cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Additional file 1: Figure S1. of LSTrAP: efficiently combining RNA sequencing data into co-expression networks
Creators: name: Proost, Sebastian
name: Krawczyk, Agnieszka
name: Mutwil, Marek
Publisher: name: Figshare
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Molecular Biology
subject: Biotechnology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: Plant Biology

description: Quality statistics for Sorghum bicolor samples. Gray dots indicate quality statistics of the samples based on HTSeq-Count and TopHat. Samples below our suggested quality control (contained within red areas in plot) were excluded from the final network. Figure S2. Dendrogram and heatmap of Sorghum bicolor sample distances. The helper script matrix_heatmap.py calculates the Euclidean distance between samples and plots a hierarchically clustered heatmap of those sample distances. This can be used to detect outliers. Here the most divergent samples (in the top left) are valid pollen and seed samples which are known to have a unique transcriptional profile. Figure S3. Node degree distribution of the Arabidopsis thaliana samples co expression network. Co-expression networks are known to have few nodes with many connections to other genes and many genes with few connections. For the co expression network of Arabidopsis thaliana based on the positive samples, this behavior can clearly be observed. Table S1. Negative Arabidopsis thaliana dataset. The columns correspond to SRA run IDs for the samples, short description (description and type) and mapping percentages for TopHat and HTSeq-count. Table S2. Sorghum bicolor samples with organ annotation. Overview of all Sorghum bicolor samples used, organized by organ the samples were derived from. Methods S1. Data source and curation. Methods S2. PCA analysis of expression data. Methods S3. Power law. (DOCX 411Â kb)
Cortical asymmetry as a potential link between depressive symptoms and cardiovascular reactivity
Creators: name: Betensky, Julia
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Although depression appears to be an independent risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, the mechanisms by which emotion dysregulation leads to cardiovascular disease (CVD) are largely unclear.  One suggestion that has received considerable attention is that depression promotes cardiovascular reactivity, which is hypothesized to contribute to CVD over time (Blascovich & Katkin, 1993; Krantz & Manuck, 1984).  There are putative neurobiological pathways by which the brain communicates with the heart during the processing of emotion and stress.   Prefrontal cortical asymmetry appears to be an objective physiological index of a depressive affective style that may promote autonomic nervous system dysregulation.  In the proposed study, cortical asymmetry was examined as a predictor of cardiovascular reactivity.  Sixty-four healthy female undergraduate students completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II (Beck et al., 1996) and a speech stressor task, in which they were asked to recall a personally-relevant event that made them feel depressed.   It was hypothesized that greater self-reported depression would be associated with right-lateralized prefrontal cortical asymmetry, and that this asymmetry would be associated with increased systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) at rest and during the speech.  Results indicated that greater self-reported depression was neither associated with right-dominant prefrontal cortical asymmetry nor cardiovascular resting activity nor reactivity to the stressor.  Although several analyses also revealed that cortical asymmetry did not moderate the effect of depression on cardiovascular reactivity, right dominant midfrontal cortical activity was a significant predictor of increased DBP reactivity to the speech stressor when electrocortical activity was treated as a categorical variable.  Continued investigation of cortical asymmetry as a potential link between clinical depression and increased vascular resistance may be useful in clarifying the utility of EEG measures of depression and for identifying high-risk groups for CVD.
Perceptions of beginning readers:
Creators: name: Halterman Brown, Tammy B.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Statement of the problem.  Viewing beginning readers through the lens of Vygotsky's (1978) notion of semiotic mediation, learning to read is a complex process in which meanings are not only encoded in print but shaped by the social and cultural experiences of the reader, the text, and the context in which the reading takes place.  The purpose of this case study was to gain a holistic picture of four beginning readers of varying ability levels as they engage in literacy-learning activities in a first grade classroom and to answer the following questions, giving voice to each child as a beginning reader:1.How do beginning readers perceive the nature of reading?How do these perceptions differ according to reading ability?2.What meanings do beginning readers construct from their literacy-learning experiences?How do these perceptions differ according to reading ability?Sample.  Two successful beginning readers and two struggling beginning readers in a first grade classroom were selected based on fall benchmark assessments and in-class performance as observed by the teacher.  Efforts were made to balance the sample according to gender, SES, and ethnicity.Methods.  Students were observed one day per week for twelve weeks.  One semi-structured interview was conducted with each participant during the study to gain a sense of the child's understandings about the nature of reading and to see what meanings s/he constructs from literacy-related activities.  Participants were also interviewed informally throughout the study as they engaged in various literacy learning activities.  Documents and artifacts were collected as an additional way to give voice to the beginning reader (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).  Discourse analysis (Gee, 2005) was used as a frame for developing individual case studies and cross-case analysis (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1998) to better understand the meanings children constructed about the nature of reading and the literacy-related instruction they experience.  Results and conclusions.  The findings of this study suggest that succeeders and strugglers perceive the nature of reading differently, with succeeders viewing reading as a process of decoding text for meaning and strugglers viewing reading as a process of remembering.  In addition, the findings suggest that succeeders and strugglers have different views of their instruction; print mediates the meanings constructed by succeeders in ways it does not for strugglers.
