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A Writer in Writing
Get PDFAs a writer and individual, I speak between many roles, presenting myself as “I” but also “her”. Inevitably, there is a gap between “who I am” and “who I am made out to be” that I am not always in control of. Similarly, there is a disparity in intention versus interpretation in writing. Since we don’t exist in a vacuum, I must account for these gaps, acknowledging my individuality while adapting to changing circumstances and needs. As an individual with several disadvantages and particularities, however, my sense of self is unstable and uncertain, reflecting the instability and uncertainty in my life. Unable to neither defend myself nor depend on someone, I take on the persona of an ‘outsider’, construing my character based on “who I am not” and “who I cannot be”. I recognize my alienation and its negative effects on me, working backward to understand myself through writing. Accordingly, I converge three narrative lines—the concept of identity, the concept of story, and the concept of sensemaking—labeling the three sections of my project following these concepts. I provide important yet traumatic accounts of my life, identifying the root of my alienation and finding similarities in how I rationalize my life and my writing. Additionally, I explore three major theories—identity, the life story, and psychological and construal-level—to support the process of acquiring and grounding individuality and ownership of voice. I finalize my project with a writing method based on the final theory to facilitate and argue for individuality and voice in writing, claiming that writing and the self are inseparable because the writer composes through experience, as witnessed throughout my project
Smart Public Transportation And Mobility Hub Design In El Paso
Get PDFThis thesis explores the potential of a Smart Public Transportation concept and mobility hub design as tools to mitigate the growing trend of transportation issues, such as traffic congestion, reliance on privately owned vehicles, or unattractive public transportation. Consequently, residentsâ?? lives are negatively affected by excessive noise, air pollution, and travel delays, leading to increased safety risks, lost productivity, and a lower quality of life. Considering these challenges, the study begins by analyzing the current state of public transportation in El Paso. Next, it introduces a toolkit from the Smart City concept, followed by case studies of best practices of public transit and mobility hub implementation from American and European conditions. Lastly, the core of this thesis lies in the design of a mobility hub in Downtown El Paso, accompanied by implementation recommendations. Hopefully, this work will serve as a roadmap and contribute to more sustainable and accessible transportation for the benefit of El Paso
Analyzing The Impact Of Oil And Gas-Contaminated Fluids On Soil In Eddy And Lea Counties Using Sequential Extraction
Get PDFThe study investigates the impacts of oil and gas-contaminated fluids on soil within the context of Eddy and Lea Counties in New Mexico, the United States. The increase in oil and gas operations has led to enormous wastewater production that is handled, stored, and transported, leading to thousands of spills yearly. The continuous and accidental release of this wastewater poses several risks to the environment due to its high levels of hazardous pollutants. Several studies were conducted on how to reduce the contaminants; however, the impact caused on the environment and the fate of the spilled fluids is unclear due to the complexity of reporting requirements, size, location of the spills, and gaps in research data on spills. The experimental research design employed as the primary research methodology, involved using sequential extraction techniques and rigorous analysis of the soil\u27s physical characteristics of Eddy and Lea Counties. T-test and spatial analysis were conducted to validate the findings. The study aimed to identify the distribution patterns, behavior, and potential implications of soil contamination resulting from oil and gas wastewater spills and leaks by employing these techniques. The research findings revealed the existence of soil contaminants attributed to the spills from oil and gas wastewater. They also highlighted the significance of understanding how contaminants interact with soil particles and the subsequent effects on soil quality. Furthermore, the findings highlighted the importance of soil properties in influencing the mobility of contaminants. The insights gained from this research can help policymakers communicate informed policy decisions on oil and gas wastewater management. They are also essential in communicating to stakeholders to conduct an in-depth study on the broader impact of oil and gas wastewater on other ecosystem areas, such as groundwater sources in different regions
Deal with a Dead Man
Get PDFThe Value of Fantasy in Exploring Intangibles
Often, a story is sparked because of asking the question, “what if?” which is what happened to create the hydra that is Deal with a Dead Man. Two percolating ideas happened to coincide, and eventually crashed together. Early on, it began when I was introduced to the Russian fairytale of Koschei the Deathless and his fear of death, but inability to enjoy life. Over the past year, my family experienced several deaths, one tragically early, and another of ripe old age. My fascination with the fairytale grew as I watched myself and family members react in different, even opposite, ways to death. A little later, while working with my teenage creative writing students a very specific character emerged; a boy named Curi who could see everyone’s moment of death and found himself employed by a man who was already dead. Looking back, I was projecting my own conflicting attitudes about death into Curi’s creation, and I never intended him to be anything else except a teaching demonstration. However, my students wanted to know more, wanted to know where the boy’s story would go. It was then a new question emerged: what if Koschei, the deathless sorcerer, originally had help to become deathless? In the fairytale he’s obviously not very good at being a loner, as he continually steals princesses and fair maids to keep him company. This new character, Curi, seemed to know the answers, not only to the sorcerer’s dilemma, but my own morbid questions. The two morphed, Curi’s employer taking on a role similar to that of the fairytale sorcerer, searching for a way to never taste of death for a second time, and young Curi discovering exactly what his own relationship to death and life meant. Deal with a Dead Man is a fantasy novel in the tradition of exploring fairytales from a different perspective, the interplay between opposites such as death and life, and the hero’s universal struggles in choosing a correct path.
