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Language Ideologies and Use Among Latine Children in a Dual Language Program in Southern California: A Qualitative Approach
Get PDFThrough a critical race and LatCrit framework, this research examined the language ideologies of young Latine children enrolled in Spanish dual-language programs. Specifically, I examined how and why the children chose to speak English and Spanish at home and school. A qualitative approach was used to understand the participants in their natural environment. The participants were five third-grade students (two males and three females), and their parents, five females and one male, and a the student’s third-grade teacher. The data collected included participant observations at home and at school as well as both formal interviews and informal conversations with students, their parents, and their teacher. The findings demonstrate that young Latine children enrolled in Spanish dual-language programs like to use English and Spanish. The students generally chose to use Spanish or English depending on the context, assessing the language needs of the other speakers and the social expectation of particular language use to within the context. However, their general perception was that English was to be used unless the speaker did not speak English or during the Spanish language component of their formal dual-language instructional day. When interacting with family members who do not speak English, Spanish is used to help communicate.
Nonetheless, primary language maintenance was understood by all participants as essential to help build cultural identity and strengthen cultural ties. The students, as well as the parents, held a strong value for the dual-language program, for developing bilingualism, and the equal value of Spanish and English. These findings suggest that dual-language programs help foster bilingualism as an asset that contributes to maintaining primary language and academic success
Experimental Research on Contests
Get PDFContests are situations in which agents compete by irreversibly expending costly resources in an attempt to win a prize. Due to their applications in conflict, rent-seeking, organizational incentives, sports, litigation, and political campaigns, contests are widely applied in the social sciences. In this survey we summarize some main results and recent developments of experimental studies in contest theory. We also point out their broader applications in the social sciences
Integrity, Flexibility, and Balance: How Change Works in Psychotherapy
No full textPsychotherapy may be the most tested form of health intervention and also one of the most mysterious. Clinical trials, and meta-analyses of these trials, have repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of psychotherapy, while also failing to uncover any clear-cut and consistent understanding of how psychotherapy works. This lack of understanding has driven the field to develop 500 supposedly distinct, yet equivalently effective “theories.” The field suffers from barriers to scientific discovery, barriers to therapist training, and barriers to people seeking help for their psychosocial problems. This chapter tackles the mystery of how therapy works by examining the shortcomings of modern medical science, most notably reductionism. By grounding the substance of psychotherapy in a more holistic and logical foundation rather than a fruitless search for active and common ingredients, the question of how therapy works becomes much simpler to answer. It is well understood that each of the approaches to psychotherapy targets one or more “channels” of human experience: emotion, cognition, behavior, and self- and interpersonal relations. When one applies a nonlinear dynamical systems perspective to these experiential domains, it becomes clear that psychotherapy works by increasing the flexibility and the structural integrity of experience, leading to improved experiential balance and resilience.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/psychology_books/1027/thumbnail.jp
Adolescent Marijuana Use and the Contribution to the Development of Schizophrenia
Get PDFSchizophrenia is an often debilitating mental condition that has become a popular topic of psychological research in recent years. Current research examines the correlation between drug use, genetics, and environment on the development of schizophrenia. Research looks at the structure of the brain in individuals with and without schizophrenia. However, research has failed to look at the specific correlation between marijuana use in adolescent youth and the developmental impact on the brain, including in the development of schizophrenia. The legalization of many recreational drugs, including marijuana, has come to fruition in recent years. This has raised concerns over adolescent access to these substances and the negative effects that result. Using the technique of a literature review, this paper analyzes several studies regarding the use of marijuana and the development of schizophrenia. As a result of this literature review, I discovered that there is convincing evidence that marijuana can impact the development of an adolescent brain leaving users vulnerable to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Specifically, the physiological changes that occur in a developing brain with marijuana use parallel the psychological changes seen in some cases of schizophrenia
Coordination Within and Across Two Cultures
Get PDFWe study within- and cross-culture interaction in a Stag Hunt game, using a controlled online experiment with Chinese and American participants. We find that cross-culture interactions can have a positive impact on efficiency. American participants, particularly females, more frequently selected the efficient but risky action when facing a Chinese counterpart. Chinese male participants, instead, less frequently selected the efficient but risky action when facing an American counterpart. These behavioral asymmetries do not support the notion of cultural equivalence, nor the hypothesis that multiculturalism fosters strategic uncertainty
Twenty-three Years of PCR-based Seafood Authentication Assay Development: What Have We Learned?
