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Hours Spent Caregiving, Activities Of Daily Living, Caregiver Gender, Role Overload, And Depression Symptoms: An Examination Among Family Dementia Caregivers
Get PDFBackground: While research has examined stressors and depression in family dementia caregivers, few studies have focused on the associations between time spent caregiving, Activities of Daily Living (ADL) dependency, role overload, and depressive symptoms. Present Study: The present study tested two mediation models: hours caregiving → role overload → depressive symptoms and ADL dependency → role overload → depressive symptoms. Methods: The study consisted of two samples, one using data from round 11 of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) and the National Study of Caregiving (NSOC) and the other collected data using Academic Prolific. In the NHATS/NSOC sample, participants (n = 283) were majority female (70.32%) and white (63.25%) dementia caregivers within the U.S. recruited to participate in a survey on aspects of caregiving for a Medicare beneficiary aged 65 or older. In the Prolific sample, participants (n = 150; 51.33% female, 68% white), were recruited to complete an online survey that contained many of the same questionnaires as the NSOC survey. Results: Results indicated a significant indirect effect suggesting that greater hours spent caregiving were associated with more depressive symptoms via higher role overload in the NHATS/NSOC sample. Additionally, there were significant indirect effects suggesting that greater ADL dependency was associated with more depressive symptoms via higher role overload in both samples. While gender did not significantly moderate the pathways in these models, women did report significantly more hours caregiving in the past month and significantly greater role overload compared to men. Conclusions: These findings suggest that depressive symptoms manifest in family dementia caregivers via role overload and warrants further investigation for clinical application.PsychologyMaster of Science (M.Sc.
Theology and Revolution?: Negotiating Heritage in Gerhard Brendler’s Biography of Martin Luther
No full textThe historiography on Martin Luther in the German Democratic Republic was a complex and fluid process of heritage building with direct influence on how the state positioned itself [TB1] in relation to the church. Martin Luther is a monumental figure in German history and has figured prominently in the construction of German national identity. When the GDR sought to build a socialist society after the Second World War, many existing aspects of Lutheran identity in the areas that now made up the GDR, had to be renegotiated due to their direct conflict with socialist principles. The East German state sidelined the Protestant Church for being an alternative site of power and ideology and for its perceived collaboration with the Nazi regime. Martin Luther lost standing under the GDR as he was the founder of German Protestant thought and a main proponent of collaboration with princely authorities. However, the relationship between the Lutheran church and the state in the GDR began to shift, and by the 1960s the church had established itself as a normalized part of socialist society. With this integration of church and society, Luther’s importance to the GDR began to become realized. In this emergent context, Gerhard Brendler penned his 1983 biography, Martin Luther: Theologie und Revolution. This book defined a new era of historiography in the GDR as Luther changed from a bourgeois villain to a hero of the people.HistoryBachelors of Arts (BA
Borderland Violence, An Intimate Resistance: Native Women Voice Their Survival
Get PDFThis thesis began as an exploration of the individual resistances of Indigenous American women, in response to the crisis of gender-based violence targeting Indian country. The purpose of this work is to investigate the United States’ border culture of sexual violence against Indigenous women, as well as the intimate resistances of these women voiced through the podcasting platform. Within this portfolio, I draw upon the theoretical frameworks of Gloria Anzaldua, Iris Marion Young, Saidiya Hartman, Melissa K. Nelson, Kim Tallbear to support the central thesis. With the first chapter, I expand Anzaldua’s borderland to Native America, to contend that the epidemic of sexual violence against Indigenous women is an intended consequence of the state’s masculinist logic, an exertion of colonial power. Through the second chapter, I construct the concept of resistant intimacy; that is, a resistance that is amassed by the creation and continuance of love and sexuality, despite the threat of gender-based brutality. Particularly, I analyze the podcasts of Indigenous women for scenes of resistant intimacy, as it is practiced and communicated to an online community of listeners. It is through this community, connected by digital means, empowered through love and pleasure, that a larger resistance is established, one that actively deconstructs the violence of the colonial state.American StudiesMaster of Arts (M.A.
The Future of Open Access Publishing in International Higher Education
No full textExcerpt from publication: "This past year has been a unique one for open-access publishing in international higher education. November 2023 was a particular tumultuous month with the mass resignation of the editor-in-chief and three quarters of the editors of the Journal of International Students due to an abrupt change in journal governance and transfer of the journal to a still-unknown third-party publisher (Fischer, 2023)..."Educatio
Enhancing Federated Learning with Deep Generative Model
No full textIn modern machine learning research, data privacy and scarcity are two pressing challenges for deploying data-driven models in domains with sensitive data, including healthcare, finance, and government. Under data privacy regulations, restrictions on data sharing make it almost impossible to aggregate sufficient data from each party to train a robust machine learning model collectively. While federated learning (FL) frameworks enable collaborative training of a shared model without direct data exchange to preserve data privacy, their performances generally degrade significantly when clients only have a limited amount of local data. To address these issues, we propose a Deep Generative Federated Learning Model (FedDeepGen) under the Federated Averaging framework. Our model involves the concurrent training of a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) and a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) classifier on local clients and parameter aggregation on a central server, enabling both image classification and image generation. We verify its efficacy in image classification by comparing it against two baselines across different numbers of clients using multiple benchmark datasets. Additionally, we demonstrate its capability to generate new images for effective data augmentation, resolving data scarcity issues in federated learning and improving the global model’s generalization ability.Computer ScienceBachelors of Science (BS
From Superman To Sana Amanat: Alienation, Assimilation, And American Superhero Comics, 1938 To Present
No full textThis dissertation combines cultural history of the superhero genre and critical analysis of contemporary comic books featuring Arab and Muslim superheroes created after 9/11 and the Arab Spring protests of late 2010 and early 2011. The first chapter critically engages existing scholarship about post-9/11 superheroes and introduces new analysis on the racialization of religious identity through visual tropes in their origin stories. Between 2011 and now, Arab and Muslim American creators introduced Lebanese and Muslim American Simon Baz, Pakistani and Muslim American Kamala Khan, and mixed-race Egyptian American Khalid Nassour as Arab and Muslim American superheroes (Green Lantern, Ms. Marvel, and Doctor Fate). The second, third, and fourth chapters focus on each of these post-Arab Spring superheroes, and each chapter introduces a new theoretical concept: critical color theory, identity pauses, and repatriation, respectively. Critical color theory combines color theory and critical race theory to argue that social discourse and technology produce race and effect and affect the racialization of minoritized people in visual media. Identity pauses are sequences in comics, television series, and films during which superheroes are civilians rather than costumed crimefighters, which highlight the particularities of their (secret) identities. Repatriation is the return of fictional material heritage to characters who share a fictionalized place of origin with those objects. The conclusion turns from the Arab Spring to the 2017 Muslim Ban and from comics to television and film adaptations, focusing on Marvel Studios’ Ms. Marvel (2022).American StudiesDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.
