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Gneiss Domes, Vertical and Horizontal Mass Transfer, and the Initiation of Extension in the Hot Lower-Crustal Root of a Continental Arc, Fiordland, New Zealand
No full textDecreasing Weight Bias in Healthcare Professionals
No full textDNP ProjectIntroduction/Purpose: Weight bias in healthcare contributes to poor patient outcomes, care avoidance, and reduced quality of interactions. It also influences healthcare students who may adopt biased behaviors modeled by their preceptors. This project aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an interactive training module in increasing awareness and reducing weight bias among healthcare professionals (HCPs).
Methods: Participants completed the Attitudes Toward Obese Persons (ATOP) survey before and after the training module to measure changes in bias. The self-paced, interactive training included five sections and took approximately 1–2 hours to complete. A post-training evaluation survey included Likert-scale and open-ended questions to assess participant experience and perceived impact
Results: ANOVA analysis of pre- and post-training ATOP scores showed no statistically significant changes in attitudes (all p > 0.05). However, qualitative responses suggested participants were more critical of the survey instrument than the training itself. Evaluation data revealed mixed reactions: while many denied personal bias, others acknowledged previously unrecognized attitudes. Two-thirds of participants reported increased awareness or appreciation for the training’s relevance, especially regarding patient communication. Interactive components and patient scenarios were cited as the most effective features. Though most participants did not support annual repetition of the training, some recommended future modules focused on specific populations or expanded bias education.
Discussion: The lack of statistically significant change may reflect participant resistance, discomfort in acknowledging implicit bias, or limitations of the ATOP tool. Despite this, qualitative data and Likert-scale responses indicate the training was well-received and increased awareness of weight bias and its impact on healthcare. Enhancing future training with multimedia content and role-specific applications may improve engagement and outcomes
Nurse Faculty's Strategies to Teach Clinical Judgment: Use of Transformative Learning Theory in the Nursing Classroom
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationClinical judgment is an important skill used by nurses. Unfortunately, the literature demonstrates a lack of this skill in new nurses entering the profession. With a decreased understanding and use of clinical judgment, patient outcomes are compromised. Research has shown that clinical judgment is acquired through experience. In nursing programs, this experience may be obtained through hospital-based clinical instruction and simulation scenarios. Although the literature demonstrates these methods of instruction beneficial to learning clinical judgment, time restraints and limited facility availability complicates the ability to provide these modalities to the students. Nursing courses incorporate theory credits into the curriculum, providing programs the opportunity to utilize this time to enhance the learning of clinical judgment. Three themes were identified in this study including clinical judgment is intentional, active teaching strategies using experiences with repetition, and limited impact of NGN on instruction. This study found the nursing faculty's definition of clinical judgment contained the basic components of Tanner's definition; the definition used by the NCSBN in the creation of the Clinical Judgment Model. Reported strategies used in the classroom to promote the increase of clinical judgment included active learning strategies and repetition in nursing students reflected the basic components of Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory. However, the use of the Clinical Judgment Model in nursing theory was found to be lacking, with most of the participants using the Nursing Process model in their instruction. Faculty reported the NGN had little impact on classroom instruction. Future research could include further exploration of the use of the Clinical Judgment Model in nursing theory
Drawing the Line: Visible and Invisible Disability, Identity, and Intersectionality in Award-Winning Graphic Novels for Teens
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationThis study examines the complex social phenomenon of disability representation in teen literature, specifically the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list from the American Library Association. The tenets of critical disability theory guided a critical analysis of both text and imagery to explore how visible and invisible disabilities are portrayed in award-winning graphic novels from the past five years (2020-2024). This includes an examination of characters with multiple identities, such as the coexistence of visible disabilities with non-apparent conditions such as psychological disorders, learning disabilities, mental health conditions, and neurodiversity. The study also investigates how these representations intersect with other social identities such as race, gender, and sexuality. The analysis of fiction and nonfiction works identifies recurring themes, stereotypes, narrative techniques, and visual strategies that either reinforce or challenge dominant discourses on disability in young adult literature. Findings indicate that recent graphic novels portray disability as a multidimensional aspect of identity, with character agency and complexity. While some stereotypical tropes persist, most works offer authentic narratives that reflect the evolving landscape of young adult literature. The study contributes to scholarship on the potential of graphic novels to serve as inclusive literary tools for teenage readers. It also offers practitioners and caregivers a practical resource for evaluating disability representation, as the coding sheet developed through this research can function as a checklist to assess authenticity, respectfulness, and intersectionality in graphic novels, supporting diverse and representative selections in libraries, classrooms, and homes
