17179 research outputs found
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Weird Boundaries: Boundary Disruption Thematics in the Works of Algernon Blackwood and Clive Barker
No full textNo abstract prepared.Englis
From Stigma to Advocacy: Examining Legal and Policy Changes in Response to Evolving Societal Attitudes Towards Mental Disability
No full textThe attitudes and understanding of intellectual disability have evolved greatly through the 20th and 21st centuries. Such a paradigm shift heavily influenced the legal regime and standards that aided in protecting this vulnerable population. This literature review is a comprehensive examination of the historical evolution of rights, regulations, and laws for intellectually disabled individuals in the United States. The review further emphasizes the societal and analytical approaches to their well-being, safety, and the protection of human rights. The information provided within this review is structured in a topical format broken into four chapters. We will focus first on an overview of why having laws and regulations is necessary and significant to the intellectually disabled community’s overall state of being and protection. The literature review will then move into a synopsis of the historical context and early legislation. Then the review will create a premise for early societal attitudes towards mental incapacity and other ethical implications in the United States before the 21st century. As well as it will explore the shift from early perspectives to contemporary viewpoints, and modernized laws/regulations will be examined with special attention to the events that led to this change. To close, the review will end with a discussion about key findings, personal reflection, and the potential for change will follow.Psycholog
Host-Pathogen Dynamics of Batrachochytrium Dendrobatidis in Mainland Ecuador
Get PDFAmphibian populations are experiencing alarming declines globally worldwide, only comparable to mass extinction events. These declines are driven in part by the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes the emerging infectious disease chytridiomycosis. Ecuador, a megadiverse country with high amphibian diversity and endemism, has documented widespread Bd presence across high elevation landscapes—yet the ecological and environmental drivers of Bd persistence across the three mainland regions remain poorly understood. This dissertation investigates Bd infection dynamics through a multifaceted approach: (1) evaluating Bd prevalence in phytotelmata across vertical forest strata and assessing the drivers of Bd across landscapes; (2) evaluating seasonal infection patterns in fragmented urban forests on the Coast of Ecuador and the implications of the size of urban forests on infection prevalence; (3) predicting the occurrence of Bd in poorly explored landscapes using bioclimatic and topographic variables to; and (4) documenting amphibian diversity and abundance in Andean canopy habitats. These results highlight the critical role of precipitation over temperature in shaping Bd suitability, the importance of microhabitats such as bromeliads in pathogen persistence across landscapes, and the overlooked risk of Bd in lowland coastal and amazonian forests. My findings underscore the need for widespread Bd surveillance and the implementation of conservation strategies, particularly in ecologically vulnerable and understudied habitats.Biolog
Looking for the Helpers: An Intentional Community for Adults with Disabilities from the Volunteer's Perspective
Get PDFGrace Garrison-Tate stayed on site at Camphill Kimberton to collect interviews and gain deeper insight into how the community functions. The project primarily provides insights into how volunteers talk about and experience the Camphill Movement’s philosophy and ideals. These findings will be shared with the public in the form of a podcast. The publishing of this project seeks to fill the gap in research that addresses the perspectives and experiences of volunteers in residential care communities. The format of a podcast aims to make the research and storytelling accessible and relatable to a larger audience. The hope is that this podcast will contribute not only to the needed research in this area, but also to a forum where volunteers and caretakers can share information.Sociolog
One Little Weed: A Concept Album
Get PDFOne Little Weed is a concept album centering a relationship’s start and end, using folk/singer-songwriter music intertwined with nature metaphors, alongside acoustic and electric sounds. One Little Weed is long form storytelling, with seven songs that peer into feelings experienced at different stages of a relationship. The album songwriting inspirations are the storytelling aspects of Taylor Swift, Lizzy Mcalpine, and Sara Bareilles, with production styles of Phoebe Bridgers, Madison Cunningham, and Beabadoobee.
One Little Weed is a concept album centering a relationship’s start and end, using folk/singer-songwriter music intertwined with nature metaphors, alongside acoustic and electric sounds. One Little Weed is long form storytelling, with seven songs that peer into feelings experienced at different stages of a relationship. The album songwriting inspirations are the storytelling aspects of Taylor Swift, Lizzy Mcalpine, and Sara Bareilles, with production styles of Phoebe Bridgers, Madison Cunningham, and Beabadoobee.Musi
Development of Machine Learning Models for Surface Distress Detection to Evaluate Pavement Sections in Coastal Regions
No full textWith the recent federal legislation approval of the funding of the United States’s infrastructure, investment into transportation research has prompted the implementation of new technologies to advance the data collection and evaluation methods for transportation asset management. As departments of transportations (DOTs) upgrade their equipment to utilize these technologies, a higher standard for the quality of highway infrastructure across the states has raised concerns for an improvement in traffic safety and efficient maintenance and rehabilitation of the roadways. This is essential for sections in locations where surface distresses are developed at a higher rate, such as coastal regions due to rapid development and extreme weather phenomena being more frequent and intensive. State DOTs have adopted the use of automated pavement data collection and condition evaluation. However, the inadequate accuracy of the existing automated technology has led to erroneous distress measurements and inconsistent manual intervention approaches for pavement engineers to assess the surface damage of the pavements after data collection to establish more reliable analyses of the performances. With the recent advancements in artificial intelligence and deep learning, progress towards more accurate and efficient detection algorithms has provided possibilities of better data quality to monitor the surface condition of the pavements. Due to these new technologies, 2D/3D pavement images can be analyzed with an improved accuracy for more efficient detection of pavement distresses such as cracks caused by various factors such as environment, weather, age, and traffic loading. In this study, 2D/3D images were collected from pavements in the coastal regions in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The proximity of these states to the Gulf of Mexico and the presence of rapid population growth and economic development in this region, unique distress image data were acquired to train and evaluate models such as convolution neural networks (CNN) and a visual transformer after manual