Dorothy Andrews is an actuary-a professional who calculates and manages risk. Like all actuaries, Andrews uses knowledge of (1) mathematics: statistics; and economics to make projections about risks, such as whether a company will lose money on a product or transaction. Andrews has distinguished (2) herself in the field of actuarial science as a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics, a method that analyzes large amounts of data to determine the variables that contribute to the likelihood of particular outcomes.

Actuaries are dedicated to (3) helping insurance companies improve their insurance policies. This is what drew Andrews to enter the profession more than twenty-five years ago, after she earned an MA in mathematical statistics from Boston University. After doing stints at an insurance company and then a bank, (4) the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) offered her the opportunity to employ predictive analytics, and she eagerly accepted it. "I have always enjoyed the challenge of applying different statistical theories to new problems where I didn't have any past experience," Andrews reflected in a 2017 interview. Her team's challenge was vital: to (5) examine how predictive analytics is used by USDA.

At USDA, Andrews was part of a team that developed the Public Health Information System(PHIS). USDA describes PHIS as "a dynamic, comprehensive data analytic system" that (6) compile and organize data collected by USDA inspectors who (7) monitor feed-production facilities. PHIS provides USDA staff with the information needed to analyze trends in inspection data. This information helps them enhance the timeliness and efficiency of inspections. PHIS also enables USDA personnel to access and share inspection reports in real-time. As a result, they can act quickly when risk factors such as unusual lab results or code violations are detected. Andrews considers her work at USDA a highlight of her career.

After the 2010 launch of PHIS, Andrews (8) left USDA. When she left, she returned to working in the insurance industry, where she uses predictive analytics to manage financial risk to the benefit of her company's clients. She also (9) educates actuaries about applications of predictive analytics. In 2017, for instance, she delivered a speech on the topic at the annual meeting of the International Association of Black Actuaries. That same year, Andrews earned a newly created credential: Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics. It's not possible to know whether the use of predictive analytics (10) will become even more widespread in actuarial science, (11) especially since Andrews no longer works for USDA.

[l] As traditionally defined, the discipline of geography explores the physical properties of Earth's surface and the human societies spread across it. [2] In his 2010 address to the Association of American Geographers (AAG), Thomas. J. Baerwald of the National Science Foundation lauded geography's embrace of "diversity, adaptability, multiple perspectives, and an ever-growing range of approaches." [3] Geographers routinely collaborate with scholars and professionals in other fields— (12) some in ecology, sociologists, epidemiologist, and political scientists, to name a [4] White interdisciplinary can raise concerns about geography's survival as a distinct discipline, it's the key to the field's continued success. (13)

Recent AAG Presidential Achievement Award winners (14) have made significant contributions to their field. The 2015 winner Diana Liverman works with legislators to enhance sustainability in the United States and Mexico; 2016 winner Audrey Kobayashi helps community activists increase housing options in Vancouver; and 2017 winner Roger Downs (15) has a PhD from the University of Bristol. This diversity is essential to (16) geography. Demonstrating its relevance to other fields and to societies worldwide.

It's perhaps inevitable, (17) subsequent to its fundamental interdisciplinary, that geography is experiencing something of an identity crisis, as reflected in name changes at college and university geography departments. In a 2017 article, Oklahoma State University's Army E. Frazier and Thomas A. Wikle examined the renaming phenomenon, identifying eighty-nine US and Canadian (18) institutions whose geography departments were renamed between 1990 and 2014. The most common change was to include "environment" in the department name. Some departments kept "geography" but added "geology" to their names as a result of department mergers. Many (19) decommissioned the word "geography" altogether, adopting names like "earth and environment."

Fortunately, though, Frazier and Wikle also found that (20) their research showed geography was taught in these renamed departments. (21)  However, the responses of the geographers surveyed were "overwhelmingly positive with respect to the impacts of name changes on their department and, more broadly, on the discipline of geography

Baerwald concluded his address by extolling geographers' interdisciplinary pursuits and (22) securing those assembled that "we can and will continue to ... engage in the same kinds of unbounded inquiry with others that first attracted us to geography." Thanks in large part to those engagements, geography is well positioned to thrive in the future.

