Motherhood has been set up as an institution of control over women by the patriarchy. Dominant ideas of motherhood and what constitutes being a good mother are steeped in patriarchal ideals and conceptual thoughts. What is absent from ideas of motherhood is the female lived experiences of mothering. Mothering, by contrast, is the conceptual understanding of what it means to be a mother from a women-centered perspective. Under the dominant discourse of motherhood, mothers are self-sacrificing, generous, calm, patient, and loving. Those mothers who do not meet these standards are constructed as "bad mothers," reinforcing a binary understanding of mothers. This paper challenges the good/bad mother binary by drawing on the lived experience of one mother who uses substances to demonstrate the judgmental road mothers are forced to walk. This thesis takes a feminist-based approach to explore Ruth's story: a mother who engages in substance use. This research is produced through a feminist ontology to add to a body of scholarship that works to create a counter-discourse for mothers from mothers against dominating patriarchal norms of motherhood. A Narrative case study methodology is applied to Ruth's story to extrapolate the complex realities Ruth faces as she attempts to make sense of her mothering identity within the patriarchal definition of the "good mother." While engaging in substance use, Ruth's mothering story produced four themes that facilitate understanding mothering from a holistic, women-centric lens. First, this research emphasizes the barriers Ruth experiences in building, understanding and maintaining her sense of self. Second, Ruth's story illuminates the impact of the dominant "good" motherhood discourse on how women like Ruth conceptualize themselves as a mother. Third, Ruth's story enables the exploration of the intersectional identities of mothering and substance use in a way that creates space for both identities to work together rather than in opposition. Lastly, reflecting on the surveillance Ruth has endured in relation to her family and interactions with child welfare, her story reveals how discourses of risk are connected to and associated with substance use. Through the exploration of Ruth's mothering experiences, a narrative is produced to challenge and disrupt the oppressive institution of motherhood. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated (ATM) gene helps to repair DNA damage and that increased cancer risks are associated with having a mutation in an ATM gene. ATM gene is newer compared to other known hereditary cancer genes. We present a rare care of 66-year-old female with extensive personal and family history of breast and pancreatic cancer had negative imaging surveillance until recent systemic imaging showed new pancreatic head 2.5x2.5 cm mass. Endoscopic ultrasound confirmed invasion of superior mesenteric vein with near confluence. No regional adenopathy was seen. She was felt to be borderline resectable and neoadjuavant chemotherapy was planned. She had a personal history of right breast cancer diagnosed in 1998 status post lumpectomy and axillary lymph node dissection and adjuvant chemotherapy with CMF regimen x 5 cycles and radiation therapy and endocrine therapy with tamoxifen for 5 years. In 2011 she was also diagnosed with rectal well to moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma status post abdominoperitoneal resection on 3/15/2011, 36 lymph nodes were negative, but the surgical circumferential radial margin was positive. She underwent adjuvant radiation therapy with total dose of 45 Gy. There was recurrence in vaginal and bladder wall adenocarcinoma in 2014 for which patient underwent an anterior exenteration. Pathology felt this was endocervical origin of malignancy and patient received megace therapy for 3 years based on hormone receptor positive status. For new diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, she was started on Gemcitabine and Abraxane chemotherapy. Given extensive personal and family history of malignancy, she was referred to genetic counsellor. Hereditary cancers panel at invitae laboratory was positive for a heterozygous pathological variant in the ATM gene deletion (exons 62-63). ATM gene is associated with an increased risk for autosomal dominant breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer. Close relatives (children, siblings, and each parent) have up to a 50% chance of being a carrier of this variant. It is essential for treating physicians to educate patients and family members on the risk for subsequent malignancies.

Resource management is an important component in many distributed clusters. A resource manager handles which server a task should run on and which user’s task that should be allocated. If a system has multiple users with similar demands, all users should have an equal share of the cluster, making the system fair. This is typically done today using a centralized server which has full knowledge of all servers in the cluster and the different users. Having a centralized server brings problems such as single point of failure, and vertical scaling on the resource manager. This thesis focuses on fairness for users during task allocation with a decentralized resource manager. A solution called, Parallel Distributed Gradient-based Dominant Resource Fairness, is proposed. It allows servers to handle a subset of users and to allocate tasks in parallel, while maintaining fairness results close to a centralized server. The solution utilizes a gradient network topology overlay to sort the servers based on their users’ current usage and allows a server to know if it has the user with the currently lowest resource usage. The solution is compared to pre-existing solutions, based on fairness and allocation time. The results show that the solution is more fair than the pre-existing solutions based on the gini-coefficient. The results also show that the allocation time scales based on the number of users in the cluster because it allows more parallel allocations by the servers. It does not scale as well though as existing distributed solutions. With 40 users and over 100 servers the solution has an equal time to a centralized solution and outperforms a centralized solution with more users. / Resurshantering är en viktig komponent i många distribuerade kluster. En resurshanterare bestämmer vilken server som skall exekvera en uppgift, och vilken användares uppgift som skall allokeras. Om ett system har flera användare med liknande krav, bör resurserna tilldelas jämnlikt mellan användarna. Idag implementeras resurshanterare oftast som en centraliserad server som har information om alla servrar i klustret och de olika användarna. En centraliserad server skapar dock problem som driftstopp vid avbrott på ett enda ställe, även enbart vertikal skalning för resurshanteraren. Denna uppsats fokuserar på jämnlikhet för användare med en decentraliserad resurshanterare. En lösning föreslås, Parallel Distributed Gradient-based Dominant Resource Fairness, som tillåter servrar att hantera en delmängd av användare i systemet, detta med en liknande jämnlikhet jämförande med en centraliserad server. Lösningen använder en så kallad gradient network topology overlay för att sortera servrarna baserat på deras användares resursanvändning och tillåter en server att veta om den har användaren med lägst resursanvändning i klustret. Lösningen jämförs med existerande lösningar baserat på jämnlikhet och allokeringstid. Resultaten visar att lösningen ger en mer jämnlik allokering än existerande lösningar utifrån gini-koefficienten. Resultaten visar även att systemets skallbarhet angående allokeringstid är beroende på antalet användare i klustret eftersom det tillåter fler parallella allokeringar. Lösningen skalar inte lika bra dock som existerande distribuerade lösningar. Med 40 användare och över 100 servrar har lösningen liknande tid som en centraliserad server, och är snabbare med fler användare.

