Browsing by Subject "development"
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Item Building a Community of Scholars in Educational Research: A Case Study for Success(University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, 2011) Brahm, Nancy C.; Davis, Tamra S.; Peirce, Gretchen L.; Lamb, Michelle M.Objective: To present the model of the Education Research/Scholarship of Teaching Community of Scholarship (EdCOS) as one Community of Scholars (COS) within a department of pharmacy. Case Study: A case study describing the Education Research/Scholarship of Teaching Community of Scholars (EdCOS). Faculty members were self-selected into one or more of eight COS. The EdCOS was comprised of 14 members. The EdCOS developed a vision statement to “foster and support a learning culture that enables faculty to capture and evaluate teaching and learning experiences.” The process by which the EdCOS set out to initiate this COS will be discussed. Since its inception all members of the EdCOS have become IRB Certified. Through a combined project, members had the opportunity to develop, learn, and acquire experience in areas of conducting research from the conception of a project through final submission of the manuscript. Departmental publications and grant funding increased over the years after the implementation of the COS. Conclusion: Although cause and effect cannot be explicitly determined, the EdCOS has had a positive impact on its members building confidence, experience, and ideas for future projects.Item "Climate-Smart" Seeds: Race, Science, and Security in the Global Green Revolution(2019-06) Eddens, AaronThis dissertation connects the racial logics and transnational ties of the Green Revolution—Cold War-era American-led agricultural development projects across the Global South—to a range of contemporary Western development projects seeking to cultivate a “Green Revolution for Africa.” Scholars have critiqued the Green Revolution’s links to U.S. foreign policy, exacerbation of rural inequalities, and environmental impacts. Yet, for the world’s most powerful development institutions, it remains a “success story” that guides policy and practice. Understanding this staying power, I argue, demands asking how the prevailing knowledge about the Green Revolution is inextricable from racial logics. Combining archival research from the records of the earliest Green Revolution projects with in-depth interviews with agricultural scientists working on development projects in East Africa, I show how Green Revolution projects are rooted in racialized thinking about poverty, security, and development. Drawing on history, geography, critical race studies, and indigenous studies, the dissertation’s chapters provide an intellectual genealogy of the key ideas that have shaped the global Green Revolution. Chapter one compares the Green Revolution’s central figure, Nobel Prize-winning plant breeder Norman Borlaug, to the Green Revolution for Africa’s most recognizable backer: Bill Gates. Both figures, I argue, share racialized framings of poverty as a security threat and Africa as a “frontier.” Chapter two shows how American scientists working in Mexico in the 1940s used ideas about the racial inferiority of indigenous people to justify their efforts to collect indigenous varieties of maize from throughout the country. Chapter three examines a contemporary effort to bring genetically modified maize to smallholder farmers in East Africa. I argue that the project’s mission to improve the plight of smallholder farmers with biotech crops reproduces racialized narratives that yoke improvement and the expansion of private property. Finally, chapter four traces parallel logics across U.S. Global Food security strategy, national security strategy, and new crop insurance schemes in East Africa, connecting this intersection to histories of racialized finance and U.S. Empire. Ultimately, the dissertation insists on the need to foreground discussions of race and racialization in debates about agricultural development in an era of climate change.Item Comparing Two Classification Methods of Third Molar Development(2018-06) Kats, OlgaBACKGROUND: Radiographic evaluation of third molar development is often used in estimating chronological age. A widely used system of such an evaluation, developed by Demirjian, uses eight growth stages (Demirjian et al. 1973). These stages are defined by changes of shape and can be subjective (Sisman et al. 2007). A new staging system uses numeric values (millimeters) to separate the stages (Hammer 2015). OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine if Hammer’s staging of third molar development is more reliable than Demirjian’s staging. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Existing panoramic radiographs from University of Minnesota Orthodontic Department were scored twice by three calibrated readers using Hammer and Demirjian Staging Classifications. Kappa statistics were calculated to assess intra- and inter-rater agreement. RESULTS: The results showed that Hammer’s method had higher intra- and inter-rater reliability, but is not significantly different from Demirjian’s method. CONCLUSION: Hammer’s classification of third molar eruption pattern may be used to stage third molar formation. Future studies may aim to correlate Hammer’s classification with population-specific chronological age data.Item Competing and contesting constructions of ‘modern’ womanhood: A vertical case study examining the effects of international development discourse on marriage and education in rural Upper Egypt(2015-05) Sallam, MohamedIn the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) education is widely understood to play a key role in promoting gender equality and economic empowerment. In the MENA region generally, and Egypt in particular, "early-marriage" is implicated as one of the main barriers to educational access for girls living in rural areas. In 2001 inspired by the Egyptian Government's commitment to the principles of the United Nations Girl's Education Initiative (UNGEI), Population Council in Egypt developed Ishraq, a literacy and life-skills program targeting rural and adolescent out-of-school girls in Upper Egypt. This dissertation examines how conceptions of womanhood are framed at varying levels of the international development landscape, and the extent to which they affect and are affected by national policy considerations (represented by the UNGEI and the Ishraq Program) and local understandings around education and marriage in rural Upper Egypt. This research is guided by the assumption that education policy formation is grounded in particular values regarding the role and purpose of education for girls. Through utilizing a vertically-oriented design, this dissertation explores how international and national policy discussions come to shape the construction and implementation of development programs targeting girls at local levels. Emerging from my conversations, interviews, and many observations with former Ishraq participants, program stakeholders, and other young women in rural Upper Egypt - are varied experiences and understandings that participants related regarding what it means to be a "modern" woman in rural Upper Egypt during this current revolutionary moment. What is revealed is an interplay between transnational development discourse and how particular women in rural Upper Egypt women engage in the social contests concerning marriage and education. The experiences and understandings of participants situated at the most local levels suggest a dynamism and complexity around these social contests that is all but left out of the prevailing policy documents, program materials, and among the views of those responsible of the funding and design of the Ishraq program. Moreover, participants experiences with safety and security in rural Upper Egypt during this most recent period of political transition appears to be contributing to the further isolation of rural communities.Item Data from: Development of an aggressive bark beetle on novel hosts: Implications for outbreaks in an invaded range(2017-11-11) Rosenberger, Derek W; Venette, Robert C; Aukema, Brian H; dwrosenberger@olivet.edu; Rosenberger, Derek WMountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) is an aggressive bark beetle native to western North America currently expanding its range east. Should it reach northeastern North American pine forests, it is unclear how novel pine hosts might affect traits related to reproduction and development. These data are the result of studies meant to determine how four novel pine hosts might impact mountain pine beetle reproduction and development, relative to two historical hosts.Item Developing Altruism: Incentivizing Young Professionals to Become Art Museum Patrons(2012-05-30) Linnemann, MikeMuseums have identified a major audience gap in the young professional demographic. In implementing young professional programs and groups, art museums are striving to develop and regain these non-users. In doing so, art museums have not had a strong strategic framework to cultivate these young professionals into members and donors. My investigation presents the current state of young professionals in art museums in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area and proposes a framework based in economic altruism to regain these lost young professionals and cultivate them into lifelong patrons.Item Dopaminergic signaling in the spinal cord suppresses locomotion in larval zebrafish development(2024-03) Walters, Deborah, LThe significance of dopamine (DA) and its multifaceted role as a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system has undergone extensive investigation. The research focus of my project centers on dopamine’s role in modulating spinal locomotor circuits in larvae zebrafish. Previous research from our lab showed that larval zebrafish swimming patterns change during development from long episodes durations at 3 days post fertilization (dpf) to short episode durations at 4 dpf and coincides with gross to fine motor control. Dopamine receptor D4 signaling in the spinal cord is necessary in facilitating this switch, likely by modulating dopamine signaling and regulating the activity of motor neurons involved in generating locomotor patterns. We demonstrated that antagonism of D4R signaling starting at 3 dpf prevents the switch from long to short episode durations, while D4R antagonism at 4 dpf reverses the switch from short to long episode durations. We hypothesized that 3 dpf larvae possess sufficient dopaminergic receptors in the spinal cord to bind to DA, enabling the advancement of the developmental switch from immature, long swim patterns