Translating C To Rust: Lessons from a User Study
Creators: name: Li, Ruishi
name: Wang, Bo
name: Li, Tianyu
name: Saxena, Prateek
name: Kundu, Ashish
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Software Engineering (cs.SE)
subject: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
subject: Programming Languages (cs.PL)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Rust aims to offer full memory safety for programs, a guarantee that untamed C programs do not enjoy. How difficult is it to translate existing C code to Rust? To get a complementary view from that of automatic C to Rust translators, we report on a user study asking humans to translate real-world C programs to Rust. Our participants are able to produce safe Rust translations, whereas state-of-the-art automatic tools are not able to do so. Our analysis highlights that the high-level strategy taken by users departs significantly from those of automatic tools we study. We also find that users often choose zero-cost (static) abstractions for temporal safety, which addresses a predominant component of runtime costs in other full memory safety defenses. User-provided translations showcase a rich landscape of specialized strategies to translate the same C program in different ways to safe Rust, which future automatic translators can consider.
description: Accepted by NDSS Symposium 2025. Please cite the conference version of this paper, e.g., "Ruishi Li, Bo Wang, Tianyu Li, Prateek Saxena, Ashish Kundu. Translating C To Rust: Lessons from a User Study. In 32nd Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2025)."
Shape skeletons and shape similarity
Creators: name: Briscoe, Erica Jan
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Judgments of similarity play an integral role in the human cognitive system as they provide a means for extracting information about how objects in the world relate to each other.  This similarity information is applied in various cognitive tasks, such as categorization, recognition, and identification.  Previous work suggests that perceived objects are cognitively represented in a psychological space where similarity is preserved, allowing for an internal structured representation of objects in the world (Shepard, 1964). For an internal representation to be formed, information about an object must be extracted. Shape, a highly informative and salient property of an object, is often used. Judgments made about shape similarity reflect how humans functionally represent and utilize shape information from an object.  Computational shape representation has been achieved with varying amounts of success (e.g. Blum, 1973; Biederman, 1987).  This variability is due, in part, to the complexity of mimicking the seemingly effortless human ability to make judgments about shape even in spite of numerous possible complications, such as sparse information and occlusions.  This work presents the use of a Bayesian estimation of a shape's skeleton, the maximum a posteriori (MAP) skeleton (Feldman & Singh, 2006), as part of a generative model of shape that allows for the computation of a probabilistically-based similarity metric.  This method of shape representation makes possible the prediction of similarity judgments reported by human subjects on collections of shapes that exhibit differences in both part structure and metric qualities and that have been generated by an unrelated process.  It is argued that the derivation of a similarity metric from this model provides the previously unavailable relationship between shape representation and categorical judgments about shape.
Additional file 1: of Little pigeons can carry great messages: potential distribution and ecology of Uranotaenia (Pseudoficalbia) unguiculata Edwards, 1913 (Diptera: Culicidae), a lesser-known mosquito species from the Western Palaearctic
Creators: name: Filatov, Serhii
Publisher: name: Figshare
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Biochemistry
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Molecular Biology
subject: Ecology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 80699 Information Systems not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Computational Biology

description: Literature searches strategy and bibliography used to compile the occurrence dataset for Uranotaenia unguiculata. (PDF 666Â kb)
Balancing the internal and external social capital of diverse R&D teams
Creators: name: Chung, Yunhyung
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Using a sample of 58 science laboratory teams, this paper explores the impact of team demographic and informational diversity on team performance through the mediation of internal and external social capital in R&D teams. Diversity research has failed to find consistent results about the relationship between team diversity and performance. I argue that the mixed empirical results may be caused by the complex dynamics of internal and external networks in teams. Diverse teams may decrease team performance through reduced internal social capital and may increase team performance through increased external social capital. Therefore, the effects of team diversity on performance may be dependent on the extent to which the diversity impact on performance via external social capital (network size, social and job-related relationship, and network diversity) is higher than via internal social capital (social cohesion, job-related cohesion, trust, and cooperative norms). In addition, the effects of task characteristics (task interdependence and task routineness) on the relationships among social capital, diversity, and team performance were explored. Results showed that demographic diversity decreased internal social capital whereas informational diversity increased internal social capital. Both internal and external social capital increased team performance. Ethnicity/nationality diversity decreased team performance via reduced internal social capital and increased external social capital. The potential moderating effects of task characteristics were examined also. The moderating effects of task interdependence did not always show consistent patterns. However, for teams that performed non-routine tasks, I found stronger relationships between diversity and internal and external social capital compared to teams that performed routine tasks. In addition, for teams that performed non-routine tasks, I found stronger relationships between job-related internal and external social capital and team performance, compared to teams that performed routine tasks.
