University of Toledo Open Journal System
Not a member yet
895 research outputs found
Sort by
Education for the Race: The History of Euthenics and Eugenics at Vassar College
Get PDFWhat happened to higher education when eugenics swept the nation? This paper answers this question through a case study of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, one of the first women’s colleges in the United States. It reveals how Vassar’s unique euthenics program, established in 1924, advanced eugenic political goals that were deliberately supported by administrators, faculty, students, alumnae, and prominent eugenicist figures such as Margaret Sanger and Charles Davenport. This paper explores the important role of academia between the late-19th and mid-20th centuries, demonstrating how the College was used to legitimize eugenics as a field of study and to train eugenics researchers. While examining student exploitation and objectification, along with pronatalist and antinatalist rhetoric, this paper contextualizes eugenics at Vassar within the broader Hudson Valley and national eugenics movements. Archival materials, including College newspaper columns and articles from the Eugenics Review, Journal of Heredity, Birth Control Review, and others, are closely analyzed to provide a primary-source-driven analysis of Vassar’s eugenic history. Finally, the romanticization of Vassar’s past is challenged with a call for increased institutional accountability
Using Climate Simulators to Facilitate Peacebuilding: A Study of Practice
Get PDFAs the climate crisis approaches a critical juncture, the pursuit of ecological peace becomes increasingly vital to conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts. This article explores the pivotal role of climate simulators in fostering peacebuilding through informed, data-driven dialogues. These tools anchor peacebuilding initiatives in scientific reality, enabling the identification and assessment of the co-benefits and co-considerations associated with climate-related actions. Furthermore, they promote scenario-based planning within peacebuilding contexts.
Drawing from the author's personal experiences with the En-ROADS Climate Simulator in both secondary education and peacebuilding education settings, this article demonstrates the practical application of these tools. The En-ROADS Climate Simulator serves as a powerful example of how climate simulators can be integrated into educational frameworks to enhance understanding and engagement.
The article provides actionable recommendations for incorporating climate simulators into broader educational environments, community advocacy efforts, and legislative processes. By emphasizing the significance of data visualizations tailored to specific geographic locations, the article highlights how personalized climate simulation tools can inform and support sustainable, long-term peacebuilding strategies.
Ultimately, this article underscores the transformative potential of climate simulators in bridging the gap between scientific data and peacebuilding practices, advocating for their active adoption to address the multifaceted challenges posed by the climate crisis
The Relationship Between Education and the Environment: A Critical and Nonviolent Perspective
Get PDFThe relationship between education and the environment has undergone various historical phases, as exemplified by practices such as open-air schools and forest schools. These educational approaches emphasize the significance of learning in natural contexts to foster a dialectical relationship between theory and practice, a core characteristic of experiential learning. Such practices offer a response to contemporary environmental challenges by proposing a non-competitive and nonviolent interaction with the environment, integrating the needs of human life with the preservation of ecosystems.
However, these perspectives often conflict with current educational systems, which tend to be neutral or subordinate to dominant economic and political dynamics. Traditional pedagogy frequently neglects the role of the teacher’s personal experience as an integral component of the educational process, favoring detached and abstract approaches. This paper instead advocates for an engaged pedagogy, wherein the educator’s experience becomes both educational content and a tool for transformation. The nonviolent dimension of educational practice emerges as a process of conscientization, bridging theory and practice, and driven by engagement with what lies outside school buildings and beyond the certainties imposed by an education system often subservient to a neoliberal economy.
This economy, by projecting human existence into an artificial and abstract dimension, has contributed to a loss of connection with reality. Neoliberalism has promoted consumption as the solution to existential crises, distancing humans from the authentic needs of the natural and animal environment. From this critical perspective, education must reclaim its transformative role, abandoning subordination to the market and reorienting itself toward a practice that fosters critical, nonviolent awareness. Such an approach is essential to addressing global challenges through sustainable and reality-based solutions
Comparison of GLP-1RAs vs Other Pharmacotherapy for Obesity: A Clinical Review
Get PDFBackground: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 42% of adults in the United States (US) are obese, and 10% are severely obese. Obesity has many known associated health risks, and successful treatment decreases those risks. Management always includes diet and lifestyle changes and drug therapy can improve weight loss. The current United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pharmaceutical therapy choices for long-term use include a combination of phentermine-topiramate, combination bupropion-naltrexone, orlistat, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), and dual action GLP-1RAs and gastric inhibitory peptide agonists (GIP).
Objectives: This review will summarize evidence comparing the safety and efficacy of GLP-1RAs or GLP-1RAs/GIP agonists with other pharmacologic treatments to achieve and maintain weight loss, improve quality of life, and reduce morbidity in obese adults.
Methods: We completed a literature review of multiple databases, including PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar, and Cochrane databases, to identify studies about pharmacologic treatment for overweight or obese adults with or without T2DM and reporting outcomes of mean percentage body weight loss. An emphasis was placed on choosing meta-analyses and primary studies in patients without T2DM. We excluded articles older than 5 years or published in a language other than English. 19 meta-analyses and 2 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were chosen, and 13 meta-analyses were excluded based on not meeting the inclusion criteria. 6 meta-analyses and 2 RCTs were included.
Results: The literature showed that over 52 weeks, liraglutide reduced mean body weight percentage by 4.81% (95% CI: 4.23%-5.39%). Between a 12-68 week period in patients receiving semaglutide, three meta-analyses reported reduced weight by 12.57% [97% CI 10.35%-14.80%,) 10.55% (95% CI 6.96%-14.13%,) and 10.09% (95% CI: 8.33%-11.84%.) Tirzepatide, a novel GLP-1RA and GIP agonist, recently completed a phase-3 RCT, which showed that over 72 weeks, the mean weight percentage decrease was 18.4% (95% CI: 18.5%-23.2%) vs a 3.1% weight gain with placebo, a change of 21.8%. Each of the GLP-1RA agents (including tirzepatide) improved cardiometabolic risk factors. Phentermine-topiramate reduced mean body weight percentage by 8.45% (95% CI, 7.89%–9.01%) after 52-56 weeks. Bupropion-naltrexone reduced mean body weight percentage by 3.01% (95% CI, 2.47%–3.54%) over 56 weeks. Finally, orlistat reduced mean body weight percentage by 2.78% (95% CI, 2.36%–3.20%) after 1-4 years. Semaglutide is a well-established drug with weight loss, but tirzepatide shows the most promise in being the superior agent.
Conclusion: It is well known that pharmacotherapy with diet and exercise is more effective than diet and exercise alone in achieving weight loss. The GLP-1RAs are effective for weight loss, with semaglutide more effective than phentermine-topiramate, bupropion-naltrexone, orlistat, and liraglutide. Tirzepatide shows promise as a superior agent, but more comprehensive studies need to be done. When choosing pharmacotherapy, utilizing a GLP-1RA (semaglutide) or a dual GLP-1RA/GIP agonist (tirzepatide) can improve cardiometabolic risk factors and quality of life and is more effective than any other FDA-approved agent.