to a mature state resembling 4 dpf larvae by exposing larvae at 3 dpf to exogenous DA. To test this, we used transgenic zebrafish that expressed Channelrhodopsin (ChR) in glutamatergic neurons within the spinal cord, allowing for the activation of these neurons using blue-light stimulation. Fictive swimming was measured using peripheral nerve recordings in different conditions, of a baseline (t0), treatment of dopamine (t1), and washout (saline) (t2). Control (untreated) preparations exhibited no significant changes between conditions, indicating that repeated optogenetic stimulation by itself did not induce notable changes in locomotor activity. Dopamine application significantly decreased the number of bursts and episode duration during optogenetic stimulation locomotor activity without affecting number of episodes, burst duration, or inter-burst intervals. These results suggest that exogenous DA affected swim patterns in 3 dpf larvae to resemble their 5 dpf counterparts, indicating a sufficient expression level of dopamine receptors in spinal locomotor networks of 3 dpf larvae to prematurely advance the developmental switch. These results could elucidate how neurodegenerative and motor disorders develop and progress, and shed light on the mechanisms underlying spinal cord injury. These findings could potentially inform translational medical approaches creating novel therapeutic interventions for treating neurodegenerative diseases.Item A Dynamic Systems Approach to Visual Attention in Infancy(2021-06) Sifre, RobinInfants live in a visually cluttered world, and prioritizing attention to meaningful information is arguably the most important challenge they face to efficiently learn about their surroundings. To do so, infants must coordinate multiple attention processes across different timescales. My program of research takes a systems-level approach, applying methods from Complexity Science to understand how infant attention becomes self-organized and displays evidence of cross-scale interactivity in the first years of life. My dissertation will be the first study to examine how brain development supports the coordination of these processes that are critical for visual exploration in infancy.Item The Eleven Distinctions(Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 2009-01-22) Lindsley, BryanThis paper discusses eleven distinctions that develop ideas about how society can ensure that every individual is given the capacity to reach her highest potential. The distinctions show us that the mother‐child (and/or caretaker‐child) relationship and early environments not only overwhelmingly shape each person’s development, but also serve as a model for human development in all stages of life; that humans control their environments; that the nature of work is changing and the only successful response is continual learning; that systems designed to share knowledge with and collect knowledge from all participants build trust and accomplish goals. Problems with current learning systems, how value is derived in the modern economy, and implementation of Learning and Working Communities are also discussed.Item Epigenetic regulatory mechanisms that govern cardiovascular development(2022-06) Sierra Pagan, JavierCardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the number one cause of death in the United States and the World. The clinical outcomes of patients with heart failure, a form of CVD, remain poor because current clinical therapies do not address a critical feature of heart failure which is the loss of functional cardiac muscle. To decrease the morbidity and mortality in these patients, several strategies are being developed to replace the loss of functional cardiac muscle with new one. Two attractive strategies for treating CVD involve converting cardiac fibroblasts (reprogramming) into functional muscle or vascular cells and promoting cell cycle re-entry of adult cardiomyocytes following cardiac injury to replace the dead muscle. While the adult mammalian heart has limited regenerative potential following injury, the embryonic and neonatal mammalian heart has a remarkable regenerative capacity. Therefore, our goal for these studies was to define new factors and mechanisms that could enhance repair and regeneration in the adult mammalian heart. To this end, in this thesis, we identified novel epigenetic regulatory mechanisms that govern cardiovascular development, particularly within the vascular and cardiac muscle lineages. Our first finding is that we identified that ETV2 functions as a pioneer transcription factor that relaxes closed chromatin and regulates endothelial development. We did this by comparing engineered embryonic stem cell (mESCs) differentiation and reprogramming models (MEFs) with multi-omics techniques, we demonstrated that ETV2 was able to bind nucleosomal DNA and recruit BRG1. The recruitment of BRG1 led to the remodeling of chromatin around endothelial genes and helped to maintain an open configuration, resulting in increased H3K27ac deposition. Our second finding is that we discovered a signaling cascade where ETV2 regulates RHOJ expression during endothelial progenitor cell migration. We did this by combining computational genomics (RNAseq, ATACseq and ChIPseq) to discover that ETV2 regulates migratory pathways through the expression of RHOJ, particularly in developing