35 research outputs found
Case study on drivers of stormwater user fees in 3 Massachusetts communities
No full textThesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2016.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 66-71).Urban stormwater is a major source of pollution in U.S. water bodies. Addressing the problem of stormwater pollution at the municipal level can be expensive, from infrastructure maintenance to implementing regulatory best practices. These needs have put pressure on municipalities to look for a stable source of revenue that extends beyond general tax appropriations for public works projects. In this context, stormwater user fees have remained a hotly debated topic in local budget discussions and national forums about stormwater management. In comparison to the rest of the country, the adoption of fees in Massachusetts communities is plagued by low uptake. This thesis aims to understand the surprisingly small proliferation and early adaptation of stormwater user fees in Massachusetts by identifying the local drivers of fee adoption as an alternative to using local tax income in three communities: Chicopee, Fall River and Northampton. Through a descriptive case study approach using qualitative interviews and publicly available data, the research underscores four key drivers apparent in local fee adoption: financial pressure, local history, governance arrangements of budgets, and cost equity. Ultimately, communities face numerous tradeoffs that affect the momentum and intricacy of the fee adoption process. Lessons learned about the local drivers of stormwater user fees in these three cases are specifically applicable to the Massachusetts context, but can serve as a guide for other New England municipalities considering new fees.by Anisha Anantapadmanabhan.M.C.P
The Romanticization of Mental Illness and Substance Abuse in Young Adult Media
No full textabstract: The following creative project defends that, whether intentionally or not, mental illness and substance abuse are inevitably romanticized in young adult media and discusses the dangers of this romanticization. This project is divided into three parts. The first part consists of psychological evaluations of the main characters of two popular, contemporary forms of young adult media, Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger and Euphoria by Sam Levinson. These evaluations use textual evidence and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) to determine what symptoms of psychopathology the characters appear to display. The second part consists of a self-written short story that is meant to accurately depict the life of a young adult struggling with mental illness and substance abuse. This story contains various aesthetic techniques borrowed from the two young adult media forms. The final part consists of an aesthetic statement which discusses in depth the aesthetic techniques employed within the short story, Quicksand by Anisha Mehra. (abstract
IDENTIFYING NEW COMPOUNDS CAPABLE OF INDUCING MODEL PHAGES
No full textMcMaster University MASTER OF SCIENCE (2020) Hamilton, Ontario
(Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences)
TITLE: Identifying new compounds capable of inducing model phages
AUTHOR: Anisha Nandy
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Alexander P. Hynes
NUMBER OF PAGES: xi, 80Prophages are the genomes of bacteriophages (phages, bacterial
viruses) that integrate into the chromosome of their host upon infection, lying dormant until conditions favour their reactivation. A cell harbouring a
prophage is called a lysogen, as, upon exposure to certain signals, the
prophage will initiate a replicative cycle ending in lysis of the host bacterium
and release of phages. This process is known as induction. Canonically,
induction occurs through activation of the bacterial SOS-response, a DNA repair cascade initiated by detection of DNA damage. Studies of prophage
induction have almost exclusively relied on challenges with compounds that
result in the initiation of the host SOS response.
Recent studies have identified some signals that affect prophage
induction independently of the SOS response, but these approaches have not
been systematic. To identify non-canonical triggers of prophage induction, I
screened 3,936 compounds against two model lysogens. The first, carrying
phage HK97, is a model for induction. The second, carrying phage Mu—a
prophage thought to be uninducible—serves as a control. Any compound
which inhibited bacterial growth in only our HK97 lysogen was considered to
have resulted in a phage-mediated response. The 171 compounds identified in this screen were then used to re-challenge the lysogen at a range of
concentrations and monitor the resulting release of free phages associated
with induction. Increases in phage counts were seen for 86 compounds. While 38 of these were known SOS activators, 49 were novel, ‘non-canonical’ inducers. Unexpectedly, the screening also revealed seven unique chemical inducers for the supposedly un-inducible model prophage, Mu.
The 56 new phage-inducers identified by this work include compounds
likely to be driving phage induction through non-canonical pathways. As
prophages are thought to respond to bacterial stress, these may reflect stressors acting through new mechanisms. Using these compounds as tools opens up an avenue to probe other stress pathways in bacteria, and, as evidenced by induction of Mu, potentially help discover new phages that don’t respond to canonical inducers.ThesisMaster of Science (MSc)Bacterial viruses (phages) can lie dormant as prophages in their host
bacterium until a signal triggers their activation, production of viruses, and
rapid killing of the host. This switch from dormant prophage to active phage called induction. Almost all molecules that result in prophage inductions
belong to a limited set of compounds which elicit a specific stress response in
bacteria.
