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#535 Heart Research: Progress Report.
No full textParticipants include: Dr. Clayton B. Ethridge, Cardiologist and Professor of Clinical Medicine, George Washington University Hospital Dr. Proctor Harvey, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Heart Station, Georgetown Univ. Hospital Dr. James Watt, Director of the National Heart Institut
The Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on College Students' Employment in China: A Country-Level Analysis
No full textM.P.P.The outbreak of COVID-19 has significantly impacted fresh Chinese graduates. This thesis empirically verifies the expectation hypothesis, which proves that the outbreak of COVID-19 significantly impacts the graduation flow of graduates, the degree of concern about unemployment, job satisfaction and current income. The outbreak of COVID-19 will make fresh Chinese graduates choose to pursue further education rather than employment. It will also increase their concern about unemployment, reduce their satisfaction with their current jobs, and significantly reduce the wages of fresh Chinese graduates in their first jobs after graduation. We develop a conceptual framework to evaluate different studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese graduates. We adopt a multi-stage mixed sampling method, which allows us to consider both the probability and selection bias. We hypothesize that COVID-19 will significantly impact graduation flow, degree of concern about unemployment, job satisfaction, and current income. We survey recent college graduates in China to explore the impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 . Our results suggest that students' concern about unemployment after the outbreak is higher, while satisfaction with their current job decreased. In addition, we find that the average salary of students in their first job after graduation decreased . We conclude that the outbreak significantly impacts fresh Chinese graduates and discuss policy implications for mitigating these effects
The Relationship Between Afterschool Program Participation and Socioeconomic Mobility
No full textM.P.P.For many disadvantaged young people in the United States, the prospect of upward economic mobility is limited by the economic resources and educational opportunities that their parents can provide for them. Afterschool programs can supplement disadvantaged youths’ human and social capital and this represents a potential mechanism for achieving social mobility. Previous studies suggest that participation in these programs is associated with improvements in academic achievement, but little is known about the long-term implications of such participation. The present study uses panel data from the Department of Education’s Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS) to explore the relationship between afterschool program participation among disadvantaged youth and their socioeconomic status once they reach their mid-to-late 20’s. My results suggest that there is a positive and statistically significant relationship between low SES youth’s participation in afterschool programs and socioeconomic mobility when they are adults. My findings are broadly consistent with a larger body of literature suggesting that afterschool program participation is positively related to academic achievement, and that academic achievement is in turn positively related to socioeconomic mobility
Children in Transit: Literary Representations of Flight and Expulsion within East and West German Kinder- und Jugendliteratur from 1949-1989
No full textPh.D.The flight and expulsion of some 12 million ethnic Germans took place between 1944 and 1948 and resulted in the largest population transfer in European history. Many people turned to literature to capture these historical events within fictional landscapes. While contemporary historians and authors take care to present flight and expulsion against the backdrop of the horrific crimes committed by the National Socialists, scholars have identified numerous examples of past German literary works that isolate flight and expulsion to focus on and highlight German suffering. The resulting effect of narratives that attend primarily and preeminently to German suffering is a lack of critical historical contextualization. Unlike adult literature that represents flight and expulsion, there has been little scholarly attention given to youth literature that engages with these same events. In my examination of 19 East and West German youth texts, I aim to accomplish the following: to build upon the work of Bill Niven and Karina Berger by establishing a definitive preoccupation with flight and expulsion by authors of youth literature in both Germanies; to perform in-depth textual analyses that show how these novels engage directly and indirectly with themes of German crimes and German suffering as they relate to flight and expulsion; to highlight the changing strategies that authors employed over time to represent flight and expulsion; and to inset these changing patterns and trends within broader social, political, and cultural developments in West and East Germany. To categorize these works, I employ the time periods of 1949-1959, 1960-1974, and 1975-1989 to be mindful both of significant sociopolitical occurrences as well as general trends within youth literature. Ultimately, my examination of these texts illustrates that despite age and political constraints, youth texts across both countries demonstrate the capacity to meaningfully address complex themes associated with flight and expulsion, including but not limited to German suffering in the form of rape; hunger; violence; and death, as well as German crimes in the form of the Holocaust; violence against Jewish people; the forced labor of military prisoners; and the mass murder of civilian and soldier populations in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia
Cochlear Hair Cell Innervation Is Dependent on a Modulatory Function of Semaphorin-3A
No full textPh.D.Proper connectivity between type I spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) and inner hair cells (IHCs) in the cochlea is necessary for conveying sound information to the brain in mammals.
