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The Impact of Animal Companions on Neurodivergent College Students
Get PDFThe Neurodivergent community has different social and mental processes due to genetic and/or environmental factors that impact interaction with neurotypical settings. There is a disparate number of college students with neurodiversity, possibly due to struggles to a new social environment and classes, often built for neurotypical students. Numerous studies have shown that animals boost social, mental, and physical health within challenged communities, such as children with autism. However, there is little research on animal companionship assisting on the transitioning process into the new settings of higher education for neurodiverse college students. The purpose of this research is to explore the impact of animal companions on the mental and social health attitudes of neurodiverse college students. Our research question is How do pets affect the social health, mental health of neurodiverse college students and the transition of first year neurodiverse college students? Mixed methodology was used within a survey containing both quantitative and open-ended questions to uncover the benefits of companion animals on neurodiverse students. Data will be collected from both those who do and do not own animals. Questions are based on social and mental health and the first year of college. Students who own pets can answer questions based on their pets and how they helped them through their first year of school. Practical Implications: The benefits of companion animals have not been thoroughly researched on neurodiverse college students, and therefore they may not be aware of the valuable possibilities this resource brings. Using the data collected from other resources that use pet therapy; could show improvements for college students who have Neurodiversity and possibly increase students' numbers to go to college. After collecting 36(n) participants' data, a t-test was run to compare the impact of animals on neurodiverse college students and those who did not own animal companions. Overall, we determined if neurodiverse students with companion owners had a lower Likert means than those who did not own companion animals. In doing this, for each section, including the mental health, social health, and the transition to college, a t-test was run for each variable created by the CFA to determine the likelihood that their sections had a smaller Likert scale for animal companion owners than those who did not own animal companions. Using the results of each section helped to conclude that overall that neurodiverse college students who owned pets had a higher or similar Likert means compared to those who did not have animal companions. We also collected data from those who owned animal companions through a qualitative survey section. With the responses, we concluded that all participants had a positive reaction that animal companions do decrease stress and anxiety level. Overall, the Likert scales of the survey show that animal companions did not have a lower Likert means than non-animal owners, and they do not have an impact on the social and mental health of college students. However, the free-response survey showed that animals could impact their social and mental health. The results could play into many factors, including having a small sample size. Overall, 65 participants do not have enough data to finalize the results, so further collections will need to collect accurate conclusions. Another issue is that the data collected does not correlate between the qualitative section and the quantitative section of the survey; further research will need to be done to close these gaps
Studies of High-Temperature Deformation Processes in Earth Materials: Experimental Investigations and Theoretical Modeling
No full textExperimental and theoretical investigations play a crucial role in advancing our understanding of high-temperature deformation processes, responsible for the plasticity and strength of the middle to lower crustal layers of continental lithospheres, plate boundaries, and subducting oceanic plates of subduction zones. I have conducted triaxial deformation experiments on naturally occurring perthitic single crystal feldspars to determine their plastic anisotropy, effects of solid solution, and exsolution and water on their mechanical properties. Deformation experiments were performed using a Griggs solid-medium apparatus, maintaining temperatures in the range of 800-900 degrees Celsius, strain rates (Epsilon) at 1.6x10^-6 s^-1 , and confining pressures ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 GPa. My findings revealed that feldspar samples compressed in [012] direction show the lowest flow strengths, while those deformed along the [001] direction displayed the highest flow strength. Deformation and strength measured in the [012] direction at different pressures (0.75-1.5 GPa) and temperatures (900 degrees Celsius) demonstrate that water weakening in feldspars due to intracrystalline defect interactions with hydrous defects depends on the water fugacity. Earthquakes occurring at depths beyond 15 km are often attributed to low effective pressures, owing to elevated pore pressures, as hydrous silicates such as serpentine dehydrate. However, recent assessments of intermediate-depth earthquakes have revealed that temperatures and pressures of seismogenic subducting slabs do not always correspond to antigorite serpentine, amphiboles, or talc dehydration. Altered mantle rocks of the upper lithosphere and mantle wedges also contain magnesian carbonates, which are stable to great depths. Carbonates of downgoing slabs are weaker than anhydrous mantle silicates. My theoretical modeling study of magnesian carbonate horizons within altered peridotite demonstrates that intermediate-depth earthquakes can result from strain localization within carbonates and thermal shear instabilities that lead to seismic rupture. Models of shear instabilities in ultramafic mantle rocks, are based on grain size-sensitive creep and changes in rheology with changes in grain size. Such analyses cannot be implemented for magnesian carbonates without a better understanding of the kinetics governing grain growth and refinement. The grain growth kinetics study of pure magnesite and Ca-rich magnesite show nearly parabolic grain growth for short annealing times in pure magnesite, when curved grain boundaries are dominant
