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STEM Major Perspectives for Humanizing Undergraduate Mathematics Classes
Full text linkUsing the eight dimensions of the rehumanizing framework [32] by Gutiérrez, built on a sociopolitical foundation, we report on research findings about what Latin* [41], Native American, LGBTQ+ and/or women science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors at two primarily white institutions (PWI) perceive as humanizing in their mathematics courses. In analysis of interviews with twenty students, we found that the core aspects of a humanized learning experience center relationality and a caring classroom environment. We then explore tensions that arose regarding the implementation of one teaching strategy reflecting the Cultures & Theirstories rehumanizing dimension, suggesting that implementation of such teaching moves matters in meeting a humanizing goal. We conclude with an expanded description of Gutiérrez’ rehumanizing framework
The Making of Mathematics: An Interview with Carlo Cellucci
Full text linkCarlo Cellucci is professor emeritus of the Sapienza University of Rome, and has written books on logic, mathematics, and philosophy. In the following interview conducted via back-and-forth email correspondence, he discusses his 2022 book, The Making of Mathematics: Heuristic Philosophy of Mathematics [3], which presents a new paradigm for thinking about, doing, and teaching mathematics
Age-Varying Associations Between Childhood Abuse and the Risk of Obesity Across Adulthood: Examining Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents to Adult Health
No full textChildhood abuse is a significant early-life stressor linked to adverse health outcomes such as obesity across adulthood. This study examines how the association between childhood abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) and obesity risk varies with age, using data from Waves I–V of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents to Adult Health (Add Health). Utilizing Time-Varying Effect Modeling (TVEM), the study identifies specific developmental periods during which the relationship between childhood abuse and obesity risk is strongest and investigates the moderating role of gender. The study found that all forms of childhood abuse are associated with elevated obesity risk across the life course, with distinct patterns over time. Physical abuse showed a stronger impact on obesity risk during late adolescence and early adulthood, with a resurgence of influence in later adulthood. Emotional abuse had a positive and long-lasting association with obesity risk from young adulthood into established adulthood. Sexual abuse was linked to increased obesity risk emerging in late adolescence, early adulthood, and established adulthood, with females experiencing particularly pronounced effects in early adulthood. These results highlight the temporal dynamics of childhood abuse on obesity risk across adulthood, offering critical insights for the timing and tailoring of prevention and intervention strategies. The study underscores the need for trauma-informed public health policies that address childhood abuse as a risk factor for obesity across adulthood, particularly at high-risk age windows. By identifying when and for whom the abuse-obesity link is strongest, this study informs more effective prevention strategies and health policies to mitigate long-term obesity risk among survivors of childhood abuse
Investigating Causal Inference of Policies: Ban the Box on Employment, Wage Transparency on Wage Gap, and Semi-Automatic Indexing & Tagging of CMES Medical Educational Documents
No full textThis dissertation is a collection of three chapters that investigate selected policy issues and their broader implications, specifically focusing on the causal inference of policies: Ban the Box on employment and Wage Transparency on wage gaps. The last chapter uses natural language processing to semi-automatically create indexes for medical documents. Chapter 1 - Ban the Box (BTB) policies move the inquiry about the candidate’s criminal record to later in the hiring process. The intention of this policy is to have employers evaluate the candidates based on their performance on the interview and qualifications instead of their criminal history. In this paper, we will study the effect of Ban the Box policy on employment for young men with no college degree in United States. We find that in the metropolitan areas where the policy was implemented, there is a negative effect on employment for unskilled young men; however, we are unable to conclude that these policies negatively impacted employment of unskilled young Black and Hispanic men with strong confidence. Chapter 2 - Gender-based wage disparities persist in the United States, despite significant strides toward workplace equality. This study investigates the wage gap, emphasizing the urgency of addressing this issue. Drawing on research by Blau and Khan (2017), we examine the extent of gender pay inequality and its implications for full-time private sector employees. In response to these disparities, legislative changes have been implemented at both the state and city levels. In particular, Ohio has proactively mandated wage transparency for firms in two of