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LGBTQ+ Leadership: Benefits of Breaking Boundaries in the Workplace
Get PDFWith the increasing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at work, it is imperative to learn about the experiences of LGBTQ+ leaders, about which there is still a dearth of research. Most of the existing literature has focused on the challenges members of the LGBTQ+ community face at work. In this study, we wanted to identify both the positive aspects of being an LGBTQ+ leader and the benefits brought to the workplace by individuals that hold both leadership positions and an LGBTQ+ identity. This study was a part of a larger project examining the experiences of LGBTQ+ leaders. We conducted 51 qualitative interviews with individuals who self-identified as belonging to the LGBTQ+ community as well as holding leadership positions. The goal of the interviews was to gain a sense of participants’ overall experience at work, focusing on the interaction of their identity and their leadership roles as well as emphasizing the advantages they experience. The interviews were qualitatively analyzed and coded into themes. Using thematic analysis, we were able to identify patterns that emerged addressing the advantages of holding a leadership position as an LGBTQ+ individual. Though there were several common barriers identified, many of the participants had overwhelmingly positive experiences at work; these positive experiences were the focus of our analysis. Most interestingly, many of the positive themes identified focused on building and supporting an environment that is inclusive of all people, not only members of the LGBTQ+ community. Some of these themes were the ability to promote change, greater emotional intelligence and empathy, strengthened interpersonal and advocacy skills, and the opportunity to be a role model and provide and receive social support. Most of the interviewees stated their identity as an LGBTQ+ individual makes them more accepting of others and better able to support and advocate for all people from underrepresented groups. Many workplace DEI initiatives focus on improving representation and providing leadership opportunities, so understanding the benefits that LGBTQ+ leaders inherently bring to the role might help in furthering that cause. Additionally, LGBTQ+ leaders’ ability to foster connectedness in the workplace owing to their strengthened skills of social support, advocacy, and forming interpersonal relationships underscores the importance of promoting LGBTQ+ leadership
Quality or quantity: using natural language processing as to assess safety checklist quality
Get PDFOccupational injuries extract a large social and economic toll on workers and companies alike. Behavior-based safety (BBS) is a method for reducing workplace accidents by identifying at-risk behaviors and reinforcing safe behaviors. BBS requires the direct observation and collection of specific behaviors (pinpoints) by managers and coworkers to be effective. Observers record their findings on behavioral checklists that contain free- and fixed-response items. Literature shows that behavioral checklists are more effective when done at a measured pace, when responses to the checklists are varied, when greater context is given by free response, and when checklist items are more specific. While there has been previous research demonstrating reductions in injuries associated with the quantity of behavioral observations, there has not been much focus on quantitatively evaluating the quality of observation reporting and the impact on injuries. This study will investigate checklist quality through natural language processing, a technique which uses machine learning to accomplish human-like language processing, and assess how that quality moderates the relationship between number of observations and incident prevention. Text analytics will assess presence or absence of free-text, length of free-text, and quality of checklist prompts and free text (use of action words and temporal words)
Decoupling power network equations for real-time computing applications on a personal computer
Get PDFThis research develops and implements a method for decoupling real-time power networks using general-purpose personal computers. The industry of real-time simulation of power networks is mature, with few prominent players dominating the market. The implementation, however, is limited to specialized high-end hardware and software. This endeavor serves researchers and small-scale users interested in investigating real-time applications without making a significant investment. The methodology sheds additional light on the inner workings of real-time computing, particularly parallel processing via approaches like those published in scientific papers. The described method can be implemented on a PC with multiple cores using relatively few resources other than MATLAB/Simulink and a C++ development environment. The method was first evaluated using the IEEE 13 bus system, then implemented on the IEEE 123 bus system. It was found to require three processing cores to avoid overruns, compared to prior attempts on dedicated real-time hardware, which needed five cores
“Sticks and stones”: experiencing microaggressions from the perspectives of the victim, bystander, and perpetrator
Get PDFFor over thirty years, microaggressions have been studied for their weight on members of groups like ethnic and racial minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ community. Microaggressions are the routine, derogatory interactions like slights gestures, snubs or minor insults. Microaggressions yield physical and psychological distress to victims and communicate to marginalized groups the biases and prejudices against them harbored by majority group members. My thesis study explored factors such as quality of psychical and psychological health, physical health symptoms, occurrence of physical pain, resilience, and self efficacy and relationships with racial, gender, and sexual orientation-based microaggressions. I analyzed these relationships in the context of perspectives of the bystander, victim, and perpetrator experience
Breast cancer treatment causing cardiovascular complications: how can we prevent it?
