Abstracts
Paper Session 1A
Between Factography and Ethnography: Sergei Tretiakov's "Roar China!" Within the Soviet Discourse on Asia
In 1926 Sergei Tretiakov's fifth play, Roar, China!, was staged at the Meyerhold Theatre in Moscow, under the direction of one of Vsevolod Meyerhold's students, Vasilii Fiodorov. The play, about Chinese workers response to the threat to destroy their town made by the captain of a British gunboat, became enormously popular. By examining the staging and text of the play in the light of Tretiakov's literary theories, this paper explores the ways in which the production shaped its audiences' receptions. These were shaped in a complex discursive environment marked by a radical change in the ways in which Soviet citizens experienced and understood the relationship between Europe and Asia. Following Adeeb Khalid's discussions of Orientalism and Emipre in Russia and the Soviet Union, I argue that this production played out this shift in attitude by building empathy for the Asian underdogs represented in the play without jettisoning a predominantly Eurocentric framework.
The Great Western European Intertext vs. the Cleaning Lady: Emine Özdamar
With the emergence of transnationlism within Western Europe and in the European Union member states also comes the emergence of literatures produced by transnationalist populations, namely "migrant" or "minority" literatures. Under various names a Migrantenliteratur established itself in the former West German Republic and continued on into the united Federal Republic. Emine Ozdamar, a Turkish-German author and actress, is one of the most celebrated and studied writers of this rising transnatiolist genre, but her success brings many questions to the fore concerning Turkish-German literature and the canon of Western European, specifically German, literary tradition. Ozdamar's short story "Karriere einer Putzfrau: Erinnerungen an Deutschland" ("Career of a cleaning lady: memories of Germany") depicts the ambiguous relationship between author and reader, nationality and statelessness, and identity politics and class, all set against the literary monolith that is Western European intertextuality. Ozdamar's story forces us to question not only the constituents of this Western European intertext, but also its possible authorship, and if the heroine of the story, a first generation guest worker newly arrived in Germany, does not have equal access and ownership of this intertext, we must question this lack and examine the cultural hindrances which have maintained this lack.
Mariategui and the Indian Behind the Indians
My presentation will examine the conception of the human being in two instances of indigenista thought: the discourse of Juan Carlos Mariategui, considered the first Latin American Marxist intellectual, and the contemporary indigenous movement in Ecuador. In the 1920's, the Peruvian political philosopher Juan Carlos Mariátegui proposed the pursuit of a Marxist revolution in Peru. His ideas encouraged the early indigenista movement in the Andes and are still paradigmatic to understand contemporary Indian groups in the Andean region, including the Ecuadorian Confederacion de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE), one of the best organized and politically active organizations of Latin America. Contemporary Indian movements have emerged in Latin America in the last twenty years to claim political agency, social presence, and media attention. These movements present themselves as highly organized but without hierarchies, an anthropological view that emphasizes community over individual. To investigate the anthropological conceptions, both in Mariátegui and the Indian communities, I will contextualize them within three notions of the human being: two from the West, Liberal and Marxist, and one from the Andean region. Finally, I will read Mariátegui from the viewpoint of the political discourse of the contemporary indigenous movement in Ecuador.
A Silent Resurgence in Germany: On Jewish Life in Berlin
Contrary to the claims of historians forecasting a narrative of disappearance running its course in Western Europe and the “gloom and doom” projections of demographers, a Jewish community with a tradition-based identity has silently appeared in New Germany over the past decade, comprising itself largely of immigrants from Russia and former Soviet republics. Many have come in response to the challenges associated with entering the US after 9-11 and the wars and turmoil plaguing the Middle East that have made Israel a less safe destination country. At the same time, erecting monuments related to WW II and the Holocaust, an extension of official Gedächtniskultur (commemoration culture), continues unabated under the current SPD-CDU government, in this case, ignoring the vocal opposition of prominent Jewish communal leaders and organizations.
Paper Session 1B
Re-creating “India” through Ritual and Musical Practices in Pittsburgh
The population of Indian immigrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania numbers the second largest of all Asian immigrants. Although living in a foreign country, many Indian immigrants reconstruct their “home” surroundings and maintain their identities through their daily activities: speaking their native language, attending ritual ceremonies and cultural events, and practicing Indian music and dance. Sri Venkateswara (SV) Temple, constructed in Penn Hills in 1976, is the oldest Hindu temple in the United States. In many ways, the SV Temple is a small version of “India” itself. Things that are experienced in daily lives in India are reproduced and materialized by priests and devotees every day inside the temple. In Indian tradition, the boundary between “sacred” and “secular” is vague. Diasporic Indians express their Indian identities through “performing” their tradition. In this paper, I focus on Indian-Americans’ perceptions of religion and culture by examining a musical performance during a ritual ceremony and a children’s Sunday school session based on fieldwork research in 2006-2007. This paper addresses the following question: What roles do ritual ceremonies and musical practices play in constructing notions of “India” in Pittsburgh? My findings reveal how essentialized notions of culture have become central to identity construction in diasporic communities.
Oakland’s Schenley Memorial: A Cultural History
The Mary E. Schenley Memorial (1913-1918), a fountain located on the Pitt campus in Oakland, has the distinction of being the only public monument in Pittsburgh dedicated to an actual woman. Mary E. Schenley (1826-1903) was a wealthy benefactress who donated land for Schenley Park as well as the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, and yet her memorial, "A Song to Nature" (by sculptor Victor David Brenner (1871-1924), a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who also designed the Lincoln penny), depicts the Greek god of Nature, Pan, being lulled by a semi-nude nymph playing a lyre. Why was Schenley "honored" with an Edwardian allegory of "culture taming nature," rather than a portrait statue (of which several alternate designs were considered)? How did local power elites (including white males such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Edward Manning Bigelow) and their cultural aspirations for a young, wealthy city -- and class tensions with Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss's fabled Forbes Field -- shape Brenner’s masterpiece, and paradoxically conceal the historical Mary E. Schenley in the process?
Tailgating as a Ritual Event? An Exploratory Study into the Structure and Dynamics of Football Tailgating
The object of this paper is to explore popular conceptions of football tailgating in newspapers and web articles across the United States, utilizing a variety of theory from ritual studies in order to determine if an underlying ritual structure of “tailgating” exists. Further, this study examines as a case study a Pittsburgh Steelers tailgating event to explore the particular way tailgating is experienced by participants and any similarities it has to a general tailgating structure.
Paper Session 1C
Conviviality and Place Relationality in the Site-Specific Installations of Andy Goldsworthy and Olafur Eliasson
An increasing number of contemporary artists are creating works that respond to the growing awareness of ecological crisis. While some seek to evoke direct experiences of natural phenomena, others raise questions about the nature of social perceptions of such phenomena. The paper aims to explore the art practice of two artists who have emerged as arguably the most important representatives of these tendencies. British artist Andy Goldsworthy, heir to the post-studio, beyond-the-museum innovations of the 1970s (Earth Art, Land Art, Environments), and Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, who, since the 1990s, has focused on the phenomenology of place through the staging of elaborate technological enactments of natural phenomena. Through a detailed visual analysis, I will investigate the participatory dimension of Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003), an immersive environment designed specifically for the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, and the spatial dialectics entailed Goldsworthy’s Roof (2004), an installation created out of nine slate domes located between the ground level of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a former Japanese garden. The paper traces the ways in which the two artists question widely presumed divisions between universality and locality, nature as wilderness and art as pure artifact, as well as between the supposedly neutral space of museums and natural surroundings.
Desiring Machines and Imaginary Geographies: Robinson Crusoe and his Imaginary Property
In his Second Treatise of Government, John Locke proposes a connection between cultivation, dominion, and the establishment of private property. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe contains significant Lockean undertones in its representation of private property inasmuch as the novel’s titular character comes to possess his unnamed island through physical labor. In this reading, the island becomes Robinson’s because Robinson tilled the soil and constructed habitations. Earlier critics have remarked upon these overlays between Lockean private property and Robinson Crusoe. Although these critics have provided useful and fruitful readings of the representation of property in Robinson Crusoe, I nevertheless believe they ignore an integral aspect of Crusoe’s property on the island—namely that it is imagined. In this paper, I will first demonstrate that Defoe’s protagonist frequently perceives his island home in imaginative terms resonant with contemporaneous English society. I will then examine how one might understand this imagined property by employing Giambattista Vico’s idea of poetic geography delineated in The New Science and Robert Young’s notion of colonial discourse described in Colonial Desire. Ultimately, I will argue that the representation of imagined private property on Crusoe’s island, in its relation to imperialism, indicates the imaginative nature of colonial practices themselves.
