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The State of the Arts in Holland: the Roles of Art and Identity in Community
No full textIdentity is something that we all possess. Forming an identity allows us to both relate to and distinguish ourselves from others. Ultimately, an identity is what unites a community. But by creating identities, we naturally build boundaries. In contrast, art seeks to push or break them. While identity can change to accommodate new ideas, to what extent can identity change without losing itself in the process? Likewise, art can exist within the boundaries of identity, but at what point is the ability of expression repressed? How can we find middle ground? Hope College has created an identity that sets itself apart from other institutions. One of Hope College’s most defining characteristics is its Christian faith, which can be traced back to the college’s origins. Hope College has also cultivated a strong arts community. By observing the departments of music, theater, and art, we will observe the relationship between the identity of Hope College and its arts community. Is Hope College a place where identity and art are at odds? Or perhaps it is the middle ground where identity and art can coexist and thrive
Positive Reappraisals After an Offense: Event-related Potentials and Emotional Effects of Benefit-finding and Compassion
Get PDFUsing a within subjects design, three emotion regulation strategies (compassion‐focused reappraisal, benefit‐focused reappraisal, and offense rumination) were tested for their effects on forgiveness, well‐being, and event‐related potentials (ERPs). Participants (N = 37) recalled a recent interpersonal offense as the context for each emotion regulation strategy. Both decisional and emotional forgiveness increased significantly for the two reappraisal strategies compared to offense rumination. Compassion‐focused reappraisal prompted the greatest increase in both decisional and emotional forgiveness. Furthermore, both reappraisal strategies increased positively oriented well‐being measures (e.g., joy, gratitude) compared to offense rumination, with compassion‐focused reappraisal demonstrating the largest effect on empathy. Late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in response to unpleasant affect words were larger following the benefit‐focused reappraisal strategy, indicating frontal LPP augmentation due to affective incongruence of the unpleasant stimuli with the positive, silver‐lining orientation of the benefit‐focused reappraisal emotion regulation strategy
The Contribution of the Pineal Gland on Daily Rhythms and Masking in Diurnal Grass Rats, Arvicanthis niloticus
Get PDFMelatonin is a hormone rhythmically secreted at night by the pineal gland in vertebrates. In diurnal mammals, melatonin is present during the inactive phase of the rest/activity cycle, and in primates it directly facilitates sleep and decreases body temperature. However, the role of the pineal gland for the promotion of sleep at night has not yet been studied in non-primate diurnal mammalian species. Here, the authors directly examined the hypothesis that the pineal gland contributes to diurnality in Nile grass rats by decreasing activity and increasing sleep at night, and that this could occur via effects on circadian mechanisms or masking, or both. Removing the pineal gland had no effect on the hourly distribution of activity across a 12:12 light-dark (LD) cycle or on the patterns of sleep-like behavior at night. Masking effects of light at night on activity were also not significantly different in pinealectomized and control grass rats, as 1h pulses of light stimulated increases in activity of sham and pinealectomized animals to a similar extent. In addition, the circadian regulation of activity was unaffected by the surgical condition of the animals. Our results suggest that the pineal gland does not contribute to diurnality in the grass rat, thus highlighting the complexity of temporal niche transitions. The current data raise interesting questions about how and why genetic and neural mechanisms linking melatonin to sleep regulatory systems might vary among mammals that reached a diurnal niche via parallel and independent pathways
Relax, Don\u27t [be] Anxious: RDA at the Ball State University Libraries (Muncie, IN)
Get PDFProvides an overview of how librarians in the Cataloging and Metadata Services (CAMS) department at the Ball State University Libraries (Muncie, IN) prepared for and implemented cataloging in RDA. Also covers the presenter’s training and evaluation of copy catalogers using RDA for monographic cataloging (books, ebooks, video recordings, maps) and the writing of local procedures
ACL Reconstruction Techniques and their Implications on Rehabilitation
No full textAnterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears are currently one of the most prevalent lower extremity injuries occurring in competitive athletics. The athlete’s goal is usually the same: to return to play as soon as possible. However, ACL reconstruction surgery is notorious for taking approximately six to nine months to heal in order for the patient to return to functional activity. Depending on the patient, various ACL reconstruction techniques can speed up the rehabilitation process while maintaining the integrity of the new ACL graft. While single bundle grafts are standard, easy to harvest, and time efficient, double bundle grafts are more anatomically fitted and produce better overall functional results. To place the grafts, there are various techniques used. Three techniques are compared based on efficiency and overall outcomes over the course of this research. The anatomic anteromedial technique, a standard procedure, is performed by drilling holes from the outside of the knee into the femur and tibia, threading the new ACL graft through the holes, and securing with screws. Rehabilitation lasts approximately 36 weeks. The All-Inside technique uses a Retro Flip Cutter to drill the femoral and tibial holes from the inside of the knee out, creating sockets. There is less trauma to the bones, therefore, the patient is able to reach functional activity sooner. This technique is especially indicated for skeletally immature patients. Lastly, the Shelbourne technique takes the new ACL graft from the contralateral, healthy patellar tendon. The trauma is then dispersed between both knees, speeding up the rehabilitation process to only nine weeks. Advantages and disadvantages to all of these techniques are compared and analyzed based on current research and local orthopedic opinions
