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Adequately assessing injury severity is critical in treating articular fractures. Severity assessment is used to inform clinical and surgical decision making through anticipation of patient outcomes. The assessments generally involve interpreting radiographs or CT image data. In recognition of the poor reliability of existing clinical severity assessments, objective severity metrics have been developed that are firmly rooted in mechanics and provide capable alternatives for use in research, where reliable data is paramount. Their broader clinical utility remains to be established. An existing CT-based method for determining the energy expended in a bone fracture was extended to facilitate its use in more fracture types. Its utility in different articular joints was evaluated. Specifically, the severities of articular fractures of the proximal tibia (plateau), of the distal tibia (plafond), and of the calcaneus were compared with present clinical severity metrics, patient outcomes, and/or surgeon rankings of severity. Differences in the fracture energies in the different joints were also compared. The objective fracture energy metric compared favorably with present clinical severity metrics. The fracture energies for fractures of the tibial plateau had between 71% and 78% concordance with surgeon rankings of severity. The calcaneal fracture energies had a 75% concordance with the present clinical standard. Fracture energy was also predictive of later radiographic indicators of post-traumatic osteoarthritis. The fracture energy metric is a capable tool for analyzing fracture severity in various joints. Fracture energy correlated well with outcomes and present clinical gold standards for severity assessment. The methods for assessing fracture energy described are highly useful for orthopaedic research and have potential as an important clinical tool.

Curriculum-Based Measures in writing (CBM-W) assesses a variety of fluency-based components of writing. While support exists for the use of CBM measures in the area of writing, there is a need to conduct further validation studies to investigate the utility of these measures within elementary and secondary classrooms. Since only countable indices are used in CBM-W, this study explored the possibility of using an assessment that measured writing quality in conjunction with the CBM metric. To accomplish this, three pieces of data were used in this study. The CBM metrics of total words written, words spelled correctly, correct word sequences, percentage of words spelled correctly, and percentage of correct word sequences were scored from a timed writing passage that second grade students completed. Scores from the district writing assessment that classroom teachers rated using an analytic rubric that focused on quality were also analyzed. Last, a validated writing assessment, the TOWL-3, was used as the criterion measure. Using correlation and regression methods, results indicated that correct word sequences was the best predictor performance on the TOWL-3. Even though the teacher writing assessment correlated with the TOWL-3 at the significant level, adding it to the scores from the CBM-W measures did not significantly increase the validity.

Let's Rap: An Artist Statement It is not enough for me to cite music solely as a source of inspiration. Hip-Hop, R&B, and, particularly, rap music has as much to do with my upbringing as does the public school system. According to Wikipedia, the components of rap include “content”, “flow” and “delivery”, which are vaguely reminiscent of the visual art terms “concept,” “sequence” and “presentation.” Growing up, music provided a forum to explore and analyze, as award-winning journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates might put it, the necessities for surviving problems of everyday life within and outside the Black American experience. Today, my interest lies in the formality of these art forms and how best to translate them visually. An aesthetic, being ostensibly subjective, offers sight as a material to be used as one uses color, texture or form. As sight is to the visual arts, sound is to music – materials to manipulate and respond to. Furthermore, I am intrigued by the practical similarities of both music and visual art, in their ability to speak to and for their audiences. Sounds formulated into songs often become portals into yesteryear or soundscapes for an extensive but evanescent summer. What can sight formulate into? How can sight be used as a medium to spark thoughtful conversation? Can Picasso's Guernica be repeated at will, or must the visual artist wait for social uproar to amass a lasting impact? Deeply rooted in creative expression, poetry is a means to get beyond conventional reasoning just as concept provides the sublimity necessary to suspend belief. Visual artists have been doing this for years: Marcel Duchamp's urinal or Vik Muniz's depiction of (waste worker) Jardim Gramacho as radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat in Jasques-Louis David's The Death of Marat. As with David Hammons' Higher Goals my approach to object making is comparable to that of a digital recording device, perceptibly replaying discourses between Black America and its audience. Visually weaving the aura of an object with its basic function is synonymous to lyrical play and, too, possesses similar impact. Conceptual and poetic play of the two genres offers the work of the artist to transcend beyond object or record. Therefore, my efforts at object making are to reveal and discover various testimonies within and surrounding Black America.

Reward has been shown to improve multiple forms of learning. However, many of these studies do not distinguish whether reward directly benefits learning or if learning is boosted by modulation of top-down factors such as attention and motivation. The work outlined in this dissertation explores the modulatory effects of reward and punishment without directly manipulating top-down factors such as attention or motivation. We achieved this goal by studying the effects of reward and punishment on incidental learning – a branch of procedural learning where learning occurs without intention and through repetition. Our results reveal that reward is able to bolster incidental learning during the performance and learning of an associative task, even when awareness of how to achieve the reward is minimized (Experiments 1 and 2). However, a similar benefit was not observed in an analogous set of experiments examining the effect of punishment on incidental learning (Experiments 3 and 4). A direct comparison between the effect of reward and punishment on incidental learning revealed a significant advantage for rewarded combinations over punishment. However, this advantage was only observed when high cognitive (associative) demands were emphasized (Experiment 6), as opposed to high motor demands (Experiment 5). Finally, we explored the role of dopamine in the effect of reward on incidental learning. Because dopamine neuron dynamics have been implicated in both reward processing and in various forms of learning, we hypothesized that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), who experience an accelerated rate of death of dopamine neurons, would experience impaired learning from rewards compared to healthy older adults. Experiment 7 revealed a significant impairment in reward-related incidental learning for patients with Parkinson's disease relative to comparisons. The amount of levodopa medication taken by PD patients predicted the effect of reward, demonstrating a potential link between dopamine levels and the effect of reward on incidental learning. Together, this dissertation demonstrates that 1) reward improves incidental learning, 2) reward may be an exceptional form of feedback, as opposed to punishments, and 3) dopamine levels may potentially drive the effect of reward on incidental learning