How Light Affects Flight: Understanding Where and When Offshore Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) Poses Challenges for Migratory Birds in the US
No full textMillions of birds migrate nocturnally over offshore environments every year, yet little is known about how maritime activities influence migratory bird populations. There is increasing concern about how maritime lighting might influence bird populations, especially given the extensive evidence that artificial light at night (ALAN) impacts bird populations. The effects on these bird populations have ecological and economic implications for communities across the United States. Working in collaboration with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, we identified areas in the Gulf of Mexico and the US East Coast where there are overlaps between sources of artificial light at night (from oil and gas platforms and from cruise ships) and avian migratory pathways (from tracked birds). To highlight hotspots where maritime routes and bird migration overlap, we produced a map that illustrates the greatest degrees of overlap of ALAN and bird migratory routes. One outcome of this research is a set of recommendations that provide information on how offshore industries can reduce ALAN and its associated ecological and economic impacts on migratory birds while still maintaining the necessary functions of lighting associated with human safety and maritime navigation
The promise of interspecies desegregation: Allying with capybaras against gated communities in Buenos Aires’ wetlands
No full textNordelta is an exclusive gated community in Buenos Aires built over the wetlands of the Paraná Delta that has encroached on more-than-human bodies and lands through racialized discourses and infrastructures. In this article, I analyze a controversy that arose in 2021 when crowds of capybaras started roaming freely in the community. The event triggered a robust social media response that, I argue, generated popular epistemic tools to enlist capybaras into categories of multispecies endangerment and dispossession. In addition, I delve into the emergence of the communitarian territory of Punta Querandí, which, at the borders of Nordelta, seeks to repair segregation and encroachment for humans and other-than-humans. Drawing on scholarship on animals, race, and the built environment, I employ an ethnographically informed analysis of social media, archival documents, and interviews to explore the two cases as responses to racial capitalism and real extractivism in contemporary Argentina, shedding light into what I term “the promise of interspecies desegregation.
Knox as an Edwardian Prophet: Continuity in Typology, Rhetoric, and Iconography between the Edwardian and Scottish Reformations, 1547-1572.
No full textThis thesis seeks to prove, via extensive engagement with the scholarly literature on Biblical hermeneutics, the Edwardian Reformation, the Scottish Reformation, as well as with the works of John Knox, that the prophetic hermeneutic of John Knox’s corpus, a hermeneutic that would not stay relegated to the written word, but rather influenced the course of his life and decisions in his leadership of the Scottish Reformation from 1560 on, can be reasonably grounded in the Old Testament typological narratives of the Edwardian period in the Church of England - a period that Knox was intimately familiar with as a preacher to Edward VI himself. Thus, John Knox is not merely a prophet after the style of the Old Testament men of God, but specifically an Edwardian prophet, whose own penchant for typology can be traced from the development of the Protestant genre at the beginning of the Reformation, through the Church of England under Edward VI, and into the Scottish Reformation of the 1560s.HistoryBachelors of Arts (BA
Student Perceptions Of On-Campus Employment: Opportunities For High-Impact Practice
No full textAs the public increasingly seeks evidence of the impact of the higher education experience on graduating students, high-impact practices (HIPs) provide colleges and universities with focused programs to direct appropriate use of resources and contribute to student persistence; however, many of these experiences remain inaccessible to various student populations. As such, universities must consider how to scale access to these practices for greater student participation. One such practice is student employment. The purpose of this study was to understand undergraduate, on-campus student employees’ perceptions of their employment experience, specifically the educational elements characteristic of HIPs therein, and the connection of on-campus employment to academic learning. This single-case study was conducted at the College of William & Mary (W&M), a mid-size, more selective public institution located in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Interviews were conducted with a diverse population of 24 on-campus student employees in both paraprofessional and non-paraprofessional roles across four university units. Analysis of data occurred through the frameworks of the educational elements associated with HIPs and the tenets of experiential learning. The employment experience at W&M was found to contain six of the eight HIP elements. Considerable influence on learning also occurred but not always because of employment experience. By bolstering the employment experience at W&M with intentional design and specific, individual feedback, educators can strengthen students’ ability to reflect and process learning, thereby aligning resources and priorities contributing to student success.EducationDoctor of Education (Ed.D.