Physics beyond the standard model:
Creators: name: Essig, Rouven
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is remarkably successful and has survived two decades of precision tests at high energy particle accelerators. However, it is known to be incomplete, and there are reasons to believe that there is new physics at energy scales that will soon be probed in greater detail than ever before by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a proton-proton accelerator being built near Geneva.This thesis contains a diverse set of topics that may broadly be described as physics beyond the SM.In Chapter 2, implications of current experimental constraints are presented for the stop masses and mixing in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), a well-motivated candidate for physics beyond the SM. It is found, for example, that lower bounds on the stop masses are as large as 1 TeV assuming no stop-mixing.Chapter 3 presents the regions in the MSSM with the minimal amount of fine-tuning of electroweak symmetry breaking. The minimal amount of tuning increases enormously for a Higgs mass beyond 120 GeV.Supersymmetry cannot be an exact symmetry, and one possibility is that our Universe is in a long-lived metastable state with broken supersymmetry. In Chapter 4, a generic model with this property is constructed in which all the relevant parameters, including the supersymmetry breaking scale, are generated dynamically. This model has several interesting model-building features including an explicitly and spontaneously broken R-symmetry, a singlet, a large global symmetry, naturalness, renormalizability, and a "pseudo-runaway'' direction.In Chapter 5, a simple extension of the SM with weakly interacting non-chiral dark matter particles is presented. Such particles can be detected at a future direct-detection experiment.There are a wide variety of possible discovery signatures for new physics at the LHC. A discovery signature with a large SM background that has not been well studied involves multi-jet events without leptons and/or missing energy.In Chapter 6, it is found that using innovative search strategies pair production of new coloured adjoint fermions producing a pure six-jet final state can be detected up to a mass of about 650-700 GeV with 10 fb-1 of integrated luminosity.
Additional file 1: Table S1. of Neoadjuvant treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 5520 patients
Creators: name: Mashaal Dhir
name: Malhotra, Gautam
name: Davendra Sohal
name: Hein, Nicholas
name: Smith, Lynette
name: OâReilly, Eileen
name: Bahary, Nathan
name: Chandrakanth Are
Publisher: name: Figshare
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Space Science
subject: Medicine
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Science Policy

description: Summary of studies included in current meta-analysis (DOCX 54Â kb)
Reconciling the costs and benefits of gender conformity:
Creators: name: Good, Jessica J.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Past research has shown that valuing gender conformity is associated with both positive (Guerrero-Witt & Wood, 2007; Wood, Christensen, Hebl, & Rothgerber, 1997) and negative (Sanchez & Crocker, 2005) consequences for self-esteem and positive affect. The current research sought to reconcile these conflicting findings in two studies by considering the role of autonomous (behaviors that are freely chosen) and pressured (behaviors engaged in due to pressure from others or situation) motivation to engage in gendered behavior (communal behavior for women and agentic behavior for men). Consistent with hypotheses, structural equation modeling in Study 1 demonstrated that autonomous motivation for gender consistent behavior was positively associated with explicit self-esteem and private regard for gender identity, while pressured motivation was negatively associated with explicit self-esteem.  Study 2 found that investment in gender ideals and external contingencies of self-worth moderated the effects of gender motivation on implicit and explicit self-esteem, private regard for gender identity, and positive affect.