The Chitlin Circuit: The Embodiment of Jazz in Physical Space and Social Action
The study of creative processes in jazz performance has focused mainly on the individual performer and ensemble interaction. This study moves beyond this focus to examine the contributions of audiences and the physical environment to jazz performance. The importance of space, place, and knowledgeable participants in the creative process becomes readily apparent when examining “chitlin circuit” jazz clubs that were active in Pittsburgh from the late 1930s to the 1960s. The “chitlin circuit,” a network of black owned and patronized music venues, provides a historically and geographically bounded context that was shaped by racial segregation and which centered on musical performance. This “circuit,” which reached its peak in the 1950s, was essential for providing livelihoods for traveling jazz, R&B, and blues musicians and maintaining cultural ties between urban African American communities.
Paper Session 1d
Quantitative Research of Active Volcano Systems Using Remote-and-Field-Based Methods
Bezymianny (Kamchatka, Russia) is an active stratovolcano that contains a summit lava dome and pyroclastic flow (PF) sheet to the southeast. Two recent eruptions (24 December 2006 and 11 May 2007) generated fresh pyroclastic flows on the southeastern flank. During the winter of 2006, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) collected several day- and night-time images to monitor the December eruption deposits and subsequent events. A field campaign in August 2007 was conducted to investigate recent changes at the lava dome and to map the new PF deposits. Within the cloud-free night time ASTER image from 30 June 2007, seven ASTER thermal infrared (TIR) 90 m pixels were identified as being thermally-anomalous and were investigated in the field. Both handheld Forward Looking Infrared Radiometer (FLIR) and thermocouple probe data were obtained and compared to the satellite TIR data. Helicopter- and ground-based FLIR surveys revealed thermally-elevated PF deposits that contained warm blocks and fumaroles. Remote- and ground-based methods were combined to provide a comprehensive dataset that can now be applied to other active volcanoes globally.
Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Approach for Analysis of Multivariate Longitudinal Left-Censored Biomarker Data
A mixed effects model based on a full likelihood is one of the few methods available to model longitudinal data subject to left-censoring. However, a full likelihood approach is complicated algebraically due to the large dimension of the numeric computations, and maximum likelihood estimation can be computationally prohibitive when the data are heavily censored. Moreover, for mixed models, the complexity of the computation increases as the dimension of the random effects in the model increases. We propose a method based on pseudo likelihood that simplifies the computational complexities, allows all possible multivariate models, and that can be used for any data structure including settings where the level of censoring is high. A robust variance-covariance estimator is used to adjust and correct the variance-covariance estimate. We perform a simulation study to evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed method for efficiency, simplicity and convergence with existing methods. The proposed methodology is illustrated in the analysis of Genetic and Inflammatory Markers for Sepsis study (GenIMS) conducted at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Role of Species Age in Explaning Geographic Range Size Variation in a Neotropical Plant Genus
Explaining why some species have large geographic ranges while other species have small geographic ranges is a central goal of ecological and evolutionary studies. I tested species age as an explanation of range size variation among a closely related group of Neotropical plants (Psychotria, Rubiaceae). I used Bayesian relaxed-clock dating of a DNA-sequence based evolutionary tree to estimate species ages and species distribution modeling to predict species’ potential ranges. If time for dispersal limits species range sizes, I hypothesized that older species should have 1) larger observed ranges than younger species, 2) occupied a greater portion of their potential ranges, and 3) colonized a greater extent of their potential ranges. I found a weak, positive relationship between species age and observed range size in Psychotria.
Paper Session 2a
The Makings of Tragedy in the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Catastrophic events occur every day—from an automobile accident, to plane crashes, to Hurricane Katrina—and while all undoubtedly evoke sadness, what makes these events the “tragedies” we characterize them as? Moreover, should we even call these non-literary events “tragedies?” This paper explores the collision of the literary tragedy and the everyday tragedy vis a vis the Interstate 35-W bridge collapse and the theoretical workings of Aristotle, Raymond Williams, and Larry May. I attempt to show how the causality of events prior to the bridge disaster and the physical fall of the bridge itself constitute the makings of both a literary and everyday tragedy. Furthermore, the collapse spawned several “circles of recognition” in the Aristotelian sense—recognition of family and friends, of the larger Minneapolis-St. Paul community, and potentially of the larger American community. This final recognition, though, involves the painful recognition of our complacent attitudes as citizens of a democratic society and of the shared responsibility that we all must take for not holding our government accountable for its (in)actions. Without this final recognition—one that few will likely make—the collapse moves closer to being just another sad event and away from fully resolving as a tragedy.
Visualizing Radiation and Death in Photographs of the Chernobyl Trauma
Significant research has been done on the consequences of the radioactive explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 in the areas of ecological, social, economical, and political studies. This national traumatic experience has drawn the attention of many European and American scholars. However, the Chernobyl trauma remains a lacuna within the area of cultural and visual studies, both in national and international scholarship. This is why the cultural analysis of images of the Chernobyl accident can significantly contribute to the studies of this traumatic event and its consequences. My paper can provide the answers to the question about a continuing interest in producing, distributing, and consuming the representations of the Chernobyl trauma. The complexity and the importance of such research come from the specificity of representations of this traumatic event and their fixation in the collective memory. Two characteristics of a radioactive explosion—its invisibility and its extreme danger for any living species—make the process of grieving and memorization of this nuclear disaster more complicated. Thus, the Chernobyl trauma requires a unique approach in its integration into the collective memory—through hypervisualization its symptoms, through production and distribution multifarious cultural and visual artifacts. This paper rests upon the analysis of the representations of Chernobyl accident by twelve Western and Eastern European photographers who have posted their works on-line. Their images of the Chernobyl tragedy re-construct the traumatic event of 1986 by visualizing its symptoms, and by making radiation and “radioactive” death both material and visible. Their photographic images of the Chernobyl traumatic event also attempt to intensify the horror of nuclear disaster through the use of indirect references to the nuclear terror during the Cold War. By emphasizing the danger of radiation and its dreadful consequences, the symptomatic photographs of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster become a part of the nuclear memory museum which reminds us about the fragility, instability, and mortality of the world.
Why Do They Hate Us? The ‘Othering’ of the Arab in Post 9/11 Discourse
Nine days after the attacks of 9/11, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and the United States as a whole. It was in the course of this speech that the President first made use of the rhetoric of “us” and “them” in the newly proclaimed “war on terror”: "Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. […] They stand against us, because we stand in their way." (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html) The terrorists had been identified as Arab Muslim fundamentalists soon after the attacks and in order to catch further potential perpetrators, a wider net was soon cast to include all Arabs – resulting in profiling at airports and other points where security was an issue on the one hand, and in a number of hate crimes – including the bombing of a mosque in Canada - on the other. The consequence of framing this discourse in terms of “us” and “them” is not only a widening of the gap between “our” position and “theirs” (and thereby, by extension, the formation of a space malleable enough to include the crimes at Gunatanamo and Abu Ghraib as necessary tactics of war), but also the gradual loss of alternative discourses. Thus, the answer to the often-asked question of why “they” hate us is transformed from one based in a series of political and historical complexities into a more unilateral one. In other words, questions of the United States’ implicit complicity and responsibility no longer need to be addressed (i.e. failed U.S. foreign policy is not a contributing factor in the events of 9/11) but rather, they are the acts of a singular “evil” force. It is not surprising that this sort of rhetoric was borrowed and appropriated in subsequent depictions of 9/11, as its very simplicity lends itself to the structure of narrativization. To examine how these tropes work more specifically, I offer an analysis of the films Flight 93 (dir. Peter Markle) and United 93 (dir. Paul Greengrass). Both films, released in 2006, begin with the same premise, namely the story of Flight UA 93, which was one of four planes hijacked on the morning of September 11, 2001. Rather than attempting to offer a documentary analysis of the events, both films perform different, though analogous, acts of interpretive ‘othering’. This paper will examine not only the divergent agendas of both films, but also explore how those agendas are manifested and achieved in order to question how racial identity is juxtaposed with national identity and to ask why this is integral to the abstractly defined terms of a “war on terror”.