Affording an Active Lifestyle
No full textPrevious researchers have shown a positive association between family income and children’s activity level outside of school (Dearing et al., 2009). In the current study, researchers examined the correlation between income and activity preference among preschoolers, ages three to five, in western Michigan. Participants were selected from six preschools, which were partnered with the Outdoor Discovery Center Macatawa Greenway. This was a nature-based learning initiative funded by the Kellogg Foundation. Understanding the relationship between these two variables could be helpful for combatting inactivity and the consequences of unhealthy development in preschool children. This study involved 430 child-participants in the Holland/Zeeland area in classrooms that were classified by income as Tuition Based or Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP). GSRP is a government-assisted funding program for preschoolers who may face obstacles for academic success in the state of Michigan. Activity preference of students was measured by researchers using a modified version of Leary’s Preschool Activity Preference Measure (2009). Additionally, demographic and income information were made available to researchers by the school administrators. Using means comparisons and correlational analyses, researchers examined the relationships between income, activity preference, and gender. Researchers predicted that preference for outdoor/non-sedentary activities would positively correlate with income. Moreover, it was hypothesized that boys would have a higher preference for non-sedentary/outdoor activity than girls. Next, boys in tuition-based classrooms would demonstrate a higher preference for non-sedentary/outdoor activity than their male peers in GSRP classrooms. Finally, across the six preschool sites, researchers predicted that there would be a significant difference between mean activity preference scores for tuition based classrooms and the mean activity preference scores for GSRP classrooms; with tuition-based classrooms predicted to have higher mean activity preference than their GSRP counterparts. Implications for this study would be beneficial for various educational programs seeking to reduce disparities between income levels
Bending and Bifurcation of a Superconductor Resonator with Engineered Nonlinearity
No full textThis experiment is designed to compare the feedback from an altered superconductor resonator with a conventional, unaltered superconductor resonator. Superconducting transmission lines are patterned on a lanthanum aluminium substrate chip with a geometry that resonates within the microwave range. Nonlinearities, distortion of the signals in the superconductor, can be engineered into the transmission line using an ion beam or other artificial source of radiation. The sample in this experiment, thin-film yttrium barium copper oxide: YBCO was sent to a facility in Italy to be engineered with a nonlinearity and then characterized in a low temperature (77 K) cryostat. This means that the power dependence of a traditional resonator will differ greatly from this sample. Two key figures of merit of superconducting resonators are their critical power, where the power input to the resonator is most absorbed, and critical frequency of the sample, the frequency at which the critical power occurs. Both were found to vary with temperature, and at high incident power the frequency response of the resonator begins to experience deformation. The change of the power response as frequency is swept through (bending) and the hysteresis in the curve (bifurcation) form the core disparities between traditional superconducting resonators and those with engineered nonlinearities
Classifying Handwritten Digits without Seeing Them
No full textDigital images of handwritten digits are high dimensional and vary with writing style. This work presents a method to perform classification on a handwritten digits database, MNIST, and enable visualization in low dimensional space. To address the handwritten digit variation issue, the edges of each digit in an image are first highlighted by gradient feature extraction. Then, the curse of high dimension is broken by t-SNE algorithm, which constructs a certain “lens” so that one can visualize MNIST on two or three coordinates. The “lens” also helps trace from low dimension back to high dimension in which clustering is applied to assigned level sets and form a more explicit visible structure among all data points. The last process is done by Mapper algorithm
Computational Chemistry: From the Phone to the Cloud
No full textOver the last half century, the cost of computing power has dropped by about 10 orders of magnitude. As a result, computational modeling has become a practical tool for chemists to calculate molecular structures, properties, spectra, and reactivity. The Polik group previously developed WebMO, which installs on a linux computer and allows students and researchers to perform state-of-the-art computational chemistry calculations from their web browsers. This past year, we have extended the WebMO project to two additional computing platforms: smartphones and cloud computing. Smartphones, with their touchscreens and high portability, are convenient for building molecules and viewing computed results. Cloud computing promises a low cost server alternative for those who plan to compute intermittently, do not have access to a conventional cluster, or lack technical expertise to maintain a server