University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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BLACK FACES IN BLUE UNIFORMS: DESEGREGATING THE BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT 1920-1950
No full textIn 1937, the Baltimore city police department hired its first African-American officer. Her hire and the subsequent hire, seven months later, of four black male officers represented the culmination of nearly two decades of civil rights activism by a coalition of print media, middle-class reformers, and cooperative politicians. I argue that civil rights activity in Baltimore, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, was generally nonviolent and led by a strong-willed, generally secular cadre of middle-class African Americans. In addition, because of its border state status, racial gains occurred earlier in Baltimore than they did in Dixie, but not as early as they did in more northern cities. The leaders of Baltimore's civil rights movement used their political and journalistic influence to call for and effect change. The process of desegregating the city's police department is a clear example of this. I begin with a general narrative of the campaign for desegregation between 1920 and 1950. Using the reporting and editorializing of the Baltimore Afro-American, I explain the importance of desegregation to the community, not only as a tangible example of racial progress, but as acknowledgment of the rising civic power of African-American Baltimoreans. I explore issues related to the police department and its integration, including the racial and sexual power dynamics inherent between any police force and its community, especially in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I also examine the economic class of the activists and the first few officers as a means of reiterating the fundamentally middle-class nature of this particular civil rights campaign
Female color preferences, ecological selection, and the evolution of male coloration in darters (Percidae: Etheostomatinae)
No full textSince Charles Darwin's initial observations and hypotheses, the evolution of elaborate male coloration in sexually dichromatic species has been the subject of great interest. Of particular recent interest is how sexual and ecological selection interact to shape variation in male coloration between closely-related species. Using darters (Percidae: Etheostomatinae), a group of fishes that vary in male coloration as a model system, my goal is to determine how sexual and ecological selection interact to shape variation in male coloration between as well as within species lineages. In Chapter 1, I used reflectance spectrophotometry to examine correlations between spectral properties of orange and blue pigmentation in the rainbow darter, Etheostoma caeruleum, with parasite load and observed a correlation between the chroma of orange bars with parasite counts. In Chapter 2, I quantified color preferences in the darter genus Etheostoma to determine if the strengths of attraction to different colors coincided with variation in male coloration between species. The females of most achromatic species exhibited no significant color preferences, while chromatic species varied in preferences, with a positive association between the presence of red or orange on the flanks and preference for red detected across all species. In Chapter 3 I utilized phylogenetic comparative approaches and a laboratory experiment of predator color preferences to quantify the role of ecological variables in shaping variation in male coloration in darters. Compared to achromatic species, chromatic darters tend to inhabit environments where predation risk would be lower; specifically, shallower, faster-flowing upland streams with a lower number of overlapping predatory species. Additionally, a common darter predator, largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), exhibited significant preferences for red stimuli in a color choice experiment. Finally, in Chapter 4 I investigated color and size correlations, as well as male and female preferences for different sized and colored mates, in the Roanoke darter, Percina roanoka. Using digital photography I found correlations between size and color, but no preferences for larger or more colorful mates were observed in either sex. The results of this dissertation suggest that sexual and ecological selection do interact to shape color variation between darter species
POSITIVE MOOD AND SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN
No full textPositive mood predicts a broad range of psychological correlates of well-being in children. The present study examined the effects of positive mood on 3 components of social information processing (SIP) in young children including cue encoding, cue interpretation, and response access. The study hypothesized that positive mood and positive emotionality would have main effects on global orientation, response access, and socially competent responding and would also have an interactive effect on these variables. It was also hypothesized that anger would increase anger attribution bias. A computer game, during which participants won or unfairly lost toys, was used to induce happiness and anger in 104 participants recruited from Head Start Centers in urban communities. Participants also were exposed to a neutral stimulus during which they viewed pictures of everyday household and classroom objects. Friedman tests were used to examine the main and interactive effects of positive mood and positive emotionality on cue encoding and response access and the main effect of anger on cue interpretation. Spearman correlations were used to examine the relation between positive emotionality and SIP variables. Results indicated that positive mood has a positive main effect on global orientation and interacts with positive emotionality to predict global orientation such that the effect of positive mood is stronger and more positive for children higher in positive emotionality. Implications for these findings are discussed
