18525 research outputs found
Sort by
More Food, Less Nutrition: K’iche’ Maya Foodways - Nutrimetics and Food Realities
No full textK'iche' Mayan women from Iximulew (Guatemala) have one of the highest global rates of stunted growth, as well as high rates of maternal mortality and anemia. These health aspects are related to food issues. This dissertation attempts to elucidate the intricate interplay between K’iche’ Maya women's understanding and food interactions. This dissertation discusses the cultural interplay between people and food, food and contexts, and contexts and people. Through ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation describes food as a relational phenomenon. K'iche' women's lifeworlds, their environments, new food products, crop processes, Maya biology, and the K'iche' language of food dynamically interact to shape Indigenous foodways. By employing an integrated framework from medical anthropology, nutritional science, and decolonial perspectives, this dissertation gives insights that can promote health and nutrition for Maya people from a theoretical and pragmatic perspective
The Empire's New Classrooms: Subversive Education and the Polish Identity in the Russian Partition of Poland
No full textHistory Department Honors ThesisCollege of Arts and ScienceDepartment of Histor
Investigating the Regulation of Polyamine Metabolism during Gastrointestinal Infection and its Impact on Inflammation and Carcinogenesis
No full textRecent advances in understanding polyamine metabolism have highlighted its importance in inflammation and cancer development. Polyamines, including putrescence, spermidine, and spermine, play crucial roles in cellular growth and survival. Herein, we show that spermine oxidase (SMOX) deletion protects against Helicobacter pylori-induced gastric cancer progression. We implicate the highly reactive aldehyde acrolein, a byproduct of SMOX activity, in inducing DNA damage and contributing to cancer progression. Additionally, spermidine’s role in protein modification through the hypusination pathway highlights its importance in regulating cellular functions as inhibition of this pathway chemically or genetically leads to alterations in translation and procarcinogenic pathways. Aconitate decarboxylase 1, which is involved in innate immunity, is a target of the hypusination pathway and we show that it can modulate inflammation and colitis through the regulation of the gut metabolome and microbiome. Together these findings suggest that regulating polyamine metabolism and related enzymes is critical during inflammation and carcinogenesis
Naturalistic and Engaging Human-Robot Interactions Through Affective Computing with Application to Apathy for Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment
No full textThis dissertation presents the design of a socially assistive robotic system within a virtual reality environment (SAR-VR) called Non-Immersive Robot and Virtual Reality Activities in Aging (NIRVANA), along with an enhanced feedback framework to address apathy in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). NIRVANA features co-operative virtual activities for older adult pairs, integrating physical, social, and cognitive elements. A humanoid robot (Nao) serves as a coach, delivering individualized verbal feedback to promote engagement.
Apathy is highly prevalent in individuals with MCI—affecting up to 82% of those with dementia—and is linked to decreased quality of life and increased caregiver burden. Existing interventions are often resource-intensive and hard to personalize. To address this, four virtual activities were co-designed with older adults (n=14) and an interdisciplinary team of engineers, nurses, and physicians. A hierarchical feedback control system was developed to allow the robot to deliver targeted, naturalistic feedback in multi-user interactions using multimodal inputs and fuzzy logic.
Three fuzzy inference systems (FIS) were developed to support context-aware robot feedback grounded in emotional intelligence and human-machine communication: one for affect-informed feedback, one for performance-based feedback, and a third that integrates the previous two for multi-participant interaction. Fuzzy logic was chosen for its interpretability and ability to incorporate expert knowledge. Each FIS used multimodal data—such as facial expressions, stress index, and task performance—collected during the NIRVANA clinical trial and was aligned with therapeutic strategies for promoting engagement. Key FIS design elements, such as membership function tuning and rule-base reduction, were optimized using real-world data.
