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Harm Reduction Strategies and Approaches
Get PDFSlide deck for an introduction to harm reduction presented to students in the Introduction to Social Epidemiology class at UNC-Chapel Hill, April 25, 2025.
Best viewed dynamically at beautiful.ai:
https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-OOO3chWEFsqAAVqjDG
Urban Acoustics and Infrasonic Detection of Crowd Noise
Get PDFThis study evaluates the feasibility of using a six-node infrasound array to detect acoustic signals generated by large-scale human crowd events. The array, deployed on the rooftop of a building approximately 500 meters from UNC’s Kenan Memorial Stadium, recorded low-frequency acoustic data during both a home football game and a matched non-game control period. After isolating eight 10-minute windows centered on known crowd events, the data were analyzed using spectral decomposition, beamforming, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). While frequency spectra and spectrograms revealed only subtle differences between conditions, beamforming identified a directional convergence in the 6–8 Hz band on game days that aligned with the stadium’s location. PCA further distinguished game and non-game windows, with game-day data showing elevated high-frequency energy and a southern directional bias. Together, these findings suggest that infrasonic crowd signatures, though subtle, are present and can be isolated using multidimensional analysis. The results support future deployment of denser, multi-array systems for robust urban event monitoring.Bachelor of Scienc
Assessing the Tax Impacts and Community Benefits of Nonprofit Hospitals with IMPLAN
Get PDFNonprofit hospitals receive scrutiny regarding two interrelated issues: (1) the equity impacts of their tax-exempt status on the communities they serve and (2) the degree to which the community-benefit spending they offer serves local communities. Using economic impact analysis, the authors construct heuristic models that estimate the economic and tax benefits of nonprofit hospitals’ operations in four small and medium-sized metro regions. The estimates find that overall tax revenues disproportionately flow to state and federal levels of government, while the costs of tax exemptions disproportionately fall on local and regional levels of government. Additionally, forms of community benefit spending that are frequently criticized, such as uncompensated means-tested care, are found to be important forms of regional investment. The authors conclude by highlighting workforce development as a pathway to improving nonprofit hospitals’ community relationships
What’s In A (Buzz)Word?: Navigating Organizational Authenticity In The Digital Age
Get PDF(Abstract taken from introduction) Organizations and their consumers commonly express the importance of authenticity as it relates to how effectively they establish their brand identity and communicate with stakeholders. According to a Stackla survey from Social Media Today, 90% of consumers say that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support. This emphasis on authenticity is not only expressed by consumers but also by those within the organizations themselves. According to that same survey, 83% of marketers say that authenticity is very important to their brands with 61% of them believing authenticity is the most important component of impactful content (“Survey Reveals How Consumers Really Judge Brand Authenticity”, 2019).Master of Art
Exploring Interprofessional Collaboration Opportunities Between Pharmacists and Oral Health Care Providers in Outpatient Settings
Get PDFPurpose
This project seeks to understand perceptions of community dental providers in North Carolina on medication issues and the role of pharmacy within dental practice to better direct future collaboration and education between community dental providers and pharmacists. Additionally, this project investigates perceptions of dental providers on acute dental care performed by non-dentist providers in emergency departments.
Methods
This study utilized a mixed-methods approach with an electronic survey and phone interviews with dental providers. Community dental providers were identified through state-level continuing education program email listservs and local and regional dental society email listservs. Survey and interview participants were eligible to participate if they had an active North Carolina dentistry license and had practiced in the state of North Carolina in the prior 12 months. Participants were able to indicate in the initial survey their willingness to participate in a follow-up interview. Survey questions were designed into four sections to assess 1) demographics, 2) perceptions of community dental providers on medication-related problems, 3) high-priority education topics on which disease states and medications are most desired for educational materials, and 4) perceptions of community dental providers on acute dental care in the setting of emergency departments performed by non-dental providers. Interview questions were designed to allow for more in-depth questions to explore similar themes from the survey.
Results
There were 24 participants in the initial survey, and 5 participants completed an interview. 42.9% of participants identified as female and, participants represented 8 counties in North Carolina with the highest frequencies coming from Monroe (n=7), Wake (n=4), and Durham (n=2) counties. When asked about comfortability in managing dental pain in the presence of chronic pain, participants varied in their responses with very comfortable (25%, n=4) and very uncomfortable (31.3%, n=5) having the highest frequency of responses. The educational topics from pharmacy professionals that dental providers indicated would be the most desired included chronic disease states and medications (n=20, 40%), new medications on the market (n=20, 45%), and oral health impact of common medications (n=20, 45%). When asked to evaluate the perceived quality of dental care in the settings of emergency departments and urgent care settings by non-dental providers, most respondents felt that the care is poor (n=16, 38.1%) or very poor (n=16, 19.1%).
