Around 9:30 PM on November 26, 2008, Mumbai witnessed multiple well-coordinated and near-simultaneous terror attacks that continued for the next three to four days. These attacks were carried out by ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, divided into multiple teams to maximize the element of surprise and effectiveness. By the time Indian security forces brought the carnage to an end, around 166 people were dead and more than 300 injured, making it one of the deadliest attacks ever on Indian soil. Given the magnitude, sophistication, and effectiveness of the attack, this was one of India's biggest intelligence failures. This paper is a critical analysis of the 11/26/08 Mumbai terror attacks and an examination of how Indian and international intelligence apparatuses failed to predict the attack.

Because of its location, Japan has an array of unique neighbors, though not all of them hold a warm attitude toward the country. China is one such example - the recent actions of the Chinese government pertaining to the Senkaku Islands, its growing military might, and the country's hegemonic aspirations are all reasons why the Japanese Ministry of Defense classifies China as the biggest current threat to Japan. Given the facts that Japan is one of the United States' most strategic allies and China is the biggest threat to the United States' superpower status, it becomes more important than ever to better understand the history and the future of relations between the two countries. This piece explores various causes of Japan-China tensions and the strategic challenges that China poses to Japan.

For this project, I have engaged in research on one of the biggest impediments to diversifying medicine and eliminating health disparities: the pipeline problem. Black students in the medical professional pipeline face barriers and a lack of opportunities that prohibit their advancement to medical school. In my project, I focus my analysis on Black students’ efforts to successfully matriculate into medical school and how undergraduate institutions play a pivotal role in the process of becoming a physician. To engage in this project, I draw upon several disciplines, because the “pre-med” experience is unique and multifaceted, spanning the disciplines of public health, medicine, sociology, and education. After I did a thorough and synthetic literature review, I conducted qualitative research through interviews with pre-med students to identify resources and constraints that impact attrition, and the extent to which it is racialized. I focus on the inconsistencies between what is said needs to be done to increase the number of Black students matriculating into medical school and whether there is something being done. I find that there are four main areas of barriers: inequalities in college advising, inequalities in access to resources, and pre-med social support inequalities. Based on my findings, I conclude the paper with a few research-informed policy recommendations to address the gaps in pipelines to becoming a physician for Black students in medicine.

In this post 9/11 era, how have countries developed their counterterrorism policies following major terrorist attacks? How have these counterterrorism policies affected the security and privacy of the citizenry? Through analyzing these counter-terrorism policies in the context of Policy Convergence Theory and Foucault’s concept of Panopticism, I seek to answer and understand these questions and more in the context of the present day. Policy Convergence Theory serves as a theory for helping understand why counterterrorism policies are similar and different across countries. Panopticism refers to the idea of humans acting accordingly to the feeling of being watched, an idea that has become much more apparent as more information about surveillance of citizens has been revealed. In this paper, I will be examining the United States, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia as case studies to answer my questions about explanations for counter-terrorism policies following major terrorist attacks and the lasting effects of these policies on privacy and security. The completion of this project marks a significant contribution to the study of counterterrorism and human rights around the world.

Aphasia is a language disorder that may be caused by stroke or traumatic brain injury. Individuals with aphasia (IWAs) may experience difficulties with word finding, reading, auditory comprehension, writing, and/or other speech and language related challenges. Many IWAs receive speech-language therapy to address these issues. One speech-language intervention for this population is Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST), which focuses on action verbs and related subject-direct object (agent-patient) pairs. Music therapy (MT) has also been used to treat aphasia, exploiting elements common to speech and music such as pitch, rhythm, and prosody to address non-musical clinical goals related to verbal expression. MeVNeST (Music Enriched Verb Network Strengthening Treatment) is an experimental music therapy treatment currently being investigated by doctoral candidate Jing-Wen Zhang. MeVNeST follows the same steps as traditional VNEST but replaces spoken prompts and responses with improvised singing in the context of live, improvised guitar accompaniment. The purpose of both VNEST and MeVNEST is to improve clients’ ability to retrieve common action verbs along with related nouns. The present study focuses on the relationship between accented beats in the guitar accompaniment of MeVNeST sessions and the duration of pauses before and within client responses to clinician prompts. The goal is to determine whether certain strum patterns are associated with more efficient word retrieval. Two strum conditions were identified: a normative beat (unsyncopated) and a syncopated beat. Fourteen audio samples from Zhang’s study were considered: seven from each strum condition, drawn from two study participants. Music and speech data from two of these samples were then coded in Praat and analyzed in Excel. Results showed no statistically significant difference between strum conditions for pauses before responses. There was a statistically significant pause duration within responses, with shorter responses being associated with the syncopated strum condition. Future studies should continue to examine how rhythmic musical accompaniment might be used to support and enhance purposeful, fluent speech and to minimize verbal hesitations.

