Purpose: This study investigates one possible reason for individual differences in vocabulary learning from written context. A Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) model is used to motivate the prediction of a causal relationship between semantic knowledge for words in a text and the quality of their hypotheses about the semantics of novel words, an effect mediated by reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to test this prediction behaviorally, using a within subject repeated measures design to control for other variables affecting semantic word learning. Methods: Participants in 6th grades (n=23) were given training to increase semantic knowledge of words from one of two texts, counterbalanced across participants. After training, participants read untreated and treated texts, which contained six nonword forms. Measures were taken of reading comprehension (RC) and the quality of the readers' hypotheses about the semantics of the novel words (HSNW). Text difficulty and semantic informativeness of the texts about nonwords were controlled. Results: All participants had increases in semantic knowledge of taught words after intervention. For the group as a whole, RC scores were significantly higher in the treated than untreated condition, but HSNW scores were not significantly higher in the treated than untreated condition. Reading comprehension ability was a significant moderator of the effect of treatment on HSNW. A subgroup of participants with lower scores on a standardized reading comprehension measure (n=6) had significantly higher HSNW and RC scores in the treated than untreated condition. Participants with higher standardized reading comprehension scores (n=17) showed no effect of treatment on either RC or HSNW. Difference scores for RC and difference scores for HSNW were strongly related, indicating that within subjects, there is a relationship between RC and HSNW. Conclusions: The results indicate that for a subgroup of readers with weaker reading comprehension, intervention to enhance lexical semantic richness had a substantial and significant effect on both their reading comprehension and on the quality of hypotheses that they generated about the meanings of novel words. Neither effect was found for a subgroup of readers with stronger reading comprehension. Clinical and educational implications are discussed.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning the Defense of Marriage Act and the plethora of institutionalized legal changes supporting LGBTQ rights, one might argue that American society is well on its way towards equality for LGBTQ individuals, thus negating the need for research in this area. Unfortunately, history has shown that despite profound changes in the codification of legal standards, which eliminates de jure prejudice, inequality in the informal and interactional experiences of individuals, or de facto prejudice, often remains. My long-term research goal is to study, at the level of interaction, the basic processes and mechanisms that produce social inequality experienced by LGBTQ individuals. I have adapted theories from the Expectation States research program (Wagner and Berger 2002), specifically status characteristics theory (Berger, Fisek, Norman, and Zelditch 1977) and status cue theory (Fisek, Berger and Norman 2005) to motivate my hypotheses concerning sexual orientation and group encounters. Then, I designed an experiment using the computerized standardized experimental setting (Foshi, Lai and Sigerson 1994) to test my hypotheses. The central research question is: will homosexuality act as a negatively valued status characteristic leading to gay and lesbian individuals having lower performance expectations, less opportunities to perform in a group, and ultimately lower status as compared to straight group members. My rationale is that a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that work to produce this form of inequality in groups will ultimately provide important opportunities for interventions to these processes of discrimination.

There is a rich literature demonstrating that adults who stutter (AWS) demonstrate atypical functional brain activity during speech production. These differences can be characterized by increased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus and premotor regions and decreased activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, premotor area, and bilaterally in the superior temporal gyrus. The process of speech production requires motor movements first be planned and then executed. However, few studies have examined activity related to speech-motor planning independently from speech-motor execution. Additionally, due to methodological limitations, few investigations have examined functional brain activity in children who stutter (CWS). We hypothesized that AWS and CWS would demonstrate atypical brain activity related to both speech-motor planning and execution. Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), we measured the change in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration (HbO) during speech-motor planning (repetition of nonwords with three repeated or different syllables) and speech-motor execution (covert/overt naming). Results indicated that both AWS and CWS demonstrated cortical activity that was atypical during speech-motor planning processes in the right inferior frontal gyrus and atypical speech-motor execution processes in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Deactivations in the left inferior frontal gyrus may reflect inefficient feedforward mechanisms for speech production. Inefficient feedforward mechanisms will likely result in more variable movements, for which larger feedback correction signals will be necessary. Overactivations in the right inferior frontal gyrus may reflect this increased correction. Additionally, AWS demonstrated atypical speech-motor planning activity in the right middle frontal gyrus, potentially related to the production of prosody. These results are presented within a theoretical framework of two competing theories of stuttering.

