Search Content

Matching Items (13)

The Psychosocial Effects on Minority Nursing Staff Due to COVID-19 Related Racial Discrimination

Description

The goal of the descriptive, cross-sectional study was to collect and analyze data among minority nursing staff including 1) the relationships between quality of life, social support, discrimination, and coping during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) the differences between quality of life, social support, discrimination, and coping among different racial/ethnic groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is based on a secondary data analysis of the T1 data from a longitudinal study mentioned above and was performed by myself, while mentored by my committee, for completion of my thesis.

ContributorsBush, Tiffany (Author) / Chia-Chen Chen, Angela (Thesis director) / Li, Wei (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation (Contributor)

Created2022-05

The Spatial, Occupational and Social Mobility of Skilled U.S. Migrants in China: A Capital-mobility and Intersectional Analysis

Description

Increasing globalization and the knowledge-based economy creates a higher-than-ever demand for skilled migrant labor. While Global North countries are the traditional destinations for skilled migrants, Global South countries have recently joined the race for such talent. The conventional migration scholarship does not adequately explain this increasing Global-North-to-South skilled migration. This dissertation fills the gap by studying mobility and its underlying factors for skilled U.S. migrants in the Pearl River Delta region of China. Using data from semi-structured interviews and sketch mapping, this dissertation develops a capital-mobility framework and employs intersectionality theory to examine the impacts of skilled U.S. migrants’ capital and intentionality on global and local spatial mobility as well as occupational and social mobility. The first empirical paper highlights skilled U.S. migrants’ cross-border im/mobility and introduces the capital-mobility framework that argues migrants’ im/mobility outcomes are shaped by their aspirations to move, and the accumulation, transferability and convertibility of various forms of capital. While the migrants’ capital was smoothly transferred to China and facilitated their voluntary mobility, the continued accumulation of capital in China could not be fully transferred to the U.S. upon their return, thus causing involuntary immobility. Although they mostly had little intention of staying in China permanently, the COVID-19 accelerated their return. The second empirical chapter shows that one’s accumulation of capital could generate both enabling and limiting effects on their everyday mobility through influencing the capability to move and the demand for local travel. Whether migrants had intention to move around in the local city also affects their everyday im/mobility. The third empirical paper discusses skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational and social mobility and how they are influenced by the intersections of race, gender and citizenship. I coined the term “glass box” to explain the limited professional growth and segregated occupations of skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational mobility in China. Although their social mobility improved after moving to China, it declined after rising racial discrimination and xenophobia during the pandemic. This dissertation sheds light on the aspirations and capabilities for mobility among Global-North-to-South skilled migrants and provides policy recommendations for attracting and retaining skilled international migrants.

ContributorsTan, Yining (Author) / Li, Wei (Thesis advisor) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Tong, Daoqin (Committee member) / Nelson, Trisalyn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2022

Exploring Genetic Associations With ceRNA Regulation in the Human Genome

Description

Competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) are RNA molecules that sequester shared microRNAs (miRNAs) thereby affecting the expression of other targets of the miRNAs. Whether genetic variants in ceRNA can affect its biological function and disease development is still an open question. Here we identified a large number of genetic variants that are associated with ceRNA's function using Geuvaids RNA-seq data for 462 individuals from the 1000 Genomes Project. We call these loci competing endogenous RNA expression quantitative trait loci or ‘cerQTL’, and found that a large number of them were unexplored in conventional eQTL mapping. We identified many cerQTLs that have undergone recent positive selection in different human populations, and showed that single nucleotide polymorphisms in gene 3΄UTRs at the miRNA seed binding regions can simultaneously regulate gene expression changes in both cis and trans by the ceRNA mechanism. We also discovered that cerQTLs are significantly enriched in traits/diseases associated variants reported from genome-wide association studies in the miRNA binding sites, suggesting that disease susceptibilities could be attributed to ceRNA regulation. Further in vitro functional experiments demonstrated that a cerQTL rs11540855 can regulate ceRNA function. These results provide a comprehensive catalog of functional non-coding regulatory variants that may be responsible for ceRNA crosstalk at the post-transcriptional level.

ContributorsLi, Mulin Jun (Author) / Zhang, Jian (Author) / Liang, Qian (Author) / Xuan, Chenghao (Author) / Wu, Jiexing (Author) / Jiang, Peng (Author) / Li, Wei (Author) / Zhu, Yun (Author) / Wang, Panwen (Author) / Fernandez, Daniel (Author) / Shen, Yujun (Author) / Chen, Yiwen (Author) / Kocher, Jean-Pierre A. (Author) / Yu, Ying (Author) / Sham, Pak Chung (Author) / Wang, Junwen (Author) / Liu, Jun S. (Author) / Liu, X. Shirley (Author) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor)

Created2017-05-02