The ecology of contaminant exposure in Uca pugnax (Smith):
Creators: name: Haroski, Dale Marie
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Physiological, reproductive, and behavioral studies were conducted to determine the sublethal effects of contaminant exposure on Uca pugnax in two New Jersey marshes.  Total lipids and lipid classes were examined in male crabs to examine the relationship between contaminant exposure and lipid variability.  Lipids were examined seasonally, during various molt cycle stages, and after a 28-day reciprocal transplant exposure study.    Seasonally, lipids were significantly different between months and although differences in total lipids and classes occurred between sites, results were not statistically different.  During the molt cycle, total lipids and lipid classes differed between sites and R-categories.  For the exposure study, total lipids were similar between sites and treatments while phospholipids increased with exposure to clean sediment.  It is not clear whether contaminants influenced lipid composition but natural lipid fluctuations occur seasonally and during the molt cycle.   Fecundity and larval morphology were examined to determine the effects of contaminant exposure on reproductive endpoints of field-collected organisms.  Mean fecundity was higher at the contaminated site but crabs were slightly larger at this site which may have contributed to fecundity differences.  Abnormal larvae were observed at both sites although the proportion of abnormal larvae was higher at the contaminated site.  Hypopigmented eyes and hydropsy were the most common abnormalities at the contaminated site while hydropsy was the most common at the non-contaminated site.  These morphological abnormalities were unspecific pathologies likely manifested as a general response to pesticides and metals.Oophagy was quantitatively documented for U. pugnax from both sites in a site comparison study and a feeding study.  For the site comparison study, egg ingestion was typically greater at the non-contaminated site, although statistically the sites did not differ.  Similarities in oophagy between sites indicate that contaminants do not appear to influence oophagy.  For the feeding study, crabs from both sites still ingested eggs even when food pellets were offered although pellet ingestion was higher than egg ingestion for both sites.  Egg ingestion in the site comparison study was similar to egg ingestion in the feeding study.  This similarity in egg ingestion between the two studies indicates that the presence of food does not decrease or stop egg ingestion.
Recovering from recovery:
Creators: name: Howard, Jenna
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: This study examines the temporal dimension of subjective identification and disidentification. It is based on a qualitative analysis of the narratives of forty people who formerly identified with emotional disorder labels (i.e., anorexic, agoraphobic, bipolar, etc.) and no longer use the labels as a source of identity. I refer to this group as de-labelers. Using a grounded theory approach, my analysis of these narratives highlights three ideal-typical sub-narratives, each reflecting a different orientation toward autobiographical time, and consequently, a different attitude toward one's disorder identity: the recovery narrative (characterized by the optimistic expecting orientation that anticipates positive change), the disability narrative (characterized by the accepting orientation that assumes the status quo), and the disidentification narrative (characterized by ambivalence toward the disorder identity). Taken together, these three sub-narratives depict a chronology of the changing meanings of the disorder label over the course of the identity careers of eighty percent of these de-labelers. My simultaneous analysis of the existential, interactional, and cultural influences on these temporal orientations (and their respective sub-narratives) suggests that individuals can exercise a significant amount of agency in temporally managing their disorder identities and may thus have considerable say in the meaning and duration of these identities.
Amphetamine-induced dopaminergic toxicity:
Creators: name: Jobes, Michelle L.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Parkinson's disease affects millions of people worldwide and is characterized by loss of dopaminergic neurons of the nigro-striatal pathway.  Although many mechanisms have been postulated to account for the destruction of these cells, no clear cause has been elucidated.  The hypothesis that oxidative stress plays an important role in dopamine depletion in Parkinson's disease was examined through use of amphetamine, a dopaminergic toxicant known to act through oxidative stress.  First, a thorough characterization of a single high dose of amphetamine was completed as a new model of Parkinson's disease.  Then, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory treatments were used to protect against amphetamine's neurotoxic effects.  The antioxidant ascorbic acid was successful in attenuating amphetamine-induced dopamine depletion, while others tested, including Trolox and EGCG, did not attenuate dopaminergic toxicity.  In addition, an end product of lipid peroxidation, malondialdehyde, was measured in response to amphetamine treatment and evaluated with the time course of amphetamine-induced dopamine depletion.  Studies have shown increased levels of malondialdehyde in the blood and brains of Parkinson's patients. Finally, the behavior and sensitivity of mice with selective deletions of genes coding for GSTM1, PAK5, PAK6, or both PAK5 and PAK6 to amphetamine was examined.  Multiple genes have been implicated in the etiology of Parkinson's disease, some of which may be associated with oxidative stress response, mitochondrial function, protein kinase function and/or neuronal survival mechanisms.  A null mutation in GSTM1 has been associated with Parkinson's disease and plays a role as an antioxidant in the brain.  Mice lacking the GSTM1 gene did not show an abnormal behavioral phenotype compared to controls and were not sensitive to amphetamine toxicity.  The p21-activated kinases (PAKs) are highly expressed in the brain as well and have been implicated in several neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease.  Mice lacking one or more of the PAK genes showed motoric similarities to Parkinson's disease, although they were relatively resistant to amphetamine toxicity.  Collectively, these experiments explored the role of oxidative stress, antioxidant function and related genetic components in a single dose, amphetamine animal model of Parkinson's disease.
