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Towards a Sustainable Recovery for Lebanon’s Economy
No full textLebanon’s current economic crisis ranks among the worst in recent history. GDP has collapsed by 38% in real terms. The Lebanese lira, which was fixed to the dollar in 1997, has lost more than 98% of its value on the parallel market. The government has defaulted on its debt, and depositors are unable to access their funds held at commercial banks. Consolidated public sector debt, including both government debt and commercial banks’ claims on the Banque du Liban (BdL), represents more than seven times the current GDP. Public services delivery has crumbled. In short, the country is undergoing a debt crisis, a banking crisis, a currency crisis, and a growth collapse. Four years into the crisis, a resolution remains elusive, and each passing day increases the economic and social burdens faced by the population.
Given the increasing cost of delaying a resolution, we propose a strategy for Lebanon’s economic recovery that addresses all the dimensions of the crisis while recognizing the need to rapidly kick-start the economic recovery.Version of Recor
The Bouncer - An American Sakadagami
No full textThe Bouncer: An American Sakadagami is the opening section of a novel that blends literary fiction with a traditional genre thriller. The genre thriller elements include life and death stakes, violence, sex, and an intricate conspiracy plot. The literary elements enter the text first through a narrative voice that uses the myriad sounds and rhythms of language and other voices to (hopefully) enable a heightened state of concentration.
Other literary elements infused into this thriller include psychological questioning, social and political observations, and observations on the relationship between the body and the emotions, and on the body and what might be considered consciousness or a soul.
The author has made a sincere attempt to achieve verisimilitude. He has studied taiji, yoga, and meditation deeply. He has also tried to imagine how thriller plot events and a thriller-worthy hero could exist in real life. Thus his hero does not just confront the villains and the plot machinations of a thriller, but also the experiences and the emotions that are common to young adults living an age where technology and mass culture mediate so many social interactions and desires.
The plot itself is simple. A brother and sister escape their troubled childhood. As they begin to build stable adult lives in the same city, the criminals from their past re-emerge and draw them into a war between rival drug dealing gangs. The author’s goal is to write an operatic text with the very highest of stakes, vibrant emotion, and poetic language. His other goal was to create a character who models what it really means to be strong and masculine in the contemporary United States
Jewish Prisoner-Physicians During the Holocaust: Macro and Micro Contexts
No full textAuthor's Origina
Learning To Love The Backlog: How Backlogs Reduce Processing Times For Serials
No full textThis article describes the use of a project management approach to existing backlogs and to ongoing receipts in technical services for improved efficiency. Drawing from lessons from the COVID19 pandemic, successful strategies regarding timely backlog reduction, and improving efficiency for ongoing work are applied to new backlogs produced through a move and in absorption of additional workflows.Accepted Manuscrip
Investigating Mechanisms of Chemotherapy Resistance in Quiescent Cancer Cells
No full textChemotherapy resistance remains a significant challenge in cancer treatment, with chemotherapy failing in up to 90% of cancer cases. Here, we report on our investigation of chemotherapy resistance, in which we have made three key discoveries. First, we found that the RNA-binding protein FXR1 induces selective translation of survival genes in quiescent (G0) acute monocytic leukemia cells, driving chemotherapy resistance. To understand this phenomenon, we performed ribosome profiling and functional analyses of FXR1-overexpressing cells. Our results indicate that FXR1 activates the integrative stress response and causes the translation of key genes responsible for survival and resistance. Second, we discovered that chemoresistant breast cancer cells secrete increased amounts of extracellular vesicles (EVs) that contain proteins and RNAs that contribute to cancer proliferation and chemoresistance, suggesting a possible mechanism of spreading their oncogenic properties to neighboring cancer cells. We used tangential flow filtration to isolate these EVs and nanoparticle tracking analysis to determine their size distribution, as we performed RT-qPCR and Western blotting to identify their biomolecular components. Finally, we found that EVs secreted by chemoresistant breast cancer cells are enriched in circular RNAs, which are known to be associated with chemotherapy resistance and may be translated to form novel proteins. We used RNA-seq and BLAST analysis to identify these circRNAs and found that they contained m6A motifs and non-AUG start sites, and we used polysome profiling to show that these circRNAs bind to ribosomes. Overall, these results suggest potential therapeutic targets to allow chemotherapy treatments to be more effective, and they shed insight into the mechanisms of resistance in cancer cells.Biomedical Engineering A
The Canadian Pacific Railway and the Newspapers that Told the Story
