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An Exploration of the Experiences of Perinatal Depression and Anxiety Among Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida
No full textPerinatal depression (PND) and perinatal anxiety (PNA) are increasing among pregnant and parenting adolescents (PPAs), with PNA often underrecognized. This leads to significant socioeconomic costs and adverse maternal consequences if untreated. Hence, this dissertation explores the experiences of PND and PNA among PPAs, focusing on their knowledge gaps, perception, mental health needs, care preferences, and access to PMH care. The research employs a qualitative design (free-listing and in-depth interviews) to gather participant insights. Key findings reveal that many PPAs possess limited knowledge about PNA when compared to PND. Lack of support from partners, family, and peers emerged as the topmost cause of PND and PNA among PPAs. The data revealed that PND and PNA significantly impact the various dimensions of the PPA’s life. The mental health needs of PPAs are evolving; however, participants in our study expressed a heightened awareness of their psychosocial mental health needs even more than their perinatal mental health needs. The results highlight diverse PPA preferences for PMH care, influenced by their individual needs. The most emphasized PMH care delivery consideration was preferred care settings and providers. Factors inherent to the PPA strongly influence both barriers and facilitators to access PMH care. Considering the impact of PND and PNA on PPAs, a comprehensive approach to PMH care addressing their developmental and psychosocial needs is essential. There is a pressing need for more formative research to harness these insights in developing and testing a scalable multicomponent PMH intervention with PPAs, such as family-centered approaches
Evaluating and Improving the Serious Game LIFE with Hereditary Cancer
No full textHereditary cancer syndromes increase cancer risks for individuals with pathogenic variants and their family members, yet many at-risk individuals do not pursue genetic testing due to barriers in family communication. Serious games—interactive tools designed to educate through gameplay—offer a promising approach to addressing these barriers by engaging users and creating supportive learning environments. LIFE with Hereditary Cancer is a serious game designed to improve genetic literacy, promote informed decision-making, and encourage family conversations about hereditary cancer risks and genetic testing. This evaluation used a mixed-methods approach to assess participant emotions, perceptions, and experiences with LIFE with Hereditary Cancer and identify ways to enhance its impact on family communication and education about hereditary cancer. Participants were 18 or older and had experienced hereditary cancer firsthand or through a family member, except for one genetic counseling student. Participants played the game, completed surveys assessing emotions, perceptions, and experiences using Likert-scale items and the Net Promoter Score (NPS), and participated in focus groups to provide feedback on the game. Descriptive statistics summarized quantitative findings, while key categories and quotes were pulled from focus group discussions. Likert-scale ratings (1-5) indicated high usefulness (M = 4.65), high appropriateness (M = 4.40), moderately favorable emotions (M = 3.90) and anticipated outcomes (M = 3.70), but revealed lower scores for having learned new information (M = 2.20). The highest-rated item was the game’s ability to encourage conversation about hereditary cancer (5.00). Net Promoter Scores (NPS) revealed a strong likelihood of participants recommending the game to others with hereditary cancer (NPS = 60, which is typically considered great). However, a lower willingness to use the game with their own family (NPS = -20), primarily because they have already shared most of the information in the game, highlights potential barriers to using this as a way to follow-up with family. Focus group feedback highlighted the game’s potential to spark conversations about hereditary cancer in the family, while also identifying areas for improvement. Recommendations included simplifying complex content in the character books and transitioning to an in-person board game format. Participants identified emotional and practical barriers, such as the challenge of initiating and sensitivity of discussing hereditary cancer, as key obstacles that might prevent families from using the resource. It was suggested that the game be better suited for training healthcare providers, while others felt that using the character booklets that go along with the game as an individual guide might be more appropriate. LIFE with Hereditary Cancer shows promise as a tool for initiating conversations about hereditary cancer; however, its current format as a game may not be ideal for individuals with hereditary cancer and it may not add value for our highly engaged and knowledgeable individuals who piloted it. Incorporating participant feedback to refine the game and explore alternative formats—such as an individual “choose your own journey” format or repurposing it as a resource for healthcare provider training—could enhance its usability and impact
Distributed Repeaters for Extending the Range of Harmonic RF Tags
No full textPassive harmonic Radio Frequency (RF) tags are highly advantageous compared to theiractive counterparts due to their ability to operate effectively in environments that are cluttered or where access to the tag for battery maintenance is challenging, dangerous and/or time consuming. They are also resistant to the local oscillator (LO) phase noise in radar applications where the doppler frequency from slow moving targets is buried beneath the noise. One of the major constraints of passive harmonic RF tags, however, lies in their operating range and the significant amount of power required to overcome the conversion loss and activate the nonlinear device responsible for transmitting the harmonic of the incident signal.
