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Differentiating the Effects of Androgenic and Anti-Androgenic Oral Contraceptives on Rodent Behavior
No full textOral contraceptive research is scarce, lacking representative samples and specificity in the generation of the pill. The pill can vary in terms of androgenicity, which can produce masculizing or feminizing effects on the brain. Clinical and animal studies havesupported that these changes may alter spatial memory and performance, attentional abilities, and affect. In this study, adolescent female Sprague-Dawley rats were injected intravenously with either an androgenic oral contraceptive, an anti-androgenic oral contraceptive, or a vehicle without a drug. Oral contraceptives did not impact anxiety in rodents but seemed to impair spatial and attention abilities in rodents. Treatment with an oral contraceptive led to worse performance in the MWM probe trial compared to control animals. The pill also decreased performance within the attentional task relative to controls, regardless of androgenicity. Contraceptive groups did not differ in anxiety measures within the EPM compared to controls. Therefore, it is pertinent that the impact of androgenicity of progestins on learning, anxiety, and attention continues to be explored. These findings support the idea that oral contraceptives can affect behavior and cognition, which is pertinent information for those who rely on these for medications
The Risk Society: Understood Through Review of Large Volume Petroleum Tank Fires
No full textThis paper supports the theoretical concept of the risk society, developed in the 1980’s, by sociologists Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. The risk society is a framework that sociology uses to study the ways in which society accounts for, reacts to, manages, and learns from risk. Sociology is concerned with this study of the risk society because it offers insight into the actions that society takes, and will take, to control dangers to find the balance between risk and reward. The following pages utilize case studies of three large volume petroleum tank fires in the United States and its Territories to find specific examples of the risk/reward balance in the petroleum industry. The successes and failures involved in each incident teach us about risk, how that risk is being controlled during tank fires, and what could be best done to adapt to those risks in the future. These little lessons on risk accumulate to give us a more educated framework for analyzing risk in other areas of society. The broad conclusion shows that there is a need for a better understanding of risk that would present an opportunity for sociologists (specifically within the field of environmental sociology) to utilize the risk society theory to evaluate climate change and other pressing environmental issues to find solutions that balance risk and reward. The risk society is a tool to aid in the study of climate and ecological changes and the balanced actions that are necessary to maintain the innovative and ever expanding planet we call home
Social Scripts: Esoteric Languages, Proprietary Software, and the Art of Writing Code
No full textWhile esoteric programming languages are becoming increasingly popular, little research exists about their political and artistic implications. In this paper, we examine esoteric languages as inherently political works of art. Esoteric programming languages have the potential to counteract a purification process common in proprietary software, in which the underlying code is hidden to portray the software as natural, infallible, and spontaneously generated. Esoteric languages that accept images as input, such as Piet, Light Pattern, and Perl-OCR, are uniquely suited to become popular forms of political expression because of the accessibility of the visual image. As a part of this research, we create the image markup language Tower, an esoteric language that accepts any image as its input and modifies the input image based on a deterministic and internally consistent grammar. By allowing any user to input an image and observe its modification, Tower showcases the process by which programs are created, undermining the code purification process
Transmission and Polymorphisms of Culex Flavivirus in Wild-Caught Culex Mosquitoes from Cleveland, Ohio
No full textThe study of Culex flavivirus (CxFv), specifically transmission modes and polymorphisms, is essential to further the world’s understanding of mosquito-borne viruses. The collection of Culex mosquitoes from Cleveland, Ohio revealed that CxFv is vertically transmitted and there are some genetic differences among these viral strains. Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) showed a 40% prevalence of CxFv among Culex mosquitoes caught in Cleveland, with a 78% rate of vertical transmission. These genetic differences provide insight into the various CxFv strains present and how the virus spreads in this area. The strains collected from here were more genetically similar to one another than to isolates from other countries according to a phylogenetic analysis. There was a percentage of similarity ranging from 33.51% to 93.04% in the samples collected from Cleveland, with CxFv isolates from India and Brazil being the closest genetic matches not from this collection location. This study effectively focused on viral transmission patterns of CxFv and the genetic differences that provide insight into potential global viral tracking
Investigating Activity Loss in an Engineered Monomeric Creatine Kinase through the Lens of a Sponge-derived CK – An Exploration of Quaternary Structure Significance
No full textInvestigating quaternary structure in proteins, particularly in the context of phosphagen kinases, provides valuable insights into protein evolution and its applications. This study focuses on creatine kinase, a member of this enzyme family which displays diverse quaternary structures but appears in nature almost exclusively as a dimer. The question arises: why do creatine kinases, and proteins in general, tend to form dimers? Previous research on rabbit muscle creatine kinase suggested that dimerization is crucial for maintaining activity, potentially due to obligate cooperativity. To test this theory, this study mutated two residues in the non-cooperative creatine kinase from Tethya aurantia (R148 and D210) to alanine, which are fully conserved in phosphagen kinase dimers and therefore believed to hold significance in the formation of quaternary structure. The R148A variant successfully formed a monomer. The monomeric R148A CK showed a 2-fold reduction in catalytic activity and a 3-fold reduction in efficiency, suggesting an insignificant loss of activity. The D210A variant remained a dimer and remarkably lost more activity and efficiency than that of the R148A monomer. Key conclusions of the current study include the critical role of Arg148 in dimerization and the potential impact of Asp210 on catalysis and conformational changes that may be critical for active site organization. The broader implication is that dimerization may not be essential for enzyme activity in non-cooperative phosphagen kinases, suggesting that dimerization in creatine kinases lacking cooperativity might have evolved for stability, but the reason behind dimerization in the TaCK remains unclear