Putting Their Masks on Last: the Lived Experiences of Nursing Professional Development Practitioners During COVID-19
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationThe purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of nursing professional development (NPD) practitioners during COVID-19 to determine what impacts the pandemic may have had on their professional identity. The pandemic caused, and continues to cause, upheaval in multiple aspects of personal and professional life for most of the general population. These effects were exacerbated in the healthcare setting due to the nature of the work and the patients receiving care. NPD practitioners were not spared from being affected by the pandemic and went through enormous changes as a population. The hope is, that by examining the lived experiences of NPD practitioners during COVID-19, the findings from this study can offer the specialty of NPD practice ways to refine pedagogical changes that were made hastily during the pandemic, improve the practice of educational delivery during times of crisis, and make recommendations to hospital administrators for support and leadership of NPD practitioners
Biomechanics-Informed Mechatronics Design of Comfort-Centered Portable Hip Exoskeleton: Actuator, Wearable Interface, Controller
No full textAuthor Accepted ManuscriptExoskeletons can improve human mobility, but discomfort remains a significant barrier to their widespread adoption. This paper presents a comfort-centered mechatronics design of portable hip exoskeletons, comprising of three factors: (i) actuation, (ii) wearable interface, (iii) and assistive controller. We introduced an analytical multibody model to predict the human-exoskeleton contact forces during gait. Informed by this model, we designed a wearable interface that significantly improved the three considered objective metrics: (i) undesired contact forces at the wearable interface, (ii) wobbling, and (iii) metabolic reduction, and also the post-test evaluation via a System Usability Scale questionnaire as a subjective metric. Our experiments with two exoskeleton controllers (gait-based and reinforcement learning-based) demonstrated that the design of the wearable physical interface has a greater impact on reducing metabolic rate and minimizing wobbling than the choice of controller. Our actuation design method leads to highly backdrivable, lightweight quasi-direct drive actuators with high torque tracking performance. By leveraging this wearable design, we achieved up to 60% reduction in undesired contact forces, and a 74% reduction in exoskeleton wobbling in the frontal axis compared to a traditional configuration. Additionally, the net metabolic cost reduction was 18% compared to the no exoskeleton condition.This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation
(NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award
CMMI 1944655, NSF Future of Work 2231419, NSF Cyber-Physical Systems
2344956, Switzer Research Distinguished Fellow SFGE22000372, NIH
1R01EB035404. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the funding organizations
Early Boys Love Manga: the Intertextual and Occidental World of Poem of the Wind and Trees
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationBL, short for "boys love," is a genre of Japanese comics or manga that depicts gay romantic and sexual relationships. In this thesis, I will compare the trope of bishounen or beautiful boy images in 1920s girl magazines' illustrations and the serialized manga Poem of the Wind and Trees (1976-1984)—a foundational text in BL and girl's manga that transformed the genre. I analyze how these images present new gender performances that work alongside concurrent women's political movements that sought to change women's prescribed gender roles in society. I investigate how intertextual visual elements from these earlier girls' magazines help construct a revolutionary Occidental and affective aesthetic in Poem of the Wind and Trees, which question readers' understanding of gender, race, and otherness. Through reading Poem of the Wind and Trees and engaging in subsequent fan communities, fans of this BL series transform their lives through travel, identification with the Occident, and engaging in BL viewing pleasures. I conclude the thesis by investigating how current fan organizing around BL works alongside ongoing social justice movements in my local context
Therapists Reassessing Evidence for Approaches to Treatment
