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Communicating Climate Change: Boundaries Between Scientists and Public Acceptance
No full textThough there is consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic climate change is happening, public polling does not show the same consensus due to variables like conflicts with personal values or misrepresentation of academic views. The interest of our research was to analyze how scientists communicate global warming findings and determine ways to improve effectiveness. A literature study focused on the overlap of personal values and trust in climate change claims. Results show that individuals will not want to engage in dialogue if they feel that their values are criticized. Values like economic views, religion, experience, and culture are all relevant to views on climate change. A scientific consensus does not translate into acceptance of the issue or policy shifts when portions of the population do not value the basis of the studies. We have found that there is often false controversy from inadequate discourse, a foundational distrust of institutions, and false speech from admired parties. Combating this requires a separation of academia from those within it, so conversations about societal issues are between equally affected citizens. The conclusion is that we cannot respect consensus or accept a contrary idea if we do not respect the origins of the information. To have productive dialogue with a member outside of an academic community like climate science, the focus of the conversation must be a connection in values to the individual's experience
Intelligent Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Areas of High Turbulence
No full textUnmanned aerial vehicles are gaining immense popularity and have found applications in delivery services, monitoring tasks and in military operations. There is one question we have yet to answer, which is, how well can a drone perform in an area with extreme turbulence? This question will be addressed in this study by comparing the performance of the drone under harsh weather conditions, with regular control mechanisms, to an intelligent control or learning technique. This article will demonstrate how Reinforcement Learning can be used to train a quadcopter to perform a certain task in turbulent areas while maintaining stability. A trained quadcopter will be assigned to a mission and will be controlled from the start point to the desired destination, maintaining stability, utilizing minimal energy, and taking the shortest time to complete without having to communicate with the drone's control system explicitly or directly. Specifically, we will be working with the Proximal Policy Optimization Reinforcement Learning Algorithm, which seeks out an optimal policy that ensures the maximum rewards for an agent or a group of agents participating in interactions with the environment. It belongs to a class of RL algorithms called Policy Gradient Algorithms, which aim to obtain the most optimal policy, rather than the most optimal state or state-action value function. We will examine the behavior of the agent when the Dryden Turbulence Model is introduced
*WINNER* Flood risk education in the Trace Creek Watershed using HEC-RAS and ARCGIS story maps
No full textFlooding is an issue that affects communities in the United States and abroad. One such community that was recently impacted by flooding was Waverly, Tennessee. Located in the Trace Creek Watershed, Waverly and the surrounding areas experienced high levels of precipitation in August 2021, leading to major flooding. The impact of the flood was especially felt by this economically disadvantaged community. While prediction efforts could have helped reduce the impact of the flood, Waverly and the surrounding area have limited data required for hydraulic and hydrologic modelling. The goal of this project is to provide an educational tool for the people living in the flood prone areas to have a better understanding of how flooding accumulates and the potential areas of risk using the Trace Creek watershed as a case study
Risk Factors, Instrumental Motivation, and Students' Fulfillment of Academic Expectations: A Moderation Analysis
Get PDFWhile many students have high school expectations to attain a postsecondary degree, certain factors lead to discrepancies in whether they do or do not attain those expectations. This moderation analysis examined the extent to which parents' expectations, when interacting with students' number of academic risk factors and instrumental motivation, predict fulfillment of expectations. Data from the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Study were analyzed using AM Software, controlling for race and gender. Although parents' expectations were a significant predictor of expectation fulfillment, they did not account for significant variance in the outcome variable. The interaction between instrumental motivation and parents' expectations was not a significant predictor of expectation fulfillment. However, the interaction between parents' expectations and academic risk factors was a significant predictor of expectation fulfillment. Implications for future research include examining how specific risk factors and parents' expectations are correlated
*WINNER* Examining the Relationship Between Identity and Shame Resilience
No full textIn recent decades, shame resilience has been implicated as an important factor of mental health. However, it is unclear what factors predict resilience when feeling shame. Identity could be a key factor. Shame is a social emotion, and one's sense of collective versus individual identity could influence how one deals with the experience of this emotion. This study investigated the potential relationship between one's identity orientation and level of shame resilience. If one's identity orientation is related to shame resilience, this could have implications for helping people cope with feeling shame and providing support for mental health. This correlational study gave established self-report scales measuring identity orientation and shame resilience to ~150 college students in the United States. We predicted that those who scored high in the collective and the relational identity categories would score higher in shame resilience than those who scored low in these areas and that those who scored high in the personal and social identity orientations would have lower shame resilience scores than those who scored low in these areas