First and foremost, the question arises, why write a fantasy? I have often been told it is not a serious genre, that it is something to be read when you don’t want to think. I speculate that this attitude became ingrained during the 1960s and 1970s when works such as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, as well as others, made their way into popular culture. The rise of movies and animation, Disney being the reigning champion, reinvented traditional fairytales and marketed them for all audiences, especially children, thereby helping to entrench the attitude that myths, fairytales, and fantasy, were less than serious. Now, are these stories entertaining? Yes. Did their authors and creators set out to do more than tell a compelling story? Not necessarily. However, there is something to be said for providing an escapist space for a reader to explore life’s difficulties divorced from an accurate similitude of reality. Not long ago, the British Library hosted a conversation between Neil Gaiman and Roz Kaveney entitled, “Why We Need Fantasy: Neil Gaiman in Conversation.” Kaveney expresses that “fantasy is a way of making things more real than the real,” while Gaiman explains that he enjoys making metaphors concrete. They discuss how fantasy is a “reconciliation of the mundane and the miraculous” (“Why We Need Fantasy”). Peter Beagle provides an excellent example of this as he frequently addresses the subject of regret and mortality; two very real things that are made more real through the lens of a fantasy. The character of the unicorn states, “’I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, though I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die…I regret’” (Beagle 289). The reader is asked not only to examine their own regrets and desires, but what it would be like not to have them. Through the use of a mythical, immortal unicorn, Beagle is able to express something very basically human in a manner that speaks to our imagination, and even to a level of spirituality. This is what a fantasy can do.
In my own life, fantasy has always made it simpler to examine reality as a whole; the known and the unknown, tangible and intangible, all at once. Faced with my speculations on one of the world’s greatest unknowns, death, I have needed to employ imagination. As Einstein once said, “’Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world’” (Lachman 127). To be fair, Einstein is referring more to imagination as an essential of scientific discovery. However, fantasy allows me to imagine a reality in which death, and life, can be treated more tangibly, where I can make “metaphor[s] concrete” (“Why We Need Fantasy”).
The characters of Curi and Lord Vasilik provide two opposing perspectives on the theme of death. On the one hand, Curi accepts that death is inevitable. Lord Vasilik rejects such inevitability, having already died, and come back. He continues to “live,” seemingly without consequence, although upon first meeting him, Curi says there is “a palpable wrongness to him that grated and crashed against my every nerve” (Reed 24). He cannot deny that Lord Vasilik has turned what he knows to be impossible on its head. He is left to question, what does death mean, what really happens after that initial moment of dying, and are there consequences of avoiding death. The hope is that Curi’s opinions of death gradually shift from an indifference to a more active understanding, and in contrast, Curi must begin to consider what he wants in life.