annotations were made. This research makes two contributions: the establishment of a novel multi-modal pavement distress dataset utilizing the combination of high-resolution 2D/3D imagery across inland and coastal regions and a systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art detection models. The images consisted of high quality 4096x2048 pixel resolution scans that were 47 feet in the longitudinal direction and 14 feet in the transverse direction on both asphalt and concrete surfaces. Deep learning models such as the You Only Look Once (YOLO) line of detection models and Real-Time Detection Transformer (RT-DETR) were developed by training, validation, and testing on the pavement image data collected in this study to more efficiently evaluate the pavement surface condition of the coastal regions. Rigorous labelling and revisions within the dataset were conducted to further optimize the detection accuracy of models as selection continued. Comparisons between the inland and coastal data in asphalt pavements were conducted to determine model capabilities for expansion as the sections near the Gulf coast had lacked sufficient instances of a few classes. Detection capabilities of the selected model faced many issues that would be reflected in real-world conditions, such as noise, distress severity, distress density, and abnormal distress appearances. These factors would heavily affect the accuracy for each distress, with joints on asphalt surfaces reaching a peak mAP50 of 0.828 while asphalt patches would reach a peak mAP50 of 0.982. Despite retaining lower scores on some classes, this thesis displays the effectiveness of deep learning detection models on pavement datasets with distresses containing a large variety of distresses and common objects.Engineerin
Moving Toward a Multifaceted and Equitable School Safety Framework for K-12 Schools
No full textResearch Questions:
1. How do federal, state, and district policies on school safety shape the structure and priorities of a multifaceted school safety framework (SSF)?
2. What needs and issues do stakeholders communicate that contribute to shaping a multifaceted SSF?
3. How does school safety research currently define and prioritize school safety?Texas School Safety Cente
Black Southern Culture: Through the Lens of Five Generations
No full textThis project is a personal reflection on my heritage as a young Black woman in contemporary culture, viewed through the lens of my family across four generations. Given the current state of the country with removal of Critical Race Theory in classes, I believe it is more important than ever to share these stories, ensuring that the history of those who came before us is neither erased nor altered to fit a specific narrative. This project aims to reach not only those who share similar family dynamics or belong to the Black community but also those who may not fully understand what Black southern culture entails. Many African Americans have deep connections to their ancestry, culture, and history in the South. Even today, the South continues to influence Black identity by merging the struggles of the past with modern expressions of resilience, creativity, and community. To gain a deeper understanding of Black Southern culture, I am conducting an autoethnography to reflect on my personal experiences as a Black Southerner and correlate them with the broader Black experience through qualitative research. My goal is to create a timeline that illustrates how my family has evolved and adapted over time through the form of a magazine. I plan to interview specific family members from different generations, each of whom has experienced being a Black Southerner in unique ways. The outcome of the interviews is to create a story that goes from start to finish. Starting with the beginning of how my family came to be and leading to what has shaped my family into what it is now. Ultimately, leading up to the current generation, me. I have six different concepts that I hope to explore in the magazine regarding spirituality, womanhood, motherhood, heritage, traditions and self-reflection.Family and Consumer Science
Cariño Chronicles: Testimonios of Latina K-12 Central Office Charter Leaders in Texas
No full textThis study provided insight into Latina central office charter administrator experiences and how and when Latina leaders have experienced and utilized cariño, or what I theorize here as genuine care, in their leadership trajectories. This study is couched in a Chicana feminist epistemology and theoretical framework with past educational research in mind. Testimonio was intentionally chosen as a relevant methodology for the study to be able to share findings from Latina leaders by utilizing their own words, carefully selected from two pláticas with each of the six participants in the study focused on the following research questions: What personal and professional educational experiences influenced participating Latinas to take on central office leadership roles? What experiences, both challenges and triumphs, are participating Latinas in central office roles facing? What strategies (if any) of cariño do they utilize to sustain themselves in their workplaces? How do participating Latinas navigate their leadership trajectory to stay true to themselves and serve their communities and to be exemplars of cariño?
Highlighting the testimonios of the Latinas who have ascended to central office levels of leadership is an important and underutilized form of knowledge creation, as this is a population that has not been the subject of much educational research. The use of culturally relevant methodologies based on my shared culture and history with my participants as Latina charter school leaders is something that has been rarely done in educational research on the charter sector. While this study is not intended to make generalizations about the experience of all Latina charter leaders, this study does provide significant data regarding trends and patterns in these six participant experiences that have led to their successes and challenges and has added to the knowledge of Latina leaders' unique experiences and what sustained these individuals in their leadership trajectories.Counseling, Leadership, Adult Education, and School Psycholog
From Canvas to Market: A Guide to the Business of Art
No full textTurning creativity into a sustainable business is a challenge many artists face, as much of the available information is fragmented and lacks a comprehensive approach. Existing resources often cover only parts of the process, making it difficult for artists to build a financially stable and well-managed business. This project explores the foundational aspects of starting and managing an art business, providing a comprehensive resource for artists transitioning from hobbyists to entrepreneurs. Through firsthand experience, industry research, and an analysis of insights from established artists and business professionals, this study examines key topics such as business laws, tax requirements, marketing strategies, pricing structures, shipping logistics, and website development. The goal is to document the learning process and compile insights into an accessible guide that demystifies the business side of art. By testing various strategies in real-time, this project identifies best practices and common pitfalls, offering practical solutions for artists looking to establish their businesses effectively. The findings will be shared through a digital format, equipping aspiring artists with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the art industry with confidence.Accountin