endothelial progenitor cells (E7.75 and E8.5 mouse embryos and developing mESCs). Our third finding is that we identified FOXK1 as an essential transcriptional and epigenetic regulator of cardiovascular development. We used mESCs that lacked FOXK1 expression and discovered that in its absence, cardiac muscle development is significantly affected, both at the transcriptional and chromatin level. Mechanistically, we also discovered that FOXK1 represses Wnt signaling, particularly Wnt6, to promote the development of cardiac progenitor cells. ETV2 has the capacity to reprogram fibroblasts to mature vascular cells and our findings identified new mechanisms we can explore to better reprogram cardiac fibroblasts. Additionally, FOXK1 is a known cell cycle regulator and together with this newly identified role in the cardiovascular system, it becomes an attractive molecule that could be used to promote cell cycle re-entry of adult cardiomyocytes following ischemic injury. Altogether these studies provide exciting data for the field of cardiac regeneration but future studies will be needed in vivo to determine the potential benefit of these molecules following cardiac injury.Item Examining the Nature, Origins, and Health Consequences of Attachment-Related Individual Differences in the Emotion Regulation Process(2014-07) Fillo, JenniferIndividuals vary in their tendency to habitually adopt different emotion-regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal and suppression (Gross & John, 2003). These strategies have implications for individuals' subjective, expressive, and physiological reactions to emotions, with certain emotional profiles being considered "healthier" than others (John & Gross, 2004). A key direction for research in this area is the identification of individual differences that can explain how and why individuals develop these tendencies. This information could help researchers and clinicians better predict and potentially curtail the negative consequences associated with some emotion-regulation tendencies. The present research examines individual differences in attachment orientations as one such explanation. According to attachment theory, individuals' histories of interactions with caregivers throughout life shape their relational orientations, as well as their motivations and abilities for coping with stressful events (Bowlby, 1969). Study 1 examined relations between attachment orientations and self-reported emotion-regulation tendencies, as well as experimentally tested attachment-based individual differences in the emotion regulation process by examining subjective, expressive, and physiological emotional responses to an emotion-eliciting film clip. Attachment avoidance and anxiety were associated with a number of similar emotion-regulation difficulties, but specific approaches to regulating emotions. In the experimental portion, the nature and effectiveness of specific emotion-regulation strategies varied across levels of avoidance and anxiety. Additionally, avoidant individuals showed some evidence of spontaneous emotion-regulation attempts, even when they were given no specific emotion-regulation instructions. Study 2 replicates and extends Study 1 by examining the developmental antecedents and long-term health consequences of these individual differences in emotion regulation, using data collected as part of the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation. It examined the potential mediating role of emotion-regulation difficulties in the link between attachment representations and later substance use (i.e., alcohol consumption, tobacco use). There was an indirect effect of attachment representations on later alcohol consumption through impulse control difficulties and limited access to emotion-regulation strategies. Attachment representations directly predicted tobacco use, but this relation was not mediated by difficulties with emotion regulation. As a whole, this research reveals important information about the nature, origins, and health consequences of attachment-based individual differences in emotion regulation.Item Frictions in the Social and Economic Lives of Underprivileged People(2021-05) Ordaz Reynoso, NataliaIn the last century, standards of living around the world have improved. However, thisprogress has not been equal across, nor within countries. This dissertation consists of threechapters that aim to contribute to answering the question of why this has been the case, inthree separate contexts.Chapter 1: I test whether the implementation of the California Paid Family Leave Actincreased young women’s human capital investment, specifically college enrollment. Using asynthetic control approach, I estimate that the policy increased the probability that womenenroll in college by about 2 percentage points. This effect is statistically significant at the5% level and persists for at least several years. I present a simple human capital modelof women’s schooling choices that characterizes these results as the effect of an expecteddecrease in the effects of motherhood on labor supply. Finally, I present evidence fromsurvey data and Internet searches that provides support to the hypothesized mechanism:women are more likely to enroll in college because they expect that the policy will increasetheir future labor supply.Chapter 2: Directly eliciting individuals’ subjective beliefs via surveys is increasinglypopular in social science research, but doing so via face-to-face surveys has an importantdownside: the interviewer’s knowledge of the topic may spill over onto the respondent’srecorded beliefs. Using a randomized experiment that used interviewers to implement aninformation treatment, we show that reported beliefs are significantly shifted by interviewerknowledge. Trained interviewers primed respondents to use the exact numbers used in thetraining, nudging them away from higher answers; recorded responses decreased by about0.3 standard deviations of the initial belief distribution. Furthermore, respondents withstronger prior beliefs were less affected by interviewer knowledge.Chapter 3: Governments across the world subsidize soup kitchen programs, but thereis little evidence on whether these improve food security. I study a soup kitchen programfunded by the Mexican government in 2013 to examine whether it has caused an improve-ment in food security. I find no mean municipal effects for six different measures of foodsecurity. I analyze a sub sample of the most food insecure and identify some positive effectswithin that sector of the population. My results suggest that the effect of the programon food security is concentrated in the lower end of the food security distribution, butchallenge the assumption that subsidizing prepared food will mechanically improve meanfood security significantly. I also estimate that the presence of soup kitchens in the mostex-ante food insecure municipalities decreases average food expenditures. This result pointsto diverse effects of soup kitchen programsItem From Waste to Wares: Upcycling Plastic Bags for Relief, Aid, and Development(2012-09-14) Golynskiy, KimberlyUpcycling plastic bags may be a viable method to provide basic necessities for people living in poverty. I created knitted and fused designs from plastic bags including; ropes, shoes, tarps, rainwater catchers, toilet seats, neonatal warming bags, fishing nets, and construction webbing. Plastic bags are ubiquitous in every part of the world, but particularly in the developing world where more than 40% of the population lives on less than $2.50 per day. Plastic bags are an environmental and health hazard, but they are also a useful raw material. Using simple knitting and fusing methods, it is possible to turn plastic shopping bags into useful items for relief, aid, and development needs.Item Green Development Potential: Leed-ND Assessment St.Paul Ford Plant Redevelopment Scenarios(Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 2009-05) Kisch, MichaelThe City of St. Paul has an opportunity to layout a vision for a truly unique and progressive urban redevelopment project on the site of the Ford Manufacturing plant in the Highland Park neighborhood. The notion that this prime real estate can be a national example of integrating sustainable practices has been a key value present throughout the early stages of the planning process. The challenge is how to assess each scenario for the trade-offs and criteria that defines sustainability. The need to find a common vision or definition of sustainability is critical to benchmarking and measuring strategies for future development. As the City of St. Paul continues to refine and develop the vision for the site, and regulatory practices that can procure that vision, a key step is establishing a strategy for comparative analysis of potential development scenarios. The intent of this paper is to aid the City of St. Paul and the Ford Site Taskforce in their efforts by providing a standardized comparative assessment of each of the five development scenarios to help frame the discussion for sustainable development opportunities as the public planning process continues to evolve and play out for the Ford Plant site. This side by side comparison will help define and identify opportunities, challenges, and unknowns in the various schemes so that outside consultants can begin to weigh and value the trade-offs and benefits within each scheme. It is intended to be a supportive document that when used in conjunction with the other processes and inquiries into the potential future use of the site, can augment possible policy and actions steps. The heart of the report utilizes the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ for Neighborhood Development (ND) as a tool for aiding the City of St. Paul’s Planning Department in assessing the preliminary development scenarios proposed as a part of the long term planning process for the St. Paul Ford Plant site. This assessment looks at all 5 development scenarios and finds commonalities and distinctions amongst them.Item Hunger Games: Analyzing Relationships between Food Insecurity and Violence(2018-03) Koren, OreWhat impact does food security have on patterns of conflict within developing states? Does increasing local food security levels exacerbate or help to quell violence in these areas? Answering these questions using both high-resolution and global data on conflict and food production, as well as a large variety of analytical techniques designed to address the different reciprocal and sequential relationships between food production and conflict, my dissertation shows that—contrary to previous expectations—conflict in the developing world is frequently driven, on average, by abundance