Impact of Federally Qualified Health Centers on Rates of Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions among Medicaid and Uninsured Populations in Maryland
No full textAmbulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSCs) are conditions for which hospitalization and emergency department (ED) visits can be avoided if a person has better access to ambulatory care services. Rates and costs of hospital admission and ED visits for ACSCs have increased over the decade, especially for people without health insurance and/or on Medicaid. Objectives of this dissertation were to study ACSC rates in Maryland over time, identify areas where ACSC rates had been persistently high, determine factors that were associated with ACSCs, and examine if the expansion of FQHCs had decreased ACSCs in geographical areas over the study period. The study used Maryland hospital discharge data to identify ACSCs based on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) definition of Prevention Quality Indicators (PQIs). A Zip Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) was used as a unit of analysis. ACSCs and all controlled factors were calculated at the ZCTA level from 2000 to 2010. Negative binomial panel models were used to determine trends, and to estimate the impact of FQHCs and other factors on ACSCs. The study found that ACSC rates among Medicaid and uninsured patients had increased over time for several conditions while such conditions among total populations remained stable or decline. In addition, variations in hospitalization and ED visits for ACSCs existed across Maryland's counties and local areas, but the rates seemed consistent within the areas over time. Proportion of populations living in poverty had the largest and consistently positive relationship with most ACSC hospitalization and ED visit rates. The relationships between ACSCs and other socioeconomic factors are varied by type of condition. Importantly, the expansion of FQHCs had a significant association with lower rates of hospitalization and ED visits for several ACSC conditions. Thus, the expansion of FQHCs is associated with better access to primary care among Medicaid and uninsured populations
Using an Intelligent Interviewer to Conduct Cognitive Assessments
No full textCognitive assessments are conducted in one of two ways; a trained professional will conduct a face-to-face interview, collecting the answers from the interviewee during the interaction; or a computer will present an inventory as a list of questions and multiple-choice answers. While a trained professional can provide an individualized assessment there is also concern that the interviewee can appear different while interacting with different assessors. Although conducting the assessment using a computer provides a consistent and cost-effective way of conducting an inventory this static process affects interpretation because it does not provide a means of clarification either for the user or the computer: the user to clarify ambiguous wording, or the computer to clarify potential conflicting responses from the user. This dissertation researches an Intelligent Interviewer conducting a cognitive assessment, specifically a learning style inventory. The Intelligent Interviewer was presented to the participants in two forms: an Embodied Interviewer, where the user and computer conversed vocally and visually; and a Text Interviewer, where the user and computer conversed by typing and reading text. Both the subjective and objective evaluation metrics were studied to determine the user experience, effectiveness, and efficiency of the Intelligent Interviewer
USERS' PRIVACY AND SECURITY BEHAVIORS ON MOBILE DEVICES.
No full textPreferences and behaviors for privacy management with mobile applications are difficult to capture. Previous measures are mostly based on self-report data, which often does not accurately predict actual user behavior. A deeper understanding was sought, gleaned from observing actual practices. This thesis analyzes 11,777 applications from the Google Play marketplace in order to determine the impact of privacy settings on purchase behavior. This was done by looking at the effect of the number of privacy concessions as well as the effect of individual concessions and category on number of downloads. It was found that users of paid applications do not have a preference for fewer privacy concessions. This study further reinforces the disconnect between the user's often stated preference for privacy and their actual behavior – a discrepancy known as the “privacy paradox ”. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed
Developing a Cybersecurity Text Corpus and its Application for Augmenting Semantic Text Similarity
No full textThe growing use of cyber-services automatically impart great importance to cybersecurity. The Internet is a primary source of information regarding software flaws, vulnerabilities, cyber-attacks and exploits. This information is available through vulnerability databases, news articles, security bulletins and blogs. Variety of applications and security systems like Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), etc. can take advantage of this information for consolidating their infrastructure. The lack of availability of ready text corpus of high quality security information from various sources makes it difficult for these applications to use this information. To overcome this problem our work focuses on building a multi-genre corpus of security text using information retrieved from multiple internet based sources; National Vulnerabilities Database, Wikipedia articles, security blogs, security bulletins and scholarly papers. The system builds a text classifier from the initial high quality data which is used to classify and accommodate new data from these sources into the corpus. This corpus can be used by variety of applications like IDS or IPS, in variety of ways like assertion into knowledge base or extraction of named entities. Our work explores one of the applications of generating the semantic text similarity model for cybersecurity text. We use the multi-genre cybersecurity text corpus for creating the word co-occurrence model. This model can extract the synonymity between the different security terms. For example, the words 'virus' and 'malware' that have same context are scored for their degree of similarity. The word co-occurrence model is then extended to generate a semantic text similarity model.The text similarity model extracts the semantic text similarity between different security texts like titles of the papers, vulnerability descriptions, blog paragraphs, etc. The system also develops a combined text similarity model from cybersecurity similarity model and generic text similarity model. This model can be used in document mining for matching security text, clustering documents describing similar vulnerabilities and so on
