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The Rise and Fall of a Video Game Dynasty and Its Road Back to Glory
Get PDFFor years the EA Sports NCAA Football series had been a long-standing success story in the world of sports video games. Combining the unique feel of collegiate athletics with the realistic nature of the game that its technology provides led the series to be a major source of revenue for Electronic Arts, Inc. in the extremely competitive and profitable industries of video games and sports merchandising.
However, the series came to an abrupt halt in 2013. Spearheaded by the O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, EA was forced to discontinue the series after legal action was taken regarding the game’s unauthorized use of student-athletes’ name, image, and likeness. The landscape of collegiate athletics took a major turn in June of 2021 when the NCAA suspended its previous NIL rules and announced the implementation of a new “interim” NIL policy. This opened the door for the return of the series, which announced a comeback in February of 2021.
This thesis explores the impact of NIL on both the discontinuation and return of the iconic video game series by dissecting the historical context of the game, legal challenges involved with its production, and the ever-changing world of NIL policies to provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics at play
How Others Influence Our Identity: The Effects of Closeness, Self-Verification, Need Fulfillment, and Self-Disclosure
Get PDFRelationships and identity are fundamental aspects of the human experience. Thus, it is vital for us to understand how these two factors are connected. In the present study, I hope to further advance our understanding by identifying psychological mechanisms that occur between individuals and close others, which could be related to their identity. Two hundred participants were recruited using Prolific, a crowd-sourcing platform for research, and they were paid $2.00 each for participation. Through a self-report survey, participants were asked to measure their Sense of Identity (SOI) on an eight-item scale. Then, they were asked to think of someone who influenced their Sense of Identity, provide an anecdote of how that close other affected them, and rate how impactful this experience was. Lastly, participants were asked to complete an Identity Mechanisms Scale (IMS) that the researchers created, which contains ten psychological mechanisms that could affect identity. Results show that five of these relational mechanisms (closeness, self-verification, competence, relatedness, and others’ self-disclosure) are significantly related to participants’ Sense of Identity. That is, participants with a stronger Sense of Identity reported having closer relationships, that others tell them the truth about themselves, that others make them feel competent, that others make them feel they belong, and that others share thoughts and feelings with them. I hope that this study can serve as a foundation for further research, offering implications for both social and developmental psychologists. Additionally, the findings could benefit clinical practitioners as well, helping patients foster healthy relationship dynamics and positive identity development
The Importance of Data Preparation in a Data Science Problem
No full textThis study is going to be based on an inventory outlier automation data science problem that is being solved to identify and prescribe inventory level outliers to help keep shelves stocked in terms of beverages. The objective of this paper will address why it is so important to understand the data that is involved in a particular data science problem and how planning ahead ensures a successful outcome in the data science world. In this data science project, Spatiotemporal Outlier Analysis for Inventory Intervention Automation, it was crucial for the team to understand, research, and visualize the data we were working with so we could prepare our data for the models correctly. We had to encode many values and deal with many null values, as well as cluster our data using date time warp clustering to feed it into our random forest model for the most accurate, yet not too granular results to get an importance list and be able to prescribe outliers. The team hopes to provide our industry partners, The Coca Cola Company, with an automated system to be ran every week that will clean the data, cluster the data, feed the clustered data to the random forest model, and output an importance list that can be interpreted to identify what specific products need attention in terms of inventory level. We then used Alteryx to build out a flow of all the code the team made to have it in one cohesive place, as this automated process was built with sample, static datasets limited to a year of inventory for only a couple states. When we then feed our models tens of millions of rows of data, we can better train our models and therefore produce better results. With all the code put into a single flow, the result is an importance list of the top 10 contributing features to why a certain product had an inventory outage. This paper will cover the importance of the first two phases of the data science cycle (Understand, the Data), how it impacted our project, and why it is so important in the general data science world
Effects of Maternal Infant-Directed Sensory Cues on Early Weaned Piglet Behavior