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationMany communities are seeing increases in the number of children with autism spectrum disorder, and a significant service gap. Alongside heightened service need, there is very limited access to evidence-based interventions. The goal of the Therapists Reassessing Approaches to Treatment (TREAT) study was to better understand how community therapists consider and weight social validity, harm potential, and evidence-base when evaluating interventions for autistic children, and to identify which factors are most likely to lead to low value practice (LVP) use by community therapists. Expert panel evaluation of a list of LVPs and EBPs informed a second phase in which the intervention list was used to assess therapist endorsement, and how they may view the interventions' value in the context of the three domains being assessed. 38 community clinicians working with autistic youth rated the interventions across the proposed domains, as well as if they consider that intervention to be an evidence-based practice, or a low-value practice. Additionally, therapists completed a Q-sort to measure their views on how they consider social validity, harm potential, and evidence-base when selecting an intervention. Results demonstrated majority of clinicians identified 2 LVPs as evidence-based, and while not the majority many interventions had multiple clinicians who rated LVPs as EBPs, which may be a factor in perpetuating use. Factor analysis revealed that clinicians who value social validity, over evidence base, are consistently more likely to incorrectly classify LVPs as evidence based. An overvaluing of social validity might be a key obstacle to EBI use, and sustained LVP use. This study provides critical data to help with deimplementation of, LVPs and to improve dissemination of evidence-based practices to increase uptake
"The Power to Change the World": a Postcolonial Analysis of the NBA's Use of Neocolonialism in Their Efforts to Globally Expand
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationThe NBA has made it its goal over the past few decades to take the sport of basketball globally, at least, the version of basketball that the league itself champions. Through various mediums over the past few years, Adam Silver (the commissioner of the NBA), and the NBA more broadly have adopted forms of rhetorical expression that emphasize the goal of global expansion. These goals are largely painted with positive connotations like that basketball "has the power to change the world" (Silver, 2022). The league has backed up these aspirations with action. This thesis examines the various ways that these actions occur and analyzes them through the lens of postcolonial theory. Within practice, these take two primary forms: expansion and extraction. From this perspective, this thesis argues that the NBA has both a history and the continued presence of neocolonial expansion through their efforts to spread the game to the rest of the world. Specifically, this thesis will use the recent acquisition of the Mexico City Capitanes by the NBA as a case study for how the league's expansion resembles both the material and discursive effects of settler colonialism. To examine extraction, this thesis analyzes the practice of international scouting that is conducted by the NBA and frames it as a way to extract natural resources. This is largely done through this thesis' examination of the continued presence of this type of extractivism throughout the years in the NBA through the stories of Hakeem Olajuwon and Joel Embiid
A Performance Guide to Ottorino Respighi's Six Pieces for Solo Piano
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationAs a twentieth-century leading Italian composer, Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) is well known for his orchestral tone poems. But his solo piano compositions have often been overlooked. For instance, his Sei pezzi per pianoforte, P.44 (Six Pieces for Piano) stands out for its stylistic diversity and technical depth. Unfortunately, this work has received little attention in academic research and is rarely performed on concert stages. While many previous studies have explored Respighi's eclecticism in his compositions, no comprehensive analysis has examined his Sei pezzi per pianoforte from a performance guidance perspective. This document aims to fill that gap by providing a comprehensive study of Sei pezzi per pianoforte. The research begins with exploring Respighi's life and times. It briefly reviews the composer's music study and related travels that affected his creativity, as well as the political climate of his time. Moreover, the opening chapter also introduces Respighi's unique musical language, specifically his piano writing within the broader context of early twentieth-century European music. The main body of this document analyzes the six pieces from theoretical perspectives and compares each of the six pieces with other inspired works from composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Frédéric Chopin, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy. These comparisons highlight Respighi's distinct approach to small-form piano compositions. Additionally, it touches on identifying key technical challenges and proposing effective interpretative and practice strategies. Some recent research argues that Sei pezzi per pianoforte was not originally conceived as a unified set, but rather as individual compositions published by the publisher as a suite. This document provides evidence to support that point of view. Finally, the document seeks to promote this work to be included in more concert programs and as a reference for piano pedagogy