Grief in Prison: How Incarceration Shapes Inmates Experiences with Loss
No full textThis project examines grief behind bars for male convicts in the United States. It looks at how the circumstances of incarceration inhibit healthy grief, and also the limited ways inmates are supported after the loss of a loved one. Existent literature on this subject highlights restricted access to funerary services, delayed exchanges of information, guilt, isolation, and macho culture as features of prison life which impair healthy mourning. This project found six primary features which characterize bereavement in prison, many of which overlap with the findings of other scholars. These features were guilt, ritual constraint, the harshness of the criminal justice system, guarded emotions, the importance of friendship, and the importance of family. Ultimately, I found grief in prison to be overwhelmingly challenging for incarcerated people, reflecting a need for change in mental health policy in United States prisons
Vaccines, Transplants, and Ethical Dilemmas: Navigating COVID-19 Vaccination Statuses and Organ Transplant Allocation
No full textThis project explores whether it is ethically permissible for healthcare institutions to deny transplant candidates, who are not vaccinated against COVID-19, the ability to receive an organ transplant. It argues that it is in fact ethical to deny an unvaccinated transplant patient an organ in order to ensure the continuance of a just organ allocation system. In the first chapter, the ethical principles of equity, justice, utility, and autonomy that guide the current organ allocation criteria within the United States are explored using William E. Connolly’s method of “essentially contested concepts” to explain the different interpretations of each principle and to identify which interpretation is most applicable to the issue of organ transplantation. Using the understanding of the ethical principles, chapter two explains the different reasons as to why a patient may refuse the vaccine and analyzes the validity of each reason: medical concerns, religious beliefs, minorities’ systemic distrust of the healthcare system, and political disinformation. Of these, the reasons that are deemed valid must be accounted for in the allocation criteria and may then shift the application of the ethical principles within the organ allocation criteria. Finally, the third chapter applies the content from the first two chapters to three cases where unvaccinated individuals were denied an organ transplant and assesses whether the healthcare institutions’ decisions were ethical. Overall, the findings show that in the majority of cases it is ethically permitted for healthcare institutions to deny unvaccinated transplant patients an organ
The Harm of \u27Harm\u27: An Examination of the Relationship Between Conceptions of Prejudice and Support for Free Speech
No full textIs support for free speech related to how students define harm related concepts like prejudice? The present research is focused on examining the relationship between College of Wooster students’ definitions of harm, as exemplified through the concept of prejudice, and their overall support for free speech. More specifically, I examined the correlation between how broadly students define the concept of prejudice and how likely they are to consider and value viewpoints different from their own. The methods used to demonstrate this relationship is the concept breadth scale derived from McGrath and Haslam (2020) and a hybrid free speech survey from various universities and a free speech non-profit. The survey was administered using Qualtrics and advertised through emails and the SONA system. The results revealed a negative association between concept breadth and students’ support for free speech. In addition, political affiliation mediated the association between concept creep and free speech. Political orientation was also negatively correlated with concept breadth. Overall, the present research provided an additional correlate with concept breadth––free speech––and verified that a relationship between concept breadth and free speech exists
Music is More Than a Hobby: The Efficacy of Music as a Form of Stress Reduction
No full textThe prevalence of stress in today’s society is an increasing concern as it can be detrimental to various aspects of health. This warrants the need for new and accessible treatments, such as music exposure. Previous literature has found that music can be effective in reducing stress as measured through subjective reports and cortisol levels. Music has also been shown to improve executive functioning measured through the Color Word Stroop task. However, the theory that music can reduce stress has not been tested specifically with measures of heart rate or neural substrates related to inhibition control. The current study aimed to replicate and expand research by measuring changes in heart rate, subjective measures, and behavioral and neural responses to the Color Word Stroop Task. Participants first had stressed induced using the MAST and were then split into two groups, a music group and silence group. Results did not elicit any significant differences between the music group and silence group within the physiological and subjective measurements of stress or the behavioral measurements of the Stroop. Neural substrates were measured through changes in the N450. Data elicited a significantly larger N450 in the music group than silence group, but through unexpected changes of amplitudes in response to the congruent condition. These findings do not support the notion that music effectively reduces levels of stress. However, various limitations such as the type of physiological measurement and the type of music used in the experiment provide possible explanations for discrepancies between hypothesis and results. Future research could expand upon this study by using measurements of cortisol or utilizing music preference
If You Give a Mouse a Virus: An Investigation of the Role of the Dorsal Hippocampus in Anxiety-Like Behavior through DREADDs
No full textAnxiety disorders make up many diagnoses of psychopathologies, and treatment incurs great financial and societal costs. The neurobiological mechanisms of anxiety are not yet understood, although research has indicated dysregulation of the limbic system and hippocampus as a potential cause. Previous studies have found a possible interaction between the hippocampus and anxiety-like behavior in rodents. However, most have looked at the ventral hippocampus, and few have used designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs). The current study used DREADDs to excite the dorsal hippocampus to investigate the role of the hippocampus in anxiety-like behavior through the open field test. No significant differences were found in anxiety-like behavior when the dorsal hippocampus was activated. This information may indicate that more specific regions of the hippocampus need to be targeted to examine behavioral consequences