility designing continuously tunable band gap 2D materials forming graphene-hBN lateral superlattices.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Human Mesh Reconstruction Through RF Signal
No full textM.S.Recently the human reconstruction in real world has become a spotlight task in Internet of Things (IOT) field and significant efforts have been made to explore device-free human skeleton reconstruction techniques that utilize the information from RF-signal. However the human mesh reconstruction task through commercial WiFi devices is still lack of explo- ration, which would be a more general solution to capture the human activities and expand the applicable scenarios of IOT. So in this paper we propose a deep learning framework to reconstruct 3D human Mesh from RF signals collected by commercial WiFi devices. From the pervasive WiFi signals, our framework can extract both shape and pose parameters of human body and construct the Skinned Multi-Person Linear (SMPL) human mesh. Besides, we also build a multi-camera 3D human skeleton reconstruction system which can output accurate human skeleton in complex scenes. This skeleton system makes it available to train our framework in more complex scenarios, which greatly improves the capacity of our framework. The evaluation results over multiple different motions collected from a real-world WiFi sensing testbed shows that our framework can reconstruct the 3D human mesh within centimeter-level error, which indicates the strong reconstructive potentiality of the framework.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Adaptable Paratransit Route Planning in Events of High Cancellations
No full textM.S.Transportation service providers fulfill customer service requests. They aim to serve the entire demand and plan accordingly to have them served within committed time intervals. However, cancellations of these requests become an integral part of their day-to-day operations. These cancellations can present itself in a variety of ways while carrying out routine scheduled trips. Depending on when they occur, they take a toll on the quality of service provided by the service provider. In order to anticipate the presence of these cancellations on the planning stage and accommodate them in the scheduling process, this paper considers an a priori policy with 2-stage recourse optimization on the stand Dial-a-Ride problem.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
UAV Search Path Optimization for Recording Emerging Targets
No full textM.S.This thesis considers the situation where targets emerge according to a non-homogeneous space-time Poisson Process during the mission. The only provided information is the functions of arrival rate for each cell in the area. Two heuristics are proposed. The firstheuristic is based on an approximation of the target recording problem as an orienteering problem with time windows (OPTW), in which the time window settings for each cell are associated with the type of target-emerging condition that it represents. The second heuristic is based on a Tabu search method. To analyze the effectiveness of both heuristics, target arrivals are simulated across many replications and summary statistics are obtained. Further, computational testing is conducted to study the impacts of three factors, sensor-capture radius, UAV speed, and UAV service time. The factorial analysis shows that sensor-capture radius and UAV service time affect performance significantly. Both heuristics deliver comparable solutions, with the Tabu search method consuming less CPU time. In terms of managerial insights, what we find is that cell visitation priorities should be based on a combination of factors, that include its target-emerging conditions, distance from the start and end points, and available mission time.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*