Conclusion
Strategies for continuing education of community oral health providers could involve a combination of live continuing education as well as online resources in antibiotic contraindications, management of dental pain in the presence of chronic pain, chronic disease states and medications, new medications on the market, and oral health impact of common medications. This study helps to identify these educational needs to inform the creation of continuing education materials for community oral health providers.Doctor of Pharmac
Free Food on Campus: A Nutrition Program to Reduce Food Insecurity in Isabella County, Michigan
Get PDFFood Insecurity affects college students at disproportionately high rates in Isabella County, Michigan, and is exacerbated by a typical lack of assistance programs available to students. This program aims to focus directly on Central Michigan University students through the development of a course in the CMU online learning management system entitled “Free Food on Campus.” This course will allow event coordinators to alert students via e-mail of any leftover food from campus events and provide them with a one-hour window to pick the food up. This program seeks to reduce student food insecurity by allocating this leftover food. Using a pre and post-test design, the study will evaluate the course’s success and effectiveness in achieving this goal, providing insight for future programs.
Keywords: food insecurity; college; students; college food insecurity; hunger; food waste reduction; food aid; learning management systemMaster of Public Healt
Investigating Obesity-related B7H3 Regulation and Immune Modulation in Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Get PDFPurpose: To investigate the regulatory mechanisms of B7H3 expression and its immunomodulatory impact in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Background: B7H3 is an immune checkpoint protein highly expressed in TNBC and often involved in coinhibitory regulation in the immune system. However, the regulatory mechanisms of B7H3 expression are unclear. Obesity-related inflammatory cytokines, such IFN-γ and TNF, upregulate expression of immunosuppressive proteins such as PD-L1 (B7H1) on TNBC cells, through the JAK/STAT pathway. While B7H3 is a related protein classified in the same B7 family as PD-L1, it is unknown whether these cytokines have a similar effect on B7H3 expression in TNBC cells. Thus, we investigated the impact of obesity-related cytokines on B7H3 regulation and the immunosuppressive effect of obesity-driven B7H3 expression in TNBC.
Methods: Murine TNBC (E0771) and human TNBC (MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468) cell lines were treated with IFN- γ and TNF alone or in combination. After 24 hours of treatment, cells were harvested for RT-qPCR analysis of PD-L1 and B7H3 and western blot analyses to confirm activation of JAK/STAT and NF- κB pathways. Additionally, MDA-MB-231 cells were treated with Ruxolitinib (RUX), a JAK/STAT inhibitor, along with IFN- γ for 24 hours before harvest for RT-qPCR analysis. In vivo, female C57Bl/6NCrl mice were placed on high fat diet (60% kcal) or low fat diet (10% kcal) for 15 weeks. Once the targeted body mass was reached, mice received an injection of E0771 cells, a mouse model of breast cancer, bearing shRNA constructs either targeting B7H3 or a scramble control leading to orthotopic tumor formation. Tumors were monitored until endpoint, upon which tumor mass was measured and immune markers among tumors were analyzed using RT-qPCR. Statistical analysis was performed using two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) or two-sided students t-test.
Results: Obesity-related inflammatory cytokines induced activation of NF-κB and JAK/STAT signaling proteins, as well as B7H3 expression in TNBC, using both murine and human cell lines. RT-qPCR and western blot analyses revealed that independent and joint treatment with IFN- γ and TNF induced B7H3 expression. Despite the increase in JAK-STAT signaling induced by these inflammatory cytokines, treatment with the JAK-inhibitor RUX did not suppress B7H3 expression in human TNBC cell lines. Lastly, B7H3 promoted tumor growth and immunosuppression in an obesity-dependent manner in a mouse model of breast cancer.
Conclusions: Our findings reveal that obesity-related cytokines can induce B7H3 in TNBC. Further, we found that B7H3 promotes an immunosuppressive composition in the tumor microenvironment in an obesity dependent manner. This indicates a potential interaction between B7H3 and obesity-driven immune modulation to promote cancer progression, highlighting the importance of metabolic factors in shaping the tumor immune composition. Given that B7H3 has emerged as a leading candidate for CAR-T cell therapies to treat TNBC, determining regulatory mechanism of B7H3 is becoming more imperative to develop B7H3 targeting therapies.Bachelor of Science in Public Healt
A Thousand Kichikus: Kichiku Hauntology and Accelerated War Machine - or a conspiracy theory of apocalypse
Get PDFForeword: How I learned to stop worrying and love conspiracy theories
A crazy conspiracy about the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodore Adorno was exposed in 1992, at a time when intellectuals were stomping on the Frankfurt School like it was a dead dog[1].