Get PDFSeafood is a prime target for fraudulent activities due to the complexity of its supply chain, high demand, and difficult discrimination among species once morphological characteristics are removed. Instances of seafood fraud are expected to increase due to growing demand. This manuscript reviews the application of DNA-based methods for commercial fish authentication and identification from 2000 to 2023. It explores (1) the most common types of commercial fish used in assay development, (2) the type of method used, (3) the gene region most often targeted, (4) provides a case study of currently published assays or primer-probe pairs used for DNA amplification, for specificity, and (5) makes recommendations for ensuring standardized assay-based reporting for future studies. A total of 313 original assays for the detection and authentication of commercial fish species from 191 primary articles published over the last 23 years were examined. The most explored DNA-based method was real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), followed by DNA sequencing. The most targeted gene regions were cytb (cytochrome b) and COI (cytochrome c oxidase 1). Tuna was the most targeted commercial fish species. A case study of published tuna assays (n = 19) targeting the cytb region found that most assays were not species-specific through in silico testing. This was conducted by examining the primer mismatch for each assay using multiple sequence alignment. Therefore, there is need for more standardized DNA-based assay reporting in the literature to ensure specificity, reproducibility, and reliability of results. Factors, such as cost, sensitivity, quality of the DNA, and species, should be considered when designing assays
Stress Granule Formation Helps to Mitigate Neurodegeneration
Get PDFCellular stress pathways that inhibit translation initiation lead to transient formation of cytoplasmic RNA/protein complexes known as stress granules. Many of the proteins found within stress granules and the dynamics of stress granule formation and dissolution are implicated in neurodegenerative disease. Whether stress granule formation is protective or harmful in neurodegenerative conditions is not known. To address this, we took advantage of the alphavirus protein nsP3, which selectively binds dimers of the central stress granule nucleator protein G3BP and markedly reduces stress granule formation without directly impacting the protein translational inhibitory pathways that trigger stress granule formation. In Drosophila and rodent neurons, reducing stress granule formation with nsP3 had modest impacts on lifespan even in the setting of serial stress pathway induction. In contrast, reducing stress granule formation in models of ataxia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia largely exacerbated disease phenotypes. These data support a model whereby stress granules mitigate, rather than promote, neurodegenerative cascades
Advancement in In-Silico Drug Discovery from Virtual Screening Molecular Dockings to De-Novo Drug Design Transformer-based Generative AI and Reinforcement Learning
Get PDFThe field of drug discovery has seen remarkable advancements over the past few decades, transitioning from traditional experimental methods to highly sophisticated computational approaches. One of the pivotal techniques in this evolution is virtual screening, which utilizes molecular docking to predict the interaction between small molecules and target proteins. This method has significantly accelerated the initial stages of drug discovery by enabling the high-throughput screening of large chemical libraries. By simulating the binding affinity and stability of potential drug candidates, virtual screening has become a cornerstone in identifying promising compounds for further development.
A notable application of virtual screening was demonstrated in the search for inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease or known as Covid M*pro, a critical enzyme for the replication of the COVID-19 virus. Researchers employed molecular docking to virtually screen vast libraries of compounds, rapidly pinpointing several candidates with high binding affinities. This approach not only expedited the discovery process but also provided valuable insights into the structural requirements for effective inhibition of Covid M*pro protein, thereby guiding subsequent experimental validation and optimization.
Moving beyond virtual screening, the advent of de novo drug design has further revolutionized the drug discovery landscape. Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, particularly transformer-based architectures, researchers can now generate novel drug-like molecules from scratch. These models, utilizing a transformer encoder-decoder architecture, are trained on vast datasets of known compounds and their properties, enabling them to learn the intricate relationships between chemical structure and biological activity. When coupled with reinforcement learning algorithms like Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), these systems can optimize the generated molecules for desired properties, such as binding affinity, specificity, and pharmacokinetics.
An exemplary study in this domain involved the design of novel inhibitors for the COVID-19 Mpro using a transformer-based de novo design framework. The researchers used a transformer encoder-decoder model to generate potential inhibitors and employed MCTS to iteratively refine these candidates. This innovative approach yielded several novel compounds with high predicted efficacy against Mpro, showcasing the potential of combining deep learning with reinforcement learning to accelerate and enhance the drug discovery process.
In conclusion, the integration of virtual screening and de novo drug design represents a paradigm shift in drug discovery. The use of molecular docking for virtual screening allows for rapid identification of potential drug candidates, while the application of transformer models and reinforcement learning in de novo design opens new avenues for the creation of innovative therapeutics. The successful identification of inhibitors for the COVID-19 M*pro protein exemplifies the transformative impact of these technologies, heralding a new era of precision and efficiency in the search for life-saving drugs
How Threat Mobilizes the Resurgence and Persistence of US White Supremacist Activism: The 1980s to the Present
Get PDFDespite a centuries-long history of violent mobilization, white supremacist activism (WSA) has received relatively little sociological attention outside a small, specialized subfield. Disciplinary interest began to change after Trump\u27s 2016 election; the 2017 violent attack in Charlottesville, Virginia; and the January 6, 2021, insurrection. In recognition, this review article focuses on what has been learned about contemporary WSA since the 1980s. We categorize studies by their unit of analysis—individual or micro, meso, and macro levels—to highlight analytic commonalities and distinctions and to underscore the central role that threat plays in the ebb and flow of WSA. As part of our discussion, we also point to unresolved and understudied issues. We conclude by identifying issues that future research should address
Bibliography for AI: The Next Chapter Display
Get PDFA bibliography created to support a display about artificial intelligence at the Leatherby Libraries during Fall 2024 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University