Seth Grahame-Smith's book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a genre mash up that polarized literary critics when it was released in 2009. As the title suggests, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies reimagines Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice by placing Austen's characters in a world overrun by zombies. While some saw Grahame-Smith's book as a way to interest younger readers in Austen's novels, others (23) appreciated the extremely engaging narrative that attracted a new generation of readers. "Is nothing sacred?" asked one critic. In the world of literary mash-ups, the answer is likely no. Nevertheless, these genre-blending books may ultimately lead readers to gain a deeper understanding of (24) their literary predecessors and the classic original texts on which they are based.

Mash-up novels can illuminate what a source text might only imply. In his 1877 novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy depicts his characters' machine-like devotion to social convention or to the actual machines of the industrial age the 2010 mash-up Android Karenina makes Tolstoy's figurative world of automations literal by adding a cyborg revolt plot to the original narrative.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, similarly, reveals the underlying tensions in Austen's novel. Austen's heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, initially rejects her (25) families expectations that she marry, fearing her loss of autonomy. Elizabeth's freedom is further threatened by laws that do not allow women to inherit property. In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, these restrictive customs (26) are personified as Zombie hordes. The mash-up also represents Elizabeth's intellectual strength and refusal to submit to social customs by making (27) it a fearless zombie hunter.

Though some consider mash-up novels unworthy of serious analysis, (28) any published authors find mash-ups enjoyable to write. In his research, PhD candidate John S. Caughey (29) deliberates that by reading a mash-up and the sources on which it is based, students can learn how an author follows genre conventions-such as the choice to set a narrative in a rural, isolated location-when writing. Professor Ryan Cordell also uses mash-ups in the classroom to a creative end. His students craft their own mash-ups, rewriting published fiction in the style of other authors. This prompts them to uncover subtle (30) similarities and differences in author's styles.

The sustained popularity of literary mash-ups with today's readers (31) suggest that this genre is more than a passing fad. (32) Helping readers appreciate literature in new ways and inspiring creativity, mash-ups should be seen as useful tools. (33) Given the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, all writers should consider penning a mash-up. 

Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese technique in which small needles are applied to specific "acupoints" on the body, has found a role in many Western countries as an alternative means of treating a variety of health conditions, including back pain and headaches. The effectiveness of acupuncture in reducing pain has long been attributed to the stimulation of these acupoints, (34) the locations of them were identified thousands of years ago in China. How does acupuncture relieve pain? Are the acupoints the main factor?

(35) Having established the acupoint's locations, researchers at the University of Michigan evaluated the effects of acupuncture on patients with chronic pain symptoms. (36) For example, chronic pain is often associated with signaling problems in a patient's endorphin neurotransmitters, which normally block pain by binding to specific protein receptors found on the surface of neurons in the brain. Over a four-week period, patients were given nine sessions of either a traditional acupuncture (37) treatment, with needles inserted at known acupoints or a "sham" acupuncture treatment, in which needles were placed in incorrect locations. The researchers compared how the two treatments affected protein (38) receptors' success in binding to endorphins in different brain regions.

After the month-long experiment, positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans (39) were used. The PET scans revealed that the binding potential of the receptors to endorphins had improved in (40) both those patients treated with traditional acupuncture and those treated with sham acupuncture. Binding potential is a measure of both the density of receptors on neurons and the receptors' ability to attract substances to bind to them.

The prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and caudate regions of traditional acupuncture patients all showed a (41) 5 percent or great decrease in receptor binding potential compared to that measured four weeks earlier. In contrast, many brain regions of participants receiving the sham treatment showed small decreases in receptor binding potential.

The study helps explain the pain-blocking mechanism of traditional acupuncture. However, the study (42) produced and yielded another additional finding that ran counter to the researchers' assumptions. All the patients in the study-whether treated with traditional acupuncture or sham acupuncture-showed significant reductions in pain ratings. If the researchers are correct that traditional acupuncture provides pain relief through receptor-endorphin binding, then there must be a separate mechanism (43) by which sham acupuncture relieves pain. Researchers' next task is to identify (44) that; only then can acupuncture's effectiveness be fully explained.