Digital Commons Network^™

The Fragmentation Of Self And Others: The Role Of The Default Mode Network In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Aldrich Chan

Theses and Dissertations

In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), social and emotional dysfunction has been interpreted as a secondary consequence of the broad impact of amygdala and fear circuitry dysregulation. However, research in social neuroscience has uncovered a number of neural systems involved in attachment and emotional regulation that may be impacted by trauma. One example is the Default Mode Network (DMN), which is implicated in human beings’ sense of self and ability to connect with others. This qualitative study explored the impact of physical and emotional traumata on the structures and functions of the DMN. The goal was to determine if dysregulation of …

Driving Employee Engagement Through Greater Purpose, Mark R. Gasta

Theses and Dissertations

A significant challenge for growing businesses is maintaining the culture that made them successful. An organization’s culture is manifested through rewards systems, values, rituals, stories, and celebrations. Vail Resorts’ mission is simple: to create the experience of a lifetime for their employees so they can, in turn, provide exceptional experiences for their guests. Vail Resorts faces a challenge: how to grow without becoming disconnected from the heart and soul of skiing and disenfranchising those that have joined the industry for the same purpose-driven reasons upon which the company was founded. This case study explored the specific actions taken by Vail …

Best Storytelling Practices In Education, Calvin Bonds

Theses and Dissertations

Effective teaching strategies can be defined as utilizing the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, which include understanding, application and analysis (Flynn, Mesibov, Vermette & Smith, 2004). Teachers that use effective teaching strategies can significantly impact the future earnings of their students. Students that are recipients of these strategies receive a higher quality of K-12 education, which leads to a higher caliber of colleges and universities chosen. As a result of the higher education institutions attended, students become more competitive when entering an evolving workforce, earning higher salaries. This study explores the effective teaching strategy of storytelling. It identifies best practices …

Internship Directors' Perspectives On Emerging Trends In Psychological Assessment Training And Practice, Angel Faith

Theses and Dissertations

Psychological assessment represents a core competency domain that continues to be uniquely associated with professional psychology. Despite the necessity and value of psychological assessment across domains of practice, there is growing concern regarding the training provided to developing clinicians, specifically psychology graduate students. Past studies have drawn attention to the discrepancy between predoctoral internship directors’ expectations related to assessment and the competency levels of incoming psychology interns. The purpose of this study was to conduct a national, online survey of psychology internship directors to examine their perspectives regarding current practices, emerging trends, and needed changes regarding psychological assessment at the …

Effects Of Ipad Tablets On Private Montessori Education, Amanda Wickramasinghe

Theses and Dissertations

Education and technology in today’s era is a vital part of our lives. Academic institutions are incorporating advanced technology into their curricula. This study will investigate how an iPad will change the course of education and improve academic achievement. A qualitative research approach conducted this study with open-ended interviews and observation. The participants consisted of a selected group of 15 Montessori teachers who have been working with the iPad for 1 academic year. The study will seek investigate and discuss the changes that have taken place in the classroom with incorporating the iPad. The following are the research questions that …

A Clinician's Guide To Working With Female Veterans And Their Children, Deniz (Mustafoglu) Ahmadinia

Theses and Dissertations

The influx of females into the military in recent years has drawn increasing attention to the impact of extended and often repeated deployments on parent-child attachment. The challenges associated with deployment may be particularly taxing on young children due to their emotional and cognitive immaturity, lack of coping skills and dependence on their caregivers for daily functioning. While children’s reaction to parental deployment varies by age, the longer and more frequently a parent is deployed, the greater the psychological, health and behavioral risk for the child. These adjustments can be complicated when mothers suffer psychological distress related to combat exposure, …

Custom-Built Environments For Communities Of Online Informal Learning: An Exploratory Study Of Tools, Structures, And Strategies, Kim Welch

