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An neuroscience approach to investigate creativity in engineers with the effects of indoor environment quality (IEQ)
Get PDFInvestigations of creativity have been an intriguing topic for a long time, but assessing creativity is extremely complex. Creativity is a cornerstone of engineering disciplines, so understanding creativity and how to enhance creative abilities through engineering education has received substantial attention. Fields outside of engineering are no stranger to neuro-investigations of creativity and although some neuro-response studies have been conducted to understand creativity in engineering, these studies need to map the engineering design and concept generation processes better. Using neuroimaging techniques alongside engineering design and concept generation processes is necessary for understanding how to improve creativity studies in engineering. Recently, a growing number of studies have revealed that some types of indoor environmental stimuli can enhance human creativity. Further, for generating creative ideas temporal dynamics of cognitive processes are critical. However, how the temporal dynamics of creativity are influenced by the indoor environment remains unclear. This research found that each stage of the temporal dynamics of creativity may be differently correlated with neural function. Further, indoor environmental factors may have various, and sometimes contrasting, effects on the temporal dynamics of creativity. Despite recent progress, there are significant gaps in understanding the effects of indoor environmental quality (IEQ), especially air quality and factors related to visual, thermal and acoustic comfort that are closely tied to performance on cognitive tasks. This is due to the lack of understanding of the effects of IEQ on human physiological and neural responses. Nonetheless, this is the first study to clarify the influence of indoor environmental settings on the temporal dynamics of creativity from the perspective of neuroscience
Indigenous Deliberation: Community Driven Research, Dual-Role Researchers, and Capacity Building in the Chickasaw Nation
Get PDFThis study examines the experiences and roles of community researchers in The Chickasaw Nation’s Indigenous Deliberation. The 2-day deliberative gathering happened in 2018 which sets a precedence for continued Indigenous Deliberation with various partners with the Center for the Ethics of Indigenous Genomic Research (CEIGR). The deliberation was community-driven and situated in the needs and concerns of The Chickasaw Nation. This study used interviews with the community researchers, the deliberative event’s transcripts, and autoethnography experiences of the author as an Indigenous scholar and academic partner of CEIGR to analyze the roles and decisions community researchers enacted. The three entry points for data is analyzed together for this case study of the first Indigenous Deliberation conducted within a Tribal community about Genomic research and biobanking. A thematic analysis was conducted to determine the overarching themes of Indigenous Deliberation within collaborative partnerships between community and academic researchers. Three themes permeated each entry point: Community Contextualization, Deliberant Support, and Equitable Partnerships. Findings explore the themes surrounding the community-driven deliberation and the roles community researchers played in its planning, implementation, and evaluation. Findings indicate community-driven research should be focused within the community research is being conducted and that their needs are paramount. Findings support and build upon the need for equitable partnerships between Indigenous peoples and academics. Through the experiences of the community researchers, I explore the complexity in maintaining relationships. I explain how each theme is present in each step of the deliberation process and how those roles work together to support an Indigenous Deliberation
Combinatorial Aspects of the Ikeda Lift via Extended Gross-Keating Data
Get PDFThis thesis is motivated by the problem of studying the Ikeda lift via a converse theorem due
to R. Weissauer. We investigate a certain function; denoted by (; ), where is a positive
integer and is a symmetric positive-definite half-integral matrix; appearing in the Fourier
coefficient formulas of a linear version of the Ikeda lift due to W. Kohnen. We develop
new methods for computing (; ) via the extended Gross-Keating (EGK) datum of a
quadratic form and develop novel combinatorial interpretations for (; ) which involve
integer partitions with restrictions depending on the EGK datum attached to at each prime
Demographic and behavioral characteristics of wintering sparrow populations in a South Carolina salt marsh
Get PDFThroughout the world, coastal communities both human and natural face the existential threat of rapidly rising seawater levels resulting from global climate change. Since 2012, my collaborators and I have been monitoring a community of sparrows that overwinter within the extensive salt marshes of Kiawah Island in South Carolina, USA. The three species that comprise this community of “marsh sparrows” are Seaside Sparrow (Ammospiza maritima), Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta), and Nelson’s Sparrow (Ammospiza nelsoni), and they can all be readily captured during above-average high-tides during which they are forced to occupy a few salt marsh patches that remain above water. This dissertation documents long-term banding efforts, field experiments, and GIS analyses to assess the current status of the Kiawah Island marsh sparrows, their capacity to cope with environmental changes, and ultimately their prospects for survival over the next 75 years. The three chapters of this dissertation take on each of these subjects in turn.
In Chapter One, I compiled eight years of bird-banding data and used open-population capture-recapture models to estimate annual survival and wintering abundance of the three “marsh sparrow” populations. I employed three different population modeling approaches that included both classical mark-recapture analyses as well as a relatively new spatial modeling approach. To determine which model was best, I simulated bird populations on Kiawah Island as well as the sampling regime (i.e., banding efforts) to see which modeling approach yielded results that best reflected the input parameters for the simulation. Annual survival for all three species generally ranged from 0.5 to 0.8 across all years of the study. Density/abundance estimates indicated that as many as 1,848 marsh sparrows occupy the ~1,650 hectares of salt marsh surrounding Kiawah Island. Although the capture and banding efforts did not fully conform to the expectations of a mark-recapture analysis, my simulation efforts indicated that a classical Cormack-Jolly-Seber model provided the most accurate estimates of annual survival.
