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Fostering Voice in Writing Conferences: A Conversation Analytic Study of Consultant Practices
No full textWriting consultants must manage a delicate balance: upholding a writer’s voice while helping them shape it to genre expectations and academic language standards. Neither writing center theory and pedagogy nor research on consultant-writer interactions has explored how they achieve this balance. The current study addresses this gap.
Through a conversation analysis of writing consultations led by experienced consultants, this study explores how consultants encourage the development of writer voice while, simultaneously, helping writers adhere to academic discourse expectations. Data come from 29 hours of video-recorded one-on-one writing consultations at a graduate writing center. Participants include 7 peer consultants and 28 graduate student writers. Data were transcribed and analyzed following conversation analytic (CA) conventions. Findings revealed three primary consultant strategies for fostering voice: invoking the reader, prioritizing writer meaning, and encouraging writer-directed solutions. To invoke the reader, consultants embody and voice the reader experience to locate problems and initiate revision sequences. To prioritize writer meaning, consultants elicit writer explanations of the text and verify their own understandings of the text. To encourage writer directed solutions, consultants preserve writer language, provide flexible solutions, and provide incremental solutions.
Through detailed analysis of consultant-writer interactions, this study specifies the interactional competencies of writing consultations and reconceptualizes the concept of voice across disciplines. It offers practical strategies for writing tutors and educators concerned with fostering writer voice
The Role of Defensive Gun Use in Injury Prevention: Insights from 50 years of U.S. Crime Data
No full textUnderstanding the effectiveness and contexts of defensive gun use (DGU) in preventing injury during violent incidents is critical for informing public safety policies and injury prevention practices. This dissertation addresses critical gaps in the literature by (i) systematically examining risk factors associated with interpersonal violence involving DGU, and (ii) evaluating the efficacy of DGU – and defensive weapon use (DWU) more broadly – in mitigating victim injuries across varying offender scenarios and historical contexts.
A comprehensive scoping review of studies published from 1946 to 2024 identified both static (e.g., substance use history, prior victimization) and dynamic risk factors (e.g., offender weapon presence, acute intoxication) associated with DGU incidents. This review underscored the necessity for nuanced definitions and improved categorizations of risk factors to enhance the reliability of future empirical investigations.
Empirical analyses utilized National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data spanning 1973-2022, employing advanced statistical methodologies including Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) and Guided Bayesian Adjustment for Confounding (GBAC) to model the relationship between DGU and injury to defensive gun users. Findings revealed that, compared to forcefully resisting assailants without the use of guns, DGU significantly reduced victim injury risk in incidents involving unarmed offenders (approximately 24-26 percentage point decrease compared to non-firearm defensive actions). However, these protective effects were substantially attenuated or nullified when offenders were armed, particularly with guns. Additionally, temporal analyses illustrated minimal shifts in effectiveness correlated with macro-level changes, such as increased gun ownership post-2008, and minor variations between urban and rural contexts.
In conclusion, this dissertation highlights that the protective utility of firearms for self-defense is highly context-dependent, significantly effective primarily against unarmed offenders. Future research and policy initiatives must consider detailed situational dynamics and evolving societal factors to enhance the effectiveness of defensive actions and public safety strategies
In Transition: A Study of Transitional School Programs
No full textThis dissertation is an investigation of transitional school programs (TSPs), non-profit organizations that recruit students of color from low-income families and prepare them to transition from public middle schools to elite private high schools. Despite being a key part of the pipeline to elite academic institutions, there is limited research about transitional school programs and how they function, or the identity work students engage in while navigating transitional school programs and the subsequent elite private institutions to which they are admitted–identity work that likely conditions their interactions with elite institutions and their futures. Additionally, this dissertation investigates how transitional school programs navigate the conflicting interest of promoting social change while relying on old sources of inequality. Transitional school programs aspire to create a leadership class from the margins, but in what ways may they be legitimizing social inequality as meritocratic?
Using ethnographic methods, from 2019 to 2021 I shadowed a cohort of 17 students at a transitional school program I call “Ascend” in their journey from middle school to high school. I review the historical development of TSPs to argue that these organizations emerged in relation to Black organizing as liberal alternative to radical critiques of white terrorism and domination in the United States. In the case of Ascend, I find that the organization exists within a web of racialized dependencies on elite schools and wealthy financial donors. These dependencies compel Ascend to adopt the inequitable practices and assumptions of the racialized organizational field of elite education. Yet over time, the program begins to resist this organizational order by decoupling their practices from elite schools. Their efforts are reinvigorated by student activism during the Uprisings of 2020 which contribute to destabilizing the racialized organizational order through direct action. As Ascend’s loose coupling to the field became untenable during national student protests, the organization sought to recouple to the demands of student protesters by explicitly renegotiating the terms of inclusion for their students within the racialized organizational field. The case of Ascend shows that decoupling, previously theorized to be a method of evading commitments to equity, may also be a method of subverting racialized dependencies.