North and South Korea are both distinctive in their heterodox approaches to economic development, governed by institutions unique to Korean history and influenced by broader international, ideological forces. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea adopted a variation of the Soviet model of controlled and centralized industrial development while espousing but failing to achieve self sufficiency through the national Juche ideology. A command approach, focused on heavy manufacturing, was retained over the more pragmatic market reforms seen in China, leading the DPRK to follow a similar arc to the USSR, seeing explosive early growth followed by stagnation and decline. The development approach of the Republic of Korea included further development of Korean liberalism and the adoption of 19th century European industrial policies, embracing an adapted approach that mirrored the processes of Japanese development. The tiered promotion of agricultural independence followed by a focus on export surplus enabled rapid development and was a foundational pillar of achieving long term growth. From these particular cases we can determine that development of agricultural self-sufficiency followed by the implementation of export oriented industrialization policy is the most effective means to achieve long term growth rather than the horizontal development of heavy manufacturing at the expense of consumer goods. Liberal democracy emerged in the South as an outcome of the economic prosperity that the country was experiencing, but the North failed to liberalize, even at its most prosperous, with the authoritarian regime only becoming more entrenched as the economy declined. In spite of this history, it is not a foregone conclusion that market reforms might be successfully implemented in the future, should the Kim regime relinquish some legal and economic control in favor of liberalization.

A young girl, age seven, wakes up one more morning to find her limbs have grown dramatically overnight. Her arm, once a mere ten inches, now extends fifteen feet from her body, while her hands have shrunk to a size similar to that of a blueberry. Her leg, once a comfortable few feet from her body, has narrowed to just centimeters in width. Amid her confusion, she recalls a situation similar to her own in a story she once read about a girl who follows a rabbit down a hole: Lewis Caroll’s popular children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. British psychiatrist Dr. John Todd noticed this same resemblance during the 1950s when six of his adolescent patients came to him complaining of migraines and epileptic episodes, simultaneously reporting symptoms parallel to Alice’s experiences.

Cases of the yips have popped up from time to time in all different sports from MLB pitchers suddenly not being able to find the strike zone to professional golfers missing very short putts. A theory proposed by researchers to explain the yips is a motor dysfunction known as focal dystonia [2]. Dystonia describes a wide variety of movement disorders which are defined by intermittent or constant muscle contractions that create irregular and repeated movements [3]. It is worth noting that the yips affect not only gymnasts and golfers, but also a wide variety of skilled professionals, as the yips target fine motor skills and muscle memory [4]. The name of the phenomenon and the affected body regions vary depending on the area of expertise of the individual affected by this dystonia. Amongst golfers it is known as the yips, for professional gymnasts it is the twisties, and professional musicians call it musician’s dystonia [5]. What happens when the mind gets in the way of the body? Severe performance anxiety may be a catalyst for the yips. Psychological stress manifesting in muscular defects makes finding a treatment plan difficult and case specific. If the yips is not purely psychological, but is a motor control disorder, then how does a healthcare professional go about treating the symptoms?

What makes schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders different from one another? Conceptually, both are thought to arise from early changes in brain development, and thus belong to the broader category of neurodevelopmental conditions [1]. Today, a particular neurodevelopmental or psychiatric diagnosis is defined by its specific symptomatology – the sum and constellation of an individual’s troubling behaviors and experiences.It was only in the past few decades that scientists have been able to study the biological origin of such neurodevelopmental disorders by examining their genetic contributions. This has been a rapidly advancing area of research and medicine. In certain cases, genetic diagnoses can now help understand and treat individuals with developmental conditions based on their specific genetic profile, in a more personalized and sophisticated fashion than symptom-based diagnoses alone could allow. Since an accurate and informative diagnosis is the cornerstone of good clinical decision making, it is important to acknowledge how advances in genetics are now enriching the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.