its metropolitan areas. This paper examines the impact of such legislation in two major cities in Ohio: Cincinnati (implemented in March 2020) and Toledo (implemented in June 2020). We find that the wage transparency policy in Ohio has a significant positive effect on female employees, resulting in a 4.8% increase in their income levels, while it has a significant negative effect on male employees, with a 6% decrease in their incomes. Furthermore, among female employees, white women are the only group positively impacted by the policy, while racial minority women experience no statistically significant change in their incomes. Among the male population, the incomes of non-white male employees are reduced by a higher percentage than those of their white counterparts. This suggests that, although the policy has reduced the gender wage gap, it has not addressed the gap between racial minority groups. Chapter 3 - Tagging of CMES Medical Educational Documents: Our project uses NLP (natural language processing) to semi-automatically create indexes for medical documents that are currently in PDF format. We improved the search engine (specifically, the searchable document tags) of the medical education documents in the CMES-Pi database owned by CMES (Continuing Medical Education on a Stick).Our aim is to examine a plethora of medical education documents and their existing tags, and then leverage use of NLP tools to determine an appropriate balance of broadness and specificity for tagging future documents with
A Vascular Flora of the Sacatar Trail Wilderness, Sierra Nevada, California
No full textThe Sacatar Trail Wilderness in Inyo and Tulare counties, California, encompasses a bioregional transition zone in the southeastern Sierra Nevada. The ca. 233 km 2 (90 mi 2 ) study area, located 32 km (20 mi) northwest of the city of Ridgecrest, ranges from 930 to 2698 m (3051–8851 ft) in elevation. The highly diverse California Floristic Province, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert converge in the region including the Wilderness creating conditions to support a broad spectrum of vegetation assemblages. The Bureau of Land Management has prohibited vehicular activity in this area since its wilderness designation in 1994; consequently, recent human impact has been minimal. Grazing, however, is still permitted throughout most of the wilderness and is a potential threat to the native flora. This area was considered a “botanical black hole” prior to 2022 with limited documentation of the plants that occur there. The primary goal of this project was to better document the vascular flora of the Sacatar Trail Wilderness and generate an annotated checklist supported by herbarium specimens. Over the course of this study in 2022 and 2023, 77 days were spent in the field and a total of 1,505 herbarium specimens were collected. With the addition of 578 historical collections, a vascular plant inventory was produced for the Sacatar Trail Wilderness that includes 507 minimum-rank taxa from 74 plant families. Over half of the checklist (266 minimum-rank taxa) were newly documented within the study area including 21 new county records. Twenty-four special-status (rare) taxa were observed, as well as 32 non-native taxa. Additionally, temperature data loggers were installed, and vegetation surveys were conducted along two transects spanning the study area’s elevational gradient at 305 m (1000 ft) intervals. This was done to associate localized temperature ranges with plant distribution and community composition. Background information about the study area, as well as temperature, vegetation, and floristic results are presented. In the context of climate change, this study is intended to serve as baseline data for future research in plant diversity and distribution shifts
An Evolving Standard of Decency: Examining the American Juvenile Justice System and the Constitutionality of Youth Incarceration
Full text linkThe United States incarcerates more children and adolescents than any other developed nation in the world. Studies have shown that juvenile detention is generally ineffective at rehabilitating delinquent youth, which places the practice at odds with the stated intent of modern juvenile justice. Similar to the adult criminal justice system, there is a significant and widespread disparity in the incarceration rate between that of minority youth and their white counterparts in the juvenile system. Finally, a substantial and growing body of medical and behavioral research concludes that trauma associated with juvenile detention can cause long-term or even lifetime negative neurological and developmental outcomes. Building on previous research, this dissertation applies prison abolition and critical race theories to youth incarceration to examine two constitutional questions: 1) Do the potentially permanent adverse neurological effects of trauma caused by non-therapeutic juvenile detention confirm that the practice of incarcerating youth is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment?, and 2) Does the stark racial disparity among America’s incarcerated youth reflect intrinsic structural features of the juvenile justice system that are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Relying on thematic, legal, and legislative content analysis, I submit that past Supreme Court opinions in Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment-related cases provide a compelling national interest rationale for Congress to ban non-therapeutic detention of youth offenders by amending the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974