Through examining how Ascend students make sense of themselves in relation to other students from their public middle schools and other students in the program. I find that many of the Ascend students I spoke to characterized Ascend as a program not just for smart kids, but for “good people” who want to “change the world,” and their non-TSP peers as people who lack a commitment to contributing positively to society and enriching their own lives. Analyzing the educational histories the students provided in their interviews, I argue that Ascend students’ particular academic careers illustrate preferential treatment in school long before applying to Ascend, and that this contributes to their perceptions of their middle school classmates. Additionally, I find that the students often moralize merit and valorize struggle as a way to prove they are worthy of the academic opportunities Ascend affords. I suggest that Ascend youth, despite a significant amount of time in Ascend classes discussing social inequality, struggle to see how it shapes Ascend and their own lives
How Does It Fit? Basic Distinctions for Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Regulatory Fit and Non-Fit
No full textRegulatory fit—the experience of alignment between an individual’s motivational orientation and his or her goal pursuit strategies—has garnered substantial attention in psychology, yet fundamental questions remain about how best to conceptualize and measure this phenomenon.
This dissertation addresses these open questions by proposing and investigating two fundamental distinctions for operationalizing regulatory fit and non-fit: (a) regulatory fit effects resulting from motivational sensitivities related to seeing the world (i.e., the chronic accessibility of motivational constructs) versus dealing with the world (i.e., the effectiveness with which individuals pursue motivation-specific goals), and (b) regulatory fit effects resulting from simultaneous alignment between an activity and one’s motivations on more than one motivational dimension. It encompasses six studies involving both correlational and experimental designs.
Central to the methods was the development, validation, and application of a novel 2 (promotion vs. prevention) x 2 (truth vs. control) motivational framework of goal pursuit activities. Results suggest that distinct measures of regulatory fit and non-fit are relevant to ways-of-seeing versus ways-of-dealing outcomes for prevention and promotion motivations. Furthermore, analyses reveal that activities can be driven by motives on both the promotion-prevention and truth-control dimensions at the same time, yielding simultaneous fit effects with important consequences for individuals’ preferences and beliefs about goal pursuit activities, as well as the accessibility and actual selection of the same set of activities. Collectively, these findings contribute to the field’s understanding of regulatory fit and non-fit by demonstrating that different types of motivational sensitivities shape cognition and behavior through distinct mechanisms.
The dissertation concludes with implications for how researchers and practitioners might better operationalize and harness regulatory fit in education, healthcare, organizational contexts, and beyond
“Steryngs” of the Will: Issues of Volition in Late Fourteenth Century English Literature
No full textOften considered less sophisticated than their Latinate counterparts, contemplatives and poets writing in the English vernacular during the late fourteenth century are, this dissertation argues, philosophers and theologians in their own right. Filling a lacuna in medieval intellectual history, “Steryngs” of the Will develops the first literary history of the will in the vernacular writing of late medieval England. Pushing beyond the boundaries of “vernacular theology,” this dissertation demonstrates that Middle English works of devotion and contemplation are significant voices in cross-disciplinary and contemporary debates in theology and philosophy, regarding especially the will, grace, the soul and body, and contemplation. More broadly, “Steryngs” of the Will explores how Middle English poetry and prose about contemplative experience do the intellectual work of philosophy and theology, and, at the same time, do more than just intellectual work. Geared toward a wider, non-Latinate public in search of spiritual nourishment, the vernacular writing of late medieval England takes up enduring questions about the will, grace, and the love of God found in the monastics and scholastics, reshapes them, and makes them new.
William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the anonymously authored Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Divine Love did not merely rehearse in Middle English the conceptions of the will found in the Latin treatises of the university of the church. Instead, these texts demonstrated that the vernacular and its literary forms could serve as profound vehicles for theological and philosophical reflection on various kinds, capacities, and habits of volition. The literary forms that emerged within, and were particular to, vernacular writing—the macaronic long poem (Piers Plowman); epistolary modes of spiritual direction addressed to novices and women (the Cloud of Unknowing and Scale of Perfection); and autobiographical narrative and reflection on visionary experience (A Revelation of Divine Love)—drew upon their Latin forebears, and in some cases surpassed them, using theology and philosophy to move beyond philosophy and theology altogether. In some instances, the vernacular became the medium for virtuosic expression of contemplative practice and experience: how the will orients the soul toward, and ultimately rests in, the unitive love of God. In studying how Middle English writers engaged the will, grace, and contemplation, this dissertation offers new directions for medievalists working in the expanding field of vernacular theology and literature, suggesting that there is promise in medievalists becoming literary theologians and theologians of the literary
The Effects of Intensive Tact Instruction on Two- and Three-point Responding to Joint Attention
No full textLow demonstration or lack of joint attention are one of the earliest indicators of children being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research shows that demonstrating joint attention is important for a child’s development and is fully demonstrated by 12 to 18 months of age. Joint attention is defined as a child sharing an experience with another individual and this definition does not require ongoing coordinated eye gaze during the shared experience. To expand the joint attention literature, two experiments were conducted to increase joint attention in toddlers and children.