Self-rated health and chronic disease status: A biopsychosocial examination
No full textPoor self-rated health is consistently associated with increased mortality risk. Here we examined whether self-rated health was similarly related to prevalent chronic disease. We further evaluated potential biopsychosocial mediators of the association including biomedical (i.e. white blood cell, hemoglobin, total cholesterol, albumin, resting systolic blood pressure, estimated glomerular filtration rate, body mass index), psychological (i.e. anxiety, depressive symptoms, perceived stress), and social (i.e. healthcare barriers, and poverty status) factors. Race was explored as a moderator. Participants were 2,802 adults (56% female; mean age = 48 years; mean education = 12 years; 58% Black) from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Lifespan study (HANDLS). Self-rated health was dichotomized into Good and Poor categories, and the number of chronic diseases (diagnosed via history, laboratory testing, and physical examination) were summed. Likelihood of chronic disease as a function of self-rated health and its interaction with race was examined in sex-stratified negative binomial regressions, adjusted for relevant demographic factors and health behaviors. Results showed that, irrespective of race, poor self-rated health was associated with increased likelihood for chronic disease in men [OR = 1.26, 95% CI 1.070, 1.482] and women [OR = 1.32, 95% CI 1.157, 1.512]. Psychological factors attenuated this association for men (7%) and women (9%). Overall, the findings suggest that individuals may be largely accurate in evaluating their physical health status. However, further exploration of intermediary factors is warranted. Better understanding of how self-rated health impacts chronic disease may help clinicians identify individuals at greatest risk for mortality
Refinement of a Food Allergy Knowledge Test
No full textFor parents of children with food allergy, illness knowledge includes a detailed understanding of the diagnosis, treatment, and responses to allergen exposure. Illness knowledge is essential for proper management of food allergy, especially due to its potentially life-threatening nature. Food allergy knowledge is a key concept for this chronic illness population. The current study aimed to contribute such a tool to the literature by building on a past study (Hahn, Dahlquist, & Bollinger, 2011) in which a food allergy test (The FAKT) was developed following rigorous measurement guidelines. The current study further developed this measure by testing it on a representative sample and, through revisions, established a final version of the test. The final version of the FAKT was determined to have strong psychometrics, as well as determined to be appropriately reliable and valid
Novel proteomic tools to understand fungal cell wall development and repair
No full textFilamentous fungi of genus Aspergillus represent a good assortment of microbes having enormous value in the bioprocessing industry and those demonstrating pathogenic activity in either plants [3] or people [4]. Fungal cell wall proteins (CWPs) protect the cell against stressful conditions in a fermenter [1], control branching [2,3] and are promising antifungal drug targets [4]. To this end the broad goal of my research is to develop novel proteomic strategies to identify and quantify change in expression of proteins that play a formidable role in cell wall development and repair. To begin with we developed a procedure to extract cell wall proteins from isolated cell walls and identify them using shotgun proteomic workflows consisting of reverse phase liquid chromatography followed by tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). In order to isolate cell walls we used sophisticated washing steps followed by two different approaches to extract CWPs from isolated cell walls which were then subjected to shotgun proteomics. Overall 34 nominal cell wall proteins were identified including proteins essential for cell wall integrity signaling (CWIS) and each step of cell wall biosynthesis. Next we established a tool to quantify changes in cell wall protein expression compatible with shotgun proteomic workflow using Deuterium Isobaric Amine Reactive Tag (DiART) reagents. DiART represents cost-effective isobaric tagging reagents due to incorporation of deuterium isotopes. We corroborated the feasibility of performing protein quantitation on a LTQ mass spectrometer using quantitative data obtained from DiART tagged synthetic peptides, model protein mixtures and complex cell wall proteins. Subsequently we proved the applicability of DiART for quantitative phosphoproteomic workflows using DiART tagged phosphopeptides subjected to affinity enrichment using TiO2 resins. Finally we focused our efforts on characterization of phosphorylation mediated regulatory networks in A. nidulans which would be valuable for overall fungal research. Using a bottom-up phosphoproteomic workflow and a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer Q-Exactive, we identified 1637 unique phosphopeptides from 647 phosphoproteins. Functional classification and kinase-substrate analysis collectively revealed clear association of the phosphoproteome and cellular events essential for fungal morphology and secretion. Overall our methodology could be used to quantify changes in cell wall protein expression and phosphorylation, both of which are inherently observed in CWIS