While delving more deeply into the theme of death, and Curi’s journey with it, I realized that the story was full of polar opposites that emphasize the immediate conflict of life and death. In his book, The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler discusses how both in life and in a story, “Unity begets duality; the existence of one implies the possibility of two” (385). Vogler goes on to describe the polarized system, positive and negative, as two ends of a single line. “These polarities create potential for contrast, challenge, conflict, and learning. As the polarized nature of magnetic fields can be used to generate electrical energy, polarity in a story seems to be an engine that generates tension and movement in the characters and a stirring of emotions in the audience” (386). How do these opposites present within Deal with a Dead Man, and how do they also work in shaping the characters and story? One of the main ways life and death come to be highlighted throughout the story is constant references to the forces of day and night, light and darkness. Most of the story takes place at night, which in turn forces the characters to constantly make use of candles and fires to see, or wait for daylight. For example, as the story begins, Curi wakes from a nightmare and cannot get rid of it until dawn.
The sky was lightening, the tree trunks beginning to change from dead black to frosted, ash-browns. I picked a fallen log and sat down, drawing my feet up out of the snow, and watched the eastern sky fade white with dawn. The heavy stillness of the night vanished with the shadows the moment the sun slivered over the horizon, allowing me to let go of the last vestiges of the dream. I needed to head back. Like most towns, the majority of Avishki’s population were up with the sun, and I had a job to do. I slid off the log, crouched and drew a sunflower in the snow with my finger, acknowledging the Bright gods influence in another day (Reed 4).
Curi is inundated with juxtaposing symbolism, constantly using language to emphasize what he knows to be the natural order. Even the deities are categorized into bright or dark, supposedly making the world easy to understand. But again, the entrance of Lord Vasilik, his request, and duality of both death and life, blur the dual extremes, forcing Curi to reconsider what he knows and figure out where on the spectrum he is.
As a compliment to the themes and dualities, consideration must be given to the world being built. Within the world of the story, particularly a fantastical story, the author must create “an internal logic…even if their internal logic is to be illogical” (Temple). So, what is the internal logic of Deal with a Dead Man, and why is it important to the story and to the genre? This is twofold, including the magical worldbuilding elements integral to a fantasy which Temple is referring to, and the use of the hero’s journey in concert with the fairytale.
During my time in the MFA program, I have been introduced to various theories of how our imaginations interact with our physical world, including our long history with religion and the occult. In his famous book on the history of the occult, Colin Wilson admits that his own fascination with “magic and mysticism” began because “they were an escape from the world of factories and neurotic landladies, [and] because they confirmed my intuition of another order of reality, an intenser and more powerful form of consciousness than the kind I seemed to share with eight million other Londoners” (46). My intentions with Deal with a Dead Man were to create the feel of “another order of reality.” Rather than the feel of a full-on epic Dungeons and Dragons type of fantasy, I wanted it to be a bit more down to earth, so to speak. The sort of fantasy in which you could see influences from our own history, where things such as premonitions and fortune telling were not unfamiliar to reality, and felt anchored to our own various forms of mysticism and the occult. True to the fairytale, the scientific logic of reality sometimes just doesn’t work, and that affects how the characters act and interact with the world. The character of Curi embodies ideas of mysticism in that he believes that his premonitions guide him where he should go in life, and while it is never expressed aloud, appears to subconsciously assume he will be led to something better.
The premonition still lingered, like a flame that wouldn’t go out, but there was no reason I should be afraid for my life. I put another bunch of [pine] needles in my mouth, walked on to find another stand of young trees.
My last premonition had led me to Peytik’s caravan six months ago. Four months before that, I’d understood how to escape from my father and Maxim’s army. Each time I had known it, as sure as I knew death, and the Harvester, came for everyone. But at least they had made sense (Reed 4).
Here, Curi magnifies the mystical worldbuilding elements within the story. He is a fortune teller who, apart from seeing death, periodically deals with knowing what will happen to himself. How many people have had moments like that? Moments when we know, in some unexplainable way and from a source outside of ourselves, that something is going to happen? Within our own reality in which most people would agree, Colin Wilson included, that magic was generally “a first crude attempt at science” (47), Something like a premonition can be explained. However, within the logic of the story, just as in a fairytale, Curi’s skills and powers are taken as fact. This is clear when Curi is initially introduced to the dead man, Lord Vasilik, and what he wants Curi to do: “’The sort of things you already do; tell fortunes, make charms, and predict when a man’s life will end.’ Heat crept into my face. He knew” (Reed 26).