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative, exploratory study grouped together and explored custom-built environments for communities of online informal learning (COILs) with a special lens on the socio-technical relationship of platform tools, structures, and strategies that lead to social learning. The study was conducted through a three-phase process. First, a list of possible candidate sites was analyzed for appropriate fit based on the defining terms of a custom-built COIL environment. Second, an observational content analysis was implemented on 10 of the sites to aggregate a list of the tools, structures, and strategies used in the sites. Lastly, the same 10 sites and the lists …

Forty-Three African American Women Executives' Perceptions Of Challenges And Required Capabilities To Become A Leader, Lysa Liggins-Moore

Theses and Dissertations

The percentage of African American women in leadership roles has not increased as significantly as women in general. This exploratory qualitative study examined African American leaders’ perceptions of their common challenges as they advance to executive leadership and their personal capabilities required to attain leadership. The intent was to understand the factors that contribute to their rise to executive leadership. Forty-three African American leaders secured through universities, sorority, church, and work in greater Los Angeles met the study’s criteria to be at the senior management level for more than two years, have over five direct reports, and born in the …

Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy For Intercultural Couples: Helping Couples Navigate Cultural Differences, Caroline Kalai

Theses and Dissertations

Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT), an empirically supported and evidence-based third-wave behavioral approach for treatment of couples, is examined in this multiple case study. Specifically, the qualitative experiences of therapists using IBCT in their work with intercultural couples are examined through each therapist’s typed responses to open-ended questions. Each participating therapist in this study contributes by describing one case in which IBCT was used to help the couple navigate cultural differences as part of treatment. This study describes the various stressors faced by intercultural couples, therapists’ formulations of cultural differences, change processes and change mechanisms during treatment, and similarities and …

Looking Into Malaria, Ahmad Ahmad

A with Honors Projects

According to the Centers for Disease Control, malaria has been a concern for more than 4000 years, with symptoms being described in ancient medical writings, and remains a prevalent health concern. In this student paper, the author reports on the history of the disease, it's epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment.

Citizen Science And Natural Resource Governance: Program Design For Vernal Pool Policy Innovation, Bridie Mcgreavy, Aram J. K. Calhoun, Jessica S. Jansujwicz, Vanessa R. Levesque

Faculty Publications

Effective natural resource policy depends on knowing what is needed to sustain a resource and building the capacity to identify, develop, and implement flexible policies. This retrospective case study applies resilience concepts to a 16-year citizen science program and vernal pool regulatory development process in Maine, USA. We describe how citizen science improved adaptive capacities for innovative and effective policies to regulate vernal pools. We identified two core program elements that allowed people to act within narrow windows of opportunity for policy transformation, including (1) the simultaneous generation of useful, credible scientific knowledge and construction of networks among diverse institutions, …

Meyer, Pierce, And The History Of The Entire Human Race: Barbarism, Social Progress, And (The Fall And Rise Of) Parental Rights, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Long before the Supreme Court’s seminal parenting cases took a due process Lochnerian turn, American courts had been working to fashion family law doctrine on the premise that parents are only entrusted with custody of the child, and then only as long as they meet their fiduciary duty to take proper care of the child. With its progressive, anti-patriarchal orientation, this jurisprudence was in part a creature of its time, reflecting the evolutionary biases of the emerging fields of sociology, anthropology, and legal ethnohistory. In short, the courts embraced the new, “scientific” view that social “progress” entails the decline and, …

A Multivariate Nonlinear Mixed Effects Model For Longitudinal Image Analysis: Application To Amyloid Imaging, Murat Bilgel, Jerry L. Prince, Dean F. Wong, Susan M. Resnick, Bruno M. Jedynak

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is important to characterize the temporal trajectories of disease-related biomarkers in order to monitor progression and identify potential points of intervention. These are especially important for neurodegenerative diseases, as therapeutic intervention is most likely to be effective in the preclinical disease stages prior to significant neuronal damage. Neuroimaging allows for the measurement of structural, functional, and metabolic integrity of the brain at the level of voxels, whose volumes are on the order of mm³. These voxelwise measurements provide a rich collection of disease indicators. Longitudinal neuroimaging studies enable the analysis of changes in these voxelwise measures. However, …

