18525 research outputs found
Sort by
Do Right By
No full textA collection of poems exploring the nature of landscapes as fundamentally cultural constructs. Written in the wake of New Formalism, the poems within Do Right By exemplify the notion that poetry is mathematical language, calculated and calculable. Inherited forms founded upon quantifiable rhythms mingle with new forms, all relayed by a speaker who discovers local history for the first time, engaging with the similarly inherited legacies of environmental change and white nationalism in what today is the Piedmont Southeast. Subject matter includes but is not limited to boyhood, twig knowledge, acts of cruelty, the afterlives of Confederate monuments, suburbanization and industrialization, barbeque restaurants, and fossil-hunting. Pastiches and parodies abound, participating in dialogues about the experiences and expectations of men with a cohort of male forebears, including both regional male authors such as Don West and major male poets like John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, W.B. Yeats, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Lowell, James Dickey, Robert Duncan, A.R. Ammons, and David Bottoms, among others. While ten of the twenty-six short poems in Do Right By are inspired by common structures, such as the sonnet or ballad, sixteen are written in a close imitation of another work. Included are six footprint poems: a new form, invented for the collection, that involves filling the exact syllabic footprint of a pre-existing poem with new language. A central closet drama, “Vigil Strange,” about the life and death of a politicized childhood friendship, utilizes the performance-driven, monologic speech of the short poems toward a narrative turn within the collection as a whole. Created is a post-epic ecosystem that incorporates countless contemporary topics and contemporary rhythms, which each have historical precedents
Programs and Policies to Support Postsecondary Success in Tennessee
No full textNearly 62% of middle and high school students say they want to pursue higher education, and 83% of these students agree that obtaining a college education is important (Gallup & Walton Family Foundation, 2023). Yet students face well-documented obstacles along the path to a college degree. Between 10-40% of high school graduates who have been admitted to a college do not end up enrolling in the fall—a phenomenon referred to as “summer melt” (Castleman & Page, 2014; 2020). For students that do enroll in college, a substantial portion are placed into remedial, non-credit-bearing courses (Chen, 2016; De Brey et al., 2023), and only about 47% of students attending 4-year colleges and 34% of students attending 2-year colleges ultimately finish their degree “on-time” (De Brey et al., 2023). These struggles are faced by thousands of high school graduates each year, underscoring the need to re-examine support systems for students as they transition from high school to college and career. To address these issues, education policymaking has increasingly focused on improving support systems for students and on strengthening connections between K-12 education, college, and the workforce. However, it is not always clear which policy solutions are working and for whom.
The following papers study policies and programs within Tennessee to examine different elements of the secondary and postsecondary systems that are designed to strengthen students’ skills and support their progress to and through higher education. Papers one and two are from a mixed methods study exploring federal and state college and career readiness accountability indicators in a public school district. In chapter one, I conduct a quantitative analysis of the relationship between meeting accountability indicator criteria and college-going among students. In chapter two, I use interviews with school and district personnel to explore how accountability indicators are used to shape school- and district-level decisions. I also combine this qualitative analysis with the findings from chapter one to explore how participants’ perceptions about the utility of state indicators compare to the measured relationship between indicators and outcomes. Paper three is a quantitative analysis of the secondary-level International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge Advanced International Examinations programs where I estimate the impact of different levels of performance on IB and Cambridge Advanced assessments on a range of college outcomes for high school students. Paper four is a qualitative study from a larger evaluation of a support program for community college students at Nashville State Community College, where I use interview data with part-time college students to understand the relevance of time poverty theory (Vickery, 1977; Wladis et al., 2018, 2022) for understanding and supporting non-traditional college students as they enter college and complete their studies. Together, these papers paint a picture of how policies, programs, and actors at different levels of the education system in a single locality shape a range of pathways through which students transition between high school, college, and career
Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Physiologic Sodium (23Na) for Human Lymphatic Disease