Postwar negotiations:
Creators: name: Miller, Jennifer A.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: This dissertation explores the immigration of Turkish "guest workers" to West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s and focuses on the decision making of workers who actively shaped new lives in West Germany, as they dealt with the emerging permanence of their situation.  The frequently mismatched interests of the German employers, Employment Bureau Officials, dorm managers, and employers, and of the Turkish workers themselves, highlight the personal as well as institutional negotiations inherent in the guest worker process. Significantly, the immigration of Turkish guest workers to West Germany during the years 1961-1973 now stands at the center of several topical discussions about Germany's postwar ethnic relations, on citizenship in the new Europe, and of Muslim communities' integration in Europe.  Turkish guest workers are necessarily a part of the central issues of German and European social, political, and cultural history after 1945, especially in the context of debates concerning "who are Europeans?" and "what makes Europe?"  The sources for this dissertation include Turkish-language sources, including oral history interviews, as well as German sources in addition to an alltag or everyday-life approach to consider the individuals involved.  I explore the entire process, examining, for example, interactions between low-ranking German officials and average Turkish workers during the pre-departure application process in Turkey; in a workers' dormitory, as captured in the surveillance records of the dorm manager; and in the workers' own labor organizing.   I reveal a breakdown of the streamlined, orderly process that published workers' instructional manuals, the media, and politicians portrayed.  Comparing these published accounts with workers' own versions and with memos and records not meant for the public eye demonstrates that there was no standardized guest-worker application, housing, or experience.  Additionally, at every step workers achieved modifications and negotiations that reveal ways in which male and female workers were able to maintain a sense of self within a highly controlled and regulated process.  In sum, the thesis gives an entirely new picture of the textured and variegated spaces of the lives of individual Turkish guest workers within West Germany's specific postwar history.
MOESM2 of Assessing bed net damage: comparisons of three measurement methods for estimating the size, shape, and distribution of holes on bed nets
Creators: name: Eng, Jodi Vanden
name: Mathanga, Don
name: Landman, Keren
name: Dyson Mwandama
name: Minta, Anna
name: Shah, Monica
name: Sutcliffe, James
name: Chisaka, Joseph
name: Lindblade, Kim
name: Steinhardt, Laura
Publisher: name: Figshare
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Cell Biology
subject: Pharmacology
subject: Biotechnology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: Inorganic Chemistry
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences

description: Additional file 2: Table S1. Descriptive statistics of total hole counts and total hole areas as measured using WHOPES guidelines and image analysis*. nÂ =Â 234 LLINs.
Enemies of the American way:
Creators: name: Mislan, David
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: This dissertation asks and answers the question, "Why do threat identifications vary among presidents?"  It considers four plausible explanations for differences in threat identification and concludes that a new approach, a rule-based (RBI) theory of threat identification, provides the most useful answer.  The RBI approach posits that American identity is subjectively defined and varies among individuals.  By analyzing the constitutive rules that a president uses to describe American identity, RBI theory explains the variation in the types of behavior that each president identifies as threatening.  This dissertation concludes that how a president conceptualizes American identity will influence the types of threats he identifies.  Its findings are based on a comparative case study of the presidents of the late nineteenth century.  After examining the foreign policies of Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley, this study concludes that their different constructions of American identity account for disagreements over the British, German, and Spanish threats during the period studied.  This dissertation and the RBI approach offer a novel and effective means for understanding late nineteenth century American foreign policy and put forward a template that can be applied to other eras, including the post-Cold War world.