No full textThe railways have been an important topic within Canadian history and a large contributor of the founding of Canada. There has been in-depth research in the ways the railroads affected Canada. There was an earlier debate around the idea of why the railway was built exploring possible reasons of national identity, defense from the United States and profiteering from businessmen and politicians. There was another stream of research that takes the Annales school of history approach focusing on the peoples’ lived experiences and drawing many conclusions on how that impacted Canada. There was a post-modernist approach to the effects on Canadian culture from the railways. There is a segment of literature on the opinions of everyday citizens on the railways and those who were in favor of the railways and those opposed to the building of the railways. This research has built a strong narrative of the major events that occurred at the political, business, and working-class citizen level. There has been many different academic approaches and biography’s that tell the story of the individual and the country at large. There was an apparent gap in this research in understanding how the different newspapers covered the Canadian Pacific Railway and the scandal surrounding its building. I argued throughout this thesis that after the founding of Canada in 1867, both the Liberal and Conservative parties of Canada attempted to become the natural governing party of Canada and this fight occurred in the different partisan newspapers and spilled over into debates about the railways.Extension Studie
Results of a Regional Study: Language concordance use, provider perspectives, and best practices among dental and dental hygiene students
No full textLanguage concordance may offer advantages as an adjunct or alternative to traditional interpretation services in the clinical setting. We undertook a cross-sectional, mixed methods approach to describe Boston, MA oral health profession student language concordance with patients. Of note, to fully characterize the spectrum of language concordance use, we utilized a broad definition of language concordance as any use of a non-English language to communicate with a non-English speaking patient. Between July-August 2023, students from three dental schools and one dental hygiene school were surveyed, returning a response rate of 23% (N=96/417). Survey areas included generic demographics, languages used with patients, language use specifics (frequency, comfort, and self-assessed proficiency), and prior education or certification. Summary statistics were generated from survey results. Dental students comprised 71% (N=68/96) of the respondents, and dental hygiene students comprised the remainder. Of the respondents, 51% (N=49/96) reported having used language concordance with patients to discuss dental diagnoses or treatment plans. The frequency of use distribution appeared bimodal, with peaks at “a few times a year” and “more than once a week.” Over one third of students were “somewhat comfortable” with both dental terms and medical terms (N=19/48, 16/47 respectively). The simple majority reported 0 hours of dental-specific and medical-specific language education in their non-English language (N=21/48, 27/44 respectively), and the majority reported no bilingual or interpreter certification (N=43/48, 46/48 respectively). Subsequent explanatory semi-structured interviews of 11 previous survey respondents related to five categories: workflow and logistics, attitudes, language background and education, decision-making, and frequency. A mixed inductive-deductive thematic analysis was used to generate themes from interview data. Interviewees used language concordance in a variety of ways, from handling all communications to giving simple instructions only as an adjunct to professional interpretation. Interviewees also discussed a range of prior language education, including informal education from family or community, formal education in high school or college, or having grown up in a non-English speaking country. Proposed quality improvement initiatives include improved dental-specific language education resources that target heterogeneous language backgrounds, regular assessment of student language concordance use, competence, and attitudes, and more concordant staff and written resources. Language concordance in Boston, MA dental and dental hygiene schools encompasses a diverse spectrum of functions and individual student language proficiency. Future studies may examine the impacts of proposed policy changes, incorporate a nationally representative, interprofessional population, or use the more nuanced definition of language concordance examined here for more rigorous study design.Orthodontic
Sarcopenia, elevated body mass index, and platinum-associated adverse events in patients with lung cancer
No full textBackground: Patients with sarcopenia and elevated body mass index (BMI) are at high risk of platinum-associated adverse events (AEs). This study examines the association between sarcopenia, BMI, and AEs in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Methods: Retrospective cohort study including adult patients with NSCLC who started cisplatin or carboplatin between 2015-2022. Sarcopenia was defined on computed tomography (CT) using sex-specific cutoffs for skeletal muscle index. We determined the association between CT-defined sarcopenia in patients with normal BMI ( 25 kg/m2) and elevated BMI (≥ 25 kg/m2) and ≥ grade 2 AEs (including anemia, thrombocytopenia, neutropenia, and creatinine increased), chemotherapy discontinuation and mortality within 90 days using a Fine-Gray subdistribution hazard model. The association between receiving an excess carboplatin dose and AEs was evaluated.