No full textDespite the prevalence of lymphedema, few objective tools exist to quantify the severity of lymphatic disease in a way that is sensitive to the complex physiologic changes occurring in affected tissues. Current clinical tools are not sufficient to capture disease features, especially when adipose tissue remodeling is prominent. Tissue sodium could be a relevant physiologic indicator of lymphatic disease, based on preclinical models showing that lymphatics participate in sodium storage and clearance to maintain homeostasis. However, the importance of sodium to lymphatic physiology in humans is not well-characterized, nor exploited for clinical applications, largely due to a lack of methods to observe both sodium and lymphatics together in vivo. Sodium (23Na) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a translational imaging modality capable of noninvasively measuring tissue sodium. We hypothesize that sodium content is elevated in tissues that exhibit lymphatic insufficiency and tissue remodeling in human lymphatic disease. In this dissertation, we implemented sodium (23Na)-MRI together with hydrogen (1H)-MR lymphangiography and anatomical imaging in patients with localized leg lymphedema to study disease characteristics and the relationship between lymphatic function and tissue sodium. Results found that tissue sodium content, measured with 23Na-MRI, increases with lymphedema disease severity and decreases following lymph-mobilization therapy. Sodium accumulation was observed in distinct locations in the adipose tissue, suggesting a link between sodium storage, lymphatic anatomy, and tissue remodeling. We also evaluated the relationship between local tissue sodium measurements and systemic sodium excretion to offer study design guidance for future 23Na-MRI studies in lymphatic disease, further promoting the clinical translation of this technique. Altogether, this work implemented objective, physiologic imaging methods to demonstrate an anatomical and functional relationship between lymphatics and tissue sodium in human lymphedema. This research addresses a clinical unmet need of patients with lymphedema by introducing a non-invasive tool sensitive to underlying disease mechanisms and laying foundations for clinically translatable ²³Na-MRI in lymphatic disease. More broadly, this work supports the emerging role of lymphatic circulation in human diseases involving sodium storage, and it demonstrates translational imaging approaches necessary to explore lymphatic health and disease
Evaluating the Need for Advanced Practice Providers in the Pre-Hospital Setting
No full textSchool of Nursing Doctor of Nursing Practice Program ProjectEmergency Departments (ED) have become overburdened from low acuity patients which can lead to increased burnout for medical staff in both the hospital and prehospital setting (Murphy et al., 2020; Osliso et al., 2022). With the implementation of Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) in the field, a true “treat and street” protocol can be practiced. The communities benefit from having access to an Emergency Medicine Provider as well as continued care via the community paramedic (Jacobsohn et al., 2022). The healthcare system will benefit due to having less patients needing to use EMS and ED resources (Joy et al., 2019). Allowing APPs to respond to low acuity calls in the pre-hospital setting has the potential to positively impact all aspects of emergency medical services at the pre-hospital setting (Mechem et al., 2019). By implementing an Advanced Practice Provider in the Emergency pre-hospital setting, evidence shows that patients receive the care they are seeking, while also relieving the burden on EMS (Schmiedhofer et al., 2016).
Setting is in Greenville, North Carolina. Patients calling the 911 system to seek care in the Emergency Department (ED) via Greenville Fire & Rescue (GFR) who provide EMS and transport to the Level One Trauma Center. Participants: All Adults aged ? 18yrs old, calling Greenville Fire & Rescue from 02/2023-02/2024 for EMS and labeled as Low Acuity. Intervention: Request for 911 call data from GFR was placed by project lead. Data for patients that met inclusion criteria was received for 12 months from 2023-2024. This information was consolidated by low acuity complaints; selecting patients that did not receive intervention from EMS and were transported to the ED. Through descriptive data analysis of 14,245 calls annually from 2023-2024, a random 30 day sample was obtained where 142 non-emergent, low acuity patients were transported to the ED with no interventions from EMS.
Through descriptive data analysis of 14,245 calls annually, a random month sample was obtained where 142 non-emergent, low acuity calls were transported to the hospital with no interventions from EMS. Therefore, those 142 calls, with APP intervention there could have been an opportunity to treat and release the patient from the scene instead of transporting to the Emergency Department. Descriptive statistic analysis of the EMS data from Greenville Fire & Rescue reveals 46% of the calls over 12 months were low acuity calls. Further investigation revealed that out of 30 randomly selected consecutive days, 142 calls were low acuity calls that were also transported to the ED, non-emergently. These findings demonstrate a need for APPs in the pre-hospital setting to care for low acuity EMS calls, thereby meeting overall aim of this project. Furthermore, while patient outcomes were not measured in the project, the findings highlight a potential mismatch between patient needs and resource utilization. Limitations: No patient outcome data was collected. Classification of acuity was based on EMS triage maybe subject to variability. Data analysis focused on descriptive findings; casual relationships or effectiveness of interventions were not assessed.