This work introduces the concept of harmonic RF tag repeaters as a solution to extend the tag’s range while simultaneously increasing the power incident on the tag, which is necessary to activate the nonlinear device that generates the harmonic signal. This way, harmonic tags that are concealed can be excited from a far enough distance without transmitting enormous amount of power from the tag interrogator. The study employs a 2.4 GHz and 4.8 GHz bi-directional repeater, which is designed to amplify both the fundamental and harmonic signals between the transceiver source and the RF tag. The experimental results demonstrate that by incorporating repeaters, the range of the passive harmonic tag can be enhanced by a factor of 3 to 4, increasing from 2 meters to a minimum of 6 meters with just one repeater. Furthermore, the power required to activate the nonlinear device also improves as the distance increases, showing the effectiveness of the repeater in optimizing tag performance
Context and Interpretability in Affective Computing Applications
No full textAffective Computing (AC) is a subdomain of AI that primarily deals with recognizing and interpreting human emotions. This field inherently intersects with psychological studies, as the comprehension of human emotions and behaviors necessitates an understanding of their underlying cognitive processes. One such concepts that lends itself from psychology is context. Roughly speaking, context in AC is defined as any meta information (e.g., environment) that can be utilized to describe the interaction between a user and a model to solve a particular application (e.g., emotion recognition). This doctoral dissertation comprises of two distinct yet interconnected components (Part I and II), the first of which seeks to analyze and study the effect of integrating such contexts in designing AC applications.
In the first part, we investigate the impact of context across diverse affect-based systems, including those designed for reflective thinking, continuous authentication, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) analysis. Initially, we examine the effect of task-specific classifiers in a unimodal system for reflective thinking prediction and showcase the performance improvement on inclusion of the tasks as context. Next, we shift our focus to multimodal systems for continuous authentication, where we delve into the effects of multiple emotional responses (context) as an indicator for identifying a particular subject across different sessions. We demonstrate that although context inclusion yields improved performance, its impact is superseded by model\u27s capability to perform continuous authentication in a single-session environment. Finally, we illustrate the influence of clinician-focused sessions as context to classify children videos with PTSD. we further extend our study of context by evaluating the inter-dependencies across context and its contribution towards the classification. Concluding with the release of a new context-integrated dataset to further expand the resources available for research in this domain.
The significance of context-aware affect systems is paralleled by the critical role of model interpretability. The aforementioned applications of affect extends to healthcare, biometrics, and education which are considered highly sensitive fields and the interpretation of machine learning model output is of paramount importance due to the potential consequences of erroneous conclusion. To this end, the second part of the dissertation focuses on novel representation learning approaches to interpretable predictions. More specifically, we employ probabilistic likelihood models to learn class-specific distribution to provide exact likelihood values of a data point belonging to a particular class, as opposed to softmax psuedo-probabilities. For instance, our initial work proposes a facial expression recognition (FER) model using normalizing flows to learn latent representations per expression. We showcase that while this approach produces latent representations consistent with model output, it exhibits limitations in real-world classification scenarios. To overcome these constraints, we introduce an innovative loss function that leverages supervised contrastive learning (SCL) to capture class-specific distributions rather than representations. We find that although this novel method enhances classification accuracy, its primary contribution lies in its capacity to detect out-of-distribution data, a crucial yet under-explored application in affective computing. We provide extensive quantitative and qualitative analysis to validate our approach
New Attack Surfaces Against Emerging Cloud and Web Based Infrastructures and Defenses
No full textEmerging network security threats, ranging from cloud-based infrastructure attacks to web-based content subversion, pose significant challenges to modern computing environments. In this dissertation, we explore two novel attack vectors that disrupt both cloud-based infrastructures and web-based content systems.
