2,282 research outputs found
Opening Prayer and Introductions
No full textWords of welcome from Susan Ferguson, director of the University of Dayton Center for Catholic Education
'Pilings of Thought Under Spoken': The Poetry of Susan Howe, 1974-1993.
No full textPhDThis thesis discusses the poetry published by contemporary American poet Susan
Howe over a period of almost two decades. The dissertation is chiefly concerned with
articulating the relationship between poetic form, history, and authority in this body
of' work. Howe's poetry dredges the past for the linguistic effects of patriarchy,
colonialism and war. My reading of the work is an exploration of the ways in which a
disjunctive poetics can address such historical trauma. The poems, rather than
attempting to reinstate voices lifted from what Howe has called "the dark side of
history", are a means of reflecting the resistance that the past offers to contemporary
investigation. It is the effacement, and not the recovery, of history's victims, that is
discernible in the contours of these highly opaque texts. Notions of authority are most
often addressed in the poetry through the figure of paternal absence, which has a
threefold function in the work, serving to represent social authority, an aporetic
conception of divinity and an autobiographical narrative. Alongside the antiauthoritarian
currents in the writing - critiques, for example, of the doctrine of
Manifest Destiny or of scapegoating versions of femininity - my thesis stresses Howe's
engagement with negative theology and with a strain of American Protestant
enthusiasm that has its roots in 17th century New England. The dissertation explores
the dissonance caused by the co-existence in the poetry of elements of political dissent
and religious mysticism. Finally, I consider Howe's engagement with literary history
and authors such as Shakespeare, Swift, Thoreau and Melville. The manner in which
Howe deploys the words of others in her work, I argue, allows for a mixture of textual
polyphony and a more conventional notion of authorial 'voice'
Ferguson-Smith, Malcolm: transcript of a video interview (06-Jun-2015)
No full textInterview with Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, conducted by Ms Emma M. Jones, for the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group, 06 June 2015, in Glasgow. Transcribed by Mrs Debra Gee, and edited by Professor Tilli Tansey and Mr Alan Yabsley. The project management was undertaken by Mr Adam Wilkinson. Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith (b. 1931) is Emeritus Professor of Pathology, University of Cambridge. He graduated in medicine at Glasgow University in 1955 and, while undertaking postgraduate training there in pathology, was introduced to research on sex chromatin under Bernard Lennox. An interest in Klinefelter’s syndrome in 1957 to 1958 led to his appointment as Fellow in Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1959, where he established the first chromosome diagnostic service in the USA, and undertook cytogenetic research into Turner syndrome. Research interests include molecular cytogenetics, karyotype evolution, vertebrate sex determination and comparative genomics. He is joint author of 'Essential Medical Genetics'.The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity (no. 210183). The current interview has been funded by the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award entitled “Makers of modern biomedicine: testimonies and legacy” (2012-2017; awarded to Professor Tilli Tansey)
"The honor of firing before His Majesty": Patrick Ferguson's will and the Royal Armouries’ Ferguson rifle
No full textPatrick Ferguson (1744-80) designed the first breech-loading rifle to be used by the British Army. In November 2000, the Royal Armouries purchased an early example, formerly in the possession of the Fergusons of Pitfour, descendants of Patrick's younger brother, George. Patrick Ferguson's will has helped the author identify the Royal Armouries' Ferguson Rifle as the one which Patrick Ferguson used when he demonstrated it before George III and Queen Charlotte at Windsor in 1776
Host Range Expansion of an Endemic Insect Herbivore is Associated With High Nitrogen and Low Fibre Content in Exotic Pasture Plants
No full textThe ins of the striatum: Utilizing chemogenetics to define the contribution of cortical and thalamic afferents during addiction behaviors
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08Addiction is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder accompanied by high rates of recidivism that lacks effect treatment, part of which may be due to an incomplete understanding of the brain circuits mediating addiction. Cortico-basal ganglia circuitry is a complex, interconnected network regulating addiction. Aberrant glutamatergic signaling in NAc is particularly important for the development and persistent of addiction, and NAc neurons receive glutamatergic innervation from many structures, with prefrontal cortex (PFC) and midline and intralaminar thalamic nuclei (MTN) inputs predominating. Recently we developed a viral mediated gene transfer approach combined with chemogenetics that allows us to selectively activate Gi/o-signaling cascades to reduce neuronal activity in specifically prefrontal cortex (PFC) or MTN NAc afferents during addiction-related behaviors. Thus, the overall goal of this dissertation was to utilize these novel techniques to more clearly define the role of PFC or MTN neurons projecting to the NAc in the regulation of psychomotor sensitization, drug-self administration, and drug-seeking behaviors in rats. We found that reducing neuronal activity of PFC neurons projecting to NAc attenuated the development of amphetamine sensitization. However, attenuating activity of these neurons during sensitization enhanced conditioned responses during a subsequent challenge session. Furthermore, our corticostriatal manipulation did not alter drug-taking during self-administration, but led to slower rates of extinction and enhanced responding following a priming injection of cocaine. We normalized responding following inhibition of corticostriatal afferents immediately prior to the drug-primed reinstatement test. These results demonstrate that corticostriatal afferents modulate responsiveness to psychostimulant drugs and drug-associated stimuli. Considerably less is known about the relative contribution of MTN to relapse behaviors compared to other sources of NAc glutamate, despite sending dense projections to NAc. First, I demonstrate that reducing activity of MTN attenuates both cue-induced and drug-primed reinstatement of cocaine-seeking, which establishes a role of MTN in relapse behaviors. Then I show that dampening activity of specifically anterior MTN neurons projecting to NAc (MTN-NAc) abolished drug-prime reinstatement, but enhanced cue-induced reinstatement. We found no effect of the same manipulation in posterior MTN-NAc during either reinstatement behavior. These results demonstrate MTN mediate relapse behavior, and MTN-NAc may be particularly important for regulating responses to drug-associated stimuli