Habituating Wild Primates: Ethics of the Researcher-Subject Relationship and Its Implications for Field Research Methodology
No full textHabituation is the process of exposing an individual to a neutral stimulus until they become accustomed to it. In nonhuman animal field research, scientists must initially present themselves as non-threatening, neutral entities to their animal subjects, as the animals initially flee from them. Over time, the subjects allow the scientists to follow them, and the animals are assumed to return to their ���natural��� behavior. For particularly intelligent and social animals, such as primates, this process can take as little as a month, but it can take up to fifteen years. Several potential impacts of habituation can harm the welfare of primates or make them vulnerable, for instance, to disease transfer and poaching. Primatologists have been particularly vocal and concerned about these impacts of habituation. However, the uniqueness of field sites, limited resources, and lack of consensus makes it difficult to guide ethical behavior. Within philosophical literature, discussions on our ethical obligations to wild animals have mostly regarded generic responsibilities or individual, isolated situations���little attention has been paid to continuous, long-term relationships between humans and wild individuals. To help guide primatologists, I turn to the professional ethics literature and draw on Beauchamp and Childress���s midlevel principles, which are flexible and balanced, to develop guidelines for primatologists regarding habituation. Based on the values and concerns expressed by the profession, I construct and develop three midlevel principles for primatologists: 1) noninterference in welfare, 2) behavioral reciprocity, and 3) protection from habituation-caused vulnerability. I have designed these principles to help primatologists decide whether, in any particular case, it is appropriate and permissible to habituate primates and, if so, how to do so in a way that minimizes the negative impacts of habituation
Not All of Me is Welcome Here: The Experiences of Trans and Gender Expansive Employees of Color in the U.S.
No full textEvery person should feel accepted at work. Organizations can signal that all identities are welcomed and protected through affirming factors in their environment, known as identity-safety cues. However, there are also things organizations can do to signal that certain identities are not welcome. Thus, the current study aims to identify these factors that can impact identity safety perceptions among transgender and nonbinary employees of color, as the past literature on transgender and gender expansive identity-safety cues predominately includes White-majority samples. Thus, the current study analyzes the intersection of marginalized racial/ethnic and gender identities, and how these combined identities impact the perceptions of identity-safety. Researchers conducted 21 semi-structured interviews through Zoom, which were analyzed by hand and through Dedoose software using reflexive thematic analysis. Results found that there are both organizational- and interpersonal-level factors that can impact identity safety. Indeed, at the organizational level, representation, systems and structures, and organizational inconsistency can impact identity safety. At the interpersonal level, levels of support, discrimination, and pronoun usage can impact identity safety. Overall, results indicated that it is not sufficient for organizations to signal identity safety for one identity; but rather, intersectional support is needed to allow transgender and gender expansive employees of color to feel safe at work
Soil Physics at Remote Sensing Footprint Scale: Emergent Properties and Applications
No full textSoil moisture (SM) accounts for a small fraction of the total global freshwater but exerts a disproportionately large influence on the global water budget. Decades-old efforts in characterizing SM controls at large spatial scales have made little difference in the process representation of soils in the existing land-surface/ Earth-System models. Currently, soil hydrological modeling remains starkly divided into two distinct paradigms: i) Point-to-field scale Vadose Zone Models, which treat soil as a 3-D porous media and the unsaturated flow is modeled with a fully parameterized, 4-D space-time model based on Richard���s equation, and, ii) Catchment Hydrology Models, where the soil is treated as a thin layer with finite, yet dynamic storage capacity. Fully distributed hyper-resolution hydrological models converge these paradigms, where the distributed soil parameters for the models are estimated by i) model inversion/ calibration or ii) through pedo-transfer functions, assuming the validity of Richard���s equation for modeling SM flow beyond fine scales. Despite critical limitations of application of Richard���s equation beyond a very limited spatial extent (typically ~1m), a universally accepted unified mathematical representation of landscape-scale flow in the vadose zone remains critically missing.