This work contributes a novel SAR-VR system that advances naturalistic, multi-user human-robot interaction for addressing apathy in older adults with MCI. It lays a foundation for future feedback frameworks that dynamically integrate affective states and therapeutic goals to support more personalized, impactful technologies
The Means of Value Production: Translating Social Causes into Business Concerns
No full textThis dissertation examines the intersection of social movements and business, including the availability and use of business-based frames and tactics, the targeting of businesses by movement actors, and the participation of businesses in cause-based efforts. It primarily draws upon social movements literature, which is supplemented by management and organizational literature. The first, qualitative study analyzes why a pro-LGBTQ business-based framing tactic emerged in Mississippi. It draws upon documentary and interview data and uses narrative analysis in a theory-driven case study to identify the discursive opportunity structure and resonant frame that fostered the availability of a framing tactic for the campaign’s founders, supporters, and participants to enact in the midst of a closed political opportunity structure. The second, quantitative study analyzes why large firms are receptive to and aligned with the workplace equality movement. It models the relationship between corporate opportunity structures – internal firm characteristics and external firm contexts – and movement receptivity and alignment when all firms are targeted by the same persuasive movement tactic. The study finds that existing ideological and structured commitment to a related cause, attentiveness to meeting expectations, and predisposition to act on issues are all positive significant predictors of firms’ likelihood of receptivity to and alignment with the workplace equality movement. The results of both studies provide support for the malleability of meaning making; the dynamic interaction among movement contexts, targets, and tactics; the utility of persuasive tactics; and the potence of business as a site of social change. Ultimately, this dissertation explores how social causes are translated into issues that are viewed as meaningful and valuable within business
Life of the Mined: Gender and Race in the Long Coal Century
No full textThis project examines how literary and cultural texts have mediated the global history of coal extraction through the intertwined lenses of gender and race. While much scholarship in energy humanities and environmental history focuses on material infrastructures and ecological consequences, this dissertation foregrounds literary analysis to trace how extractive capitalism becomes thinkable, desirable, and durable through narrative form, aesthetic conventions, and symbolic investments. Spanning the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, and focused primarily on the extraction zone known as “Appalachia,” this project conceptualizes “the long coal century” as a transnational and transhistorical period shaped by the cultural labor of mining fictions. Each chapter pairs literary and cinematic texts with theoretical insights from feminist, Black, Indigenous, postcolonial, and queer and trans studies to uncover how extraction structures not only economies and ecologies, but also imaginaries of personhood, community, and survival. By reading literature as both a witness to and agent of extractive modernity, Life of the Mined argues for the centrality of narrative in shaping the historical and affective contours of energy regimes, and reimagines literary analysis as essential to understanding the uneven violences and speculative futures of the Anthropocene
Will the Children be Alright?: Exploring the Association of Structural Racism Awareness and Mental Health Outcomes of Black Adolescents
No full textStudies examining the impact of racism on Black adolescent mental health have largely focused on interpersonal racial discrimination, with limited attention to structural racism as a social determinant of health (SoDH). As awareness of structural racism’s influence grows, new frameworks are needed to explain how macrosystem-level processes filter through the lives of Black youth to shape their everyday experiences and mental health outcomes. This three-manuscript dissertation addresses this gap by exploring how structural racism influences Black adolescents’ mental health through cognitive, social, and digital pathways.
The first manuscript critically reviews theoretical and conceptual frameworks that link racism to Black youth mental health. It evaluates the extent to which these frameworks account for structural racism’s influence and proposes a model that explains how youth exposed to structural racism cognitively recognize and interpret these experiences. The model highlights youth’s stress appraisal and coping processes that forecast variability in mental health outcomes.
The second manuscript investigates the role of structural racism in predicting depressive symptoms among Black adolescents. Using secondary data from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) and a sample of 741 Black American middle adolescents, this study examines whether neighborhood segregation and individual causal attributions of inequality predict depressive symptoms. Findings revealed that individual causal attributions of inequality, but not segregation, significantly predicted depressive symptoms. Additionally, cultural pride socialization moderated the relationship between causal attributions of inequality and depressive symptoms among girls. These findings underscore the influence of internalized cultural ideologies on youth mental health.
The third manuscript examines social media as a contemporary context in which messages about racism are shared and interpreted. In light of increasing hostility toward formal discussions of racism in public institutions, this study explores how TikTok content serves as a platform for transmitting racialized messages. A thematic analysis of 250 videos under five commonly viewed racism-related hashtags revealed that while racism is rooted in systemic and structural oppression, TikTok content predominantly depicted interpersonal racism. This finding highlights social media’s potential role in shaping adolescents' emerging perceptions of racism and their ability to recognize its structural origins.