Abraham, Job, and the Tragic Community
The religious and the tragic have, traditionally, dwelt in two different camps and have been viewed as having different purposes, not to mention audiences. This essay seeks to explore whether the religious, in a Jewish Biblical understanding, and the tragic should be kept separate. Is there something to be gained by viewing them alongside one another? The overarching question is, can the religious be tragic? The two stories involved here are Abraham with Isaac and the story of Job. My analysis extends to a comparison of these same stories to close Grecian counterparts – Agamemnon, Prometheus, and Oedipus. I will argue that the Biblical stories reach and elicit the same height of emotion as that of Greek tragedies and while both are dealing with metaphysical issues, Greek tragedies do not end by laying out a moral code by which to live but simply reify the pluralist, ambiguous nature of their gods while the Biblical stories work towards forging a community identity out of their relationship to a God who, although multifaceted and ambiguous in intention and purpose, is, nonetheless, the single deity that must be served in order for reward to occur.
Paper Session 2b
Galileo’s Two-Bucket Experiment
I examine an experiment that Galileo devised and discussed, but did not publish, namely the two-bucket experiment from the Added Day of his *Two New Sciences*. Galileo presents the experiment to investigate the force of impact. The purpose of this project is to discover precisely what role the experiment plays in Galileo's investigation. This involves, firstly, determining whether Galileo accurately depicts the outcome of the experiment. To this end, the two-bucket experiment is recreated, and the findings suggest that while Galileo's account closely approximates the results of the recreation, particular discrepancies leave significant room for doubt concerning the story told by Galileo. Secondly, given the just-described outcome, an explanation for the discord is sought, with particular attention being paid to its ramifications for the overall narrative of the Added Day. The status of Galileo's experimentation has long been a source of debate (with Koyré's famous experimentation thesis on one side and Drake's archival work and the recent experimental history of science movement on the other). The results of the present project are developed within the context of this debate.
On the Design of Load Factor Based Congestion Control Protocols for Next-Generation Networks
In the early 1980s, the Internet experienced its first congestion collapse (a condition whereby nodes experience a dramatic decline in available bandwidth). Few years later, a congestion control algorithm was added to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Since then TCP has been widely credited for the stability of the Internet. However, during the last two decades, the Internet has experienced rapid growth and most of the assumptions made during its inception are no longer true. The emergence of diverse networks (such as Mobile Ad Hoc Networks) and applications (such as Skype) has echoed the need for new transport protocols that can meet the requirements and challenges of future network scenarios and applications. In order to meet the above challenges, we have designed a new transport protocol, which we call, Multi-Level Congestion Control Protocol (MLCP). MLCP uses load factor (the ratio of demand to capacity) as a signal of congestion and achieves high utilization, low queues and near-zero packet drop rate in all likely scenarios. These features coupled with its smooth rate variations make it a viable choice for real-time applications. We have tested out protocol under diverse settings and a fluid model of MLCP shows that it remains globally stable.
The Proper Province of Philosophy: Ordinary Language Meets Experimental Philosophy
It is not uncommon for those engaged in the study of mind to react adversely to many of the claims coming out of the neuroscientific study of the brain. One prominent line of attack in these boundary disputes is that neuroscientists (often) misappropriate and misuse mentalistic vocabulary. In particular, Max Bennett and Peter Hacker (2003, 2007) have charged neuroscientists with committing the "mereological fallacy"; they claim that psychological predicates only apply to whole animals, that neuroscientists often apply them to other entities (brains, neurons), and that the resulting utterances are literally nonsense. In this article, I expose the empirical claim about ordinary language that the mereological critique of neuroscience rests on. I then detail empirical evidence from the emerging field of experimental philosophy that runs counter to that claim. I conclude that the boundary dispute between neuroscience and philosophy/psychology cannot be won by means of the (so-called) mereological fallacy.
Paper Session 2c
Japanese Lute as a Ritualistic Musical Instrument
During rituals in ancient Japan, shamans often used the lute (琴koto), a musical instrument considered mystical and supernatural. Both textual and archaeological evidence suggest that the lute is a medium through which the gods (and the deceased) delivered their words. Many passages from ancient textual records (Records of Ancient Matters, Chronicle of Japan, Mythology of Izumo, One Thousand Poems, and Book of Court Etiquettes and Regulations) include sacred usages of lutes. These text records represent historical, literary, and legal texts. Archaeologists have excavated from ancient tomb sites (Oshorodoba, Matsubara Naiko, and Korekawa) some pieces of wooden lutes and clay figures playing lutes. Despite the unreliability of mythological and literary documents and archaeology based on educated assumptions and hypotheses, one can still effectively extract much useful information from these sources about the lute and its role in ritual. Given the evidence available, I will prove that ancient Japan considered the lute an important ritualistic and shamanistic instrument.
First-Rate Performance: Theatre and the Promotion of World War II
How does theatre function in times of war? It can offer entertainment and relief from social unrest just as ably as it can indict war, violence, and major governing institutions. Theatre in New York City thrived during World War II, not because of its controversial commentary, but because of its entertaining musicals and its unifying family dramas. Rather than setting itself against the government, the theatre forged a partnership with the United States and committed itself to advancing the war effort. Playbills for the major Broadway theatres featured advertisements capitalizing on the war effort, articles written by members of the Writer’s War Board, and announcements about fundraisers, book drives, and ticket donations for soldiers. The playbills also featured ads for the American Theatre Wing War Service’s Stage Door Canteens, which serviced enlisted soldiers on leave in New York City with food, fun, and flirtations at no cost. Less interested in questioning the war, the theatre during World War II actively encouraged audiences to support the war effort. Though they were not officially part of the Office of War Information, the government office created to advance war propaganda through film, radio, and television, the American Theatre Wing orchestrated a propaganda blitz each time an audience member sat down to read a playbill at a Broadway show. Using the University of Pittsburgh’s Curtis Collection, I will explore the theatre’s contributions to the war effort by examining pro-War playbill material and its impact Broadway audiences, with particular emphasis on the female experience.
Drumming for the Mouse: Walt Disney World and the Reification of Kumidaiko
At the Walt Disney World resort in Orlando, FL, the World Showcase section of the EPCOT theme park offers visitors the opportunity to, in the words of The Walt Disney Company, “celebrate the fascinating cultures and wonders of the world.” Visitors typically participate in this celebration by riding attraction rides and watching movies, all the while being encouraged to buy merchandise. However, with the absence of a ride or a movie at the Japanese pavilion performances by the taiko group Matsuriza are used as the main vehicle for this celebration. Given the nature of this performance space, has Matsuriza made concessions so that it matches other cultural representations in the park? Has the group’s participation in EPCOT’s “celebration” of world cultures changed its approach to kumidaiko (group taiko drumming)? In this paper, I shall show that despite the unique performance space, Matsuriza has made very few concessions or changes, remaining true to its performance heritage. Indeed, the group’s performances echo greater trends in kumidaiko today. Comparing Matsuriza’s daily performances at EPCOT with taiko performances by other groups outside the park (including two concerts held in Pittsburgh, PA during October 2007), I shall argue that kumidaiko is beginning to approach a state of reification, particularly in situations when it is used as a symbol of Japanese culture. A degree of homogeneity is developing as kumidaiko seeks to fit within this structure of representation in the United States, half a century after it emerged as a vibrant new performance style in Japan.
Paper Session 3a: PANEL
Words and Voices: Collaborative Composition of a Song Cycle
Six graduate students in Music Composition and Theory here at Pitt are collaborating to create a song cycle. Each composer will provide a song setting of a poem from a related group (one possibility is poems taken from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”). For the expo, the group will begin with a brief introductory presentation explaining the nature of the overall project. Each composer will give a five-minute presentation on the compositional process for this project, possibly with audio examples. After some summarizing remarks, the presentations will be followed by a performance (the composers will perform as well as compose the pieces). The rest of the time will be given to answering questions from the audience. Issues that may be addressed include: how a composer selects musical materials, interactions between text and musical setting, relationships or differences between different songs with related texts, and collaboration in musical composition.