All throughout the narrative, Curi uses rune bones to find answers to difficult questions: My hand wavered, the bones feeling almost hot. The wolf’s dead eyes loomed, as though it were still watching me. I’d start there. I sucked in a breath through my teeth, asked my first question: “How do we get rid of the dead wolf?”
The bones dropped from my hand, clicking against each other as they fell. One stuck to the sweat of my palm, but I didn’t shake it off. I turned my still open palm up, cupping the bone against my life line, enfolding it in my fist. I didn’t look at it. Apparently, it wasn’t meant to be part of the answer (Reed 76).
I take many liberties, fitting the overall how’s and why’s of Curi’s power into the logic of the story. In the nature of a hero’s journey, Curi’s abilities increase from where he began. Eventually, he is not only able to see the moment of death, but also to “walk” along death’s edge, to see a small part of what waits once mortal existence is severed.
Terrified, I slowly turned, and blinked in astonishment. The colors and frost were a misted field. Dry grass peeked through a thin skiff of snow, barely enough to hide the ground. It was difficult to see where mist ended and frost began. Carefully, I stood up, still holding the medallion. The colors were spread across the sky, half hidden by the mists; tinges of purple, faded green and shadowed blue, as of twilight just before the stars appear. In a strange way, it felt familiar, like the long fields of destruction in my dreams” (Reed 87-88).
For this, I needed a visual, a representation of what death would be like. Not only does it show Curi’s progress, but muddies the strict opposition of death and life, dark and light, as the sky has color.
Again, there is a familiarity to the scene. Every religion and philosophy in the world has its own version of what death is like as a place, and as a state of mind. How many mythologies introduce a journey in which the hero must travel into death and then return? The world’s earliest epic sees Gilgamesh endeavor to rescue Enkidu from death. The Japanese god Izanagi travels to the underworld to try and bring back his wife, Izanami. Dante spends quite some time in every level of the afterlife. And in at least one version of the tale of Koschei the Deathless, he can put himself back together after being killed (“Myths and Legends”). It is a journey that everyone must experience in their own way. This is where fictions such as Deal with a Dead Man can again make use of the imagination and speak to the possible answers, providing differing perspectives. Margaret Atwood’s does this to the Greek afterlife in her book, The Penelopiad. “It’s dak here, as many have remarked. ‘Dark Death’, they used to say. ‘The gloomy halls of Hades’, and so forth. Well, yes, it is dark, but there are advantages – for instance, if you see someone you’d rather not speak to you can always pretend you haven’t recognized them” (Atwood 15). Here death is gloomy, where the dead wander around doing nothing much. Death is, in many ways, boring, yet Atwood adds the very small twist in that it allows the Penelope to ignore others more easily.
I wanted death to be a bit more dynamic than Atwood’s Hades, as visiting death is an important part of Curi’s journey. Within the context of a hero’s journey, not only does death figure as a place where Curi experiences several ordeals in preparation for fulfilling his bargain, but it becomes a place where he gets answers (Vogler 220). This reflects my own complicated reactions towards death. On the one hand, death is bleak, and that comes out in the snow-skiffed, misted field Curi finds himself in. It can feel intimidating, which comes through in the appearance of a dark line of trees. This place appears to truly be the edge of death, and so whatever lies beyond the trees is still an unknown. As I was contemplating and writing this description of death, I was surprised by the addition of a mentor figure, in the form of the god of death, or the Harvester. As in many fairytales, he serves to plant information that Curi will need, as well as act as a trickster, questioning Curi’s decisions. I also realized that without meaning to, I had made death a bit more like life; even after the inevitable act of dying, the dead still had to make a choice, to move on or remain in the fields.