A Theoretical Framework for Black Women’s Leader Development
Full text linkThis dissertation examines the leader development journeys of Black women, identifying key contributors and inhibitors that influence their progression into and experiences within formal leadership positions. This study employed a grounded theory methodology, integrated with an intersectional framework and Black feminist theory. Study data was gathered utilizing three methods: social media listening data points (n = 216), a leadership roadmap survey (n = 69), and structured interviews (n = 15). The open, axial, and selective coding led to the creation of a theoretical framework outlining two pathways to leadership outcomes: one shaped by inhibitors (e.g., identity management, overcompensation, hindrance, resource deficits) that result in negative outcomes like career disruptions and isolation, and another shaped by contributors (e.g., mentorship, advocacy, leadership training & experience) that promote positive outcomes like empowerment and advancement. The study also identified critical mechanisms, such as emotional/psychological toll and self-awareness in the inhibitor pathway, and leader self-views, advocacy, feedback, and trust in the contributor pathway. Contextual and individual factors, such as intersectionality, organizational dynamics, societal norms, and resilience were highlighted, demonstrating how these elements interact to hinder or support Black women’s leader development. These findings underscore the need for tailored leadership development strategies that account for the unique intersectional challenges Black women face and highlight the importance of organizational cultures that foster equitable leadership pathways for Black women. The resulting grounded theory provides a valuable framework for understanding Black women’s leadership development, offering organizations and practitioners insights into the barriers and enablers that shape their leadership journeys, and laying the groundwork for future validation studies
Components of Evolutionary Psychology are Falsifiable, But Does That Make It a Good Theory? Commentary on Costello et al. (2025)
Full text linkAt the center of narrow evolutionary psychology’s theory lies the assumption that many human behavioral mechanisms evolved via natural selection. Although some components of this theory are falsifiable, its Lakatosian framework protects its core assumptions from falsifiability, even though most human behaviors probably do not require evolutionary explanations. Crucially, falsifiability is a necessary but insufficient quality of a good scientific theory, and the value of narrow evolutionary psychology (NEP) can be questioned on other grounds. NEP holds that only natural selection can create complex, functional adaptations, but natural selection is not a creative force; this process merely functions as a sieve that influences phenotype frequencies in descendant populations. Instead, only developmental processes can create the adaptations observed in individuals. Evolutionary explanations for behaviors will always be less useful than developmental explanations, given the context-dependent, emergent, and plastic nature of development. Evolutionary explanations will often be superfluous
Graphical Timetables as a Real-life Example of Different Representations of Functions
Full text linkThis paper examines 203 pre-service teachers\u27 reactions and learning when they were introduced to a real-life situation in which it is natural to publish officially both graphs and tables of a given function: the situation of operating a railway. I found that almost all the pre-service teachers managed the easiest tasks, like calculating speeds, distances, and time for train represented by graphs. However, the more complicated tasks, which required interpretations of the graphs and tables, such as planning for a delayed train, finding which trains were locals, freight trains etc., were more difficult for them to grasp. There were few instances where the pre-service teachers had been exposed to real-life situations in their previous education, and while many of them welcomed such a realistic situation, others found the extra details the real-life situation required confusing. Nevertheless, the previous lack of exposure to realistic situations in their educations may highlight the need for more realistic examples in school and teacher education
Examples of Mathematics Personified
Full text linkSynesthesia is a cognitive condition in which multiply senses are stimulated at once. There are different types of synesthesia. For example, in a documented study [9], a person with synesthesia when considering the number three associates it as a male and a jerk. This association is persistent, always the same and automatic. Presented here are a variety of examples about mathematics in personified form. These examples focus on using personification as a way to better understand and appreciate mathematics