These results suggest an opportunity to explore the implementation of a “treat and street” model in which Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) are integrated into the pre-hospital setting to evaluate and manage low-acuity cases on site. While this project did not directly measure patient outcomes, system savings or the impact of APPs, the data highlight a pattern of potentially avoidable transports. This trend contributes to increased demand on EMS personnel and adds strain to Emergency Department resources. Based on these observations, incorporating APPs to manage low-acuity patients
Mechanisms of Topoisomerases and Topoisomerase Poisons During Vertebrate DNA Replication
No full textDaughter DNA molecules must be unlinked to ensure complete and accurate duplication of the genome, which is critical for cell survival. We have previously found that during vertebrate DNA replication topoisomerase IIα (TOP2) is crucial for resolving catenanes, or interwound daughter DNA molecules, that form throughout replication. This suggested an expanded role for TOP2 during DNA replication, yet it was unclear how replication was affected in the absence of TOP2 activity. My thesis work uses Xenopus egg extracts to explore the consequences of impaired catenane resolution during DNA replication. First, I found that the TOP2 poisons etoposide and doxorubicin both inhibit DNA replication through different mechanisms. Etoposide induces TOP2-dependent DNA breaks and TOP2-dependent fork stalling by trapping TOP2 behind replication forks. In contrast, doxorubicin does not lead to appreciable break formation and instead intercalates into parental DNA to stall replication forks independently of TOP2. In mammalian cells, etoposide stalls forks in a TOP2-dependent manner, while doxorubicin stalls forks independently of TOP2. However, both drugs exhibit TOP2-dependent cytotoxicity. Thus, etoposide and doxorubicin inhibit DNA replication through distinct mechanisms despite shared genetic requirements for cytotoxicity. Second, I investigated whether other topoisomerases could compensate for loss of TOP2 and discovered that topoisomerase IIIα (TOP3α) normally has a limited role during DNA replication but becomes crucial when TOP2 cannot function. TOP3α carries out this role as part of the TOP3α-RMI1-RMI2 complex, independent of the BLM helicase. Moreover, TOP3α aids replication fork progression when extensive lagging strand gaps limit the amount of double-stranded DNA that is the substrate for TOP2. Finally, extensive lagging strand single-stranded DNA generates a novel DNA structure that contains intramolecular single-stranded DNA intertwines that are resolved by TOP3α. These data suggest that the TOP3α-RMI1-RMI2 complex is crucial to resolve catenanes in the absence of TOP2 during eukaryotic DNA replication. Ultimately, my work highlights the consequences of inhibited catenane resolution during vertebrate DNA replication and suggests that targeting TOP3α may help overcome resistance to etoposide, but not doxorubicin
Can't Hold
No full textCan’t Hold follows the life of Matthew, a drug addict, as he tries to survive the opioid crisis of the early twenty-first century. The novel begins with Matthew trapped in a drug-riddled neighborhood outside Tampa, Florida. After a close friend dies from a drug overdose, Matthew, in a panic, leaves the neighborhood, gets a job, and hopes to return home to his sister and niece who live in Wisconsin. This novel explores the physical and spiritual pervasiveness of addiction. Ultimately, this novel is wondering why there exists such a staggeringly low survival and recovery rate for drug addicts in our country. To investigate this ongoing epidemic, the novel is narrated through the first-person present tense perspective of Matthew in hopes of offering a visceral and personal experience for the reader—a glimpse into the demanding nature of addiction, and the seemingly impossible prospect of recovery
Examination of the Benefits of Inhibitory Retrieval Strategies and Associated Mechanisms in Exposure-Based Interventions
No full textExposure therapy is partially based on extinction principles and is considered a core component of treatment for anxiety-related disorders. However, a common limitation of exposure is that fear often returns following successful treatment. Informed by the inhibitory retrieval model, exposure augmentation strategies have been proposed to increase learning and decrease subsequent return of fear. However, the extent to which these inhibitory retrieval strategies enhance human fear extinction and traditional exposure therapy remains unclear. Study 1 critically examines human fear conditioning and exposure-based interventions that compared extinction/exposure with and without an inhibitory retrieval strategy. Findings from this qualitative and meta-analytic review suggest the benefits of inhibitory retrieval strategies translate from human fear conditioning studies to exposure-based therapies. However, it remains unknown which inhibitory retrieval strategies most effectively attenuate return of fear. Study 2 demonstrates that occasional reinforcement is one such strategy that significantly weakens behavioral return of fear at a one-week follow-up, and that mean distress mediates this behavioral change. Study 3 expands upon these findings by examining the comparative efficacy of occasional reinforcement with another inhibitory retrieval strategy, affect labeling. Findings suggest that compared to occasional reinforcement, affect labeling during exposure results in less behavioral approach at post-exposure and follow-up, and this difference is partially mediated by distress variability and within-session habituation. Although studies 2 and 3 provide insight into which inhibitory retrieval strategy may be most promising, these strategies often combine exposure to multiple-contexts and exposure to multiple-stimuli. To clarify which approach may maximize therapeutic effects, study 4 examines the efficacy of exposure to multiple-contexts, exposure to multiple-stimuli, and their combination. Results suggest that exposure to multiple contexts and multiple-stimuli effectively decrease negative threat expectancies but may be detrimental when combined without sufficient repetition. Future directions for translational exposure-based research, including measurement selection and prescriptive indicators for treatment are discussed
Diagnostics of Soft X-ray Emission from the Sun: Energetic Solar Flares and Gentle Quiescence
No full textThe Sun is complex and enchanting. It produces all types of electromagnetic radiation and releases the energy needed to sustain life on Earth. The variability of the solar soft X-ray (SXR) emission can answer: (1) How plasma is transported within the solar atmosphere during solar flares? (2) What mechanisms could drive Quasi-Periodic Pulsations (QPP) signatures in solar flare radiation? (3) What are the characteristic temperatures of the quiescent Sun?