and not by scarcity. The dissertation establishes two mechanisms to explain this relationship. The first in- volves conflict designed to secure local food resources for the group’s own consumption, and is hence termed “possessive conflict” over food security. The second relates to situations where armed groups use violence to regulate the food supply available to other groups by prevent- ing access to and destroying these resources, and is hence termed “preemptive conflict” over food security. Original archival evidence from the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya highlights the microlevel importance of controlling food resources and increasing group—and community—resilience; different armed actors might therefore gravitate into food-abundant areas, increasing the frequency of local armed conflict and incidents of violence against civilians. This archival evidence also shows that some food resources, such as maize and wheat, are much more valuable as an input of rebellion, and are thus more likely to and more frequently attract conflict locally. Finally, the role of highly nutritional food resources in engendering and perpetuating rebellions is evaluated on a global sample consisting of all rebellions. The data used in these macrolevel cross-national models builds on food types and other factors deemed especially salient in the microlevel analyses. Substantively, the effect of nutritious food resources is shown to surpass that of other benchmark explanations of conflict such as economic development and political openness. These findings suggest that food resources and their impact on rebellions should be taken seriously by academics and policymakers alike.Item Identification and characterization of EMS mutant trm5a-1 and its interactions with SPY(2020-01) Grandt, KristinSPINDLY (SPY) is an O-fucosyltransferase involved in several processes in Arabidopsis thaliana, including gibberellin signaling, cytokinin signaling, and plant development. spy plants display a number of easily scored phenotypes such as increased stem elongation, decreased leaf serration, and early flowering. Despite its apparent importance, SPY’s function has not been fully characterized, as very few SPY substrates have been identified. In order to address this gap in knowledge, a suppressor screen was conducted to identify potential SPY interactors. An M2 population of ethyl methanesulfonate mutagenized spy-4 plants was screened for suppression of spy phenotypes. Three alleles that showed suppression of spy early flowering and spindly floral shoot phenotypes were identified. The strongest of those alleles was selected for analysis. However, spy-4 is partially male sterile, so the suppressor allele was crossed into spy-3 to facilitate genotypic and phenotypic analysis. Bulk segregant analysis using next generation sequencing was employed to identify the mutation responsible for the partial spy suppression observed. This analysis identified a point mutation that introduces a premature stop codon into the coding region of the TRM5a gene as the most likely candidate. This EMS allele is called trm5a-1 here-in. Analysis of another trm5a allele (T-DNA insertion line trm5a-2) and transgene rescue experiments confirmed that this mutation was responsible for suppressing spy. trm5a-1 and trm5a-2 mutants grow slowly and flower late, phenotypes that have been previously reported in other trm5a alleles. The trm5a-1/spy-3 double mutant phenotypes for these traits suggest a complex interaction between the two genes. Other phenotypes which have not been previously characterized in trm5a mutants are also observed. Exogenous application of cytokinin results in outgrowths at the valve margin in trm5a-1, trm5a-2, spy-3, and trm5a-1/spy-3, but not, at the concentrations used, in Col-0. In all trm5a-1, trm5a-2, and spy-3 single mutants, the outgrowths are small hair- or fan-like protrusions . However, in trm5a-1/spy-3, the outgrowths are larger and may even appear to have stigmatic papillae on their surface. There is also a phenotype of floral clustering in trm5a mutants, which is occasionally observed in some spy mutants but not spy-3. In trm5a-1 and trm5a-2 mutants, the phenotype manifests mainly as flower doublets with occasional small clusters of 4-5 flowers, while in trm5a-1/spy-3 the clusters are larger often comprised of ten or more flowers. The trend of trm5a-1/spy-3 plants to display more severe valve margin outgrowth and clustering phenotypes than the single mutants suggests additive or synergistic interactions between TRM5a and SPY. Broadly, the phenotypes of the trm5a-1, trm5a-2, and spy-3 demonstrate the importance of the genes in proper plant growth and development, and the phenotypes observed in the trm5a-1/spy-3 double mutant suggest a degree of genetic interaction between the two genes and areas of interest for future research into both.Item The Impact of Iron Deficiency During Development on Mammalian Target of Rapamycin Signaling, Neuronal Structure, and Learning and Memory Behavior(2010-11) Fretham, StephanieIron deficiency (ID) is the most common micronutrient deficiency, affecting an estimated 2 billion people world wide including 20-30% of pregnant women and their offspring. Many human studies have demonstrated negative effects of early life ID on learning and memory which persist beyond the period of ID despite of prompt iron treatment, observations which are supported by rodent models of early iron deficiency anemia (IDA). In spite of a large, observational literature the mechanisms through which early ID causes acute and persistent brain dysfunction are largely unknown. Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling is an attractive candidate for mediating the effects of early ID because it integrates cellular metabolic status to regulate fundamental aspects of cellular growth and differentiation. The overall goal of the current studies is to understand the role of iron in regulating mTOR signaling during a critical period of development in the hippocampus by using unique genetic mouse models of hippocampal ID to: 1) Determine when iron is required for hippocampal development 2) Determine the role of iron in mTOR signaling 3) Manipulate iron and mTOR to determine effects on hippocampal structure and behavior. The findings from these experiments demonstrate that mTOR signaling is upregulated by neuronal ID during the same period that rapid hippocampal development requires large amounts of iron. Additionally, rescue of behavioral outcomes in adult animals following restoration of mTOR signaling (through either timely iron repletion or pharmacological suppression) provides functional evidence for a connection between mTOR and the persistent effects of early ID.Item Individual differences in the acquisition of the /t/-/k/ contrast: A study of adults' perception of children's speech(2015-05) Bernstein, SaraThe presence of subtle but meaningful within-category sound differences has been documented in acoustic and articulatory analyses of children's speech. This study explored visual analog scaling (VAS) to measure speech perception. Productions of word-initial /t/ and /k/ were recorded from a diverse group of 63 children aged 28 to 39 months. Adult na�ve listeners rated productions on a VAS. Measures of children's vocabulary, speech perception, executive function, home language environment, and maternal education level were collected. Robustness of the /t/-/k/ contrast was derived from adult VAS ratings for each talker. Speech accuracy, based on phonetic transcriptions was calculated. Listeners differentiated transcription categories, including intermediate categories, using the VAS. Listeners had variable levels of intra-rater reliability, and set effects were present. Transcription accuracy and robustness of contrast were closely related, but robustness of contrast highlighted differences between children with high accuracy. Vocabulary measures predicted both robustness of contrast and transcribed accuracy.Item The knowledge thief? intellectual property disputes and copying for development in India(2022-09) Chatterjee, AninditaThis dissertation examines the legal lives of two knowledge-embedded goods—(i) a cancer drug in the Glivec case, and (ii) course packs in the Delhi University photocopy case. These distinct and disparate things were the subjects of two landmark disputes over intellectual property rights, i.e. patents and copyright, in India. The Glivec case involved divergent claims about Glivec was an invention, or whether it was a slightly modified version of an existing drug, and thereby ineligible for such protection under Indian law. Answers to these questions would determine when cheaper generics of Novartis’ exorbitantly priced medicine would be available in India. saw The Delhi University photocopy case saw three international academic publishers file a lawsuit against a small copy shop in Delhi University. Their claim was that copying books to make course packs without permission from or payment to the publishers, trespassed on their copyright. Through a close reading of the judgements issued by multiple forums, as well as interviews with select experts, this dissertation shows while neither the Glivec case nor the DU photocopy case can be easily read as resistance to the intellectual property project per se, i.e. the creation and protection of private property rights in knowledge more broadly, stakeholders are able to contest entrenched narratives, categories, norms, and histories of intellectual property during the course of legal arguments. In this process, they offer ways to blunt the sharp edges of intellectual property law through a combination of the politics of knowledge, of sovereignty, and of development. At the same time, by juxtaposing these cases, I also highlight differences in infrastructures of copying. The decentralized nature of the copy machine makes copy shops forces of democratization of knowledge and education. Copying pharmaceutical knowledge, i.e. the production of generic medicines, on the other hand, requires considerable investment and techno-scientific expertise; and such companies are no less motivated by the logic of profit. This renders them more amenable to incorporation into global networks, thereby undermining the subversive potential of the copy. Finally, this dissertation argues that while intellectual property law is tasked with policing boundaries between the original and the copy, such distinctions do not exist a priori. Rather, sameness and difference among pharmaceutical compounds and literary works come into being as things, knowledges, and relationships are made legible to the law.Item Northfield Downtown Development Corporation Report(2001) Moore, Michael