Previous studies have shown that type I SGNs are heterogeneous in form, function, and synaptic
location on IHCs, but factors controlling their patterns of connectivity are not well understood. In
my thesis research I have investigated transgenic mouse models and used several in vitro
experimental approaches to explore the connectivity of type I SGNs. During embryonic and early
postnatal days, cochlear supporting cells and SGNs express Semaphorin-3A (SEMA3A), a
known axon repulsion guidance factor. In this document, I demonstrate the role of SEMA3A in
type I SGN development from embryonic stages through mature postnatal stages. Although,
during early developmental stages we show that recombinant SEMA3A can play a role as an
inhibitory cue for axon outgrowth (Salehi et al., 2017). In vitro experiments using recombinant
SEMA3A in postnatal cochleae suggest that SEMA3A may be playing an alternative role other
than acting as a repulsive cue. Mice homozygous for a point mutation that attenuates normal
SEMA3A repulsive activity (Sema3aK108N) show cochleae with grossly normal patterns of IHC
innervation. However, genetic sparse labeling and three-dimensional reconstructions of
individual SGNs show that cochleae from Sema3aK108N mice lacked the normal synaptic
distribution of type I SGNs. Where type I SGNs from the mutants have no significant diameter
difference which is expected in the WT to have differences between modiolar and pilar
synapsing IHC side . Additionally, Sema3aK108N cochleae show a disrupted distribution of
GLUA2 postsynaptic patches around the IHCs. The addition of SEMA3A-Fc to postnatal
cochleae led to increases in SGN branching, similar to the effects of inhibiting glutamate
receptors via well-known inhibitors such as NBQX and CPP. Furthermore, Ca2+ imaging studies
show that SEMA3A-Fc decreases SGN activity in vitro. Contrary to the canonical view of
Sema3A as a guidance ligand, our results suggest SEMA3A may regulate SGN excitability in the
cochlea, which may influence the morphology and synaptic arrangement of type I SGNs. This
results suggest that SEMA3A may be playing an interesting role that is not guidance related.
Moreover, the postnatal expression of SEMA3A suggest the possibility of an entire new
mechanism that it could be tapping to
United States Presidents with Disabilities: Methods of Narration in Biography
No full textM.A.While disability and power are often thought of as antithetical, they have coexisted at the highest levels of power in the United States. United States presidents with disabilities serve as proof that disability and power can occupy the same spaces. Nonetheless, a normative understanding has pervaded that establishes an idealized, normative understanding of what United States presidents should look like. Presidential biographies in particular reinforce this normative understanding through ableist depictions of disability that cast disability as a deficit. I examine how presidential biographies construct these ableist narratives by engaging with biographies about three United States presidents with disabilities: Abraham Lincoln who had depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who had polio, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy who had Addison’s disease. I engage with presidential biographies, disability studies theory, and the nuances of memorialization through museums, memorials, and historic sites. Moreover, I critique dominant portrayals of disability in presidential biographies. I pay particular attention to “full-scale biographies” which chronicle the presidents’ lives from start to finish, analyzing how disability appears, or does not appear, in those narratives. Ultimately, I offer how this topic pertains to the present moment, and how we may integrate disability more fully into our national story
Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) : The Challenge of Offsetting Social and Economic Disparities with Unrestricted Aid in New York State
No full textM.P.P.Taxes are the largest revenue source for 43 out of the 50 states and translate into the major source of income to pay for social services in local counties. This study assesses the social and economic gap in New York state, specifically between counties through a quantitative analysis of unrestricted state-aid (a category of taxes called general revenue sharing) called Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM). This 9 year study from 2009-2018 hypothesizes that the AIM program is duly ineffective in relieving poverty at the county-level. Through a Pooled OLS and Fixed Effects models, the hypothesis holds true—it would take $3.47 trillion dollars to lift 0.65% of households in New York counties with the parameters of the AIM program. In my research, I find that measures of poverty in assessing how state aid is distributed is limiting. It does not incorporate socio-economic variations. The thesis ends with a policy recommendation of a meta-analysis of poverty called CountyPoverty. The findings indicate that a more targeted and robust analysis of poverty is better at addressing AIM program targets. The goal of this research is estimating the magnitude of effectiveness of the AIM program and bringing a robust quantitative discussion to the AIM literature that does not currently exist
Toxic Release Inventory Sites in New York City: Who Is Bearing the Cost of Exposure?
No full textM.P.P.As environmental justice becomes an increased priority across every level of government, there has been a lack of research on what kinds of communities reside near facilities that produce toxic substances. Although the federal government tracks this information in some form, the data it provides covers the demographics of areas is a 5-mile radius, or roughly 78 square miles. In New York City, where demographics can vary wildly from neighborhood to neighborhood and the entire city compasses only 300 square miles, these units are not nearly precise enough to be a useful unit of measurement to determine which communities are most exposed. This paper will attempt to remedy this issue by examining demographic statistics and predicted health outcomes due to toxic substances on the census tract level while comparing these data to proximity to the facilities that produce toxins