American Antigone:
Creators: name: Nelson, Robert E.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: My dissertation explores women's moral and educational labor--teaching, writing, and reforming--in the United States during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the social ideas and the lives of Emma Willard (b. 1787), Catharine Beecher (b. 1800), and Elizabeth Peabody (b. 1804), this study argues that an expansion of women's moral and educational labor played a significant role in political and social changes during this period. The Sophoclean heroine Antigone of the play named for her serves as a representative of womanhood in the emerging democratic culture of the United States. Antigone tells the story of a woman who tries to fulfill her family obligations by burying her brother, killed in a civil war. The conflict between a citizen's duties to the state versus a sister's duties to family, illustrates the concept of "separate spheres," with its firm distinction between private and public. That these duties are not separate, that they come into conflict, is the moral dilemma of the play. Antigone challenges the state by publicly articulating her sense of family duty. Unlike her brothers, she does not claim the throne for herself. Like many American women in the nineteenth century, Antigone makes political arguments as a woman without claiming the same political rights as a man. American women of this generation did not all believe in sexual equality, and so their social ideas imagined reform within a different framework than political parties and elections. Willard, Beecher, and Peabody understand themselves and other middle-class women as participating in the democratic culture of the United States. This participation was through their moral and educational labor, not voting. Their ambivalence toward women's suffrage was less a case of reactionary conservatism and more an attempt to assert the importance of civil society as the best ground for reform. Today, that position can seem alien in its conception of women as non-voters, but the social ideas of these women continue to speak to debates over the role that electoral politics can play in social change and to the way that the disenfranchised can speak to political authority.
Teacher concerns and elementary student outcomes in a school-based preventive intervention
Creators: name: Parker, Sarah J
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Teachers' feelings about, attitudes towards, and perceptions of their ability to implement a particular program (called concerns by Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1977) are often assumed to influence program delivery and, thereby, student outcomes. In this study, a conceptual model of implementation (Greenberg, Domitrovich, Graczyk, and Zins, 2005) helped elucidate how teacher concerns might influence student outcomes in a social-emotional learning (SEL) program. Specifically, this process could occur through the dosage, timing, and quality of program delivery, through teachers' psychological "readiness" to implement the program, and through the environment they establish in their classrooms, which may or may not support program principles. Three main hypotheses were generated for study: that teacher concerns would change over time, that student outcomes would vary with different profiles of teacher concerns, and that certain teacher concern types could have cumulative effects on students over two years of program implementation. Over the course of two years, approximately 100 teachers in a disadvantaged, urban, and ethnic minority school district in central New Jersey completed the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) describing their attitudes about the program, and student and teacher ratings of student behavior were gathered. Approximately 2,300 second-, third-, and fourth-grade students participated. Cluster analyses of teachers' responses to the SoCQ yielded four distinct concerns profiles in each year. Analyses regarding developmental patterns of teacher concerns and their relationships to student outcomes yielded mixed results that did not clearly support or detract from the proposed relationships among these variables. This study illustrated the importance of measuring a wide variety of implementation details when examining questions of this kind, using objective ratings instead of (or in addition to) student- and teacher-rated measures of behavior change, and employing multilevel modeling techniques (as opposed to traditional analyses of variance) when analyzing data nested within classrooms and schools. In addition, analyses suggested organizational effects on teacher concerns, certain profiles of teacher concerns that may be unique to disadvantaged districts, and varying rates of change among different aspects of student behavior as SEL skills are being acquired.
The lyrical and the crisis of modern Chinese selfhood in modern Chinese literature, 1919 -1949
Creators: name: Ning, Xin
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: This work considers the fate of "self" in modern Chinese literature in the first half of the twentieth century. It aims to explore the various aesthetic approaches by which the image of selfhood has been constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. It also examines the relationships, either explicit or implicit, between such aesthetic practices and their historical backgrounds. I want to answer the following questions: What is the implication of "self" in modern Chinese context? How do the changes of social milieu and ideological context affect the meaning of "self"? In what ways are the different understandings of selfhood reflected in literature and art, and how do these aesthetic practices contribute to the configuration of modern Chinese subjectivity? How do we interpret the interplay between the aesthetic and the political around the issue of selfhood in modern China? How does that interplay illuminate on the cultural dilemma and spiritual crisis that Chinese people are forced to be faced with in the process of China's modernization, as well as the solutions they have experimented with? The dissertation mainly takes a thematic approach and the texts I examine cut cross a spectrum of conventional genres and established historical periods in literary history. Among others, the texts explored include Lu Xun's stories and prose poems; lyrical poems of Ai Qing, Mu Dan and some other minor poets; novels and stories by Fei Ming and Shi Zhecun. It also involves western texts for comparison, such as poetry of Baudelaire and other French Symbolists, novels of Anglo-American modernists, and poetic as well as critical works of Whitman, T. S. Eliot, and Auden.
Essays on the post-9/11 labor markets for "Muslims" in the West --
Creators: name: Rabby, Md Faisal
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Theories of both statistical and prejudiced discrimination predict adverse effects of terrorist events on workers who are demographically similar to terrorists. Using a difference-in-differences framework, this paper assesses the impact of the 9/11 attacks in the US and of the July 2005 bombings in Britain.In the US, the outcomes worsened for those with nativity profiles closer to the terrorists'. The author finds a relative decrease in employment of very young (ages 16 to 25) target-group men associated with 9/11 in the US. A similar decrease in employment of these very young "Muslims" living in the UK is also found after 9/11 and again after the bombings in London in July 2005.