Associations Between Performance On An Abbreviated Cogstate Battery, Other Measures Of Cognitive Function, And Biomarkers In People At Risk For Alzheimer's Disease, Annie M. Racine, Lindsay R. Clark, Sara C. Berman, Rebecca L. Koscik, Kimberly D. Mueller, Derek Norton, Christopher R. Nicholas, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, Bruno M. Jedynak, Murat Bilgel, Cynthia M. Carlsson, Bradley T. Christian, Sanjay Asthana, Sterling C. Johnson

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is not known whether computerized cognitive assessments, like the CogState battery, are sensitive to preclinical cognitive changes or pathology in people at risk for Alzheimer's disease(AD). In 469 late middle-aged participants from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention(mean age 63.8±7 years at testing; 67% female; 39% APOE4+), we examined relationships between a CogState abbreviated battery(CAB) of seven tests and demographic characteristics, traditional paper-based neuropsychological tests as well as a composite cognitive impairment index, cognitive impairment status(determined by consensus review), and biomarkers for amyloid and tau(CSF phosphorylated-tau/Aβ42 and global PET-PiB burden) and neural injury(CSF neurofilament light protein). CSF and PET-PiB …

Voxel Based Morphometry In Optical Coherence Tomography: Validation & Core Findings, Bhavna J. Antony, Min Chen, Aaron Carass, Bruno M. Jedynak, Omar Al-Louzi, Sharon D. Solomon, Shiv Saidha, Peter Calabresi, Jerry L. Prince

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) of the human retina is now becoming established as an important modality for the detection and tracking of various ocular diseases. Voxel based morphometry (VBM) is a long standing neuroimaging analysis technique that allows for the exploration of the regional differences in the brain. There has been limited work done in developing registration based methods for OCT, which has hampered the advancement of VBM analyses in OCT based population studies. Following on from our recent development of an OCT registration method, we explore the potential benefits of VBM analysis in cohorts of healthy controls (HCs) and …

Bartleby’S Consensual Dysphoria, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest movement adopted what on first blush appears to be a peculiar literary mascot: Bartleby the scrivener, one of the two protagonists of the Story of Wall Street penned by Herman Melville in the middle of the nineteenth-century. But this empathic identity of interests between twenty-first-century street protesters pushing back against the dominance of the .01% and a pathetic, melancholic, cadaverous, anorexic, apparently suicidal, and fictional mid-nineteenth-century legal scrivener is decidedly odd.

In this paper, I ask and try to answer this question: what did the OWS protesters recognize in Bartleby that sparked their empathic …

Foreword, Melanie Papadopoulos

Emory International Law Review

It is with great pride that the Editorial Board of the Emory International Law Review presents the first issue of Volume 31. In this volume, we continue the tradition of publishing pieces in four smaller, more frequently published issues. With Volume 31, the Emory International Law Review also starts a new tradition'for the first time, Emory International Law Review will publish the annual David J. Bederman Lecture. The David J. Bederman Lecture was established in honor of David J. Bederman, professor in Private International Law at Emory School of Law.

Beyond Lifestyle: Governing The Social Determinants Of Health, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Non-communicable and chronic diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the major causes of death and disability around the world. Despite recognition that reduction in the chronic disease burden will require governance systems to address the social determinants of health, most public health recommendations emphasize individual behavior as the primary cause of illness and the target of intervention. This Article argues that focusing on lifestyle can backfire, by increasing health inequities and inviting human rights violations. If States fail to take meaningful steps to alter the social and economic structures that create health risks and encourage unhealthy behavior, health at the …

Exploring How Secondary Pre-Service Teachers' Use Online Social Bookmarking To Envision Literacy In The Disciplines, Jamie Colwell, Kristen Gregory

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This study considers how pre-service teachers envision disciplinary literacy through an online social bookmarking project. Thirty secondary pre-service teachers participated in the project through an undergraduate literacy course. Online bookmarks and post-project reflections were collected and analyzed using a constant comparative approach to determine emergent themes. Results suggest varying levels of disciplinary knowledge among pre-service teachers, influences of pre-service teachers' envisionments on posted bookmarks, and considerations about standardized testing in disciplinary literacy instruction. Implications for teacher education are discussed in light of these results. Copyright (c) by the authors.