Get PDFIn the commercial pig production industry, weaning is a stressful time. Stress is related to loss in production due to increased incidence of illness, increased aggression, and reduced rate of gain, which results in economic losses for the producer. The purpose of this continuous behavior study was to explore the effects of provisional own-mother olfactory and auditory stimuli on early weaned piglet behavior and growth. During days 7-14 postpartum, the grunting of 12 individual sows was recorded while their piglets nursed. The audio files were put into a single loop with grunting occurring for 20 minutes followed by 60 minutes of silence. A cotton cloth was rubbed along the ventral midline of each sow and vacuum sealed to preserve scent. Eight piglets per litter (4 male and 4 female) for each of 12 litters were selected and randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: control (CON, no scent, no vocal), scent (S), vocal (V), and vocal with scent (VS). Piglets were weighed and transported to an offsite nursery at 19 days of age. VS group was exposed to the vocalization loop for 7 days and cloths with their own mother’s scent for 48 hours. V group was provided the vocalization loop for 7 days and cloths with no scent for 48 hours. S group was provided cloth with mother’s scent for 48 hours. CON group was exposed to cloths with no scent for 48 hours. Behaviors deemed important to the study were approaching the scent towers curious, approaching the scent towers interested, approach feeder, feeding, and fighting. Behaviors were monitored with continual video recording for 7 days. Piglets weight was recorded on days 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 28, and 42. GLIMMEX Mixed Model Procedure SAS (Cary, NC) was used for data analysis. Results demonstrated that the scent groups had a significant reduction of fighting (
Surveys Assessing Food Security and Willingness to Buy Dairy Products in Mauritius Conducted Summer 2022
Get PDFIn the summer of 2022, I worked on a team of University of Arkansas and University of Mauritius students to administer surveys regarding the consumption of dairy milk and the impact of COVID-19 on food security in the island nation of Mauritius. This project was created by both universities in conjunction with the Mauritian Ministry of Agro Industry and Food Security
Workplace Wellness
Get PDFThe evolving landscape of workplace dynamics underscores a growing emphasis on achieving a better work-life balance and healthier lifestyle, particularly among younger generations entering the workforce. This shift in preferences highlights the importance of companies adapting to meet the needs of employees by offering flexibility and support for wellness initiatives. A workplace culture that promotes work-life balance not only enhances employee satisfaction but also leads to increased productivity and decreased healthcare costs. While comprehensive wellness programs and flexible work arrangements are beneficial, they may not be universally applicable. However, the overarching commitment to creating a supportive and healthy work environment remains crucial. As individuals seek workplaces that prioritize employee well-being and offer flexibility, the trend towards fostering healthier and more balanced work environments continues to gain momentum. Ultimately, finding a workplace that aligns with one\u27s values and encourages a healthy work-life balance is a desirable goal for both employees and employers alike
What Impact did the TCJA Tax Cuts Have on the Manufacturing Sector?
Get PDFThroughout this paper I will examine positive effects the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had on the manufacturing sector. To do this I begin by outlining the key provisions in the TCJA that directly benefit the manufacturing sector. This includes the corporate tax rate reduction from 35 percent to 21 percent, the changes to the repatriation tax for foreign funds, and the treatment for capital assets. I then analyze key metrics including pre-tax income, income tax provision, dividends, changes in retained earnings, and spending on property plant and equipment. I will show the interactions between the increase in these key metrics after the passing of TCJA. I will then analyze the industrial sector of the S&P 500 and show the positive effect the TCJA act had on index returns. Finally, I will discuss the critiques of the TCJA before concluding my paper
LGBTQ+ Spaces in Rural Arkansas that Accommodate and Advocate for Queer Existence
Get PDFQueer communities located in rural Arkansas are often scarce and elusive to the public eye as a justified reaction to mass negative interpretations and understandings of these LGBTQ+ individuals from a predominantly conservative population. The few who have a more broadcasted identity are subject to potential public scrutiny, but offer queer individuals needed refuge and areas of unfiltered self-expression. This paper explores two LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and other identifying individuals) communities and their concomitant establishments: Santuario Arco Iris, an esteemed communal settlement designed specifically for BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color), queer individuals in Boxley, AR, and Safe To Be, the upcoming tiny-home community in Eureka Springs created with the intention of providing affordable living to queer individuals. Queer Space precedents and theories are explained and interviews with mentioned communities are analyzed. Findings archive and offer insight to the complex similarities and differences between the investigated groups, consequently providing a comprehensive template for the design of queer space/community in rural locations and potentially broader