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to induce joint attention (RJA and IJA) using an Intensive Tact Instruction (ITI) for children with listener and speaker skills and was a systematic replication of Harms (2020). The participants were selected based on a purposive and convenience sample and they were all receiving Special Instruction services at an Early Intervention center during the time of the experiment. The participants were between the ages of 2 and 3 years. The researcher recruited participants who did not emit three-point RJA. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design was used to measure the Effects of the ITI on two- point RJA, three-point RJA, and IJA across 3 participants. Results indicated that 1 out of 3 participants increased three-point RJA and IJA to criterion-level but the remaining 2 participants did not increase three-point RJA after experiencing the ITI.
The purpose of Experiment 2 was to target two-point RJA using an ITI intervention for children who emitted limited to no two-point RJA during the preintervention assessments. The participants were selected based on a convenience sample and they were all receiving Special Instruction services at an Early Intervention center or at a preschool during the time of the experiment. The participants were between the ages of 2 and 4 years. None of the participants demonstrated criterion-level of two-point RJA prior to beginning the experiment.
The main dependent variable in this experiment JOINT ATTENTION 4 was two-point RJA while also assessing three-point RJA, IJA, vocal verbal operants, and the childhood joint attention rating scale (C-JARS). A concurrent multiple baseline design was used to measure the effect of the ITI on two-point RJA. The results indicated that participants who completed the experiment increased two-point RJA to criterion level and demonstrated a functional relation between the ITI and two-point RJA. Experiment 2 also successfully increased three-point RJA with one participant and IJA with one participant. The ITI used an elongated reinforcer experience as part of the consequence for correct tact responses and successfully paired social experiences as a reinforcer. This resulted in increasing two-point RJA to criterion level across all participants who completed the experiment. Results indicate that the ITI may successfully lead to an increase in two-point RJA in toddlers and children between the ages of 2 and 4 years old because it establishes reinforcement for sharing social experiences with another person.
Keywords: Joint Attention, Language, Intensive Tact, Natural Reinforcer
Quantifying Peptide-Specific Immune Surveillance via HLA-I in Viral Infection & Cancer
No full textCancer is an enormous global health burden, affecting millions of people each year. It is estimated that 15–20% of human cancers are attributable to infections, predominantly by carcinogenic viruses, with incidence varying worldwide. In order to investigate the role that viral infection plays in cancer, we conducted a comparative analysis of virus-positive and virus-negative tumors across nine cancers linked to five viruses. We observed a higher frequency of virus-positive tumors in males, along with notable geographic differences in incidence.
Genomic analyses of 1,971 tumors revealed that virus-positive cases generally exhibit a lower somatic mutation burden, distinct mutation signatures, and characteristic driver gene alterations. Clinical trial analyses of PD-(L)1 inhibitors suggest that virus positivity is associated with higher treatment response rates, particularly in gastric cancer and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, both of which also demonstrate increased CD8+ T cell infiltration and T cell receptor clonal selection in virus-positive tumors.In order to further explore the role of the immune system in virus-associated cancers, we developed HLAScope, a metric designed to quantify immune surveillance at a granular, peptide-subspace specific level via HLA class I (HLA-I) molecules. Effective immune detection and elimination of abnormal cells, critical for cancer and infectious disease outcomes, relies on the presentation of intracellular peptides by HLA-I to cytotoxic T cells. HLAScope integrates HLA genotypes, peptides derived from selected proteomes, and binding affinity predictions to produce individual-level coverage scores across user-defined peptide spaces.
We demonstrate the utility of HLAScope across several contexts. When applied to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) proteome, HLAScope reveals that EBV-associated cancers, including nasopharyngeal carcinoma, natural killer/T-cell lymphoma, and classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma, exhibit reduced coverage of key viral proteins, such as LMP1 and LMP2 in EBV latency phases II/III. Extending this analysis to 73 EBV-associated conditions in the UK Biobank, HLAScope identifies a greater number of statistically significant associations between HLA-I peptide coverage and disease risk, recapitulating known links (e.g., diffuse large B cell lymphoma) and uncovering new ones (e.g., mononucleosis and multiple sclerosis). In two independent non-small cell lung cancer cohorts, HLAScope scores derived from the human proteome correlate significantly with improved survival in patients treated with immunotherapy, identifying associations unseen through existing genomic metrics such as tumor mutational burden, HLA-I zygosity, and HLA evolutionary divergence.