Paper Session 3b
Hope and Cynicism: Considering the Responsibilities of the Public Intellectual
In 2004, Barack Obama posed a challenge: "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or ... a politics of hope?" I reflect on the responsibilities of scholars studying contemporary political topics, asking this question: for those aiming to be "public intellectuals," do we participate in a scholarship of cynicism or one of hope? I begin by discussing Kenneth Burke and Paul Schiff Berman, both of whom object to scholarly postures that are preoccupied with the attempt to uncover "real" motives lurking behind the overt messages of political elites and producers of popular culture. Burke calls such scholarship a form of "debunking," while Berman terms it the "hermeneutics of suspicion." Then, I analyze John Mellencamp's recent song "Our Country" to examine the differences between scholarships of hope and cynicism.
Hirschhorn’s Utopia, Utopia = One World, One War, One Army, One Dress: Imagining Alternative Forms of Political Affiliation
In his recent installation work, Utopia, Utopia = One World, One War, One Army, One Dress, Swiss contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn presents an apparently totalizing, nightmarish world-picture of consumerism, militarism, and violence. In 2005, he covered the entire space of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston with the camouflage motif – not only two stories of white cube, but also every object within it. In this piece, Hirschhorn specifically references the United States’ war in Iraq and the War on Terror, but more generally points to problems of ubiquitous global militarism, mimetic violence, and an unequal allocation of corporeal vulnerability across the globe. Whereas most critics and historians have focused on Hirschhorn’s critique of consumerism and “homogenizing” forces of globalization, interpreting his work through a Marxist, historical materialist lens, I plan to explore his work in relation to theoretical issues raised by Judith Butler in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.
Interest Group Coalitions and the U.S. Supreme Court's Church-State Docket
Few would argue that conservative interest groups have been absent from the debates waged in American institutions regarding constitutional rights. Indeed, the early mobilization of conservatives was, in part, prompted by U.S. Supreme Court decisions which ran counter to theologically orthodox or conservative belief systems. The research presented here aims to fill the gap in the existing empirical research on interest groups by evaluating existing theories applied to coalition activity before the U.S. Supreme Court. While the existing research in American politics discusses the role of religion in a variety of contexts little research within the interest groups literature has been conducted evaluating whether conservative interest groups participate in coalitions, and the ways in which such interest groups (1) mobilize beyond the legislative or electoral contexts; and (2) condition the choice to engage in the litigation process. This research focuses on the establishment clause cases granted certiorari by the Rehnquist Court and the decision of conservative interest groups to file amicus curiae at the stage that follows granting certiorari; the plenary stage. The findings reveal support for the hypothesized relationships between the staff size, budget, age and the missionary imperative of the group and the decision of the group to participate in a coalition when filing an amicus brief at the plenary stage.
Paper Session 3c
Peek-a-Boo with the Hostile Fetus in Rosemary’s Baby and Alien
This paper explores the representation of horrifying fetuses in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Alien (1979). Drawing on both film critics and cultural historians, it contextualizes these films with regard to medical history and reproductive technology, social and personal experiences of pregnancy, and abortion rights; it also responds to the many studies which already allude to matters of gestation, abortion, and mothering in Rosemary’s Baby and Alien. I contend that these studies have focused on psychoanalytic approaches at the expense of recognizing the central and literal fetal threats around which both films revolve. Through their representation of fetuses, these films document a growing horror of pregnancy experienced by both women and sympathetic men from the 1960s up to the 1980s, as medical technology and legal actions colluded to empower the fetus at the expense of the pregnant woman. The hostile fetus in horror provides its viewers with a narrative, lexical, and visual framework, albeit one masked by supernatural or otherworldly settings, in which their fears about physical colonization and the medical industry’s control over reproductive processes can be articulated. These two films are appropriate focal points for consideration because they were released at crucial moments in the history of American civil/human rights and medical technology. They also suit the paper’s secondary purpose: to stimulate further consideration of the relationship between horror films and social anxieties.
Surrealism Comes to Me in a Dream: The Proto-Surrealist Erotica of Styrsky, Nezval, and Toyen
At the beginning of the 1930s, several members of the Czech avant-garde group Devtsil were moving closer and closer to surrealism. Like the Paris surrealists, they took an interest in Freudian psychoanalysis, dreams, and the unconscious. They shared an attachment to such surrealist “precursor” authors as Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Apollinaire, and the Marquis de Sade. And, strikingly, they sought to explore and eventually transform human consciousness via desire. In this paper, I examine the erotic and theoretical works of Czech artists and writers Jindich Štyrský, Vítzslav Nezval, Toyen, and Bohuslav Brouk during the early 1930s, when they collaborated on a series of works under the imprint of Štyrský’s privately printed Edice 69. I focus on Štyrský and Nezval’s Sexual Nocturne, Štyrský’s Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream (with an afterword by Brouk), and Toyen’s erotic illustrations for Edice 69. I consider the close personal relationships of these creators, who became founding members of the Prague surrealist group in 1934, and analyze their views on marriage, sexuality, and gender (one of these artists—Toyen—was female) in relation to French surrealist ideas.
A Critique of the ‘Abstinence-Only’ Sex Education Approach with Regard to Adolescent Decision-Making
This paper addresses the issue of adolescent decision-making capacity and how it may be approached by either a comprehensive or an 'abstinence-only' sex education program. I discuss the relationship among cultural, legal and scientific conceptions of adolescence and present findings and claims pertaining to adolescent decision-making capabilities. Ultimately, I contend that the abstinence-only program ignores the existing and emergent decisional abilities of adolescents and is therefore an impoverished response to the developmental needs of the adolescent decision-making faculty. The first section of the paper maintains that adolescents have decisional capabilities that ought to be respected and nurtured. In the second section, I contend that the decisional autonomy of adolescents is improperly deprived by the abstinence-only program’s policy of withholding information; in particular, I highlight the particular challenges the abstinence-only approach presents to women.
Paper Session 3d
Maximum Enjoyment Among Friends: A Frame for the Selection of Topics in Conversation
When someone introduces a new topic during conversation, what causes it to succeed or fail? This paper proposes the existence of a frame that speakers use to maximize enjoyment during casual conversation. Various linguistic tools are used to analyze segments of a dinner conversation among four female college students. The study focuses on instances of topic shifts. When a choice is available, this Maximum Enjoyment Frame creates a preference for the most enjoyable topic that produces the most laughter and amusement for all speakers. During their conversation, one of the women, given the name Kim, interrupts current conversation to relate a funny story from soccer practice. Though another of the women, Lisa, is not finished with the current topic and overlaps Kim for a few moments, she cedes the floor to the new topic that promises more amusement than the current one.
Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage: Credibility and Efficiency in Dynamic Matching Markets
Much of economic life involves two-sided matching which often spans the long-term. Examples include music lessons, business relationships between two firms, hospital-intern markets. For example, consider piano lessons organized by some institution. Music teachers of the institution have preferences over students, and students also have preferences over teachers. Thus, this can be seen as a two-sided matching interaction. To better play the piano, students have to spend many years taking lessons. They have to be involved in long-term relationship. Thus, this is a dynamic two-sided matching market. In static settings, a property known as “stability” is critical in what kinds of matching arise in real-life markets. The stability requires that no pair of a student and a teacher find it better off to be matched with each other than current partners, and no individual teacher or student would rather stay unmatched than the current partners. Until now, although static relationships have been extensively studied, there is almost no attempt to analyze dynamic relationships. I introduce a new framework and propose a new dynamic stability concept that is immune to certain credible” deviations. I show that implementing a statically stable matching in each period is credibly pairwise-stable under this new concept.
Imperfect Talk: Seeking Advice from Experts of Unknown Expertise
People seek for advice from experts everyday. Patients see doctors, investors consult investment planners, clients seek for legal opinion - these are all but a few examples of an uninformed person asking for help from an expert in order to make a sound decision. Common to all these is that it does not cost much for an expert to give a particular advice to a client, and the personal interest of the expert is likely to diverge from that of the client. Existing literature in economics has analyzed the information content of expert advice that is possible when the expert distorts or withholds information in favor of her personal interest. In reality, there is another important aspect of communicating with experts – more often than not we as clients do not know precisely how knowledgeable the one we turn to for advice are. We model and analyze such a scenario of communication with experts. We characterize the optimal expert's behavior. We are able to match the predictions of our model with a number of empirical observations. The results also shed light on, for example, under what circumstances should we spend more time on finding a capable one to consult.