In his book The Story of The Committee of 300, former MI6 agent John Coleman claimed that with the help of Adorno, the Beatles successfully launched the “Aquarian Conspiracy” advocating LSD and “New culture” by rock music. And through the techniques called “backmasking”—first referenced by occult leader Aleister Crowley to mean editing a reversed sound on the original recording to create rhythms and codes that hinted at communism—this became “a power inviting demonic possession”[2] [3]
Of course, such conspiratorial arguments made by Christian Crusade Publication couldn't be taken seriously in academia, while its twin brothers put out by Neoliberalism Crusade Publication[4] are full of studies of Chinese cyberculture. These ideological theologians who treat every subculture in post-socialist nations as variants of The Plastic People of the Universe[5] view Kichiku (please explain what Kichiku is!) culture as a potential resistance to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship driven by the still-powerful hysteria against communism.
Another scary fact about communist utilization of media was exposed before the collapse of the CCP: On May 17th 1991, there was a TV show named The Fifth Wheel (which means something unnecessary) broadcast on Leningrad Television. The special guest, musician, pianist, experimental artist, writer, and an impersonated historian, Sergey Kuryokhin, proposed to the audience a shocking historical fact : Vladimir Lenin is a mushroom and a radio wave.
Kuryokhin hypothesized that with the surprising achievement of the October Revolution there must have been something supernatural to make this unexpected revolution possible. Then he went through a long series of deductions combined with “sources”, several of whom were his own fabrications): the novelist and peyote proponent Carlos Castaneda; founder of Russian Cosmism Nikolai Fedorov; a study about radio waves from MIT; a letter from Lenin to Plekhanov; before finally coming to a conclusion that because Lenin consumed too many psychedelic mushrooms, he eventually became a mushroom. The type of mushrooms Lenin took, according to the study from MIT, allowed them to morph into radio waves.
Again, I am not judging any tendency analyzing Kichiku culture: I am very content to see their theoretical tool— neoliberal theology—and my theoretical tools—Postmodernism, media theory, and psychoanalysis—to be similarly criticized as conspiracy theories. Besides the fact that critical theories with the European continental tradition were classified into “literature” (like German/French literature), even Bruno Latour concedes that critical theories with dialectics as conspiracy plays a role in climate-denialist movements. To study a postmodern cultural phenomena like Kichiku, we need conspiracy theories at its base level: that’s why I made a parody of Zizek’s interdiction of The Parallax View “DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM AT THE GATE” in the first two paragraph to state the function of conspiracy theory in dialectical materialism by providing “the parallax view” that the different visual senses caused by the dynamic shift in point of view and because of the inherently concealed ,parallax gap between two eyes, making a synthesis impossible. Such a parallax gap reveals that two opposed positions can be an internal contradiction of a single position. The rejection of sublation to a homogeneous Hegelian synthesis creates a new space for Benjamin’s constellation, a special dialectic of redemption almost like a Christian miracle. In his The Origin of German Tragic Drama, to explain why his research is about Baroque tragedy normally valued less than Greek tragedy, Benjamin argues that comparing to Greek tragedy assuming a perfect totality, the elements in Baroque tragedy are isolated and changing over the contexts where the totality is being constantly re-constructed. Benjamin identifies the relationship between universality and particularity “constellations” ,like the Kichiku and Kichiku elements. The particular elements are fragmented and the universe totality is ruins : according to Benjamin, Baroques litterateur play a similar role as alchemist, the heritage for Classic became elements and were mixed up as new totality - so is the role played by critics- in Gothe’s Elective Affinities, Benjamin declare that the truth exists in the burning fire of the works , which are the firewood for critics. From the flame of truth, critics liberate the elements from the ruins and build up the constellation, just as what the Angelus Novus in On the Concept of History will do to the dead, liberating them from the ruins of history.
So please allow me to do the same thing Benjamin described to the works previous scholars have done with the Kichiku artworks made by anonymous creators. I would like to give credit to Yihong Liu for his 2019 essay KICHIKU CULTURE: AUDIENCE AS CREATORS, CREATORS OF THEIR OWN REALITIES which is one of the few scholarly essays about Kichiku. Also, Liu’s research is typical among research about Chinese subculture or youth culture in general because of its belief of neoliberal theology that the creators know exactly what they want to create, or desperately distort elements together automatically dogfighting with the algorithm in the techno-feudalistic stream-media platform. Based on previous research, I will explain how Kichiku was rapidly developed and transformed to completely different forms compared to what it was in 2019 and the limitations of neoliberalism academic tradition. Chairman emphasizes “criticism and self-criticism”[6] as “a quality that distinguished the Chinese communist Party from other parties.”. I will harshly criticize a booklet Chinese Cyber Ideology: Neoliberalism, Nationalism and Nihilism[7] I published in high school, which is a naive and overly simplistic connection between the mainstream cultures advocated by the three stages of CCP and their influence on subcultures. By writing this thesis, I hope I can finally erase this embarrassing episode .