Get PDFBreast cancer has the highest incidence rate of any cancer in the United States, and it is the second most deadly. It comprises 30% of all diagnosed cancers in women, and it is predicted that the incidence of breast cancer will continue to rise. Most common chemotherapeutic agents utilized in the treatment of breast cancer are known to be cardiotoxic, each with differing mechanisms and possible damage done to the patient. In turn, cardiovascular diseases are the number one killer of women in the United States, and their prevalence is continually growing. It is unknown exactly how many women who are treated with chemotherapeutic agents and survive breast cancer develop cardiovascular complications, and there is no predictive model to assist with discerning the patients who would be affected by this complication. The following is a review of literature that was conducted to determine the potential impact of utilizing the cardiac biomarkers C-reactive protein (CRP), homocysteine, brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), lipid profiles, and cardiac troponins as predictors of increased cardiovascular risk in women who require or have required chemotherapeutic treatment for breast cancer and to potentially establish a route to determining prevalence. This was completed by reviewing PubMed; Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) databases; National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports; Tennessee Cancer Registry; Baroness Erlanger Hospital registry abstracting; and National Cancer Institute (NCI) reports. It was found that, with diligent monitoring, all the biomarkers studied could be used to quantify the women affected by cardiovascular disease (CVD) due to breast cancer treatment as well as to predict CVD in breast cancer patients to prevent or reduce damage
Shining a light into the darkness: the developmental impacts of internment in U.S. immigration detention centers on detained Latinx children
Get PDFAmericans are concerned about immigration politics and how to handle the migration of immigrants into the United States, especially those from Latinx countries who immigrate illegally. In response, the United States government has formed detention centers to house the children of these illegal immigrants. While the immediate safety and developmental appropriateness of current separation practices are of concern, few have considered what the long-term developmental and transgenerational impacts on Latinx immigrant children, held within these detention centers, will be. This thesis concludes that the negative physical, emotional, and psychological impacts both in the short and long terms are expected to be significant though without continued exploration are currently unmeasurable
The changing classroom: a thematic analysis on the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic on children and educators of a Montessori school
Get PDFThe Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has drastically changed day-to-day functioning in American culture and the outlook of many essential institutions, specifically the education system. A halt in learning for most American school children in the spring semester of 2020, as well as necessary adaptation of the day-to-day functions of educational facilities in the fall has altered the learning environment for children and educators like never before. Research on historical disruptions in education, such as natural disasters and public health crises, provide a partial framework for federal approaches to the modern-day pandemic and their potential consequences. Modern technology has provided an array of alternatives to traditional learning and family engagement, yet barriers still exist, especially in early childhood settings. Specifically in classrooms that rely on sensorial and manipulative-based learning, historically utilized in the Montessori method, online learning is simply no substitute to the potentials of in-person instruction. The purpose of this study is to investigate the evolvement of the classroom environment in response to the pandemic through the eyes of one small Montessori school and draw conclusions on how these shifts are impacting the entire wellbeing of school children, their educators and beyond. Using a qualitative thematic analysis framework and data gathered from multiple interviews conducted with teachers and faculty, my project will develop and offer overarching axial themes that may be applicable to a larger body of modern educators
Molecular dynamic simulation of the complex folding patterns of Apolipoprotein A1 in various concentrations of potassium chloride
Get PDFApopliprotein or ApoA-1 is a complex lipoprotein that functions in the removal of cholesterol from the blood, removing cholesterol from the area around white blood cells and promoting the excretion of lipids through the lymphatic system. Previous research has found that ApoA-1 shows both folded and unfolded conformations depending on the concentration of NaCl in solution in the water around it. The protein was studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Once this state of equilibrium was reached, various structural properties of the protein were measured including the radius of gyration and the radial distribution function. The goal of the project was to determine if ApoA-1 had stable folding conformations in various concentrations of Potassium Chloride and how those concentrations compared with the concentration of Sodium Chloride around known stable conformations. Previous research has determined that in a range of concentrations from 0.5M to 2.0M ApoA-1 has both folded and unfolded conformations. We are now working to study Potassium Chloride in these concentrations to determine if the radius of gyration results will be the same as the ones found in studying the sodium chloride. This research will determine if the healthier salt potassium chloride, allows for the same folded and stable conformations of ApoA-1
Simplifying the creation of virtual topologies using MPI Sessions
Get PDFAs supercomputers have approached exascale performance, several scalability issues have emerged within MPI. These issues arise because MPI includes all processes in the World model, which consumes unacceptable amounts of time and resources at large scale. The Sessions model was developed to combat these issues by removing the requirement of MPI_COMM_WORLD, which provides a more scalable method of creating communication groups in large jobs. Additionally, the Sessions model enables the creation of virtual topologies directly from sets of processes allocated to the execution of a parallel application rather than building virtual topologies from an existing communication group such as MPI_COMM_WORLD. For this project, I implemented the Sessions model in ExaMPI, an MPI implementation designed for modularity, extensibility, and understandability. I also created topological variations of several common communication algorithms and topological connection building to further take advantage of the benefits of the Sessions model. I found that using the Sessions model reduces the time and resources used when a large parallel application begins executing. Additionally, I found that using topological connection building and topological communication algorithms is faster than traditional all-to-all connection building in certain situations
The relationship between homonegativity, sexual harassment myth acceptance, harasser and target sex, and perceptions of sexual harassment
Get PDFThe current purpose was to determine the relationship between participant homonegativity, sexual harassment myth acceptance, and perceptions of sexual harassment where the gender of the target and harasser varied. Contrary to the hypothesis, higher and lower homonegativity participants did not differ in their perceptions of harassment severity, realism, or consequence and higher homonegativity participants did not report any differences in perceptions between the different-sex and same-sex scenarios. However as hypothesized, participant homonegativity was positively correlated with sexual harassment myth acceptance. Interestingly, participants higher in homonegativity or sexual harassment myth acceptance were more likely to rate the harassment as less severe and had less of an emotional reaction. The current results imply that regardless of the type sexual harassment (different or same-sex), higher homonegativitly participants may not react in institutionally appropriate ways regarding sexual harassment in the workplace