In Chapter Two, we used radio surveillance methods and translocation experiments to study the movement abilities and site fidelity of Nelson’s, Saltmarsh, and Seaside Sparrows. The vast majority of translocated birds returned successfully to their initial capture sites (presumed winter home range area), and they generally did so within a few days, regardless of whether they were displaced across fragmented or continuous marsh landscapes. We found no clear evidence that return success differed among species or between landscape treatment (continuous marsh vs. fragmented marsh). Return times did not appear to be significantly influenced by species, landscape treatment, or translocation distance. The high rate and speed of returns following displacement indicates a strong fidelity in marsh sparrows to wintering home ranges and associated high-tide roost sites.
In Chapter Three, we evaluated losses of wintering habitat for marsh sparrows at Kiawah Island under future sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios. We specified four different SLR scenarios in our local models and found that even the most moderate predictions for SLR entailed dramatic losses of salt marsh habitat on Kiawah Island. For the more severe SLR scenarios, our models predicted that Kiawah would not likely sustain overwintering marsh sparrows by the year 2075
Inclusive Metadata Strategies at Max Chambers Library
Get PDFMax Chambers Library is committed to serving underrepresented communities. One way this is accomplished is through the professional catalogers' dedication to accurately and respectfully describing materials relating to underrepresented communities. They are actively taking steps to ameliorate these problematic practices that directly affect the Central community's access to library resources. In this presentation, the catalogers will describe various projects undertaken in the areas of offensive/outdated terminology, issues in classification, and retroactively and actively adding inclusive language to records.N
An integrative ecological and evolutionary genomic study of lake Daphnia across time
Get PDFAn undisputable fact of the modern age is that human activities are now a major force shaping the biosphere. Some have called for a new geological epoch called the “Anthropocene” or the age of humans— the search is underway for a reliable and unambiguous mark in the geological record for the designation of this new epoch. As a biologist, however, I am reminded daily of the “marks” this age has left on the world around us. The American philosopher and ecologist Aldo Leopold perhaps said it best when he described an “ecological education” as “living alone in a world of wounds.” What follows in this dissertation is maybe best described as searching for wounds, for marks, in biological archives that allow us to better understand the ecosystems of the Anthropocene.
My dissertation is focused primarily on studying the widespread crustacean zooplankter, Daphnia pulicaria. A common refrain in the following chapters will be to point out the function of this and related species in lake ecosystems and their value to the humans that enjoy and benefit from lakes. Daphnia in lakes are important for two reasons; first, they are keystone species of the pelagic food webs, connecting primary production from algae to higher trophic levels namely fish. Daphnia thus support the recreational and commercial fisheries of freshwater lakes. A knock-on benefit of Daphnia trophic position is they control the standing crop of algae in freshwater ecosystems and maintain water clarity, so lakes are not choked with noxious algal blooms. My dissertation is separated into three chapters. In the first chapter, I sequence, assemble, and annotate a genome for D. pulicaria using the latest long-read DNA sequencing technology. We use the genomic resources developed for this species to better understand its evolutionary history, especially its split from the closely related “sister” species D. pulex. This reference genome is important for enabling other work, a thread we pick up in the third and final chapter.
In my second chapter, I chronicled the 175-years history of D. pulicaria and other Daphnia species in a small lake that will be the primary focus of the last two chapters. Tanners Lake is an ecosystem replete with wounds from the numerous human activities that dominate the landscape surrounding it. Due to their landscape position, lakes integrate vast amounts of information about their watersheds in their sediments. Tanners Lake records in its sediments the history of a landscape dominated by humans with the development of a major city surrounding it. Located just outside of Saint Paul, MN, Tanners Lake is impacted by two major human impacts inflicted on Northern Temperate Lakes. It is not only eutrophic, from the export of unprecedented amounts of nutrients but also it is severely salinized. Freshwater salinization is a consequence of the widespread use of de-icing salts on impervious surfaces such as roads and parking lots- a ubiquitous feature of human-dominated landscapes. I collected sediment cores from Tanners Lake to reconstruct the ecological dynamics of the Daphnia community across time in this lake by examining the abundance and diversity of resting eggs (encased in durable sclerotized structures called ephippia) across time in the core. I found that only modest changes in diversity and abundance occurred in the lake during salinization. This result suggests that Daphnia may be resilient to the threat of salinization- perhaps maintaining the ecosystems they support despite salinization.
