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Cognitive strategy intervention for elders living in a residential care facility.
Get PDFResidential care facilities are communities for elders that encourage residents to maintain their independence for everyday activities. These individuals may experience memory dysfunction which can negatively impact their confidence and well being. Through the implementation of an intervention focusing on teaching elders strategies to improve everyday memory functioning, older adults’ knowledge of memory strategies, confidence in their memory, and quality of life may improve. The present study examines the efficacy of a five-session cognitive strategy program for elders on memory self-efficacy, quality of life, and memory strategy knowledge. The memory self-efficacy of participants of elders in the intervention group improved significantly relative to a control group. Additionally, participants’ knowledge of memory strategies improved overall after completion of this program; but no significant improvement in quality of life was observed. Such findings highlight the benefits of cognitive-behavioral interventions can for bolstering elders’ confidence and knowledge for memory strategies, thereby reducing age-related stigma
More than remembering: how memoirists recall and write the past
Get PDFMemory is integral to writing memoir, but sometimes, memory fails. How do successful memoirists mine their past for meaning, while staying true to their recollections? In my craft essay, I examine how writers harness the energy of their own explorations of the past. Then, I show how I have used these techniques in my own work. Six personal essays comprise the remainder of my thesis project
“Liberation from what?”: French Muslim women’s bodies as a site of national boundaries and identity
Get PDFThis thesis examines how dominant French discursive frames conceptualize Muslim and French-Algerian women\u27s gender performance as related to their level of assimilation into France politically and socially. It examines how these modern discursive derive from colonial sentiments and policies towards Muslim Algerian women. Then, I outlines the specific frames used in discussion of French-Muslim women\u27s bodies and consider the international and national political contexts in which these frames developed. Finally, the thesis presents four interviews that I conducted in June 2018 with French-Algerian women, providing them a space to respond to elite framings of their decisions about how to present themselves as women, how to interact with men, and personal religious decisions
An examination of the perception, role and impact of student-led clubs and organizations on student development, engagement and success: a small-sample study of extreme users and extreme non-users using service innovation methods
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was, first, to research what involvement in student-led clubs and organizations (SLCOs) contributes to student development, engagement, and success. Second, to understand the perceptions that students at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga have about SLCOs and their impact on the students’ development, engagement, and success. I posed three research questions: 1) What is the perception of SLCOs from the perspective of both uninvolved students and extremely involved students? 2) What drives students to become engaged in SLCOs? 3) What impact does involvement in SLCOs have on students’ development and success? My goal in conducting this research was to contribute to both theoretical questions and a practical problem. Eight (8) semi-structured interviews were conducted, with students who fit into either an “extreme user” or “extreme non-user” category. I developed the interview protocol by drawing on the service innovation interview questions created by Lance Bettencourt to capture the core service and service delivery needs, as well as the desired outcomes, of service users. Bettencourt’s interview questions follow the Universal Job Map and user-centered methodology. There were several important findings, with three major observations. Firstly, Alexander Astin’s continuum of student involvement is better understood as a two dimensional model, with quality as the vertical axis scale, and quantity the horizontal axis. Secondly, the best driver of high quality, high quantity student involvement is for the student to have been recruited by an influencer in their community, either a peer or a professor who directly recruits the student to a specific club. Finally, extreme non-users perceive SLCOs as important, but only for other people. They see participating students as inherently different from themselves, even though by comparison their behaviors are not that different
Is Bitcoin Reminiscent of Past Bubbles?