At some point in our lives, we have all experienced physical and emotional pain. We all also try to find meaning in such suffering, first within ourselves, but also through sharing these experiences with those who are close to us. In literature, authors who write autobiographies blur the boundaries between the public and private spheres when they invite readers into their personal world. Georges May and Philippe Lejeune, leading critics of the genre, have concluded that autobiographers not only try to make sense of their own lives, but through their writing, they also seek forgiveness and human compassion. My doctoral thesis explores how an important contemporary literary genre, the French autobiographical comic book (also known as the graphic novel), approaches the topic of health and disease and links it closely with questions of identity formation. Within the theoretical framework proposed by Laurent Berlant, who founded a now thriving branch of contemporary cultural studies known as “Intimacy Studies,” the central aim of my thesis is to demonstrate how these French graphic novels have become an important literary and cultural site for examining the social and artistic significance of a form of writing in which private health concerns are made public. In speaking of intimacy, emotions such as love and other kinds of interpersonal bonds typically come to mind. However, my study of a corpus of ten French-language autobiographical comic books indicates that health concerns and representations of a variety of physical, emotional and mental afflictions are topics of focus in this genre. Authors share their life stories and discuss their relationships with others, but they also share very personal details about their physical and mental states. This sort of intimacy is, I argue, a product of the medium itself. Comics are a hybrid genre in which written texts and images coexist. Comic artists who take their own lives as the subject of their art draw pictures of themselves over and over again. In the autobiographical comics I study, when illness and other afflictions strike the body, this suffering is rendered graphically on the page. These artists are also preoccupied by their inner lives. Both their writing and visual art allow them to portray the inner turmoil they endure in their private life. Comic book scholars, whose studies have proliferated over the past several decades, have largely overlooked how important the portrayal of health is in the development of the genre. This is somewhat surprising given the extent to which the underground graphic novelists who emerged in the United States in the 1960s found ways to defy the Comic Code Authority by challenging cultural norms. These artists openly rejected the rules and conventions of mainstream comics, which typically focused on the exploits of super heroes or talking animals. Instead, they found artistic inspiration in their everyday lives and here is where politics and the art of expressing intimacy intersect. Underground comics were certainly infused with a spirit of rebellion, but the artists who participated in this movement sought first to reinvent the genre itself. Little by little, they delved into their inner lives and began to address some of the most taboo subjects of the day, including topics relating to the most personal aspects of their bodily existence. The daring these early underground comic writers showed in examining the unspoken aspects of personal life and relations went a long way toward establishing the genre as a recognized art form, opening the way for a subsequent generation of comic writers to tackle other serious topics such as war and genocide. Knowledge of the contributions that American underground artists had made to the comic book genre eventually reached Europe in the 1990s. At the time, French artists were also growing tired of their own superhero story lines and disenchanted with the mass-production model that defined the Franco-Belgian comics industry. In response to these conditions, a small group of comic book artists formed a company called L’Association (The Association) which became the first independent comic book publishing house of its kind. They paved the way for many other such enterprises and their formula for success is now being replicated in the mainstream publishing houses these independent-minded artists fled several decades ago. Part of that formula is the inspiration these artists drew from American cartoonists who began in the 1960s to share intimate aspects of their personal lives with their readership. What I have discovered thus far is the frequency with which French autobiographical comics take up and place the subject of ill health and life-threatening disease at the center of the stories they tell. Broaching the topic of ill health is not unique to the comics genre, but is rather a feature of modern autobiographical writing in general. As medical knowledge and scientific understanding have advanced in the modern era, the field of literature has worked to reclaim narratives from the medical world. But unlike other forms of literary expression, comic books offer more freedom of expression and possess a greater capacity to reflect the complexity of human identity and existence. This is especially the case with representations of human suffering. Images can configure what writing fails to grasp, allowing comic artists to express feelings and convey anguish that words can hardly express. The autobiographies I examine were produced by authors who have lived through, survived, or were in some way personally touched by a grave health crisis. Their use of the comic book genre allows them to make sense of the often life-shattering events they, or those who live in close proximity to them, have lived. I am particularly interested in the way in which these authors recount the crisis moment in their lives, how they understand the ways it affected them, and how they were able, or not, to recover from the experience. I show that our state of health, both physical or mental, has a profound effect on our identity, and how we perceive and tell stories about this dimension of our lives is crucial to forming a sense of self, particularly in a contemporary digitalized world that is now flooded with information and images once considered too private for public consumption. I demonstrate how the nine graphic autobiographies I have chosen to study are intimate expressions of vulnerable selfhood, showing how these public portraits of human weakness are a particularly postmodern way of reconstituting one’s identity in the social world. Modern and contemporary theories of human subjectivity teach us that the self is always fragmented. When we are sick, however, the task of finding a sense of stability in ourselves and in the world is even more daunting. Illness proves to be such a dominant theme in the comic book tradition, I argue, because it is a reminder of our own mortality. In the works I am studying, it is the experience of pain and the specter of death that often prompts the authors’ reflection on the self and on life. All of the works I am examining share a common feature. They exhibit a constant tension between the anxieties of revealing a deep personal vulnerability and the desire to make their suffering meaningful, which is a crucial aspect of these authors’ quest to recover and to reconstitute a sense of self in the aftermath of a debilitating illness. Informed by the insights of intimacy studies, psychoanalysis, comics studies and visual studies, I will show how the nine works I examine participate in the process of meaning-making and how the comics genre allows them to do so in particularly inventive and contemporary ways.