Paper Session 4a
Rethinking Marginality: Art and Gender in 17th Century Netherlands
Traditionally, women's roles in history have been defined by previously established archetypes such as 'wife', 'mother', or 'widow.' This paper examines how those labels, generally seen by feminist writers as expressions of limitation or oppression, can also serve as positions of agency. Taking as a case study the life of one 17th century Dutch aristocrat, Amalia van Solms, the author examines the ways in which Amalia continually renegotiates her shifting social role in order to function as an agent of history, not just a passive recipient. Traditional scholarship on the subject limits Amalia to a footnote, a marginal figure who has only ever been studied as a footnote in the studies of her more famous husband. Both her involvement in the political climate of the emerging Dutch Republic and her patronage of art and architecture will be considered in this examination of how her process of social definition helped shape not only her home and family, but also the broader pan-European political scene.
“I Am Not Suffering Anymore”: Tragic Potential in the Nineteenth Century Consumptive Myth
Consumption (tuberculosis) was a seemingly kaleidoscopic phenomenon in the nineteenth century, a unique and paradoxical blend of fact and fiction within the collective cultural imaginations of several Western populaces. Consumption’s conceptualized bond with human sensibility, as well as its mythologized capacity for bestowing pain-free demises, made it an exceptionally popular literary device. These same qualities, coupled with the iconic image of the delicate but expressive, pale but flushed consumptive body, made it an equally employable theatrical device in plays like Alexandre Dumas fils’ La dame aux camélias. With Robert Koch’s landmark 1882 discovery of the contagious tubercle bacillus, the clinical tuberculosis began its very prolonged supplanting of the mythologized consumption.
Beauty in Death: Toiletry Cases and Immortality in Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) China
Lacquer toiletry cases are common components of tombs in Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) China, and can be found in most regions of the empire. These cases are commonly round with one or two levels, and contain mirrors, combs, and smaller lacquered boxes for cosmetics, as well as other tools for beautification. In this paper, I examine the multiple meanings of toiletry cases in early Chinese mortuary contexts. As finely-crafted lacquerwares that exhibit some of the most advanced artistic techniques known from that time, they are luxury items in themselves and therefore communicate clear ideas about wealth and status. When considering other factors of social identity construction, such as age and gender, the picture is more complex. Toiletry cases have been found in both female and male tombs, and among the burial goods of those both young and old.
Paper Session 4b
The Supply and Demand of Mediation
Why do third parties mediate interstate conflict? Briefly, third parties mediate interstate conflict either because they are interested in the conflict or they wish to enhance their international reputation. I argue that mediation occurs in a market. The mediators are the suppliers and the combatants are the demand side of the equation. Supply and demand are a strategic logic because this is an interactive process between those who wish to provide or “sell” mediation and those who wish to accept or “buy” mediation on the open market. The suppliers of mediation follow a rational actor model based on their interest in the conflict, beliefs about the likelihood of success and structural factors that influence their decision to mediate. On the demand side, the combatants ask for mediation based on structural factors within the conflict such as stalemate as well as external incentives to end the conflict.
Limited Effects of Corporatist Control over Labor Conflicts in China
Since the late 1970s, China’s transition to market economy has generated not only remarkable growth but also severe class stratification. In particular, discontent and unrest are increasing among wage workers who have been isolated from the distribution of economic wealth. The widening income gap and the exploiting work conditions are emerging as the most significant sources of sociopolitical instability. To ease the situation and strengthen the legitimacy of its rule, the Chinese government has started to allow labor unions to strengthen their role in protecting labor rights. However, despite the significance of the new measures, labor conflicts still increase in China. Why is it so? Does the rise of labor disputes mean that the Chinese government has failed in managing labor relations? The argument presented in this research is that the Chinese government’s efforts are effective in influencing labor relations but, despite its substantial effectiveness, the scope of influence is increasingly limited. Recently, labor conflicts take place more frequently in non-public sectors where the government’s control is limited. As a result, even though the role of labor unions is significantly strengthened, its impact is limited in scope and accordingly the overall number of labor disputes still increases.
Forecasting Inflation Volatility: A Stochastic Volatility Approach
As highlighted by the recent instability of financial world markets, volatility is a fundamental component of asset allocation. Specifically, investors need to carefully estimate return and volatility when making financial decisions. But sound investment decisions require more than estimation. Forecasting the relationship has great importance but nevertheless, research on volatility forecasting is lagging behind and constitutes a primary focus of my dissertation. In this paper I use Stochastic Volatility (SV) model to estimate and forecast inflation volatility. They are highly flexible but difficult to estimate due to the intrinsic nonlinearity of their underlying (unobserved or latent) dynamic volatility process, therefore, researchers need some simulation techniques to estimate SV model. I rely upon a simulation technique known as Efficient Importance Sampling (EIS), proposed by Richard and Zhang (2007), in order to estimate SV models and use them for forecasting. I estimate SV inflation models for the US (January 1914-December 2006) and for Turkey (February 1982-August 2005) and tested the validity of the corresponding inflation forecasts. Results indicate that the SV model provides valid forecasts of US inflation. Results for Turkey also support the validity of SV models but are weaker. My tests of forecast validity are complicated by the fact that inflation is observed at a much lower frequency (quarterly) than stock returns (daily). Since existing methods for validation of the method are not useful for forecasting inflation, the author proposes a new validation procedure based on the empirical distribution of forecasted errors, extending earlier contributions by Liesenfeld and Richard (2003, 2007).
Paper Session 4c
Tonal Non-Reduplication versus Phonetic Analogy: Implications for Tonal Morphology in Cantonese
Cantonese attenuative reduplication construction features a canonical morphosyntactic form AA + /dei2/, where A is a monosyllabic adjective that duplicates and /dei2/ is an adverbial marker of manner (Yue-Hashimoto 1972). The reduplication construction [Base + RED + dei2] yields an attenuative meaning. The construction exhibits quasi free-variation — one featuring tonal identity between the Base and RED (Paradigm I), whereas the other does not (Paradigm II). Chan (to appear) proposed an optimality-theoretic account for tonal reduplication (Paradigm I) and tonal non-reduplication (Paradigm II). Despite the principled account of the phenomena, two problems remain unresolved. First, regarding the architecture of the phonological representation, a contour tone is traditionally assumed to be phonologically more complex than a level tone. The analysis, however, predicts that a contour tone (i.e. tone 2) emerges as unmarked. Second, typological evidence (Hyman and Schuh 1974; Maddieson 1978; Pulleyblank 1986) suggests that a high tone is more marked with respect to a low tone, especially in African register tone languages. The survey in Cantonese attenuative reduplication suggests that a morphologically-derived high-rising contour tone (tone 2) is preferred. Granted the problematic phonological account for emergence of tone 2 in tonal nonreduplication, this paper explores an alternative explanation — phonetic analogy. In fact, the reduplicated syllable (RED) in Paradigm II can be characterized as undertaking pinjam ‘changed tones’, which is conditioned by morphological and phonetic processes (Bauer and Benedict 1997; Yu 2007a, b). According to the acoustic evidence in Yu (2007b), the morphologically-derived high-rising contour tone exemplfies a case of tonal near merger with lexically-specified high-rising contour tone in Cantonese. The former is arguably a product of phonetic analogy, which is obtained “when non-contrastive phonetic properties associated with the morphological complex structure correlates with those properties associated with its paradigmatically related forms” (Yu, p. 1749, 2007a). Capitllizing on these phonological and phonetic evdience, this paper devotes to a theoretical discussion central to tonal representations in Cantonese by focussing on morpho-lexical tone change versus postlexical tone change, as well as the aggregate interface among phonetics, phonology and morphology, in the domain of reduplication. Empirical research on tone sandhi, tonogenesis, and tonal evolution of Cantonese will also be discussed.
Literature Alive in the Foreign Language Classroom
Intermediate level courses represent a critical stage in foreign language instruction. While students are, at this point, usually equipped with the fundamentals of the target language's grammatical structure and vocabulary, they often lack the adequate skills and strategies to read, process large quantities of written information at a desirable pace, and analyze complex texts. The PACE model offers a perfect framework for contextualizing grammar within literature. I show how in this context I have built a course reading a fairly recent text from Italian literature: Jack Frusciante e uscito dal gruppo by Enrico Brizzi. Presented in English with examples in Italian and of interest to postsecondary educators.