Modeling p53 transcriptional regulation
Creators: name: Riley, Todd Robert
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: The p53 protein has been called the "gatekeeper" of the cell. After DNA damage, p53 transcriptionally activates downstream pathways to prevent cancer from occurring. Target genes are activated to cause cell cycle arrest, DNA repair, cell senescence, and apoptosis. However, the exact transcriptional program that determines the specific outcome of a certain cell stress is not completely understood. We present an analysis to help shed light on the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation by the p53 protein.First, we present a detailed analysis of the known modes of p53-regulation, and a dataset of 160 functional human p53-binding sites curated from the literature. Second, we present a new method (called p53HMM) to model p53-binding sites using Profile Hidden Markov Models (PHMMs). This new method is the most accurate predictor of functional p53 singlesites and cluster-sites to date. Third, we show that functional sites with low estimated relative affnity scores are highly correlated with distances from the TSS. Fourth, we show that the capability to fold into a non-linear cruciform DNA structure is an important predictor in estimating the overall binding affinity of a functional p53-binding site. We use UNAFold to calculate free energies and probabilities of p53-binding sites folding into different non-linear cruciform structures. Fifth, we present a new motif-finding algorithm (called PURE) that uses relative entropy to find over- and under-represented motifs near functional p53-binding sites. The goal is to find possible motifs (like co-factor motifs) that can help designate functional p53-binding sites, thereby reducing the false positive rate that currently plagues motif-finding algorithms.
The effects of soil manipulations on invasion success of two exotic species, Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum)
Creators: name: Ross, Kristen Ann
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: Biological invasions by exotic, invasive plants are widely recognized as a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function. Invasive plants alter ecosystem processes, specifically shifts in plant community composition and nutrient cycling. Subtle ecosystem effects of non-native species invasion are often undetected and understudied. Invasion driven changes to above- and below-ground processes and structure can create feedbacks that increase site susceptibility to further invasion. Enhancing resistance to further invasion in systems already experiencing altered community structure and nutrient cycling continues to challenge restoration ecologists. To investigate practical ecological methods designed to enhance biotic resistance of a system to invasion, I tested the effectiveness of six different soil manipulations to alter chemical, physical, and biological aspects of forest soils that influence the invasion of two invasive, exotic species, Berberis thunbergii and Microstegium vimineum. I focused on experimental manipulations of nitrogen availability, surface leaf litter, and mycorrhizal infection in greenhouse and field studies to provide a multi-pronged approach to investigations of exotic species invasion success. Nitrogen additions tested the response of two exotic and two native species to different forms and concentrations of nitrogen. Exotic species were found to be more plastic in their growth response to either nitrogen form in both excessive or limiting concentrations. Topsoil removal showed some success in limiting inorganic nitrogen availability but trends were not consistent. Woodchip additions were not successful at immobilizing nitrogen or increasing the C:N ratio of the soil. Aluminum sulfate, added to increase soil acidity, was also not consistently effective, but did lower soil pH temporarily. The nitrification inhibitor applied to field plots proved to be ineffective in forest soils. Leaf litter addition applied to field soils in which Microstegium seeds were planted did not inhibit but enhanced its growth compared to soils without litter. And finally although Microstegium roots were found to be responsive to arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization, its growth in two different forest soils was not negatively affected by removal of mycorrhizal inoculum. This research highlights the plasticity of these two exotic species to a variety of environmental conditions and reveals the challenges of forest soil restoration.