Screening 3936 compounds for their ability to inhibit the growth of
bacteria carrying known prophages resulted in the identification of a small
subset associated with increased phage production. For one Escherichia coli
prophage—HK97, a model of induction—we found 49 compounds not
previously known as inducers. For another model prophage—Mu, a prophage
thought to be chemically uninducible—we identified seven such compounds.
These compounds will serve as tools to determine what signals prophages can respond to, and potentially identify new stress pathways of
interest in bacteria
Late Endocrine Effects after Stem Cell Transplant in a Young Girl with Griscelli Syndrome
No full textBackground. Griscelli syndrome (GS) is a rare disorder characterized by partial albinism and silver hair with alteration in genes necessary for melanin transport. Type 2 GS is fatal due to severe immunodeficiency without curative stem cell transplant (SCT). Late endocrinopathies are quite common in other disorders after SCT. These complications have not been reported in GS. Case Presentation. A 7-year-old female presented for growth failure with a history of GS status post curative SCT and consequently developed graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). She also had a history of eosinophilic enterocolitis, for which she was taking supraphysiologic glucocorticoids for the past year. She presented with severe short stature along with mild hyperthyroxinemia with subsequent diagnosis of Graves’ disease, which was treated with methimazole. GH therapy was commenced due to persistent growth failure, with a robust increase in growth parameters. She started spontaneous puberty; however, initial biochemical evaluation revealed hypergonadotropic hypogonadism with undetectable anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) consistent with low ovarian reserve and premature ovarian failure. Discussion. Growth failure was multifactorial due to her inflammatory condition and poor weight gain from multiple underlying illnesses, including hyperthyroidism, as well as chronic supraphysiologic glucocorticoid use. Although hypothyroidism is more commonly seen after SCT, rare cases of hyperthyroidism have been reported. In addition to SCTs, GvHD and GS have been associated with autoimmune conditions. It is important to monitor pubertal progression as the majority of those treated with alkylating agents prior to SCT have pubertal and ovarian failure and remain at risk for premature menopause
An Efficient Text Classification Scheme Using Clustering
No full textAbstractText classification method that uses efficient similarity measures to achieve better performance is being proposed in this paper. Semi-supervised clustering is used as a complementary step to text classification and is used to identify the components in text collection. Clustering makes use of labeled texts to capture silhouettes of text clusters and unlabeled texts to adapt its centroids. The category of each text cluster is labeled by the label of texts in it. Thus here the text clustering is used to generate the classification model for the next text classification step. When a new unlabeled text is incoming, measure its similarity with the centroids of the text clusters and give its label with that of the nearest text cluster. The similarity is calculated using different similarity measures. Results and evaluations are summarized and it is found that the system provides better accuracy when a Similarity Measure for Text Processing (SMTP) used for the distance calculation
Is That How You Should Talk to Her? Using Appropriate Prosody Affects Adults’, But Not Children’s, Judgments of Communicators’ Competence
No full textVarghese, A. & Nilsen, E. S., Journal of Language & Social Psychology, SAGE ( 39), 738-750 pp. xx-xx. Copyright © 2019 (SAGE Publications). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X19871692Two studies explored whether the appropriateness of a speaker’s prosodic style (i.e., pitch,
volume, speech rate) affects observers’ judgments of speakers’ and listeners’ competence. Adults
and school-aged children watched videos of speakers addressing a listener using prosodic styles
that were either appropriate (e.g., adult-directed for an adult listener), or inappropriate (e.g., child-directed for an adult listener). Adults, but not children, awarded higher ratings in some domains of
communicative competence to speakers and listeners when a speaker used appropriate prosodic
styles.Funder 1, The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship awarded to the first author and a SSHRC Insight Grant awarded to the second author
Physical and chemical characterization of composite flour from canna flour (Canna edulis) and lima bean flour (Phaseolus lunatus)
No full textTHE FULFILMENT OF MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS ON MAIN CHARACTERS IN “ENCANTO” MOVIE: A HUMANISTIC STUDY
No full textThe purpose of this study is to find out how the efforts made by the main characters in Encanto Movie (2021) meet their needs and analyse it according to Maslow's theory. This research method is defined as a qualitative method. The author limits the data by classifying into five groups of different levels of needs based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory. In this study, it can be concluded that the main character has levels of needs ranging from the most basic to the most important needs. For example, on Maribel, the author found that of Maslow's 5 levels of needs, there are 5 needs so that it can be said that all of her needs have been met and the most important are the needs for love and belonging, and self-actualization. As for Abuela, the author finds that out of these 5 levels of needs, there is only 1 level of need that must be met by her, namely the needs for self-actualization.Keyword: Hierarchy of needs, Family Relation, Humanistic psycholog