Transitive or Intransitive: Choice of Verbs by Chinese Learners of Japanese
This paper attempts to answer the question of how the difference in typology affects the learning of a second language. Ikegami (1981, 1991) hypothesizes that “there is a contrast between two languages” in which one “tends to give linguistic prominence to the human being” (i.e. a DO-language), while another “tends to suppress the notion of human being (i.e. a BECOME-language).” Given that Japanese is a BECOME-language and Chinese is a DO-language, how does this difference affect the learning of Japanese by Chinese native speakers? 40 Chinese learners of Japanese (CNS) and 40 Japanese native speakers (JNS) were asked to make choices between Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs by means of a questionnaire. Results showed that for events without an agent/causer (e.g. the sun rises), both CNS and JNS showed a preference for intransitive verbs. However, for events where an agent/causer exists, JNS preferred to focus on the result of the event and chose intransitive verbs, while CNS preferred the passive forms of transitive verbs. The results not only support Ikegami’s hypothesis that there is a contrast between a DO-language and a BECOME-language, but also suggest that speakers of a DO-language still prefer describing an event with an agent/causer either explicitly, with the use of transitive verbs, or implicitly, with the passive forms of transitive verbs when they speak a BECOME-language.
Poster Abstracts
Noradrenergic Inputs to the Paraventricular Nucleus of the Hypothalamus are Necessary for Systemic Endotoxin to Fully Activate the HPA Axis in Rats
Noradrenergic (NA) projections from the nucleus of the solitary tract (NST) and ventrolateral medulla (VLM) to the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) provide important modulatory control over the HPA stress axis. The present study examined the involvement of NA inputs to the PVN in rats treated systemically with bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to generate a pro-inflammatory immune response and activate the HPA axis. Two to four weeks before LPS treatment, male Sprague-Dawley rats received bilateral stereotaxic microinjections of DSAP (saporin toxin conjugated to an antibody against dopamine-#946;-hydroxylase, DbH) into the PVN to destroy its NA inputs. DSAP and sham rats subsequently were injected with LPS (200 µg/kg BW, i.p.) and perfused with fixative 2.5 hrs later. Brain tissue sections were processed for single or dual immunoperoxidase localization of nuclear Fos protein and cytoplasmic DbH. The ability of LPS to activate Fos expression in the medial parvocellular PVN was significant.
Protozoan Predation as Major Contributor to Maintenance of O-Antigen Diversity in Salmonella
Only a small fraction of the billions of bacterial species cause disease, but those that do often have a dramatic impact on the human population. Sometimes, only a fraction of strains of a given type of bacteria infect any one particular host. For example, only a handful of types of Salmonella-termed serovars-infect humans; other serovars infect different animal hosts, including pigs, sheep, cows, and chickens. This poorly-understood phenomenon is referred to as serovar-host specificity. Traditional understanding of how bacteria cause disease has focused mainly on the immune system, but Salmonella’s interaction with host immune systems does not provide an explanation for serovar-host specificity. One of two major determinants of what defines a serovar is the O-antigen, a sugar molecule covering the entire surface of the Salmonella cell. The O-antigen is involved in Salmonella virulence, but its role in serovar-host specificity remains unclear. Here, we present evidence that little-studied amoebae, single-celled organisms that are the major predators of bacteria within intestines, may be dictating which strains of Salmonella survive there, and therefore which have a chance to cause disease. Additionally, we found that the Salmonella-amoebae relationship is influenced by the O-antigen, linking Salmonella virulence to this unique predator-prey interaction.
A Multi-Proxy Paleoclimate Record of Rapid Holocene Climate Variability from Northern Greece
A lake sediment core retrieved from Lake Zazari (40.6°N, 21.6°E), northern Greece was analyzed for stable isotopic and geochemical indications of paleohydrologic changes over the last ~7500 years. Significant transitions in all lake paleoclimate data coincide at 1280, 2700, 3500, 4230, 5320, and ~6250 calibrated Y.B.P. Rapid changes in isotopic values for biogenic carbonates combined with sedimentological evidence reflect periods of severe climate fluctuation culminating with maximum aridity (potential drought conditions) occurring from 6250 - 5950, 5320 - 4750, and 4050 – 3500 yrs. B.P. This suggests the Early Holocene was relatively dry within northern Greece punctuated by specific arid events at decadal to centennial scales. Evidence for the late Holocene shows more humid and stable climate conditions represented by isotopic values decreasing nearly 4‰ followed by even lower isotopic values for the remainder of the sedimentary sequence. This high-resolution multi-proxy record shows convincing evidence of rapid climate oscillations during the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age periods in mainland Greece. Further evidence for lake response during the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly period are also recorded. These climatic sequences may have had an influence on the human history and prehistoric societies of this region within the eastern Mediterranean.
Urinary 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) Covaries Positively with Hostility
Dispositional hostility is characterized by hostile cognitions, such as cynicism and mistrust, hostile emotions, such as anger and irritability, and hostile behaviors like aggression and verbal abuse. Recent evidence suggests that individuals high in dispositional hostility are at elevated risk for cardiovascular disease, although the biological mechanisms by which hostility confers such risk remain uncertain. One possibility is that hostility is associated with oxidative stress, which is thought to play a role in atherogenesis. Oxidative stress is commonly defined as an imbalance between damaging pro-oxidants and protective anti-oxidants. Any imbalance that results in a higher ratio of pro- to anti-oxidants can result in cellular damage. Here, we examine the covariation of hostility with a measure of systemic oxidative stress, the urinary excretion of 8-hydroxy-2’-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) among a community sample of 224 volunteers aged 30-54 years (87% white, 49% female).
Simulated Sunyaev-Zeldovich Maps from Black Hole Feedback
Active Galactic Nuclei are the central regions of a special class of galaxies, that host accreting super massive black holes (SMBH) at their centers. Understanding the growth and evolution of these SMBHs and their host galaxies is extremely important in our study of the universe. It is now believed that the feedback from these SMBHs has played a considerable role in formation of galaxies and clusters. The Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect, which is the inverse Compton scattering of the Cosmic Microwave Background photons, happens to be a robust observational probe in studying the feedback process from SMBH. In the current work, we have made high resolution SZ maps around individual black holes using the first cosmological simulation where, black hole growth and feedback have been studied in a self consistent manner. The simulation is based on an N body code where a realization of the universe is manifested within a 33.75 Mpc box, using periodic boundary conditions.
The Impact of General Problem Solving Strategy Instruction on Inter-domain Transfer and Learning Domain Principle
Explicit instruction in a problem-solving strategy accelerated learning not only in the domain where it was taught but also in a second domain where it was not taught. College students studied two unrelated domains: probability and physics. During the probability instruction, the Strategy group was trained with an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that explicitly taught a general problem-solving strategy while the No-strategy group trained with another ITS without any explicit strategy instruction. During the subsequent physics instruction, both groups used the same ITS, which did not explicitly teach any strategy. Results showed that the Strategy students gained significantly more than their No-strategy peers in both domains. The taught strategy includes two main components: one is solving problems via Backward-Chaining (BC) from goals to givens, named the BC-strategy, and the other is drawing students’ attention on the characteristics of each individual domain principle, named the principle-emphasis skill. Analysis of test performance and computer logs from the physics instruction showed that the Strategy group apparently transferred both skills to physics. In a further analysis, students were divided into High and Low groups based on their prior competence. The Low students in the Strategy condition seemed to transfer the principle-emphasis skill alone to physics while their High peers already possessed it and thus transferred the BC-strategy. Surprisingly, the two groups learned equally effectively in physics. We concluded that the effective element of the taught problem-solving strategy seemed not to be the BC-Strategy, but the principle-emphasis skill.