One of the challenges I have experienced is in how to structure Deal with a Dead Man, as a large part of the story’s internal logic comes from the fairytale of Koschei the Deathless. Curi’s story begins prior to where the fairytale begins, and yet seems to be heading for a similar ending; with a princess escaping from, and destroying the sorcerer. Restructuring a fairytale is not new, neither is it new to closely follow the preestablished plot of these traditional tales, the author adding their own conjectures into the lives and opinions of the established characters, or added characters as in the case of Curi. The trouble was how to do it, as I had both pieces of Curi’s original story, and the restructured fairytale. I went back to reading various novels that had inspired me, looking for what their authors had done to flawlessly weave various storylines together. I turned to The Penelopiad, as Atwood moves between Penelope’s current dead state, her past while alive and waiting for Odysseus to return, and a Greek chorus of servant girls who were murdered. Each storyline contributes to the themes of Penelope’s guilt over the girls’ deaths and who is to blame. Patrick Rothfus and his novel The Name of the Wind follows a similar pattern, interchangeably narrating the past and the present with the character of Kvothe telling the story of his early days. I decided to try something similar with Deal with a Dead Man, renouncing a strict chronological order, and alternating between the fairytale storyline, and Curi’s.
I discovered several problems to this narrative strategy of a story within a story. While the fairytale structure created parallels, such as Curi and the kidnapped princess Melet making a bargain similar to Curi’s and Lord Vasilik’s original one, it felt clunky.
Another difficulty that occurred accidentally was the use of both first person and third person narration. While it is not common, I have seen it used to great effect, providing a means of keeping parallel narrative and timelines distinctive. However, I wanted Curi to remain the primary, first-person narrator, keeping a closer psychic distance with the reader. Naturally, this creates more of a bias, a limiting of information, and works very well to the development of themes. As Curi’s opinion changes concerning death, so does the reader’s, as he understands more about Lord Vasilik, so does the reader, etc. That didn’t happen. Instead, his voice became lost in the back and forth.
Along with Curi’s diminishing importance, I realized it would be impossible to keep some information from the reader. For example, Lord Vasilik is referred to as a “feeder,” with only hints of what that means along the way. It is deliberately meant to keep a sense of mystery, and distance for the reader. I discovered the story was stalling, hesitating, and I had forgotten a cardinal rule: “The needs of the story dictate its structure,” and that “stories are alive. They seem to be conscious and purposeful. Like living beings, stories have an agenda, something on their minds. They want something from you” (Vogler 266, 368).
In order to rectify my mistake, Deal with a Dead Man has been returned to chronological order. This does not mean that I have removed the fairytale, but placed it as a second part to Curi’s original narrative. The reader has the opportunity to become invested in Curi before introducing the character of Melet. However, this second part is currently in the experimental stages and I may discover that it demands yet more structural changes.
As mentioned previously, fairytales touch on basic aspects of our human existence. They are also, very systematic, the characters serving specific functions that can be nearly interchangeable, allowing the reader to pick out the themes being expressed more easily. Vladimir Propp describes the interchangeability of the fairytale in this way:
The name of the dramatis personae change (as well as the attributes of each), but neither their actions nor functions change. From this we can draw the inference that a tale often attributes identical actions to various personages. This makes possible the study of the tale according to the functions of its dramatis personae (20).
In other words, within the fairytale, each of these roles is played by either a single character, or by a combination of several characters. What is important, is the function they serve within the story. This is what makes fairytales so viable for interpretation, it’s not the characters themselves that are important, but the function they serve within the story. It doesn’t matter if you name the villain Koschei, Lord Vasilik, or Voldemort, the function of antagonist to the hero is still served. Not much attention is paid to personality, which leaves a lot of room for speculation. Propp addresses this issue by pointing out the function of character motivation within a fairytale:
By motivations are meant both the reasons and the aims of personages which cause them to commit various acts. Motivations often add to a tale a completely distinctive, vivid coloring, but nevertheless motivations belong to the most inconstant and unstable elements of the tale…The majority of characters’ acts in the middle of a tale are naturally motivated by the course of the action, and only villainy, as the first basic function of the tale, requires a certain supplementary motivation (75).
In short, motivation is driven by the plot, not the character. And it is at this point that stories become messy, and is perhaps better understood within the context of the hero’s journey. Vogler introduces the reason myths and fairytale characters remain popular as follows:
The repeating characters of the world myth such as the young hero, the wise old man or woman, the shapeshifter, and the shadowy antagonist are the same as the figures who appear repeatedly in our dreams and fantasies. That’s why myths and most stories constructed on the mythological model have the ring of psychological truth.