This thesis considers source localization and tracking when both the signal propagation model and the source motion dynamics are unknown. Algorithms are developed for different scenarios. The algorithms are discussed when a source is stationary or mobile, under the condition when sensors are fixed or mobile. These algorithms exploit the strictly decreasing properties of the model in terms of distance, but do not depend on the form and the values of the models. Therefore, these algorithms could be applied when the signal propagation models and the source motion are unknown. The only assumption made is that the signal propagation strength decreases in distance. For a given performance specification, the optimal number and placement of the sensors is also discussed. Convergence and other properties of the algorithms are established under various noise assumptions.

Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive opportunistic pathogen responsible for more deaths every year than HIV/AIDS. Its formidable repertoire of virulence factors, ubiquitous nature, and ability to acquire antibiotic resistance quickly allow S. aureus to colonize and persist in nearly any body site if given the opportunity. S. aureus is the leading cause of many common and severe skin diseases, i.e. atopic dermatitis and surgical site infections, which can result in significant morbidity and mortality due to lack of available treatments and chronic non-healing nature of each infection. The human body is capable of producing many antimicrobial factors, such as defensins in the epidermis, in conjunction with providing a seamless barrier to many environmental threats, i.e. the skin, yet when given the opportunity, S. aureus can overtake these innate defenses, colonize, and cause disease. Despite S. aureus being a prominent organism in skin infections, little has been done to identify critical factors of S. aureus to cause skin infections. This document demonstrates the capacity of specific S. aureus virulence factors, superantigens and cytotoxins, to alter re-epithelialization and wound healing, as indicated by altered keratinocyte migration and proliferation. In an attempt to harness natural occurring host defenses, we have also identified and generated novel antimicrobial peptides capable of ablating toxin production independent of bacterial growth inhibition. Evidence presented should convince the reader that S. aureus exotoxin production is critical in perpetuating chronic wounds through local keratinocyte interaction. This suggests targeting production of these toxins to prevent cell toxicity and inflammatory responses, could allow the host to repair damaged tissue effectively.

The purpose of this study was to identify essential features of Epistemic Orientation toward Teaching Science (EOTS) and to explore the relationships between EOTS and instructional practices. This study proposes a new concept, EOTS: defined as a teacher's set of interrelated beliefs that are developed and used when teaching science, and are shaped by the Nature of Knowing in General, the Nature of Knowing in Science, the Nature of Learning, and the Nature of Teaching. The essential elements of EOTS were identified through a comprehensive literature review and refined through a multiple-case study. The participants of the study were three exemplary fifth grade teachers who had been implementing an Argument-based Inquiry (ABI) approach, called Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), for more than three years and were highly devoted to encouraging their students to engage in science practices addressed in Next Generation Science Standard. Data were collected from multiple sources including semi-structured interviews, Video-Stimulated Recall interviews, classroom observations, researchers' field notes, and classroom artifacts. Data was systematically coded, and each belief and practice analyzed in-depth. The results identified eleven interconnected beliefs held in common by all three teachers. Among the eleven elements, How to Learn was the core belief that was most connected to the others and also aligned well with the Source of Knowing, How to Learn, Evidence-based Argument, and How to Teach; this idea established a strong structural foundation for the EOTS. In addition, some elements were explicitly presented when the teachers made instructional decisions, while others were only presented implicitly. In addition, prominent patterns of instructional practice were evident across the three cases. The teachers did not plan how to teach in advance, rather they made instructional decisions based on their epistemic orientations. In particular, they emphasized a conceptual understanding of the big ideas in science by making connections between students' ideas and the big ideas in science. Constant negotiation (construction and critique) was another pattern observed throughout the lessons. In creating effective learning conditions for conceptual understanding and constant negotiation, teachers used language practices and social, group-work as epistemic tools to help students construct and critique knowledge. Moreover, physical resources, such as physical materials and time, were used in a way that encouraged students to engage in science practice. More importantly, the way in which classroom practices and dialogue were managed relied heavily on the essential elements of ETOS. Specifically, How to Learn and Control of Learning influenced the student-centeredness of their instructional practices. This study provides several implications for teacher education and research. Teacher-education programs should focus energy on shaping teacher ideas about learning, and address the epistemic foundations of science practices. Further investigation into the essential elements of EOTS, and the relationship between these elements and instructional practices must be pursued with diverse subjects, contexts, and methodologies, to develop a fuller understanding of how these elements work as a whole.