Only You: The Role of Exclusivity Ideals in College Students' Dating Relationships
We showed that an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that taught a domain-independent problem-solving strategy accelerated learning not only in the domain where it was taught (probability) but also in a second domain where it was not taught (physics); more importantly, it indeed closed the gap between High and Low learners in both domains. The taught strategy includes two main components: one is solving problems via Backward-Chaining (BC) from goals to givens, named the BC-strategy, and the other is drawing students’ attention on the characteristics of each individual domain principle, named the principle-emphasis skill. Evidence suggests that the Low learners transferred the principle-emphasis skill to physics while the High learners seemingly already had such skill and thus they mainly transferred the other component, the BC-strategy. Surprisingly, the Low learners learned just as effectively as the High ones in physics. We concluded that the effective element of the taught problem solving strategy seemed
Dissecting the role of the Paf1 complex in ARG1 repression
The Paf1 complex, consisting of Paf1, Ctr9, Cdc73, Rtf1, and Leo1, facilitates transcription elongation of a chromatin template through the regulation of histone modifications. The Paf1 complex associates with the polymerase and is recruited to chromatin by Bur1-Bur2, a cyclin-dependent kinase complex. Importantly, members of the Paf1 complex are required for histone modifications that are associated with active transcription. However, the Paf1 complex also has negative effects on the transcription of a subset of genes. To study Paf1 complex-mediated transcriptional repression, ARG1 serves as a model gene. ARG1 encodes an enzyme involved in the arginine biosynthesis pathway. Members of the Paf1 complex are required for ARG1 repression and Rtf1 mediates ARG1 repression through histone H2B ubiquitylation. Bur2 is also required for ARG1 repression, indicating that Paf1 complex recruitment by Bur2 may be important for ARG1 repression. Finally, the Paf1 complex can be detected at ARG1 in repressing conditions by chromatin immunoprecipitation, suggesting that the Paf1 complex may be a direct repressor of ARG1. However, an indirect role cannot be currently excluded and therefore will be investigated. Future experiments will further define the mechanism of Paf1 complex-mediated ARG1 repression.
Utopia Was a Place: Motley Crews, Seaborne Salons, and the Transatlantic Tradition of Utopian Thought, 1620-1726
This study explores the utopian dimensions of seventeenth century Caribbean piracy, and disputes the contention of that utopian writings and ideas were disconnected from one another and from reality. By tracing the social and intellectual origins of the buccaneers across the Atlantic in French, Spanish and English language sources, it demonstrates that many of these men in fact brought with them a rich and diverse array of utopian ideas that played an important part in how they organized and understood their lives. Comprised of mutinied sailors and runaway slaves, rebel peasants and insurgent Indians, the buccaneers came together beneath the black flag and turned the world upside down. The pirate ship was a seventeenth century seaborne salon, and the motley crew brought these transatlantic traditions together in an early modern outburst of freedom, equality, and camaraderie. Even after their suppression, stories of their way of life formed the basis of a new genre of utopian literature.
XTutor: an Intelligent Tutor System for science and math based on Excel
VanLehn argued that an essential feature of many intelligent tutoring systems(ITSs) is that they provide feedback and hints on every step of a multi-step solution. This is certainly true for some well-known ITS such as Andes, the Cognitive Tutors and constraint-based tutors. It is not clear yet whether step-based feedback and hints alone suffice for strong learning gains, as Anderson et al. (1995) conjecture. If so, then perhaps a lightweight tutoring system that employ only feedback and bottom-out hints would have advantages. This motivates the current project. We wondered if the spreadsheet program Excel would allow easy construction of an ITS that would teach the same class of equation-based task domains as Andes (VanLehn et al., 2005) and Pyrenees (VanLehn et al., 2004). Using Excel there are some immediately advantages that can be obtained. First, most people is familiar with its user interface and its notation for mathematical expressions. Second, Excel already contains facilities for solving some systems of equations. Third, Excel can be easy mashed up with many other pieces of software, making it easier for instructors to include the tutor in their course activities. Forth, web-based delivery is simple because most students already have and use Excel.
Developmental Precursors of Moral Disengagement and a Mediator of Early Risk for Antisocial Behavior
Research on the development of antisocial behavior (AB) is important because of the great cost of these behaviors to individuals and society. While research in this area has focused on how behavior mechanisms link early risk to later behavior, there has been little work looking at cognitive mechanisms. In other words, little work has examined how children’s attitudes may link early risk for AB to later behavior. The purpose of the study was to advance our understanding of the developmental precursors of Moral Disengagement (MD) (a potential cognitive mechanism between early risk and later AB) and the role of MD in mediating the link between early risk and later AB among an ethnically diverse sample of 189 low-income boys followed prospectively from ages 1.5 to 16. The results indicated that measures of parenting, neighborhood impoverishment, and child empathy were all related to later MD. Furthermore, MD was found to contribute to an indirect relationship between these two constructs.
Nonmetric Sex Determination from the Sternal End of the Rib
The sternal end of the rib has been suggested as an element for use in the determination of sex. Radiographic analyses have defined common male and female patterns of costal cartilage ossification producing promising results in determining sex, however, this method has not been applied to dry ribs. The purpose of this research is to apply these methods of nonmetric sex determination to the sternal end of dry ribs. The anthropologist, Iscan, also commented on variation between the sexes at the sternal end of the rib. These researchers noted features similar to the common male and female patterns of costal cartilage ossification, and also described the female traits of: plaque-like deposits, wall flaring, and a central arc. The current study assesses these features defined by Iscan using the right fourth rib of 159 EuroAmericans of the Hamman-Todd Osteological Collection. The traits appeared infrequently in this sample: male pattern (10.7%), female pattern (21.4%), plaque-like deposit (1.3%), wall flare (8.2%), and central arc (3.8%). The constructed logistic regression model correctly predicted 57.2% of the individuals. The results indicate that the dry rib is not as accurate in determining the sex of an individual as is the use of a chest radiograph.
Limiting inter-observer error in determination of sex and age at death of human skeletal remains
A key tenant of paleodemographic and skeletal analysis is to implement reproducible methodology to assess probable sex and age at death. Twenty non-metric, sexually dimorphic traits (Acsádi and Nemeskéri, 1970) and three methods for age determination, including the auricular surface (Lovejoy et al., 1985) and the pubic symphysis (Brooks and Suchey, 1990; Meindl et al., 1985), were assessed for an index of reproducibility. Two trained osteologists analyzed a group of Monongahelans (Campbell Farm, 36FA26, n=46), part of a homogenous pre-contact Pennsylvania population. The index of reproducibility was assessed by inter-observer error using chi-square for each dimorphic trait (M/F/I) and aging method by respective stages of bony change. Features of the mandible were significantly more consistent (p=.045) than the cranium alone, yet no difference was seen between the skull and pelvis. There were no significant differences in aging methods; both os pubis methods were equally reproducible, and when compared (p>0.05) or culled to the auricular surface (p>0.05) exhibited no significant differences. Overall, application of multiple features for determination of sex (Acsádi and Nemeskéri, 1970) increases reproducibility, decreasing inter-observer error. Aging methods of the os pubis and auricular surface exhibited comparable reproducibility and limited inter-observer error suggesting dependability.
A High-Throughput Phase-Distribution Method to Measure Drug-Cyclodextrin Binding Constants
Aqueous solubility can be a problem for drugs. Cyclodextrins (CDs) are used as excipients to solubilize drugs frequently. A high-throughput phase-distribution method has been developed to measure drug-cyclodextrin binding constants. It measures the distribution coefficient of a drug (Econazole) between a polymer film (polyvinyl chloride (PVC) with 67% (w/w) dioctyl sebacate (DOS)) and a cyclodextrin-containing buffer in a 96-well microplate. Measurements of distribution coefficient at several cyclodextrin concentrations lead to binding constants. The K1:1 values are 3979±127 M-1, 3902±222 M-1, 29327±2249 M-1, 661±40 M-1, 1781±301 M-1, 4083±504 M-1, with (2-hydroxyethyl)-β-cyclodextrin, (2-hydroxypropyl)-β-cyclodextrin, 2,6-di-O-methyl-β-cyclodextrin, heptakis(2,3,6-tri-O-methyl)-β-cyclodextrin, α-cyclodextrin, β-cyclodextrin, respectively. It is likely that 1:2 complexes are also formed. This method has also been applied to study the binding behavior as a function of pH values. An acidic environment decreases the binding constant of CD with the basic econazole. The formation of the 1:2 complexes is completely suppressed in acid as well. Our protocol is faster and requiring much less materials than previous methods. Therefore, our method shows great potential for application in pharmaceutical field.
Isotopic investigation of anthropogenic sources of atmospheric carbon and nitrogen to vegetation along an urban to rural gradient
My research uses stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to examine the contribution of atmospheric CO2 and NOx to vegetation along an urban to rural gradient in Baltimore, MD. CO2, a primary greenhouse gas, and NOx, a precursor to acid rain, are two major air pollutants, especially in urban areas. While these compounds can be produced naturally, a large source for them is anthropogenic fossil fuel burning. This research explores the role of urban vegetation as a sink for these gases. Each source of CO2 and NOx exhibits a unique isotopic signature, which becomes incorporated into plant tissue when plants take up these compounds from the atmosphere. Looking at the isotopic composition of plant tissue samples can tell us the sources of CO2 and NOx to which the plant was exposed. I hypothesize that plants in urban areas will reflect the isotopic signatures of CO2 and NOx from fossil fuel burning, while the isotopic composition of plants in rural areas will be more characteristic of natural sources of CO2 and NOx. This research will demonstrate a tool for assessing impacts of regional emissions of CO2 and NOx around urban areas, which can be used by agencies developing pollution reduction strategies.