This study proposes a new paradigm of vadose zone process modeling to account for the complex and simultaneous interactions between hydro-bio-geo-chemical processes at the landscape scale as observed through remote sensing. We propose incorporating the emergent patterns of ecosystem-scale terrestrial water and energy linkages to develop a new understanding of vadose zone processes. We hypothesize that the effective manifestation of the spatiotemporal variability and controls of SM at landscape scales is engrained in scale-specific ���emergent��� properties, observable using remote-sensing datasets. Such emergent properties can be used to study, model, and predict soil hydrology, while accounting for the coupled processes in the hydro-bio-atmosphere which govern the effective SM dynamics at landscape scales. The objective of this research is to i) identify novel ���emergent��� properties of SM dynamics and controls at the landscape scale using remote sensing and, ii) demonstrate the application of the emergent SM properties in understanding SM dynamics and physical controls, hydrological modeling and monitoring hydrological extremes from continental- to- global scale
Wearable Bio-Impedance Sensing Methods for Continuous Monitoring of Hemodynamic Parameters
No full textContinuous monitoring of hemodynamic parameters such as blood pressure (BP) provides significant advantages in predicting future cardiovascular disease. Traditional BP measurement methods are based on a cuff, which is bulky, obtrusive, and not applicable to continuous monitoring. Measurement of blood pulsatile is one of the prominent cuffless methods for continuous BP monitoring. The pulse morphology and pulse transit time (PTT) which is the time taken by the pressure pulse to travel between two points in an arterial vessel are highly correlated with the BP. In this dissertation, we present a new cuffless BP method using an array of wrist-worn bio-impedance (Bio-Z) sensors placed on the wrist arteries to monitor the arterial pressure pulse from the blood volume changes. The Bio-Z sensing method is a non-invasive technique that can measure blood volume changes by injecting alternating current (AC) signal that flows deep into the tissue via a pair of electrodes and then, sensing the potential difference on another pair. We present the design of our custom Bio-Z sensing hardware and electrode array wristband that provide high-quality pulse signals through multi-channel Bio-Z sensing from the wrist. BP is accurately estimated by using the AdaBoost regression model based on selected arterial pressure pulse features. Post-exercise BP was accurately estimated with an average correlation coefficient of 0.77 for the diastolic BP and 0.86 for the systolic BP. In addition, we present a Bio-Z simulation platform that models the tissue and arterial pulse wave using a 3D circuit model based on a time-varying impedance grid. The proposed model will enable researchers to create time-varying blood flow models and rapidly test the effectiveness of the sensing methods and algorithms without the need for extensive experimentation. Furthermore, we propose a new multi-source multi-frequency Bio-Z sensing method that provides more localized pulsatile monitoring for improved PTT. Another Bio-Z method is proposed based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) autoencoder that estimates an accurate arterial pulse signal independent of sensing location from multiple pulse signals. The proposed methods contribute to reliable and accurate continuous monitoring of hemodynamic parameters from wrist-worn devices, which can contribute to more effective monitoring and management of the cardiovascular disease