The pedigree of voltage-gated sodium channels spans the millennia from eukaryotic members that initiate the action potential firing in excitable tissues to primordial ancestors that act as enviro-protective complexes in bacterial extremophiles. Eukaryotic sodium channels (eNavs) are central to electrical signaling throughout the cardiovascular and nervous systems in animals and are established clinical targets for the therapeutic management of epilepsy, cardiac arrhythmia and painful syndromes as they are inhibited by local anesthetic compounds. Alternatively, bacterial voltage-gated sodium channels (bNavs) likely regulate the survival response against extreme pH conditions, electrophiles and hypo-osmotic shock and may represent a founder of the voltage-gated cation channel family. Despite apparent differences between eNav and bNav channel physiology, gating and gene structure, the discovery that bNavs are amenable to crystallographic study opens the door for the possibility of structure-guided rational design of the next generation of therapeutics that target eNavs. Here I summarize the gating behavior of a bacterial channel NaChBac and discuss mechanisms of local anesthetic inhibition in light of the growing number of bNav structures. Also, an interesting novel observation on cross-lineage modulation of NaChBac by eNav beta subunit is reported. This auxiliary subunit modulation is isoform specific and I show the discrete effects of each isoforms on NaChBac, with functional and biochemical analysis. I also report a novel mutation that alters inactivation kinetic drastically and a possible mechanism of NaChBac inactivation is discussed.

Traditional quality control charts are designed to monitor and control a quality characteristic for processes with a stable in-control state in which enough data is available to estimate the process parameters prior to a production run. For many processes we desire the ability to monitor a quality characteristic that has an in-control state not stable such as a degradation or deterioration process that exhibits a linear trend as its in-control state. In addition, there are many times when sufficient sampling for in-control parameter estimation is not possible before the production run due to cost or collection time. We therefore desire a self-starting charting scheme that monitors both in-control and out of control linear trends. We present here the needed results so that a process with the in-control linear trend can be charted to detect slope and intercept shifts, when accurate information on in-control parameters is not available. We propose a Q chart scheme, a EWMA Q chart, and a EWMA Q chart with delay parameter d that utilizes results from statistical process control and linear regression. The developed control chart schemes are tested through simulation studies and applied to real data examples.

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Detection of airborne influenza virus is needed in order to determine exposure and prevent and control infections. Few researchers have successfully detected airborne influenza virus in environmental settings with current bioaerosol samplers. Therefore, new sampling strategies should be considered to increase the likelihood of detection. This study compared four bioaerosol samplers in collection of airborne influenza virus – the SKC Biosampler, NIOSH Biosampler, Andersen N6 single-stage impactor containing a liquid media, and the newly developed Next Generation Inhalable Aerosol Sampler (NGIAS). Ten 30-minute laboratory trials were completed by aerosolizing active influenza virus (H1N1) in a bioaerosol chamber to compare the ability of four bioaerosol samplers to collect aerosolized virus. Samples were analyzed using RT-qPCR. The mean total virus particles per liter of sampled air (TVP) recovered with the NGIAS was significantly less than that measured by all other samplers (p < 0.001). The TVP recovered with the SKC Biosampler (111.41) and Andersen N6 sampler (102.36) was substantially larger than that recovered with the NIOSH Biosampler (58.59), however the difference in TVP between these samplers was not statistically significant (SKC – NIOSH p-value = 0.187 ; Andersen – NIOSH p-value = 0.297). Our results demonstrated that liquid based bioaerosol samplers recovered more TVP than dry collection samplers. The high flow rate sampler, the Andersen N6, did not collect more TVP, but had a lower limit of detection than other samplers. Furthermore, the SKC Biosampler collected the most TVP. Therefore, future investigators should design a liquid based personal bioaerosol sampler to maximize the likelihood of influenza virus detection.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the phenomenon of highly publicized trial in China. There have been studies exploring the relationship between the media and the political system, especially the judicial system in China. Scholarship on this topic has shown that the Chinese media are playing an increasingly important role in sustaining the regime. Specifically, they are becoming more influential over the outcomes of court cases and have developed to one of the most important actors in China's legal system (Wang & Tan, 2008; Liebman, 2005, 2010; Stockmann &Gallagher, 2011). The media-court relationship provides insights into China's politics, and more importantly, reflects the logics and rationale behind the Communist Party-state's governance. This thesis aims to contribute to existing knowledge on the functioning of the Chinese judicial system using as a case study, the trial of Yao Jiaxin, a young man prosecuted for a particularly heinous murder. This case study explores the dynamic relationship between the media and the courts in China under the framework of the “governmentality” of the Chinese Communist Party. The findings showed that the relationship between the media and the courts is changing, and the public has become an important actor in this relationship. As such, both the media and the courts are now more responsive to public opinion. This new dynamic is attributed to China’s evolution to a governmentality of “soft authoritarianism,” which is enabled by the Internet, mainly online forums and social media platforms in China. However, Yao’s case also suggested some limitations of China’s governmentality. First, social actors including the media and the court are facing challenges in achieving a balance between being responsive to the public and maintaining their professional integrity. Secondly, “soft” authoritarianism is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Individual interests are expected to be sacrificed for the sake of collective interests under this governmentality.