THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN AUTHOR: MELVILLE AND THE IDEA OF A NATIONAL LITERATURE

In this study I examine the ways in which the idea of a national literature affected the development of both Herman Melville\u27s career and of his reputation through 1930. Melville, as a member of the New York literary group Young America, participated in an effort to define and create a national literature. His apprenticeship was served under the influence of Young America, and the group\u27s ideas about the act of writing, the defining qualities of a national work, and the relationship of writer and reader influenced the shape of his career. Although Melville\u27s exploration into the implications of Young America\u27s theories pushed him into profound religious and social questions that were, according to the group, better left unprobed, he could not escape the contradictions inherent in Young America\u27s theories--contradictions that made professional authorship and the development of a national literature mutually exclusive enterprises. The first chapter of the dissertation examines Melville\u27s relationship with Young America and the arguments of both Melville\u27s group and the more conservative Whig reviewers over the necessity of a national literature, the defining characteristics of that literature, and the role of professional authorship in America. The next six chapters trace the development of Melville\u27s career in light of his relationship with Young America. In the appendix, I examine the dramatic revaluation of Melville\u27s place in American literature during the 1920s. Just as Melville\u27s career becomes representative of the difficulties that many American writers encountered in trying to resolve the paradoxes inherent in the profession of authorship during the 1840s and 1850s, his Revival is representative of the broader revaluation of the American literary canon that occurred during the 1920s. Melville\u27s career and the history of his reputation help illuminate the central issues in America\u27s peculiarly self-conscious attempt to create and define a truly national literature.

Will COVID-19 Worsen California’s Truck Driver Shortage?

The trucking industry serves as the backbone of the nation’s economy. In 2018, approximately 3.5 million truck drivers were delivering over 70% of all freight tonnage in the United States, generating close to $800 billion in gross revenue annually.1 While 3.5 million truck drivers represents a significant number of jobs, it is not enough to satisfy demand. The trucking industry suffers from a chronic shortage of drivers. Nearly 70,000 additional heavy-duty tractor-trailer drivers in the United States were needed at the end of 2018, according to the American Trucking Associations. And COVID-19 has brought new challenges that may amplify or dampen the driver shortage and in turn impact supply chains. For example, what if a small percentage of long-haul truck drivers became ill? Would it cripple the industry? Would it significantly delay the delivery of essential medical supplies and equipment? New research from UC Irvine explored the challenges imposed by COVID-19 on truck drivers by conducting a literature review, looking at past crises, and interviewing academic and industry experts

Project Nurture: An Educational Model for Substance Use Disorder Treatment During & After Pregnancy: Saving lives, saving money, saving families, and training future doctors

BACKGROUND: • 25% of women presenting for prenatal care are using substances. • Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) in pregnancy are associated with preterm birth, intrauterine growth restriction, placental abruption, increased risk of C-section. • Infants exposed to in utero illicit substances have higher likelihood of being small for gestational age, experiencing a neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome that requires prolonged NICU hospitalization, and are at higher risk of developmental delay. • Societal costs of SUDs in pregnancy include worsening mental illness, increased utilization of the foster care system, early death secondary to overdose, and associated financial burdens. • The nature of SUDs, and how they are perceived by society, has made it difficult for pregnant women to receive appropriate care. • Pregnant women suffering from addiction often feel they cannot trust the medical system and fear the potential loss of their infants. • There is considerable variation in the way that pregnant women with chemical dependency are treated, and most models have not been adequately studied. • Project Nurture is a novel treatment model combining prenatal care, primary care, and addiction treatment with a multidisciplinary team • Housed within Providence Milwaukie Family Medicine Residency, Project Nurture has also provided doctors in training with valuable experience caring for women and babies affected by SUDs, including: • Training in Medication Assisted Therapy • Education and experience on managing high risk pregnancy care for patients with SUDs • Caring for newborns with Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome, both in and out of the NICU • Participating in an innovative primary care model • Pediatric primary care for infants with utero drug exposures • Managing buprenorphine induction during pregnancy • Continuity delivery experiences • Developing knowledge of community resources available to patients with SUDs OBJECTIVES: • Assess resident interest, experience, and goals related to addiction care for pregnant women and families • Examine common primary care outcomes for women and families involved in the Project Nurture program METHODS: 1. Pregnancy-related outcomes, social measures, and primary care outcomes were tracked for 3 years for all participating Project Nurture patients and their infants. 2. Current and former residents of Providence Milwaukie Family Medicine were surveyed on their training experience and translation to independent primary care practice. 3. Data was compiled and analyzed for review and exploration of outcomes and trends. RESULTS: • 84% of surveyed residents indicated an interest in addiction medicine prior to entering the program. • The majority of current residents indicate that they will feel comfortable managing infants with Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome in their future practice. • The majority of current residents indicate that they will feel comfortable addressing addiction with pregnant patients in their future practice. • 87% of Project Nurture patients obtained long-acting contraception (Nexplanon, intrauterine device, tubal ligation). • 80% of infants born to Project Nurture were completely up to date on their recommended vaccinations. • 77% of Project Nurture patients had successfully obtained long-term custody of their infants. • 88% of Project Nurture patients were up to date on well woman care such as cervical cancer screening. CONCLUSIONS: • Incoming residents value addiction medicine training. • Residents recognize importance of managing addiction in their future practice. • Project Nurture and other MAT models of care provide valuable training experiences. • Residents plan to care for patients and families suffering from addiction. • Resident training experiences have provided a foundation for providing addiction care in future practice.https://digitalcommons.psjhealth.org/milwaukie_family/1003/thumbnail.jp