Easy Come, Easy Go: The Plight Of Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

This article explores the plight of “short stayers” and argues that juvenile courts are failing to use two tools—the federal reasonable efforts requirement and the early appointment of parents’ counsel—to prevent the unnecessary entry of children into foster care. The article also argues that states should give parents and children the right to an expedited appeal of removal decisions to ensure removal standards are properly applied. Finally, this article argues that the federal government must acknowledge the problem of short stayers by utilizing data related to children who may unnecessarily enter foster care in the Child and Family Services Review, …

A Bare Desire To Harm: Transgender People And The Equal Protection Clause, Kevin M. Barry, Brian Farrell, Jennifer Levi, Neelima Vanguri

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges establishing marriage equality for same-sex couples marks a major shift in recognizing gay, lesbian, and bisexual people as a central part of the fabric of American society. Obergefell also marks the passing of the torch from “LGB” to “T”; the next civil rights frontier belongs to transgender people, for whom key barriers still remain. In January 2015, a transgender woman filed an equal protection challenge to a provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), which explicitly excludes several medical conditions closely associated with transgender people. In support of this challenge, …

"As Who They Really Are": Expanding Opportunities For Transgender Athletes To Participate In Youth And Scholastic Sports, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

The aim of this Article is to assist the efforts of inclusion of transgender athletes by helping decision-makers in scholastic athletics and youth sports understand why and how to create inclusive policies. These decision-makers include leaders and stakeholders in local, state, and national sport organizations.

This Article begins with an overview of policies already adopted by interscholastic athletic associations and sport governing bodies that regulate youth sport programs. It critiques policies that categorically exclude and otherwise impose limitations on transgender persons who seek to participate in sports in a manner consistent with their gender identities (what this Article will refer …

Predicting Dna Methylation State Of Cpg Dinucleotide Using Genome Topological Features And Deep Networks, Yiheng Wang, Tong Liu, Dong Xu, Huidong Shi, Chaoyang Zhang, Yin-Yuan Mo, Zheng Wang

Faculty Publications

The hypo- or hyper-methylation of the human genome is one of the epigenetic features of leukemia. However, experimental approaches have only determined the methylation state of a small portion of the human genome. We developed deep learning based (stacked denoising autoencoders, or SdAs) software named "DeepMethyl" to predict the methylation state of DNA CpG dinucleotides using features inferred from three-dimensional genome topology (based on Hi-C) and DNA sequence patterns. We used the experimental data from immortalised myelogenous leukemia (K562) and healthy lymphoblastoid (GM12878) cell lines to train the learning models and assess prediction performance. We have tested various SdA architectures …

Do Vertebral Chemical Signatures Distinguish Juvenile Blacktip Shark (Carcharhinus Limbatus) Nursery Regions In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico?, Justin P. Lewis, William F. Patterson Iii, John K. Carlson, Katherine Mclachlin

Faculty Publications

Identifying and protecting shark nurseries is a common management strategy used to help rebuild overfished stocks, yet we know little about connectivity between juvenile and adult populations. By analysing trace metals incorporated into vertebral cartilage, it may be possible to infer natal origin based on nursery-specific chemical signatures. To assess the efficacy of this approach, we collected juvenile blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus; n = 93) from four regions in the Gulf of Mexico in 2012 and 2013 and analysed their vertebral centra with laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. We observed significant regional differences in six element : Ca …

Gay Rights Versus Religious Freedom, And The Influence Of Obergefell V. Hodges On Distinguishing The Dividing Line, Kathleen Rainey Mcstravick