Results: Of 604 included patients, mean age was 66±10 years, 307 were female (51%), and 167 (28%) had sarcopenia. Sarcopenia and elevated BMI (N = 67) was associated with an increased risk of grade ≥ 2 anemia (subdistribution hazard ratio [sHR] 1.64, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.17-2.29, P = 0.004), thrombocytopenia (sHR 2.25, 95%CI 1.16-4.36, P = 0.016), and creatinine increased (sHR 2.72, 95%CI 1.45-5.13, P = 0.002). Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that patients whose Cockcroft-Gault based glomerular filtration rate (GFR) dictated a carboplatin dose ≥ 25mg higher than CKD-EPI GFR were at significantly higher risk of grade ≥ 2 AEs and chemotherapy discontinuation.
Conclusions: Combined CT-defined sarcopenia with elevated BMI is associated with an increased risk of platinum-associated AEs in patients with NSCLC; this may be due to GFR misestimation in patients with low muscle mass and elevated BMI.Graduate Educatio
Okinawa and Military Housing: Challenges and Opportunities for Progress
No full textThere are many challenges related to U.S. Military Housing on Okinawa. Several of the most prominent issues are U.S. military-related accidents and incidents (e.g. Aircraft related accidents, Pollution, Wildfire, Noise), crimes, economic impact, and compensation politics. Both the U.S. and Japanese governments regard the U.S.–Japan security alliance as a cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, and the U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) continues to play a critical role in supporting this alliance. Although the USFJ reformation plan includes reducing the burden on Okinawa as one of its objectives, significant challenges persist. This research confirmed that the crime rate and traffic accident rate by U.S. military-related population is much lower than the civilian population. However, the number of U.S. military-related accidents and incidents has not decreased over the past 20 years, averaging approximately 86 cases per year. There is a substantial safety risk associated with hosting U.S. military bases. It also affects the local economy development and influences the local communities policies.
This research also uncovered opportunities for better understanding current conditions, specifically identifying the need for a clear definition on how think about the concentration of military forces outside the U.S. The concentration of military forces is not only about the size of U.S. military-related population, the size of base, or how closely they are located to each other, but also what kind of units and from which branch of the military they are from. U.S. military-related incidents and accidents are associated with the combination of units, which military service branch they come from and what kind of training and operations they conduct. There needs to be greater quantitative and qualitative research as this can help shape local and national policies governing not just Okinawa, but in similar conditions around the world.Extension Studie
AI-Generated Summaries for Course Selection
No full textMany university students use course evaluation guides to select courses. However, these guides
do not present course feedback in a way conducive to the course selection process; many offer lists of written
comments without providing tools for students to easily analyze these data. A simple improvement to such
guides would be the inclusion of AI-generated summaries of the comments. This paper implements a summarization
tool for the Harvard Course Evaluation Guide which efficiently summarizes feedback comments
through few-shot prompting of ChatGPT with a focus on capturing the overall quality, instructor quality,
and workload of each course. Using summaries generated in this way, ChatGPT is better able to rate the
qualities of a course than random sampling, using summaries generated through zero-shot prompting, and
using the verbatim first five feedback comments. A user study investigating the difference between course
selection using feedback comments and using summaries of the comments generated by the summarization
tool did not find statistically significant differences. However, summaries might potentially improve
understanding of a course’s workload, and qualitative feedback suggested AI-generated summaries offer distinct
advantages, especially in terms of cost. Therefore, AI-generated summaries cannot replace feedback
comments, but tangibly improve the course selection process.Computer Scienc