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COPING EXPERIENCES OF LOW-INCOME INDIVIDUALS WITH A HISTORY OF OPIOID USE IN SANTA CRUZ COUNTY: A QUALITATIVE STUDY
Get PDFThe opioid epidemic has increased exponentially in severity across the United States in the last decade. This research project was conducted to understand the needs of a vulnerable population (opioid users) at the local level. The research sought to answer the following question: How do low-income individuals in Santa Cruz County cope with opioid use? The purpose is to identify the most common coping strategies used by this population, so that social workers and others in helping professions in Santa Cruz County will have a fuller picture of what this vulnerable demographic is facing. The data for this research was collected via 13 anonymous interviews. Data was analyzed via thematic analysis, which produced the following themes: coping strategies, negative effects of opioid use, experiences of services used, and gaps in services. Implications from this research for social work practice include revealing a lack of affordable addiction services, a lack of clarity in services available, and a need for advocacy and local political action to secure funding and program expansion in Santa Cruz County
DOES INCOME INEQUALITY AFFECT THE LONG-TERM WELL-BEING OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND LATINO POPULATIONS IN CALIFORNIA?
Get PDFThis research project investigated the complex issue of income inequality and its effects on the long-term well-being of African American and Latino populations in California. The study adhered to a post-positivist paradigm, allowing for an in-depth exploration of the experiences of the participants. Qualitative data were gathered through individual interviews with twelve participants, representing diverse perspectives within these communities. To analyze the qualitative data, a bottom-up approach was utilized, leading in the identification of seven open codes and four axial codes. The open codes included: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Family; Meaningful Activities; Emotional Well-Being; Life Satisfaction; Socioeconomic Impact on Education; and Income Inequality. The axial codes identified were: Systemic Discrimination; Desire for an Improved Lifestyle; Importance of Family; and Stressors. This structured analysis provided insight into the ways that income inequality manifests in daily life and its interplay with various social determinants. The findings of this study stress the significance in addressing current social issues. The researcher analyzed a range of related concerns, including the effects of income disparities, limited access to further education, and overall well-being. By exploring these interconnected factors, the study reveals how income inequality not only affects economic status but also diminishes opportunities for education, undermines health outcomes, and diminishes the overall quality of life for individuals in these populations. Ultimately, this research highlights the urgent need to address the systemic factors that contribute to social and economic divides, advocating for policies and interventions aimed at fostering equity and improving the overall wellbeing for African American and Latino communities in California
ENHANCING ZERO-SHOT SEGMENTATION WITH DOMAIN-ADAPTIVE PROMPT LEARNING
No full textZero-Shot Semantic Segmentation (ZSSeg) addresses the challenge of segmenting images into semantic classes that were not seen during training. Traditional ZSSeg methods rely on fixed visual-language mappings, often suffering from limited generalization to unseen categories. Recent advances like CLIP have provided a breakthrough by aligning image and text embeddings in a shared space. However, such models still struggle to incorporate domain-specific knowledge and often require extensive learnable prompt engineering. This project aims to overcome these limitations by introducing domain-adaptive prompt learning into a CLIP-based ZSSeg pipeline.
Our approach enhances CLIP-based segmentation with learnable domain-agnostic and domain-specific prompts. The domain-agnostic prompt captures general knowledge across visual domains, while the domain-specific prompt encodes contextual cues from specific training datasets. These prompts are trained using a contrastive learning objective in a classification task before being integrated into a segmentation model. The proposed method significantly reduces manual engineering and enables better adaptation across domain shifts, such as synthetic-to-real transitions or changes in lighting, texture, or style.
The project is implemented by extending the DAPrompt framework, originally designed for classification, to a semantic segmentation setting using MaskFormer as the base architecture. A dual-stage training process is followed: (1) prompt learning via classification on COCO Stuff 164k, and (2) integration of learned prompts into a MaskFormer segmentation model. Experimental results show improved performance over baseline models using learnable prompts. Notably, domain-specific prompts lead to more accurate predictions for unseen classes and better segmentation confidence across domain boundaries.
Extensive evaluations on COCO Stuff demonstrate that domain-adaptive prompts offer improved generalization capabilities compared to standard CLIP prompts. Ablation studies highlight the contribution of prompt length, threshold sensitivity, and prompt embedding initialization strategies. The best configuration—using both domain-agnostic and domain-specific prompts—achieves competitive mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU) scores, validating the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
This project contributes a new perspective on integrating domain knowledge into vision-language models through learned prompt structures. The pipeline remains lightweight, modular, and easily extendable to other segmentation architectures and datasets. Moreover, by reducing the dependence on labeled data and learnable prompt tuning, the method paves the way for more robust deployment of semantic segmentation in real-world applications such as autonomous driving, medical imaging, and remote sensing.