In this dissertation, we first introduce the Warmonger attack, a novel attack vector that can cause denial-of-service between a serverless computing platform and an external content server. The Warmonger attack exploits the fact that a serverless computing platform shares the same set of egress IPs among all serverless functions, which belong to different users, to access an external content server. As a result, a malicious user on this platform can purposefully misbehave and cause these egress IPs to be blocked by the content server, resulting in a platform-wide denial of service. To validate the Warmonger attack, we ran months-long experiments, collected and analyzed the egress IP usage pattern of four major serverless service providers (SSPs). We also conducted an in-depth evaluation of an attacker’s possible moves to attack an external server and cause IP blockage. We demonstrate that some SSPs use surprisingly small numbers of egress IPs and share them among their users, and that the serverless platform provides sufficient leverage for a malicious user to conduct well-known misbehaviors and cause IP-blockage. Our study unveiled a potential security threat on the emerging serverless computing platform, and shed light on potential mitigation approaches.
In the second part of this work, we investigate security vulnerabilities in the use of fonts in digital documents and web pages, focusing on PDF documents and web-based emails. We find multiple attack surfaces that can be exploited by an adversary using malicious fonts. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of Portable Document Format (PDF) documents collected from the real world to investigate how an attacker can bypass PDF signatures. We further evaluate the potential security threats that an attacker can bring to web-based emails. Our study shows that various security issues may be caused by the inappropriate use of fonts, which have nevertheless been overlooked in the past years. As such, guidelines promoting the secure use of fonts could be beneficial in reinforcing the security measures for digital documents and web pages
Tomb 007: Virginia Walton
No full textDescription: Marble tablet with a sandstone base, which has been parged with concrete (most of which is lost). A central fracture across the middle of the tablet was patched with a fine, gray mortar and the full tablet appears to have been reset into this base with pins. Virginia Walton (child) - B. 4/8/1850, D. 4/2/1854. The records for her parents are also present: George Washington Walton (D. 1886) and Mary Ann Walton (D. 1892). They had at least one other child, Willie, who died in 1878 at age 18 whose resting place is unrecorded. The parents were both buried in Evergreen Cemetery. (Source: St. Johns Co. Deaths 1800-1899)
Material(s): Marble, Sandstone
Dimensions: (Tablet) 16” Wide, 2” Thick; (Base) 32” Wide, 8.5” Deep; (Overall) 34.5” Highhttps://digitalcommons.usf.edu/idex_tolomato/1015/thumbnail.jp
Tomb 032: EFM
No full textDescription: Small segmental-arched marble tablet. Most likely a footstone.
Materials: Marble
Orientation: West-Easthttps://digitalcommons.usf.edu/idex_tolomato/1036/thumbnail.jp
Tomb 073: Francisca Gonzalez
No full textSegmental-arched tablet on base set into a concrete slab with a marble footstone. Concrete slab is scored to resemble the traditional cradle. The slab appears to have been parged with light tan stucco (only trace amounts remain).
Material(s): Marble, Concrete
Dimensions: Tablet: 16” Wide, 2” Thick, 37” High. Base: 22” Wide, 11” Deep, 5.25” High. Slab: 30.25” Wide, 59” Deep, 1.5” High (South, the North is below grade). Footstone: 5.25” Wide, 2” Thick, 8.75” High.
Orientation: East-West
Enclosure: 72Psthttps://digitalcommons.usf.edu/idex_tolomato/1000/thumbnail.jp
Ceramic Etruscan Kyathos
No full textA bucchero sottile drinking cup on a high stem with flaring foot. The body is ornamented with alternating buds and petals. The exterior of the lip is incised with a zigzag band between parallel horizontal lines, the interior with two horizontal lines. The strap handle extends prominently above the rim. The top is decorated with a stylized, double-sided head of Potnia Theron (“Mistress of Animals”). An additional bar joins the handle to the rim. An applique male head marks the join of the handle with the rim of the cup. Known as kyathos, this class of cups was an originally Etruscan shape. This particular type was popular at Vulci in the Archaic period. The term kyathos, however, is derived from the Classical Greek word for a ladle to draw wine from a mixing vessel.https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etruscan/1010/thumbnail.jp