An accurate and efficient numerical method for Compressible Vorticity Confinement (CVC) was developed. The methodology follows from Steinhoff's vorticity confinement approach that was developed for incompressible flows. In this research, the extension of this approach to compressible flows has been developed by adding a vorticity confinement term as a "body force" into the governing compressible flow equations. This vorticity confinement term tends to cancel the numerical dissipative errors inherently related to the numerical discretization in regions of strong vorticity gradients. The accuracy, reliability, efficiency and robustness of this method were investigated using two methods. One approach is directly applying the CVC method to several real engineering problems involving complex vortex structures and assessing the accuracy by comparison with existing experimental data and with other computational techniques. Examples considered include supersonic conical flows over delta wings, shock-bubble and shock-vortex interactions, the turbulent flow around a square cylinder and the turbulent flow past a surface-mounted 3D cube in a channel floor. A second approach for evaluating the effectiveness of the CVC method is by solving simplified "model problems" and comparing with exact solutions. Problems that we have considered are a two-dimensional supersonic shear layer, flow over a flat plate and a two-dimensional vortex moving in a uniform stream. The effectiveness of the compressible confinement method for flows with shock waves and vortices was evaluated on several complex flow applications. The supersonic flow over a delta wing at high angle of attack produces a leeward vortex separated from the wing and cross flow, as well as bow shock waves. The vorticity confinement solutions compare very favorably with experimental data and with other calculations performed on dense, locally refined grids. Other cases evaluated include isolated shock-bubble and shock-vortex interactions. The resulting complex, unsteady flow structures compare very favorably with experimental data and computations using higher-order methods and highly adaptive meshes. Two cases involving massive flow separation were considered. First the two-dimensional flow over a square cylinder was considered. The CVC method was applied to this problem using the confinement term added to the inviscid formulation, but with the no-slip condition enforced. This produced an unsteady separated flow that agreed well with experimental data and existing LES and RANS calculations. The next case described is the flow over a cubic protuberance on the floor of a channel. This flow field has a very complex flow structure involving a horseshoe vortex, a primary separation vortex and secondary corner vortices. The computational flow structures and velocity profiles were in good agreement with time-averaged values of the experimental data and with LES simulations, even though the confinement approach utilized more than a factor of 50 fewer cells (about 20,000 compared to over 1 million). In order to better understand the applicability and limitations of the vorticity confinement, particularly the compressible formulation, we have considered several simple model problems. Classical accuracy has been evaluated using a supersonic shear layer problem computed on several grids and over a range of values of confinement parameter. The flow over a flat plate was utilized to study how vorticity confinement can serve as a crude turbulent boundary layer model. Then we utilized numerical experiments with a single vortex in order to evaluate a number of consistency issues related to the numerical implementation of compressible confinement. / Ph. D.

BACKGROUND: Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is characterized by gradual kidney enlargement and cyst growth prior to loss of kidney function. The Consortium for Radiologic Imaging Studies in Polycystic Kidney Disease (CRISP) created a standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol to be used for ADPKD patients to determine if changes in total kidney volumes can be detected over a short period of time, and if they correlate with decline in renal function early in the disease course. CRISP guided researchers and physicians to use a T1-weighted sequence with gadolinium contrast to measure kidney volumes. After the Food and Drug Administration discouraged the use of gadolinium contrast in individuals with kidney diseases, total kidney volume measured by MRI for ADPKD patients was done using the T1-weighted pulse sequence without contrast enhancement. STUDY OBJECTIVE: The retrospective cohort study will aim to assess reliability of the T2 sequence and total kidney volume measurements compared to total kidney volume measurements performed on a T1 sequence. METHODS: The study collected intra-reader and inter-reader cases from four imaging studies, each with an abdominal MRI performed. Repeated volume measurements were performed within an individual reader (intra-reader) and between different readers (inter-readers). The stereology method was used to quantify kidney volume from T1 images for three studies and T2 images for one study. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze volume differences between repeated measurements for intra-reader and inter-reader data for each MRI sequence. The intra-class correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman plot were used to describe correlation between kidney volumes, for intra-reader and inter-reader data respectively. RESULTS: Analyses show a significant difference in the repeated volume measurements from the T1 sequence in inter-reader data. Reliability for the T2 and T1 sequence was represented by high correlations in both the intra-reader and inter-reader total kidney volumes. CONCLUSION: MR measures of total kidney volume are reliable in patients when measured on both the T1 sequence and the T2 sequence. ADPKD kidney volumes for future clinical trials can be reliably measured on either sequence.

Assisted reproductive technologies such as estrus synchronization and embryo transfer can aid producers in meeting their goals of improving genetics, calve one calf per cow per year, and wean heavy calves. Most estrus synchronization protocols follow a GnRH-PGF-GnRH sequence. Ovulation prompted by exogenous gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) may cause the release of sub-mature oocytes and lead to decreased pregnancy rates. Inclusion of estradiol benzoate (EB) improved pregnancy rates in some studies. The objective of this study was to determine if EB affects blood perfusion of follicles, corpus luteum (CL), or uterus, concentrations of estradiol and progesterone, or incidence of standing estrus.

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