Volcanic history of western Nicaragua and geochemical evolution of the Central American volcanic front
Creators: name: Saginor, Ian
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: As part of a long term study on the geochemical evolution of the Central American Volcanic Front led by my advisor, Michael Carr and colleagues at Rutgers University, my dissertation work centers around the development of a better understanding of the duration and scope of a Central America volcanic lull to better constrain and interpret possible causation. To so, I have attempted to improve our knowledge of the volcanic record during this interval by attempting to locate samples that might have erupted during this time period.  This effort yielded ages on volcanic samples ranging from 1.1 to 3.6 Ma and, thus, substantially reducing the volcanic gap in Nicaragua.  Thus, it may be that while Nicaraguan volcanism was reduced in volume between 7 and 3.6 Ma, activity was still occurring albeit at a substantially reduced rate.Results of this effort, has given a more complete record that permits more precise analysis of how the volcanic front has evolved since the Miocene.  Geochemical analyses of the active and Miocene volcanic fronts document that U/Th values increased by nearly threefold following the Central America, Pacific Coast "carbonate crash" that has been documented at about 10 Ma, related to the closing of the Isthmus of Panama.  Although this transition was considered rather abrupt, data from this study indicate that the transition was somewhat more gradual, occurring over the last 7 myr.  An increase in La/Yb Since the Miocene and with increasing distance from the trench, is perhaps due to backward migration of the arc towards the trench. A systematic increase in Zr/Nb towards the trench shows no correlation with age is indicative of a stronger subduction signal near the trench.Geochemical analysis of Tertiary volcanic rocks from El Salvador to Costa Rica combined with available 40Ar/39Ar ages indicate that U/Th values along the Nicaraguan segment of the front have increased since the Miocene, while Ba/La values have not.  These values have both remained the same towards the edges of the front.
A systematic analysis of extinction at 3 months of age
Creators: name: Shafer, Christiana Kimberly
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: In operant conditioning, "extinction" refers to a procedure in which reinforcement is consistently withheld after conditioned responding.  The "extinction effect" is observed when learned responding declines to its baserate, or extinguishes.  Evidence suggests that the original association is preserved through extinction because conditioned responding can be restored.  A hallmark of extinction is that it dissipates with time, and as subjects again exhibit the conditioned response.  This phenomenon, spontaneous recovery, led Pavlov (1927) to conclude that learning is permanent.  Extinction manipulations have been used in research with infants to eliminate undesirable behavior, to study emotion, and as test periods in instrumental learning preparations.  However, it is unknown whether the properties of extinction are the same for human infants as for human adults and nonhuman animals.  In order to systematically characterize the extinction process early in ontogeny, 3-month-olds were first trained using the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm to kick to move an overhead mobile.  Once the response was acquired, the extinction was presented and spontaneous recovery was assessed over the course of the normal retention interval for the task.  The duration and temporal placement of the extinction phase were manipulated.  Infants did not reduce ongoing responding during the extinction manipulation, but the extinction effect was evident during subsequent testing.  More than three minutes of nonreinforcement immediately following acquisition was effective at decreasing conditioned responding during subsequent long-term retention test.  Paradoxically, when the extinction session was separated from acquisition by at least one day, 3 min was sufficient to cause a reduction in conditioned responding, while 6 min enhanced retention.  No evidence of spontaneous recovery was observed in this study.
The mitoses of Akhilleus
Creators: name: Smoot, Guy
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2008

description: In her article "Achilles Lord of Scythia," Gloria Pinney cogently argues that Akhilleus was sometimes depicted as a barbarian from the far north in archaic Greek art.  Why Akhilleus has such a strong connection to the far north has thus far remained problematic.  I propose, however, that it arises from Akhilleus' hypostatic relation to the youthful god Apollo, who migrated to the land of the Hyperboreans on an annual basis.  The Iliadic evidence for a paradisiacal island at the northern ends of the earth is consistent with this interpretation.  In Book 13, for instance, the eyes of Zeus travel north to the land of the Abioi, who I contend must be Hyperboreans.  Significant details about the funeral of Patroklos support the notion that the Thracian winds took the psukhe of Akhilleus' therapon to Leuke in the north just as Thetis snatched her son from the pyre.  It is my contention that even the Iliad knew of the tradition according to which Akhilleus was a northern barbarian.  In order to assess the evidence, it is necessary, however, to acknowledge the process of dissimilation whereby doubles of Akhilleus were differentiated from the hero in terms of their persona, and yet exhibited certain idiosyncrasies that are suggestive of a common identity.In the case of the Paionian Asteropaios (Book 21), the strongest indication that the Iliad understood him as a northern Akhilleus in the strict sense of the word is the paronomasia involving the name Πηλεγόνς, which is morphologically, grammatically and semantically analyzable as "the son of Peleus."  The Iliad subtly yet cogently portrays his native Paionia as the mythical land of the Hyperboreans.Akhilleus has no greater enemy than himself: only Asteropaios, who comes from the ends of the earth like Memnon in the Aithiopis, manages to shed Akhilleus' blood.  Only Apollo, his divine counterpart, will manage to kill him.  Specific clues in the confrontation of the two heroes by the river Xanthos and the funerary contest between Aias and Diomedes suggest that the death of Asteropaios by Akhilleus amounts to a suicide: by killing Asteropaios, Akhilleus kills himself.