Even for audiences besides Doctors Driscoll and Dixon, who unfortunately have to read this whole “私小説” (I-novel), I still urge anyone who swears that he or she or they will not view this as some sort of “creative writing” to spend some time reading this for entertainment. I promise you it will be exciting: The traditional culture-study scholars are like the European armchair detectives who always keep a safe distance from the traumatic presence involving themselves into cases, using logic to map an ideal panorama; But what I will do is more like American hard-boiled detectives, like the investigator from H.P. Lovecraf’s novels, directly face the unspeakable horrors—the unrecognizable noise, twisted faces, and unexpectable screaming inside the Kichiku as my adventure—protecting myself with the weapons of psychoanalysis, media theory, and dialectic of redemption, while trying to maintain self-sanity all the time! Or you can view this project as a seance based on Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher’s Hauntology: as Derrida successfully recalled the specters of Marx through Das Kapital in 1993[8], (John Coleman’s prophecy came true a year later- Communism does connect with demons) I am trying to recall the specters from the Kichiku artworks; the specters of Jean Baudrillard; the specters of Antonin Artaud, the specters of Marinetti, the specters of Wagner & Nietzsche, the specters of Bataille & De Sade… Angelus Novus will eventually wake up the dead and prepare for the return of the repression, or the Terminator, who knows?
[1] Hegel made such analogy to Spinoza and Marx made the same analogy to Hegel
[2] According to the book Rhythum, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music by David A. Noebel Christian Crusade Publication 1966.
[3] The first two paragraph are imitation of the beginning Zizek’s interdiction of The Parallax View “DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM AT THE GATE” , where Zizek referred to a conspiracy that Walter Benjamin was killed by “ ‘killerati’ (Stalinist agents recruited from socialist intellectuals who were carrying out assassinations)” tp prevent the publication of the full version On the Concept of History (P3, The MIT Press 2006)
[4] I made this up, scholars are liars, be careful.
[5] A Czech rock band from Prague, a cultural symbol of anti-communism liberalism.
[6] 批评与自我批评
[7] Not an advertisement. Don’t buy it on Amazon, first it is a boring book, second I couldn’t get a single dollar from it due to my F1 visa, contact me if you really want to laugh at me, I will send you a free copy.
[8] The publication of book Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International by Derrida 1993Bachelor of Art
Effects of Acute MDMA Exposure on Serotonergic System Associated Genes: Sert1, Grin2b, Psd-95, and 5-Ht2ar
Get PDF3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), more commonly known as ecstasy, is classified as both a hallucinogen and a stimulant and leads to changes in the levels of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric condition characterized by heightened reactivity to certain stimuli following exposure to a traumatic event or repeated stressful experiences. Currently, there is no effective treatment for PTSD; as a result, clinical trials are exploring MDMA as a potential treatment for PTSD. Clinical trials have demonstrated that MDMA provides greater therapeutic benefits in treating severe PTSD than SSRIs, a commonly prescribed PTSD treatment. However, the mechanism behind how MDMA is able to alleviate symptoms of PTSD and facilitate fear extinction learning is unknown. This research aims to use quantitative PCR (qPCR) to assess changes in gene expression for genes related to fear learning following acute MDMA exposure in the amygdala, ventral hippocampus, and dorsal hippocampus – brain regions known for their involvement in fear and memory. Specifically, gene expression levels of SERT1, PSD-95, GRIN2B, and 5-HT2AR were assessed in rodents that received MDMA or saline injections 24 hours and 1 hour prior to cervical dislocation. This study found that SERT1 expression was significantly increased in the dorsal hippocampus in the MDMA group compared to the control group. Expression of all four genes of interest did not change significantly in any other brain regions studied. Bachelor of Scienc
Experience and Escape: The Vale of Soul Making in the Odes of John Keats
Get PDFIn April of 1819, in a letter to his brother and sister-in-law, British romantic poet John Keats first described his concept of Soul-making. He asserted that human Souls were created through unique and varied experiences, and that pain and pleasure were equally valuable to the Soul-making process. Within weeks after proposing this theory, Keats composed a cluster of five odes – "Ode to Psyche," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode on Indolence." These odes, addressing themes of expereince, escape, and doubt, cannot be fully understood outside of the context of Keats's theory of the Soul. Reading the odes and the Soul-making letter in tandem illuminates naunced readings of each poem individually and reveals their interwoven story. Bachelor of Art