Together, these studies advance understanding of how Black youth come to recognize and make meaning of structural racism, with implications for future research and preventive interventions aimed at promoting adolescent mental health
Consciousness, Cognition, and Connectivity: An Investigation in Focal Epilepsy
No full textEpilepsy affects approximately 50 million people worldwide, often resulting in recurrent consciousness-impairing seizures and chronic neurocognitive deficits. Despite advancements in medical therapy, at least 40% of patients continue to experience significant impairments in daily functioning. While neurosurgical interventions can offer seizure freedom and neurocognitive improvement, successful outcomes are limited to 60-70% of patients, highlighting the need for more effective treatments. This dissertation investigates brain networks in epilepsy to advance understanding mechanisms of consciousness-impairing seizures and neurocognitive deficits. The research builds upon two key hypotheses: the Network Inhibition Hypothesis, which posits that focal seizures disrupt subcortical structures critical for cortical activation, resulting in impaired consciousness, and the Extended Network Inhibition Hypothesis, which suggests that recurrent seizure propagation to these subcortical arousal structures leads to chronically reduced cortical activation and subsequent neurocognitive deficits. These detrimental sequalae of epilepsy can be studied in humans during seizures with intracranial recordings and between seizures with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). First, as a pre-requisite to study subcortical structures important in consciousness we developed a novel method using MRI and deep learning to capture patient-specific subcortical anatomy. Second, to augment our understanding of consciousness we then analyzed intracranial recordings from consciousness-impairing and consciousness-sparing seizures to identify network signatures of impaired consciousness. Third, we sought to improve our understanding of the effect of recurrent consciousness-impairing seizures on arousal networks and neurocognitive deficits with fMRI. Fourth, we hoped to improve seizure and neurocognitive outcomes with a machine learning approach for localization of seizure onset zones. Fifth, to improve our understanding of network signatures of neurocognitive impairments we used data-driven methods to uncover brain states linked to neurocognitive impairment. By combining both data-driven and hypothesis-driven methods with intracranial recordings and fMRI we sought to gain further knowledge on the underlying pathology behind consciousness-impairment and neurocognitive deficits in epilepsy. We believe that this work lays the foundation for the development of novel approaches to decrease the morbidity of epilepsy
Multi-omic Characterization of Astrocyte Reactivity in Alzheimer's Disease
No full textAstrocyte activation has emerged as an important early phenotype in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), potentially linking amyloid pathology with downstream tau hyperphosphorylation and cognitive decline. Astrocyte activation affects the function of the brain’s glymphatic system, a recently characterized network of perivascular channels that facilitates clearance of metabolic waste, including amyloid-β. Additionally, recent findings using plasma glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) as a biomarker of astrocyte activation have highlighted its predictive value as a minimally invasive, in vivo measure for predicting cognitive trajectories in preclinical AD. The field has largely focused on the clearance of amyloid-β as a primary therapeutic target, while mechanisms downstream of amyloid-β deposition may serve as intermediaries for subsequent tau hyperphosphorylation, neurodegeneration, and cognitive decline.
The overarching goal of the analyses presented here was to more fully characterize key molecular markers of astrocyte activation in the pathogenesis of AD, focusing on multiple layers of phenotypic validation. This research sought to explore the relationship between gene and protein expression of key glymphatic molecules and AD pathology as well as cognitive decline (Aim 1). Furthermore, to evaluate whether brain GFAP expression reflects peripheral findings, this research characterized the relationship of brain GFAP with AD pathology and cognitive decline, as well as its potential role in modifying the association between amyloid and downstream outcomes (Aim 2). Finally, to elucidate genetically regulated gene expression in a brain transcriptome-derived signature of astrocyte activation, this work developed a polygenic prediction of brain astrocyte activation and tested its ability to predict AD biomarker burden and cognitive decline (Aim 3).
In summary, this work deeply explored multiple phenotypes of astrocyte activation in AD, subsequently building on our understanding of astrocytic changes in disease, how they inform trajectories downstream of amyloid-β deposition, and the utility of GFAP as a preclinical biomarker of AD risk and progression
Matthew's Parable of the Two Sons: Textual Confusion in the Manuscript Tradition
No full textThe parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32) is found in three distinct versions in three of the early significant uncial manuscripts: Codex Sinaiticus (01, א), Codex Vaticanus (03, B), and Codex Bezae (05, D). While Vaticanus and Sinaiticus reverse what each son says and does, they nonetheless conclude the pericope with the approved son being the one who obeys his father. Bezae follows the order of Sinaiticus with respect to what each son says and does. However, Bezae then surprises its readers by concluding that the approved son is the one who disobeyed his father. The dissertation employs traditional models of textual criticism alongside newer methods, such as certain aspects of the Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), to argue for the superiority of the readings of Sinaiticus and Bezae over Vaticanus. In addition, the dissertation examines the history of interpretation of the parable in light of Matthew’s literary motifs and theological concerns with particular emphasis on Judaism, supersessionism, and anti-Jewish allegorical readings. The dissertation concludes that both Sinaiticus and Bezae have strong claims to being the most authentic reading but that the wording of Bezae is to be slightly preferred due to its status as the more difficult reading, its support among early translations, its greater resistance to allegorical interpretation, and its strong alignment with Matthean literary devices and theological themes