In conclusion, this work demonstrates that domain-adaptive prompt learning is a viable and impactful strategy to enhance zero-shot segmentation. It effectively bridges the gap between general-purpose vision-language models and the nuanced requirements of domain-specific tasks. Future work will explore fine-tuning frozen image encoders, introducing prompt selection strategies based on content, and extending the framework to multimodal segmentation and temporal video data
The Black Curse: The Curse of Ham and the Mark of Cain as Justification for Black Subjugation
Get PDFThe concept of race, particularly the construction of blackness and anti-blackness, emerged during the Medieval and Early Modern periods around the Mediterranean and its surrounding cultures. It is a concept of religious origin, in that it first depended on the worldview of the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam— and their interpretations of the narratives surrounding the Biblical figures Cain and Ham. This established the “mark” of black skin as a curse placed by the Abrahamic God that made up the foundational justifications for racial hierarchies and the subjugation of black Africans. The convenient narrative framed blackness as inherently inferior and divinely ordained for servitude. The latter provided not only a moral justification but, at times, a moral imperative for the practice of racialized slavery, specifically in the Americas. These theological constructs evolved well into the nineteenth century, blending religious, cultural, and later scientific justifications to reinforce racial hierarchies. Religious justification, while powerful and pervasive, acted primarily as moral cover rather than root cause, ultimately proving to be unnecessary to continue in maintaining the status quo of black subjugation
Revolutionary Sisters: The Rise of Chicana Feminism
Get PDFThis essay examines the rise of Chicana feminism during the Chicano Rights Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It covers the reasons why women felt the need to create an organization outside of the movement that focused on specific women’s issues and the importance of building sisterhood with Chicanas. As great as it was for women to have a space where they could organize and discuss the advancement of Chicanas, there were other women who did not feel that feminism should even be a topic for discussion. The essay also touches on queer liberation, the importance of art, newspapers, photographs, and media to organize Chicana women, forced sterilization of Mexican women, and the future of Chicana feminism
A GRAIN OF SAND ON THE BEACH : THE IMPACT OF SENSE OF BELONGING ON BLACK COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS
Get PDFThis qualitative case study sought to examine the impact of the sense of belonging on Black community college students in the Umoja Program. Students who participated in this study were enrolled at a community college in Southern California. The students were interviewed using an online format. The data retrieved through interviews were transcribed, analyzed, and grouped into themes that illustrate the lived experiences of the student participants. This study explores the differences in a sense of belonging between Black men and Black women in the community college system.
There were three central themes that emerged from the analysis of the data. Those themes were (a) academic support, (b) culturally affirming space and community, and (c) leadership and increased involvement at Mountain Top Community College or MTCC. These themes revealed the specific ways in which the Umoja Program impacted the sense of belonging as students persisted toward graduation. The recommendations that appear at the end of this study seek to offer community colleges a model of supporting Black students. The recommendations center on the ability of community colleges to increase the sense of belonging for Black students as a significant indicator of increasing successful graduation and transfer. Researching models of practice that increase student success among Black students could help other community colleges with similar Black student populations enhance retention efforts toward completion
Comparing VR and TV in Nigeria and the U.S.: Impacts on Empathy, Engagement, and Enjoyment
No full textThis study (N = 170), involving participants from Nigeria and the U.S., investigated how different technologies (TV and VR) affect users\u27 empathy (α = .93), engagement (α = .93), enjoyment (α = .93), preferences, and likelihood of technology use. Participants watched an animated documentary titled “Is Anna OK?” at two different time points, utilizing VR (Oculus Rift S) and TV, following which they completed measuring empathy, engagement, enjoyment, device preference, and usage likelihood. Analysis via one-way ANOVA and chi-square tests revealed that VR users reported significantly higher empathy and enjoyment compared to TV viewers, particularly on second viewing. Combining both countries, VR users showed greater enjoyment than TV users on both days, with similar effects seen in U.S. participants. However, no significant difference was observed between TV and VR groups for Nigerian participants on Day 1. Nigerian participants preferred VR to TV, while U.S. participants preferred TV for watching sports. Nigerian participants were also more likely to select a VR headset over TV for watching sports events, while U.S. participants tended to select TV over VR. The findings demonstrate the applicability of the media richness theory and affordances theory in the media technology context
NENE LEAKES AS A MODERN MEDEA
No full textThis paper examines how The Real Housewives of Atlanta functions as a modern form of Greek tragedy through its portrayal of Nene Leakes, whose rise and fall within the Bravo franchise mirrors the tragic arc of Euripides’ Medea. Both Medea and Leakes represent women who defy the systems that once empowered them Medea through her rebellion against patriarchal and familial structures, and Leakes through her public confrontation with the television industry that made her a star. By analyzing these two figures through rhetorical, feminist, and media studies frameworks, this paper argues that reality television operates as a contemporary stage of classical tragedy. In this case Nene Leakes’ life is transforming from the personal struggles of women into public spectacle, emotional catharsis, and cultural commentary. There is similar structures between both reality television and Greek tragedy. Both of these dramas rely on tension, rebellion, all while evoking empathy and judgement from the audience
Adaptive Compulsion
No full textAdaptive
Adjective
Adap.tive ( ə-ˈdap-tiv)
of, relating to, or being a heritable trait that serves a specific function and improves an organism\u27s fitness or survival
Compulsion
Noun
Com.pul.sion (kəm-ˈpəl-shən)
a repetitive behavior or mental act that a person feels driven to perform to alleviate the anxiety and distress caused by an unwanted thought or urge, known as an obsession.
For years we have lived in unprecedented times. From the worldwide quarantine in 2020 resulting from the pandemic, to our current US political crisis. The constant barrage of events is overwhelming and demoralizing.
The work in this gallery is a display of my coping mechanism. I am fascinated with the microscopic and its metaphor for anxiety. Both are imperceivable, a catalyst striking seemingly at random with the power to disrupt normalcy. In response, I compulsively create my own imaginary viruses as an attempt to regain control over the invisible. It is not only a meditative practice, but an act of resilience. The work is brightly colored, a conscious decision to choose joy. It is a whimsical resistance against the viruses and policies that try to cage me