St. Mary's Law Journal

Obergefell v. Hodges, a United States Supreme Court case, added more fuel to the fire, leaving many to wonder how to voice religious opposition to same-sex marriages, and what are the second order effects for religious opposition in light of the new rule. The Court held the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Obergefell, brings the conflict between freedom of religion and LGBT rights to a new level by questioning how far freedom of religion can be used to refuse anti-discrimination statutes regarding sexual …

Animism Among Western Buddhists, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Myriad instances of animist phenomena abound in the Buddhist world, but due to the outdated concepts of thinkers such as Edward Tylor, James George Frazer, and Melford Spiro, commonly scholars perceive this animism merely as the work of local religions, not as deriving from Buddhism itself. However, when one follows a number of contemporary scholars and employs a new, relational concept of animism that is based on respectful recognition of nonhuman personhoods, a different picture emerges. The works of Western Buddhists such as Stephanie Kaza, Philip Kapleau Roshi, and Gary Snyder express powerful senses of relational animism that arise specifically …

The Maternal Personhood Of Cattle And Plants At A Hindu Center In The United States, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Religious experiences with sacred nonhuman natural beings considered to be “persons” remain only vaguely understood. This essay provides a measure of clarification by engendering a dialogue between psychoanalytic self psychology on one side and, on the other, religious experiences of cattle and Tulsi plants as holy mothers at a Hindu cattle sanctuary in the United States. Ethnographic data from the Hindu center uncover experiences of sacred maternal natural beings that are tensive, liminal, and colored with affective themes of nurturance, respect, and intimacy, much like psychoanalytic maternal selfobjects. Devotees protect cattle and ritually venerate plants because these actions facilitate a …

Groundhog Oracles And Their Forebears, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Groundhog Day animal weather forecasting ceremonies continue to proliferate around the United States despite a lack of public confidence in the oracles. This essay probes religio-historical and original ethnographic perspectives to offer a psychological argument for why these ceremonies exist. Employing Paul Shepard’s notion of a felt loss of sacred, intimate relationships with nonhuman nature, as well as Peter Homans’ concept of the monument that enables mourning, this essay argues that groundhog oracles serve as monuments that allow humans experientially to attempt to heal lost sacred relationships with animals like weather forecasting bears, hedgehogs, and badgers

Drug Therapy For Obesity With Anti-Aging Genes Modification, Ian J. Martins

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Nutritional regulation and drug therapy has been the focus of the current obesity epidemic in various countries in the world. Epigenetics is the major mechanism for the development of insulin resistance and obesity with unhealthy diets, oxidative stress and environmental factors relevant to alterations in gene expression with effects on mitochondrial biogenesis, adipose tissue lipid metabolism and energy expenditure. Anti-aging genes are involved in the regulation of adipogenesis with increased sensitivity to anti-aging gene dysfunction associated with adipocyte-neuron interactions compared to other cells. Unhealthy diets downregulate adipocyte anti-aging genes associated with the development of Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) …

Accelerating Tropicalization And The Transformation Of Temperate Seagrass Meadows, Glenn A. Hyndes, Kenneth L. Heck, Jnr, Adriana Verges, Euan S. Harvey, Gary A. Kendrick, Paul Lavery, Kathryn Mcmahon, Robert J. Orth, Alan Pearce, Mathew Vanderklift, Thomas Wernberg, Scott Whiting, Shaun Wilson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Climate-driven changes are altering production and functioning of biotic assemblages in terrestrial and aquatic environments. In temperate coastal waters, rising sea temperatures, warm water anomalies and poleward shifts in the distribution of tropical herbivores have had a detrimental effect on algal forests. We develop generalized scenarios of this form of tropicalization and its potential effects on the structure and functioning of globally significant and threatened seagrass ecosystems, through poleward shifts in tropical seagrasses and herbivores. Initially, we expect tropical herbivorous fishes to establish in temperate seagrass meadows, followed later by megafauna. Tropical seagrasses are likely to establish later, delayed by …