This study examined the differences and patterns for three categories between an argument-based inquiry group and a traditional group over the period of the SWH (Science Writing Heuristic) project: (1) teacher talk time, (2) structure of questions (question types), and (3) student responses. The participating teachers were chosen randomly by a convenient sampling method because the data were collected previously from the SWH project. Each group had thirty teachers. A total of sixty teachers participated in the study. Student responses were part of the study to evaluate the effect of open-ended question types but students were not direct participants in the study. Each teacher was asked to send a recorded video clip of their class at the end of each semester (spring and fall) over two years. Each teacher sent four video clips for the project. A total of two hundred forty video clips was analyzed to gather the information regarding the three categories. The first category was teacher talk time. It was measured in seconds only when teachers interacted with students with the topic. The second category was the structure of questions (question types). It consisted of two question types (open-ended and close-ended). Under the open-ended question category, there were three sub-question types: (1) asking for explanation (AE), (2) asking for self-evaluation of reasoning (AF), and (3) asking for self-evaluation of others' reasoning (AFO). Under the close-ended question category, there were two sub-question types: (1) asking for factual information (AI) and (2) asking for confirmation (AC). Each sub- question type was counted numerically. The last category was student responses. Student responses consisted of higher-order thinking and lower-order thinking. Under the higher-order thinking category, there were three sub-types: (1) explanation responses (E), (2) self-evaluation of reasoning responses (SE), and (3) self-evaluation of others' reasoning responses (SEO). Under the lower-order thinking category, there was one sub-type: simple responses (S). Each sub type was counted numerically. Based on the descriptive results (the length of teacher talk time in seconds, the number of question types, and the number of student responses), repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to find any differences and patterns for teacher talk time, structure of questions and student responses between the treatment and control groups over the period of the project and across time (four different time points). The results showed that there were clear differences for teacher talk time, the structure of questions, and student responses between the treatment and control groups over the period of the project and across time. The treatment group teachers talked less and used more open-ended questions than the control group teachers. The treatment group students displayed more higher-order thinking responses than the control group students.

B lymphopoiesis requires a network of transcription factors that orchestrate changes in gene expression amidst immunoglobulin gene rearrangement and periods of cell proliferation. Although proteins required for the function of this network have been identified, the precise mechanisms that coordinate these processes as hematopoietic progenitors differentiate into lineage-committed B cells remain unclear. Justy mice display a profound arrest of B cell development at the time of lineage commitment due to a point mutation that decreases expression of the protein Gon4-like. Previous studies suggested that Gon4-like functions to coordinate gene expression and cell division to determine cell fate, but the role of Gon4-like in B lymphopoiesis is largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that Gon4-like is required to regulate gene expression and cell cycle progression in B cell progenitors. Expression of genes required for B cell development is intact in Justy B cell progenitors, yet these cells fail to repress genes that promote the development of alternative lineages. In addition, Justy B cell progenitors are unable to upregulate genes that instruct cell cycle progression. Consistent with this, B cell progenitors from Justy mice show signs of impaired proliferation and undergo apoptosis despite containing elevated levels of activated STAT5, a transcription factor that promotes cell proliferation and survival. Genetic ablation of p53 or retroviral-mediated overexpression of pro-survival factors failed to rescue these defects. In contrast, overexpression of proteins that promote the G1/S transition of the cell cycle, including D-type cyclins, E2F2 and cyclin E, rescued pro-B cell development from Justy progenitors, an effect that was not observed upon overexpression of proteins that function during the S and G2M phases of the cell cycle. Further, overexpression of cyclin D3 led to partial restoration of gene repression in Justy pro-B cells. Notably, Gon4-like interacted with STAT5 when overexpressed in transformed cells, suggesting Gon4-like and STAT5 function together to activate expression of STAT5 target genes. Collectively, our data indicate that Gon4-like is required to coordinate gene repression and cell cycle progression during B lymphopoiesis.

This dissertation examines narratives of early modern women travelers and the spectacles these women produced as a strategy to negotiate gender paradigms that aimed to silence and immobilize women. In María de Zayas's short novel “La esclava de su amante” (1647), the protagonist's journey to North Africa gives her the tools she needs to publically address her rape. Historia de la Monja Alférez (c. 1626) is the autobiography of Catalina de Erauso, whose constant movement on both sides of the Atlantic allows her to construct a spectacle of hybridity that both entertains her audiences and authorizes her many transgressions. Finally, Viaje de cinco religiosas capuchinas de Madrid a Lima (1722) highlights the masses of people who clamor to catch a glimpse of the itinerant nuns, creating a spectacle that reaffirms the women's importance in the social hierarchy of the Spanish Kingdom. In these three baroque texts, I highlight the construction of the female traveler's body and the suffering it endures while crossing great distances. I examine the ways in which each text reimagines or reorganizes the traveler's social relationships and her place in early modern Hispanic society. Through an analysis of spectacle based on the mediation of these relationships, I interrogate the image of women travelers and the power that image has to push back against a gendered social hierarchy.