During periods of solar activity, the dim and hot solar corona becomes a blazing ball emitting flaring phenomena. Solar flares are capable of releasing over 10^32 erg, radiating SXR light, and heating the ambient plasma to excess of 20 MK. The SXR inferred elemental abundance of low first-ionization potential (FIP) elements are observed to deviate from their nominal values during solar flares. The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer CubeSat–1 (MinXSS-1) conducted solar SXR spectral observations of ~30 flares C to M class flares. The flares were spectrally examined to determine the time evolution of temperature, volume emission measure, and elemental abundances of Fe, Ca, Si, S, Mg, and Ar. The low FIP elements were depleted near the SXR peak which is consistent when lower atmospheric plasma fills the coronal loops through chromospheric evaporation.
A key observational signature in flaring plasma is the presence of low-amplitude pulsations known as QPP. These small flux variations could be driven by periodic or "bursty" energy releases and place important constraints on the energy release processes and heating mechanisms. Using multithreaded hydrodynamic models we synthesized SXR and EUV emission to understand the generation of QPP signatures. Results showed that the successive reconnection of the flare loops could generate the ~26 second QPP observed in SXR.
In the tranquility of the Sun, the solar corona has minimal flaring events. The MinXSS-2 CubeSat made solar daily quiescent SXR spectra observations and were analyzed to determine the time evolution of temperature, volume emission measure. The average isothermal temperature ranged from 1~2 MK being consistent with other SXR observations during the solar minimum
How Exogenous Factors Affect Undergraduate Student Enrollment in BIPOC-Related Studies in the South
No full textLeadership and Learning in Organizations capstone projectColleges and universities across the United States are experiencing enrollment declines, driven in part by demographic shifts and increasing public skepticism about the value of higher education. This study examines these trends within a program at a public institution in the southern United States, referred to here as The Program (TP) to preserve anonymity. TP centers its curriculum on a BIPOC community. It has experienced a drop in BA degrees nearly twice the national average. To understand the extent to which exogenous factors shape student decisions to enroll in TP, we administered a survey to students who completed a TP course in Fall 2024 – Spring 2025. We analyzed responses using chi-square tests, thematic coding of open-ended comments, and within-group comparisons. Findings indicate that the influence of the political and social climate intensifies as the students progress through their degree, Across all groups, the current political and social climate in the Southern United States emerged as a top factor influencing the decision to pursue a major or minor in TP. Additionally, job availability and expected earnings consistently ranked among the top concerns that caused students to second-guess enrollment. These findings suggest that in a sociopolitical moment where BIPOC histories and communities are increasingly framed through a deficit lens, TP has an opportunity to elevate narratives of strength, resilience, and cultural value
Evaluating the Efficacy and Feasibility of a School-Home Communication Intervention Among Families of Children with Autism
No full textEffective school-home communication is vital for families of children with autism, yet many families report suboptimal communication with schools, leading to conflicts and poor educational outcomes. This study evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of the School-Home Alliance for Relationship Enhancement (SHARE) intervention, designed to improve communication between families and educators. Grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, this study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the SHARE intervention in improving school-home communication satisfaction and quality, family-professional partnerships, and its feasibility and acceptability among participants. A convenience sample of families and educator of children with autism from diverse geographical regions was recruited. Findings suggest that SHARE was a feasible, well-received, and effective intervention for enhancing school-home communication satisfaction and quality. Given its scalability and strong participant engagement, SHARE has potential for implementation in family-centered training programs and school-based initiatives. Future research should focus on strategies to increase educator participation and assess long-term impacts on family-professional partnerships