Such stories are accurat
Comparative Analysis Of The Effects Of Post Processing On The Flexural Fatigue Endurance Of Additively Manufactured Ti-6Al-4V
Get PDFThis study delves into analyzing the effects of various machining techniques on the flexural fatigue life of Ti-6Al-4V L-PBF specimens. The fatigue life and fracture behavior of specimens subjected to milling, grinding, polishing, and abrasive media blasting were compared. The findings reveal significant differences in the fatigue resistance between machined and non-machined parts. This study contributes to the understanding of the effects of post-processing on the durability of L-PBF manufactured components, offering insights for enhancing their application in critical aerospace and biomedical applications
Investigating The Production And Perception Of Lexical Stress In English As A Second Language: A Cue-Weighting Approach
Get PDFThe Cue-Weighting Transfer Hypothesis states that (a) listeners weight acoustic cues according to how informative they are in signaling a lexical contrast in their L1, and (b) that listeners transfer their cue weightings from the L1 to the L2, using those cues that are important in the L1 to perceive lexical stress in the L2 (Tremblay et al., 2021). Most of the Spanish-English bilinguals in our region are highly proficient in both languages, but differ in their language dominance spectrums. That is, they can handle both languages with ease, but are usually more dominant in one of them. Because of the bilingual uniqueness of this region, the present study tests the Cue-Weighting Transfer Hypothesis from a language dominance perspective, as opposed to doing so from an L2 proficiency perspective, like previous cue-weighting research has done. We tested Spanish-dominant and English-dominant speakers from our region using a lexical stress perception task and a lexical stress production task to investigate if these participants show evidence of cue-weighting transfer from the dominant into the non-dominant language in the perception and production of lexical stress. Our results revealed various differences manifested as a result of language dominance effects, two of the most salient ones being that (i) English-dominant speakers use vowel reduction to a significantly higher degree than Spanish-dominant speakers, and that (ii) in the absence of vowel reduction use, Spanish-dominant speakers increase their reliance on other acoustic cues like duration and pitch instead when producing and perceiving lexical stress in English. Our results provide support for the Cue-Weighting Transfer Hypothesis. We suggest that the differences in cue weightings across languages can be modulated by language dominance, and not just by L2 proficiency, like previous research has shown. That is, cue-weighting differences can be observed in speakers who are highly proficient in both languages, but differ in their dominance continuum
Effect of Patient Specific Blood Biomarkers on Nanoparticle - Cell Interactions
Get PDFNanoparticles are currently known to be a promising material class for bio-applications in drug delivery and vaccine development. Using gold nanoparticles of varied sizes, in this case 45 and 100 nanometers as a model nanomaterial system, we investigated how patients\u27 blood physiology and chemistry (such as solute, protein, lipid levels) affect the biological response to bionanomaterials. When nanoparticles are injected into the body, biomolecules in the blood adsorb to the nanoparticle\u27s surface to form a biomolecular corona that is specific to the patient\u27s unique blood composition. This biomolecular corona is important because it affects the in vivo fate and biodistribution of the administered nanoparticles Here we show that the abundance of certain proteins and lipids in patient blood changes the biomolecular corona of nanoparticles of the varied sizes. Furthermore, the presence of these proteins and lipids affected in vitro cell uptake of nanoparticles. Our preliminary results suggest that certain blood composition biomarkers can predict patient-specific biomaterial interaction. Future experiments will follow up on these candidate protein and lipid biomarkers and investigate if they are applicable in predicting nanoparticle interactions of different physicochemical properties, such as lipid-based nanoparticles. Studying how patient-specific blood biomarkers interact with biomaterials can help us rationally design personalized nanomaterials for therapeutic applications to improve their health
Dynamic Storytelling Algorithms Using Contextual Aspects Of A Large Language Model