Indonesian automatic short answer grading system

Short answer question is one of the methods used to evaluate student cognitive abilities, including memorizing, designing, and freely expressing answers based on their thoughts. Unfortunately, grading short answers is more complicated than grading multiple choices answers. For that problem, several studies have tried to build an artificial intelligence system called automatic short answer grading (ASAG). We tried to improve the accuracy of the ASAG system at scoring student answers in Indonesian by enhancing the earlier state-of-the-art models and methods. They were the bidirectional encoder representations from transformer (BERT) with fine-tuning approach and ridge regression models utilizing advanced feature extraction. We conducted this study by doing stages of literature review, data set preparation, model development, implementation, and comparison. Using two different ASAG data sets, the best result of this study was an achievement of 0.9508 in pearson’s correlation and 0.4138 in root-mean-square error (RMSE) by the BERT-based model with the fine-tuning approach. This result outperformed the results of the previous studies using the same evaluation metrics. Thus, it proved our ASAG system using the BERT model with fine-tuning approach can improve the accuracy of grading short answers

Exploring Optimizations in Anthophila Taxonomic Research Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Although taxonomists have access to a massive amount of information, accessing this data is a major hassle for researchers and can be a barrier to entry for aspiring taxonomists. We created a chatbot for bee research that stores some of this information (provided by our advisors) and uses it to respond to user queries. Our approach was to implement a multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline, which matches user queries with relevant context in our bee data, returning answers based on related text chunks, along with images. This method yielded great results, with our advisors evaluating the chatbot highly compared to other prominent Large Language Models (LLMs). We are hosting the model as a website locally, and plan publish it in coordination with our advisors after more rigorous evaluation of its performance. This poster was presented at the UCSB Data Science Initiative Capstone Project Showcase in 202

The Grizzly, December 6, 2018

Snapchat Story Leads to School Enforcement of Discriminatory Acts Policy • What\u27s in Store for Martin Luther King, Jr. Week • Ursinus Celebrated the Fifth Annual #Giving2UCday on Campus • Student Employee Profiles: Facilities • The Curtain Club and how Theatre Evolved at Ursinus • Opinions: It\u27s Time to Retire the War on Christmas ; Let Students Spend Dining Dollars Off-Campus • Athlete Spotlight: Junior Quarterback Tom Garlick • Eric Williams Jr. Knocks Down 1,000th Career Point for UC Men\u27s Basketballhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1610/thumbnail.jp

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Coastal Wave Powered Reverse Osmosis System

Part of the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC) is the optional Build and Test Challenge where teams are encouraged to build a portion of their proposed solution. After the conducted testing the laboratory results are compared to the simulated and calculated models. For the MECC the University of New Hampshire (UNH) team decided to use a wave energy converter to produce pressurized water. The pressurized water would be filtered through a reverse osmosis membrane to make it potable. Our system uses the power of the ocean waves to move a float up and down in heave motion. This motion drives a piston in a piston chamber. The piston and piston chamber are two separate buoys that work together to create the pressurized water. The relative motion between the piston float and the piston chamber float creates pressurized water for the reverse osmosis membrane. Our team decided to reproduce our system at a 1/8 scale and test it in the UNH wave tank in the Jere A. Chase Ocean Engineering Lab. The UNH wave tank can produce waves at specific periods and wave heights which allows testing of the device at scaled down wave heights and periods using Froude scaling

Mixed Valence {Ni²⁺Ni¹⁺} Clusters as Models of Acetyl Coenzyme ASynthase Intermediates

Acetyl coenzyme A synthase (ACS) catalyzes the formation and deconstruction of the key biological metabolite, acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA). The active site of ACS features a {NiNi} cluster bridged to a [Fe4S4]n+ cubane known as the A-cluster. The mechanism by which the A-cluster functions is debated, with few model complexes able to replicate the oxidation states, coordination features, or reactivity proposed in the catalytic cycle. In this work, we isolate the first bimetallic models of two hypothesized intermediates on the paramagnetic pathway of the ACS function. The heteroligated {Ni2+Ni1+} cluster, [K(12-crown-4)2][1], effectively replicates the coordination number and oxidation state of the proposed “Ared” state of the A-cluster. Addition of carbon monoxide to [1]− allows for isolation of a dinuclear {Ni2+Ni1+(CO)} complex, [K(12-crown-2)n][2] (n = 1–2), which bears similarity to the “ANiFeC” enzyme intermediate. Structural and electronic properties of each cluster are elucidated by X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, cyclic voltammetry, and UV/vis and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopies, which are supplemented by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Calculations indicate that the pseudo-T-shaped geometry of the three-coordinate nickel in [1]– is more stable than the Y-conformation by 22 kcal mol–1, and that binding of CO to Ni1+ is barrierless and exergonic by 6 kcal mol–1. UV/vis absorption spectroscopy on [2]− in conjunction with time-dependent DFT calculations indicates that the square-planar nickel site is involved in electron transfer to the CO π*-orbital. Further, we demonstrate that [2]− promotes thioester synthesis in a reaction analogous to the production of acetyl coenzyme A by ACS