These results illustrate epidemiological, genetic, and therapeutic insights across virus-associated malignancies and establish HLAScope as a robust framework for quantifying immune visibility
The link between tax, trade and investment: tensions and opportunities
No full textReactions to global tax reforms highlight ongoing tensions between national tax sovereignty and obligations under tax, trade, and investment agreements. Despite these issues, investment competition will persist, requiring countries to adopt multifaceted strategies that recognize the interconnectedness and synergies among tax, trade, and investment disciplines
Characterizing Protein Glycosylation with Single-Molecule FRET Imaging
No full textIgA1 nephropathy (IGAN) is the most common form of primary glomerular nephritus1. The disease is triggered by damage to glomeruli from deposition of complexes formed between polyclonal IgA1 antibody proteins that are “galactose-deficient” (GD-IgA1) and antibodies directed to this GD-IgAI. Currently, galactose deficiencies are detected through mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography, and other ensemble methods. Ensemble measurements, however, only measure average glycan-IgA1 ratios, but cannot resolve heterogeneity of O-glycosylation between different IgA1 populations.
To resolve heterogeneity in O-glycosylated IgA1, we are creating an assay to detect GD-IgA1 using single molecule fluorescence measurements. Using single molecule fluorescence methods may allow us to detect small populations of glycosylated IgA1 or subtle differences between the glycans that are not detectable in ensemble measurements.This work utilizes Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) to observe the binding of protein probes to surface adhered molecules and obtain their kinetic fingerprints. Specifically, we measured the kinetic rates of jacalin (a lectin binding to O-linked glycans) binding at individual IgA1 molecules on a surface. Adding galactose decreased binding, which demonstrated that the jacalin probe binds specifically to O-linked glycans on the hinge region of IgA1.
This result is a first step towards kinetically fingerprinting O-glycans on IgA1. Subsequently, we compared kinetic fingerprinting results for IgA1 from healthy and Myeloma plasma samples. This work using Myeloma plasma samples will serve as a proof of concept for resolving multiple IgA1 populations in IgA Nephropathy patient samples, to ultimately find biomarkers or cure the disease
Coupled Tearing-Kink Modes and their Interactions with the Sawtooth Crash in HBT-EP
Get PDFThis thesis reports observations of kink and tearing modes in the High Beta Tokamak - ExtendedPulse (HBT-EP) experiment. When unstable, these modes could limit the operation of tokamaks used for fusion power by terminating the plasma discharge and causing rapid loss of plasma energy. The aim of this work is to characterize the sudden transition after a sawtooth crash of coupled 2/1-3/1 tearing-kink modes into a sustained and disruptive 2/1 tearing mode.
The following diagnostic techniques are used. Kink and tearing modes in HBT-EP distort the plasma edge, measured by a large array of Mirnov sensors, and perturb the interior of the plasma, observed routinely with Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) detector arrays. Two arrays, with different transmission filters, are located with tangential views to estimate the time evolution of the plasma temperature profile. Four EUV arrays, with 16 detectors each, are positioned with different poloidal views for poloidal Extreme Ultraviolet (pEUV) emission tomography. The 2D emissive structures producing the pEUV signals are reconstructed with tomographic inversion using a pixel basis and fixed weighting smoothness regularization. Spatial and temporal correlations across these independent diagnostics are used to measure the evolution and structure of coupled modes using a technique called multidiagostic Singular Value Decomposition (mdSVD). In mdSVD, orthogonal modes are identified within any fixed time window with their unique spatial and temporal characteristics.
The technique uncovers: coherent behavior of coupled (/) = (2/1) and (3/1) tearing-kink modes and rapid changes in plasma structure associated with sawtooth crashes which trigger disruptive and nondisruptive tearing modes. HBT-EP’s unique radially movable wall is found to significantly influence sawtooth triggering of disruptive tearing modes. The onset of sawtooth-triggered modes depends both on the plasma-wall separation, or wall coupling, and on the value of edge safety factor qₐ. We confirm that the condition for sawtooth triggering of disruptive (/) = (2/1) tearing modes does not correspond to the mode’s single-helicity stability condition Δ′₂/₁. We identify a dependency of the sawtooth period _ on the wall position and qa as a candidate to explain the onset of the saturated tearing mode. This thesis motivates future efforts to model the influence of a nearby resistive wall on sawtooth triggering of tearing modes