Get PDFStorytelling is a set of algorithms used to create narratives by connecting documents in a sequencethat accurately reflects the evolution of events and entities within a particular topic or theme. Early storytelling algorithms face challenges in encoding the progression and interconnections of information between consecutive texts, given that the conventional approaches rely primarily on connecting document pairs based on content overlap. They often neglect critical linguistic features, such as word contexts, semantics, the roles words play across different documents, and attention to the historical contexts of the underlying documents. Many existing storytelling models frequently produce story chains that, while connected by keywords, lack meaningful coherence in the chains. My dissertation introduces innovative LLM-driven storytelling algorithms to overcome the challenges traditional storytelling algorithms face and significantly enhance downstream tasks. In my research, I propose a role-based contextual embedding algorithm using a large language model that provides a rich understanding of text in a document by considering the different roles of the same word in other documents. I also employ a generative diffusion model to seamlessly link documents within a narrative, even with gaps in the data, to ensure a smoother and more logical story progression. In my dissertation, I introduce a novel distributed attention similarity mechanism designed to control the narrative output of storytelling algorithms locally and globally. The techniques I have designed ensure that the generated stories are not merely connected by keywords but are also coherent and meaningfully sequenced. The experiments in my dissertation indicate that the proposed storytelling models generate more coherent, cohesive, and contextually rich narratives than existing approaches. In addition, I demonstrate that my proposed storytelling model has immense potential in vector data preparation for conventional machine-learning tasks
Advancing Understanding Of Opinions, Perceptions, And Knowledge In Underrepresented Communities In The El Paso Region To Promote Electric Vehicles And Electrified Infrastructure Use To Reduce Environmental Impacts
Get PDFAs the transportation and automotive industries continue growing, environmental and human health impacts remain a growing concern for planners, policy-makers, constructors, and the public as well (Krause et al., 2013; Larson et al., 2014). Although Electric Vehicles (EVs) are entering the market as a green technology solution to counteract greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), there are still barriers that need to be overcome for widespread diffusion and adoption as the best solution. These include disseminating basic information about the technology for public awareness, considering equity concerns, and ensuring equitable access to infrastructure for all (L. Lozada-Medellin, 2022).
This work is a collaboration between the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification (ASPIRE) and the US Department of Transportation’s Center for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy and Health (CARTEEH). The ASPIRE Center aims for a sustainable and fair future for transportation infrastructure systems through widespread electrification of all classes of vehicles. The center focuses on incorporating electrified roadways and wireless charging solutions for EVs to charge either in motion or parked, thus eliminating the gas-station models and offering health benefits through cleaner air and sustainable infrastructure (ASPIRE, 2023). CARTEEH focuses on the impact of transportation on human health (CARTEEH, 2024).
To contribute to the center’s work, this study aims to advance vital knowledge regarding the environmental and social justice impacts of electrified technologies. These include EVs, EV charging stations (ChSs), and electrified roadways (ERWs). The study seeks to evaluate the environmental and social justice impacts of EV market penetration. Also, to identify and understand key barriers to EV public acceptance and adoption, concurrently fostering diversity and inclusion by accounting for historically underrepresented minorities
Improving Bipolar Diagnosis with the Rapid Mood Screener
Get PDFBackground: Bipolar disorder is a chronic, debilitating mental illness that affects individuals globally. It is characterized by significant challenges in diagnosis, often leading to delays in receiving appropriate treatment. This condition can mirror the symptoms of unipolar depression, leading to frequent misdiagnoses and hindering timely intervention that could improve functional outcomes and quality of life.
Aims/Methods: This project aims to enhance the accuracy of bipolar disorder diagnoses in clinical settings, specifically bipolar disorder type 1 (BPT1), at the earliest possible stage of the illness. By doing so, it seeks to improve symptom management, reduce the duration of episodes, and enhance psychosocial functioning. This study employed the Rapid Mood Screener (RMS), a validated tool for the diagnosis of BPT1. The RMS demonstrates a positive predictive value of 0.80 and a negative predictive value of 0.88, with an overall accuracy rate of 80% when four or more of the responses are “yes.” This screening tool was implemented in an outpatient mental health clinic utilizing a telemedicine platform to assess new and established patients.
Results: The introduction of the RMS for screening new patients was particularly effective in diagnosing bipolar disorder. It reduced unspecified or incorrect diagnoses, enabling more precise pharmacological intervention and treatment approaches. Conclusions: This quality improvement project underscores the RMS’s effectiveness in enhancing the diagnostic accuracy for BPT1, particularly in its early stages, and distinguishing it from major depressive disorder.
Implications for Practice: The findings advocate for the RMS’s integration into routine psychiatric assessments, especially for new patients, and highlight the need for further investigation into its utility across broader age groups, including adolescents and elderly patients