The Boy from Abydos: CT Scanning of a Ptolemaic Dynasty Egyptian Mummy
CT scanning conducted on a child from the Cemetery of Abydos has enabled detailed noninvasive examination without removal of the mummy’s cartonnage or wrappings and sheds light on the health, sex, age, stature, and mortuary preparation of this individual. The mummy was excavated at the Cemetery of Abydos, in 1911-12, by T. Eric Peet and dates to between 332-250 BC. Prior to this study, the child’s age and sex were unknown. Age estimation based on dental growth and eruption placed the boy at about 3 years, and preservation of soft tissue indicates that the child was a boy. Long bone diaphyseal measurements of the mummy were compared to modern growth charts to reconstruct his stature at the time of death. Osteo and craniometric analyses indicate that the child exhibits some form of pathology. Considerable information was acquired about Ptolemaic mortuary practices for elite, non-royal children from this child. The ancient mortician first attempted to excise the brain through the right nostril, and then through the foramen magnum. A papyrus support rod, was then positioned inside the cranium and wedged down inside the vertebrae. Given the rarity of intact child mummies from this period, this study provides significant comparative data.
Water quality in a restored urban stream, Pittsburgh, PA
Nine Mile Run, in lower Frick Park, is the site of the largest urban aquatic ecosystem restoration in the U.S. NMR drains a significant portion of east Pittsburgh, emerging from culverts and flowing through Frick Park to the Monongahela River. A visual inspection of the stream shows a marked qualitative improvement in the stream quality, however there has been no continuous water quality monitoring and there is little pre-restoration water quality data. We initiated water quality monitoring in summer 2007 to: 1) determine sources of nutrient contamination and; 2) assess the influence of sanitary sewers and combined sewer overflows (CSO) on nutrient dynamics. Low-flow samples were collected bi-weekly in four locations and analyzed for major anion (nitrite, nitrate, sulfate, Br, F, Cl) and cation concentrations (Mg, Ca, Na, K, Sr, Si). Discharge data, nitrate, and fluoride concentrations suggest that connections between sanitary sewers and NMR impact streamwater quantity and quality more than combined sewer overflow (CSO) during low flow. Nitrate concentration suggest in-stream processing or multiple sanitary sewer inputs during low flow. Future work will employ stable isotope compositions of nitrate (delta15N, delta18O, Delta17O) to determine how nitrate sources to NMR vary with stream length and during varied flow regimes.
Fast Inference for Hidden Failure Diagnostic Problems
We are interested in the task of automatic monitoring of systems whose components are subject to cascading failures. The state of some of these components is observable by means of noisy sensors. The state of the unobserved components has to be inferred from the observations. A natural way to formulate the problem probabilistically is a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). DBNs are a popular formalism for representing the evolution of probabilistic state in time and well-understood general-purpose algorithms exist for inference in them. However, the computational complexity of said algorithms often severely limits the size of the system that can feasibly be represented. We observe that in the monitoring task, once a component fails, it stays broken until repaired. This nearly trivial observation leads to development of PPT-DBN, a new exact inference algorithm for certain DBNs with this "persistence" property. PPT-DBN is shown to exponentially outperform the state-of-the-art general-purpose inference algorithm in terms of computation time and memory consumption.
Sequential Organization of Adult Medical Closings
This study is grounded by our belief that medical interviews should not just end or be broken off at random, but should be terminated according to the particular dynamics of the discussion. Ideally, medical interviews should be ended when all patients’ concerns have been addressed, or have been taken far enough for one visit. However, patients’ additional concerns are often marginalized because they are typically raised towards the end of the visit, when the physician’s hand is already on the doorknob (Zoppi 1997). Patients afflicted with the “by the way syndrome” (Barsky 1981) also frustrate their doctors by raising new potentially life-threatening complaints in the final moments of their visits. In this paper, we take sociolinguistic approaches, such as discourse analysis, to examine the sequential organization of adult medical closings. We identify and describe the discourse used to negotiate the closure of the clinical encounter and a transition into the activity of closing the encounter.
A New Spin on Specificity
Our research focuses on adducing general principles applicable to site-specific protein-DNA interactions by linking structural, thermodynamic and dynamic properties to function. I use as a model the interaction of EcoRI endonuclease with specific, miscognate, and nonspecific DNA. Biochemical and genetic data suggest that the dynamic properties of the EcoRI "arms" that embrace the DNA play a key role in specificity determination. We hypothesized from thermodynamic and DNA footprinting data that there would be differences in the structure and dynamics of the arms in wild type complexes with the three classes of sites, with the most restricted mobility for the specific complex. In collaboration with Dr. Sunil Saxena and coworkers, we are using pulse Double Electron-Electron Resonance experiments to map distances and distance distributions between site-directed spin-labeled residues in the two "arms" of the EcoRI homodimer. Our data show that the distance between mean positions of targeted residues is consistent with that observed in the X-ray structure of the specific complex, but the breadths of the distance distributions differ significantly for the three classes of complexes. Our results are consistent with inferences from thermodynamics that specificity and the extent of dynamic fluctuations are coupled: the highly complementary specific complex has highly restricted motions, whereas the nonspecific complex is much "looser".
Responses to combined stress of heat & drought by two species of Collinsia from contrasting environments.
Plant populations frequently experience stressful conditions involving multiple environmental factors. Understanding how plants are adapted to respond to these conditions is vital to the preservation of both natural and agricultural plant populations. However, multiple stressors are rarely investigated in combination. I examine the phenotypic responses to heat and drought of two species of the genus Collinsia from contrasting environments in order to understand the role of local adaptation in stress response. I investigate effects on photosynthesis, transpiration and leaf morphology. Additionally, I examine expression of Heat Shock Protein 101, a vital component in the acquisition of thermal tolerance in plants. I discuss the adaptive significance of differences in plasticity and present one of the first assays of natural variation in heat shock protein expression.
Conditional Anomaly Detection in Medical Domains
The primary focus of my research work is the development of new computational anomaly detection techniques and their application to clinical data and clinical problems. In general, anomaly detection techniques are used to identify anomalous (unusual) patterns in data. In clinical settings, these may concern identifications of unusual patient-state outcomes or unusual patient-management decisions. My current research explorations address the error detection problem. The existing error detection systems deployed in hospitals are built entirely by human experts. Because of this such systems are time-consuming and costly to build, they typically do not cover all specialties of the care. Statistical anomaly detection approach for error detection, proposed and studied in my work, relies solely on data that are extracted from existing patient record repositories and no or very limited expert input is required. This reduces the cost of the approach and its deployment. I will present a framework that adapts to a patient and automatically selects a cohort of similar patients from the database. Using that cohort we build a model that evaluates the probability of physician's decisions. We raise alarm if the decisions have very low probability.
Ets DNA binding transcription factors: their role in Fibroblast Growth Factor signaling and embryogenesis
Fibroblast Growth Factors (FGFs) are secreted molecules that activate the RAS/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway, inducing critical developmental processes to take place within the zebrafish embryo. This signaling is responsible for establishing the embryo body plan and heart and brain formation. To understand how FGFs control these processes and dictate gene expression, we are studying the transcriptional regulation on an FGF target gene, Map Kinase Phosphatase 3 (Mkp3). We have identified several putative DNA binding sites within the mkp3 promoter, consisting of members of the Pea3 Ets transcription factor family. Since several Ets factors are known transcriptional mediators of MAPK signaling, we hypothesized that Ets family members function to mediate FGF signaling processes. We have isolated several Pea3 Ets factors to determine their role in FGF signaling and gene regulation. Our gain-of-function studies show that over-expressing these factors can induce mkp3 transcripts, thus indicating the importance of Ets factors to activate FGF target genes. In loss-of-function studies the concerted depletion of Ets proteins results in altered brain and heart formation. These same phenotypes are reminiscent of zebrafish FGF mutants. These results reveal the requirement of Ets factors in maintaining FGF signaling in crucial developmental processes.