The results of my second chapter set up an important question to tackle in my third chapter. Since D. pulicaria remains in Tanners Lake despite salinization, is this population evolving higher tolerance to these conditions? We tackle this question using an approach that is somewhat unique to Daphnia, by hatching the eggs contained in the ephippia from across time. This method known as Resurrection Ecology, allows us to sample individuals from across time and study their phenotypes and genotypes. I hatched Daphnia from across approximately 25 years (~1994-2019) and resequenced their genomes. In addition, we also evaluated these D. pulicaria clones for their tolerance to salinity using phenotypic (i.e., survivorship) assays. I compiled this data set together to understand the evolution of this population through time. The genomic data supports the idea that salinity is a driving force for evolution in this population. In particular, genes related to osmoregulation and salinity tolerance are enriched within the statistical outliers. The phenotypic data supported this finding, as we observed that the salinity tolerance of modern Daphnia was higher than that of the ancestors hatched from the sediment.
Interestingly, while I initially described this work as a search for ecological and or evolutionary wounds, I was surprised to find that while they exist in very real ways in the biological archives studied, they are not mortal. My research, taken together, suggests that Daphnia populations should have the potential to respond to human threats and evolve to maintain the ecosystems they support. However, this resiliency will be highly dependent on the speed and intensity of the threats that these systems will face, as well as the strength of the evolutionary forces (i.e., selection, drift, migration, mutation) that will shape the underlying genetic structure of these populations
An American Knightmare: Joker, Fandom, and Malicious Movie Meaning-Making
Get PDFThis monograph concerns the long-standing communication problem of how individuals can identify and resist the influence of unethical public speakers. Scholarship on the issue of what Socrates & Plato called the “Evil Lover” – i.e., the ill-intended rhetor – began with the Greek philosophers, but has carried into [post]Modern anxieties. For instance, the study of Nazi propaganda machines, and the rhetoric of Hitler himself, rejuvenated interest in the study of speech and communication in the U.S. and Europe. Whereas unscrupulous sophists used lectures and legal forums, and Hitler used a microphone, contemporary Evil Lovers primarily draw on new, internet-related tools to share their malicious influence. These new tools of influence are both more far-reaching and more subtle than the traditional practices of listening to a designated speaker appearing at an overtly political event. Rhetorician Ashley Hinck has recently noted the ways that popular culture – communication about texts which are commonly accessible and shared – are now significant sites through which citizens learn moral and political values. Accordingly, the talk of internet influencers who interpret popular texts for other fans has the potential to constitute strong persuasive power regarding ethics and civic responsibility.
The present work identifies and responds to a particular case example of popular culture text that has been recently, and frequently, leveraged in moral and civic discourses: Todd Phillips’ Joker. Specifically, this study takes a hermeneutic approach to understanding responses, especially those explicitly invoking political ideology, to Joker as a method of examining civic meaning-making. A special emphasis is placed on the online film criticisms of Joker from white nationalist movie fans, who clearly exemplify ways that media responses can be leveraged by unethical speakers (i.e., Evil Lovers) and subtly diffused. The study conveys that these racist movie fans can embed values related to “trolling,” incelism, and xenophobia into otherwise seemingly innocuous talk about film. While the sharing of such speech does not immediately mean its positive reception, this kind of communication yet constitutes a new and understudied attack on democratic values such as justice and equity. The case of white nationalist movie fan film criticism therefore reflects a particular brand of communicative strategy for contemporary Evil Lovers in communicating unethical messages under the covert guise of mundane movie talk
Developing and Applying Hybrid Deep Learning Models for Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Medical Image Data
Get PDFThe dissertation discusses three methods to address the challenges of applying deep learning models to medical imaging. The first method involves the development of a new joint deep learning model, J-Net, to achieve lesion segmentation and classification simultaneously. The J-Net model outperforms the individual models in accuracy with small datasets. The second method performs automatic image detection using a two-stage deep learning model to produce clean data. The third method involves developing multi-stage deep learning algorithms to generate synthetic medical image data, which can be used to overcome the lack of large, diverse datasets. These methods demonstrate that building enhanced training datasets can play a vital role in improving the performance of deep-learning models in medical imaging applications
Low-Cost Video-Oculography System for Eye Tracking
Get PDFThe vestibular system plays a critical role in balancing and the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), which aids in maintaining visual stability during head movements. Current methods of vestibular research rely on scleral coils and video-oculography (VOG) with markers. These processes are potentially damaging to the test subject and painful. A comfortable non-invasive procedure is VOG without the use of markers. However, this option foregoes the accuracy of the others. A machine learning approach was explored to see if this gap in functionality could be closed. VOG is a visual-based technique of measuring eye movements. This method is used in vestibular and oculomotor research and medical diagnosis involving vertigo and stroke. A Machine Learning system was developed by training object-detection models from TensorFlow with a headset fabricated for this project. The horizontal/vertical movements were tracked by recording the model’s bounding box. From the bounding box, the center of the pupil can be derived via the geometric center. The location of the pupil center is used to calculate the angular velocity of the eye. A 3d-printed headset was fabricated to test the system using a gyroscope, raspberry pi, button light, and camera. The headset’s rotational data collection is processed along with the images captured. The rate of error was calculated to be more than scleral coils, although a more thoroughly trained model could be able to reduce error. The pupil miss rate limits the accuracy but using a higher speed and resolution camera will ameliorate the problem. A machine learning process was explored for the use of vestibular-ocular research in 2D. A low-cost headset was fabricated as an alternative to the current methods which are significantly more expensive