Increasing the region of attraction in DC microgrids
No full textBased on the port-Hamiltonian framework, this paper proposes a novel control scheme for stabilising the voltage in DC networks affected by (i) unknown ZIP-loads, i.e., nonlinear loads consisting of the parallel combination of constant impedance (Z), current (I) and power (P) load types, and (ii) unknown (but bounded) time-varying disturbances. Differently from the results existing in the literature, where restrictive (sufficient) conditions on the load parameters, voltage trajectory and voltage reference are assumed to be satisfied, this is the first paper (to the best of our knowledge) proposing a controller that relaxes such conditions and guarantees the exponential stability of the desired equilibrium point, whose region of attraction can be increased by simply tuning the control gains. In the case the network is affected by unknown time-varying disturbances, local input-to-state stability (l-ISS) is ensured. Furthermore, if non-ideal P-loads are considered, excluding the unrealistic possibility that the load absorbs infinite current when the voltage approaches zero, the aforementioned stability results hold globally.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Characterizing the role of accumbens medium spiny neurons in vulnerability to heroin addiction
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2021Opioid addiction is a chronic, relapsing disorder that arises from dysregulation of the neural circuits responsible for reward processing, associative learning, and decision making, and is conceptualized as a three-stage, cyclical process encompassing drug consumption, withdrawal, and drug craving. Research into the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie addiction has demonstrated a central role for the cortico-basal ganglia circuit in the development and persistence of maladaptive addictive behaviors. The nucleus accumbens (NAc), which lies at the interface of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit, integrates cortical and subcortical inputs to guide behavioral output. The NAc is a heterogeneous structure containing two interspersed populations of medium spiny neurons (MSNs) with oppositional behavioral control: direct pathway MSNs (dMSNs) facilitate behavior and serve as a “go” signal; indirect pathway MSNs (iMSNs) suppress behavior and serve as a “stop” signal. Behavioral regulation is thought to rely on a balance between signaling of the direct and indirect pathways, and discrete behavioral aberrations, such as those associated with addiction, have been linked to disruptions of this balance. For example, driving NAc output (via dMSN activation or iMSN inhibition) facilitates drug taking and drug seeking, while dampening NAc output (via dMSN inhibition or iMSN activation) suppresses drug taking and drug seeking. Moreover, the excitability of iMSNs increases after cocaine exposure in cocaine-resistant mice, suggesting a role for MSNs in encoding individual vulnerability to addiction. It is important to note that most of our understanding of the role of these neuronal populations in regulating addictive behaviors is based on psychostimulant research, so their contribution to opioid addiction remains unknown. Furthermore, only a subset of individuals who use drugs medically or recreationally transition to addiction, so it is imperative to determine the neural correlates of vulnerability to addiction
Cortical and subthalamic circuits in the regulation of addiction-like behaviors
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2019Addiction is a debilitating and complex neuropsychiatric disorder that generates substantial medical, social, monetary, and emotional costs for both addicted individuals and society. In spite of these costs, relapse rates remain high and effective interventions lacking, attributable in part to our limited understanding of the complex pathophysiology and neural substrates underlying addiction. The corticolimbic circuitry which underlies many of the maladaptive behaviors associated with addiction is a complex and interwoven network. Under normal conditions, this network helps regulate a wide array of motor, associative, and affective behaviors, allowing us to shape our actions adaptively in response to environmental rewards, dangers, and other stimuli. However, the use of addictive drugs initiates a broad cascade of intra- and extracellular changes to this circuitry, which are believed to underlie the transition from controlled, volitional drug use to the uncontrolled, compulsive drug abuse that defines addiction. The interconnectivity of addiction circuitry presents a significant challenge for studies seeking to explore how addiction emerges from drug-induced neuroadaptations, but recent advances in virus-mediated chemogenetic manipulation have allowed targeted examination of discrete neuronal circuits in ways not previously possible, allowing us to examine how specific components of the corticolimbic network contribute to drug addiction. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to leverage chemogenetic tools to investigate how corticostriatal and subthalamic circuits, critical components of the corticolimbic network, regulate addiction-like behaviors in rodents, including locomotor sensitization to amphetamine as well as self-administration and seeking of cocaine. The first chapter establishes the current state of knowledge surrounding cortical and subthalamic involvement in drug addiction. The second chapter demonstrates how inhibition of neuronal projections from medial prefrontal cortex to the nucleus accumbens transiently attenuates the development of amphetamine sensitization while also enhancing conditioned responding to drug-associated cues, slowing extinction of cocaine self-administration, and enhancing drug-primed reinstatement of drug seeking. The third chapter describes how stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus dramatically blocks the development of amphetamine sensitization, while inhibition only transiently enhances induction of sensitization. It also describes how inhibition of subthalamic afferents from the ventral pallidum and prelimbic cortex both attenuate conditioned responding to drug-associated procedures, with only the prelimbic projection significantly attenuating the persistence of sensitization and neither altering its induction, suggesting a complex role for the subthalamic nucleus in larger addiction circuitry
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