Get PDFBitcoin, an open-source decentralized peer-to-peer payment system, has made an unprecedented rise to notoriety in the last decade. In 2018, Bitcoin reported its worst year in history with depreciation of more than 70% from its year opening price. Consequently, the narrative of a bubble that surrounded Bitcoin was amplified by this news. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the presence of a bubble within Bitcoin by comparing its price volatility and the psychological factors that influence its price formation to that of two historic bubbles, the Dotcom Bubble and the Tulip Mania
The effects of animal-assisted therapy on participation in rehabilitation in a patient post-stroke: a case study
Get PDFThe human-animal bond is a powerful and emotional connection. The bond between dogs and people can provide numerous physiological and psychological benefits as well as potentially increasing the human’s quality of life. Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) utilizes the human-animal bond by incorporating a dog into the patient’s rehabilitation therapy. This case study examines if AAT sessions increase a stroke patient’s participation in the rehabilitation sessions when compared to normal sessions. Participation in therapy reduces the length of stay for patients, improves outcome measures, and lessens the effects of depression.A key part of stroke rehabilitation is incorporating exercises that increase neuroplasticity. One way to increase neuroplasticity is by making the therapy more salient, or relevant, to the patient. Stroke patients are a population that are at an increased risk for mood disorders and low participation scores. The goal of the study is to determine if participation in therapy can be improved by using a dog as an integral part of the session. There are a total of 20 therapy sessions recorded. The PRPS scores for AAT averaged to be 3.25 (95% CI .83). The PRPS average for normal sessions was 2.33 (95% CI .23). The p-value was \u3c0.016 showing statistical significance. The subjective and objective results show that AAT significantly increases patient participation
A net-zero framework for farms: a business plan
Get PDFWith current agricultural methods causing an abundance of environmental problems, LDEC, LLC is an environmental consulting firm created to address these environmental impacts in the Southeast region of the United States. Examining an industry overview of small dairy farming (a dairy farm having fewer than 500 cows) in the state of Tennessee, LDEC, LLC looks to potentially impact the farming industry on a larger scale. The research for LDEC, LLC is centered on utilizing net-zero technologies in order to address energy usage, water consumption, and waste build-up on farms and reduce their side effects. The success of net-zero initiatives in office and residential settings provides a positive outlook for the use of these systems on farms, but the cost to implement net-zero technologies may not be economical for small farmers. By examining the current status of the dairy industry throughout the United States and Tennessee, LDEC, LLC is able to begin determining if net-zero initiatives are transferable to a farming environment
Analysis and proposed improvement of Hamilton County VW eLab equipment
Get PDFDigital fabrication laboratories have revolutionized project based learning within K-12 STEAM education curriculum. However, classroom utilization of the labs often requires excessive machine hours to accomplish, and this often leads to rapid machine depreciation and disrepair. Many educators do not have the time to repair their equipment while developing curriculum and engaging with their students. This study focuses on building a repair history for common digital fabrication equipment, which includes Prusa i3 Mk2S FDM 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC routers. Data were collected over a 6 month period to find which machines encountered the most issues. The 3D printers were the only machines that had consistent issues, with a 15 of the 32 printers failing within their first 2000 print hours. Many printers reached 2000 hours within the 6 months, which is concerning when considering the long-term sustainability of the laboratories. The results yielded a 40% failure rate due to jamming, mostly during large-scale prints. Many of the failures suggest that there is a heating issue due to heat creep from the hotend to the heat sink. A rudimentary heat transfer analysis was run, and the results suggest that it is critical to prevent the temperature from the outside of the teflon tube from reaching 136.77oC, which would provide enough energy within 15.86 seconds to cause the PLA to reach its glass transition temperature of 65oC. This issue can be mitigated by installing an additional thermistor into the Prusa’s RAMBo 1.3a board and making a modification to the printer’s firmware that would allow for a temporary cooling process during a large print, which would increase the number of successful large-scale prints in the Prusa 3D printers. This improvement could also be translated to many small-scale FDM printers. An experimental analysis of heat transfer within the heat sink was planned, but due to equipment malfunctions, this analysis could not be performed
Designing a general education course on the societal impacts of artificial intelligence
Get PDFMost colleges, including UTC, already offer an artificial intelligence course (CPSC 4440) as part of their computer science curricula. Such courses are meant to explain the technology behind these elaborate systems, but these courses often neglect extensive coverage of the real-world impacts of the technology itself. UTC also offers a course entitled “Ethical and Social Issues in Computing” that does convey the importance behind the advances of computer technology and its impacts, but this course is practically available only to computer science majors. There is no generalized and widely available course that covers the technological, economic, cultural, philosophical/theological, and ethical concerns that come with the implementation of artificial intelligence. My main endeavor in this thesis has been to review the literature of the fields involved and decide what collection of reading/film assignments best covers the necessary information when it comes to the widespread impacts of AI. I then constructed a course syllabus with clearly defined assignments and a schedule of topics. Furthermore, I discuss each decision in the construction of the syllabus and explain how and why each topic will be addressed when the course is offered in the fall semester of 2018. The final product of my research is this thesis, detailing the considerations that went into the design of the course; every anticipated discussion topic, reading, and writing assignment is laid out in detail, and the decisions for every area of the class are explained. A final syllabus for the course has been drafted as well as a completed course proposal form containing clear explanations of how this course meets the established purpose and learning outcomes of UTC’s Thought, Values, and Beliefs general education category
My love involves the love before : Tennyson\u27s In Memoriam A.H.H., Temporo-Narrative progress, and the Petrarchan lyric sequence tradition
Get PDFThis thesis examines temporo-narrative progress in Tennyson\u27s In Memoriam A.H.H. as a means of situating that work within the Petrarchan lyric sequence tradition, in relation to which it has most often been treated as tangential. In Memoriam A.H.H., I will demonstrate, exhibits a more persistent sense of temporal progress than is typical in other examples of the Petrarchan genre, by virtue of its containing more frequent direct continuities of thought between individual poems than is typical. Such continuities, however, are not in themselves entirely unprecedented in the genre, so that their more persistent presence in Tennyson’s work represents more a stretching than a breaching of generic parameters, and In Memoriam A.H.H. in any case also utilizes other, more conventional methods to contribute to its uniquely strong sense of sequence-wide temporo-narrative progress