Online Guard: Identifying the misinformation in social media and its impact on COVID-19 vaccination progress in different countries
Get PDFThe emergence of the novel coronavirus pandemic has caused a myriad of problems worldwide. One such problem is misinformation, which in itself should be considered a risk. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, popular social media platforms are flooded by exaggerated phony news which is affecting our society, well-being and public safety. Many of the online falsehoods don't have apparent sources or intentions, rather, some niche groups often start mobilizing to endorse their agendas through the rumors. Although the pertinent tools and existing techniques can support fact-checking and identification of conspiracy, misinformation and negative sentiment at various stages, a complete end-to-end solution is complicated. In this paper, we propose a thorough analysis and identification system named Online Guard using natural language processing tools and supervised learning techniques to identify the relationship between misinformation from the negative sentiment of COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets and vaccination progress rate and its impact in different countries. For this purpose, we will use a COVID-19 all vaccines tweet dataset to identify and analyze misinformation, and another dataset named country vaccination that shows vaccine rollout and vaccination progress in different countries. The aim of this project is to identify the relationship between spreading misinformation, negative emotions on Twitter, and its impact on vaccination progress for a particular time period
The development of an isoform-specific JNK3 inhibitor
No full textMitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) are involved in a variety of signal transduction mechanisms as a response to a wide range of cellular stress stimuli. The ASK/MKK/JNK protein kinase cascade is involved in such signal transduction. The dysfunction of these cascades has been identified to impact downstream signaling effectors linked with the onset of neurodegeneration and cancer. c-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNK) are attractive therapeutic targets due to the rising interest in developing treatment for these diseases. Among the ten JNK isoforms (JNK1a/ß-1/2; JNK2a/ß-1,2; JNK3a-1/2), the two JNK3 isoforms' tissue distribution are near exclusive to the Central Nervous System (CNS). The objective of this work is to develop an isoform specific JNK3 inhibitor based on the structural protein interactions of JNK3 with its upstream kinases. Based on preliminary kinase assays comparing JNK3a2 and JNK2a2, it was supported that the novel Maltose Binding Protein (MBP)-fusion peptide inhibitor MBP-NJ40 was successful in isoform specificity in favor of JNK3a2. Another novel MBP-fusion peptide inhibitor, MBP-NJ20, was also investigated in its efficacy to inhibit JNK3a2. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of both MBP-NJ40 and MBP-NJ20 when analyzed were comparable to each other. This suggests that these inhibitors are successful novel candidates for controlled inhibition of JNK3a2
Synthesis of Structural Colorants via Silane Functionalization of Reactive Pigments
No full textThe formulation of new colorants that are both inherently colorfast and stable is an active area of research. By utilizing tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) to form shells around colored substrates they may be enhanced with a greater reflective ability resulting in an iridescent effect. The size of this particle can contribute to the refraction of light of a similar wavelength to produce a structural coloration. The Stober process was used to produce glass nanoparticles that refract blue light. When dried on top of black carbon media, the nanoparticles aggregate in layers and are visibly bluer than when dried on clear media. With the manipulation of the size of the particles and substrate the nanoparticles are deposited on, a range of semi- to truly iridescent colors can be created. By modifying the Stober process to incorporate different functionalized silanes and pigments, this work explores the creation of more stable and vibrant colorants
Comparison of RAMAN Microscopy and ASAP Mass Spectrometry for Identification of Selected Fountain Pen Inks
Get PDFThere has been a rise of counterfeit and forgery crimes. For forensic purposes, research on fountain pen inks include identifying and distinguishing between samples. RAMAN spectroscopy analyses the vibrations of molecules and the spectra can act as a "fingerprint" for different fountain pen inks. A sample size of fourteen blue-black inks were analyzed. Ink spectra were added to an OMNIC database to compare and recognize similar inks to a certain confidence. It is anticipated that inks of the same brand or similar color will have a lower differentiation by the OMNIC software. If successful, the next phase will include a larger sample size with more brands. If inks are indistinguishable via RAMAN spectroscopy, inks will be diluted and compared to results from an ASAP Direct Mass Spectrometer
*WINNER* Synthesis of a novel Terpenoid and optimization of its preparation for yield and environmental impact using Design of Experiment (DOE)
No full textThe use of certain solvents in chemical reactions can cause negative environmental impacts. The goal of this work is to synthesize a novel terpenoid for use as topoisomerase inhibitors and optimize this synthesis for both yield and environmental impacts. The reactions are analyzed by a green scoring software, DOZN, that provides a quantitative scoring of its environmental impact. This research optimized a green reaction on the microliter scale using design of experiment (DOE) procedures with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The reporting of the synthesis of a terpene derivative including an F19 label and the optimization of its synthesis using DOE for its ideal DOZN score. A standard procedure that optimizes multiple reactions while also remaining fiscally competitive with non-green alternatives was developed