JBC Commons (New College of Florida)
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VacciNATION: Religious exemptions and reasoning of individuals with vaccine hesitancy
No full textVaccination is a major public health accomplishment that acts to protect citizens, but it also acts as an exertion of state control that citizens may resist for multiple reasons. My thesis explores the intersections between religion and vaccination with a focus on religiously motivated vaccine hesitant decision making. I conducted a general population survey and a series of interviews with vaccine hesitant individuals. The goal of the interviews was to understand motivations around vaccine decision making, particularly religious motivations. The survey outcomes were focused on religion’s impact on vaccination, mass vaccination opinions, and new vaccine decisions making. My findings suggest that vaccine hesitant individuals’ concerns about state control and experience with doctors’ reactions pushed them further into vaccine refusal and left them feeling excluded from medical care
EXPLORING IDENTITY AND CULTURE THROUGH THE OVERLAPS OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND LITERATURE IN THE WORKS OF AMITAV GHOSH AND JOSÉ MARÍA ARGUEDAS
No full textIn this thesis, I explore the overlaps of literature and anthropology in the works of two novelist-anthropologists, José María Arguedas and Amitav Ghosh. Arguedas is a Peruvian ethnologist, folklorist, and writer while Ghosh is an Indian sociologist, historian, anthropologist, and writer. Their novels, Deep Rivers (1958) and The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), respectively, focus on matters concerned with cultural transformations, the representation of the subaltern or the Other, and marginalized communities and histories. Because of the authors’ backgrounds as both novelists and anthropologists and the anthropological concerns present in their literary work, I became interested in studying how the two fields inform each other and overlap in the authors’ works. How do their understandings of anthropology inform their literary styles? What does the novel form offer them that ethnography does not? Where can one find the overlaps of anthropology and literature in their texts? I explore these questions in my analysis of Arguedas’ Deep Rivers and Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome
THERE IS NO ‘RIGHT’ WAY TO WRITE: AN EXPLORATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS AND ACADEMIC BURNOUT
No full textResearch on metacognition and the awareness of one’s writing process has been linked with higher quality writing evaluations from instructors. What remains unknown is if these practices also improve wellbeing associated with the writing process. Academic burnout is the psychological experience of high levels of stress and expectations of high performance, which negatively impacts student wellbeing and could be mitigated through metacognitive processes. Study 1 examined how burnout patterns from before to after a three week writing task differed between students assigned to a metacognitive writing process intervention versus students who were not assigned an intervention. Study 1 found that getting students to engage in metacognitive processes is difficult and that students spontaneously adopt a variety of metacognitive strategies that differ from the metacognitive awareness intervention. Study 2 surveyed 61 students and found that metacognitive awareness of writing is negatively correlated with academic burnout. Overall, these results point to the general idea that writing awareness does more than bolster instructor evaluations of writing; it may also prevent or at least reduce burnout
PUT YOUR STRANDS IN THE AIR: AN EVALUATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DNA AS A TOOL IN BIODIVERSITY MONITORING
No full textIn this present time, most scientists agree that we are living through the sixth mass extinction and that this event is partly due to humans’ effect on the environment (Abatzoglou and Williams, 2016; Payne et al., 2016). Maintaining biodiversity is a key component in mitigating the many effects of anthropogenic climate change. Biodiversity must first be evaluated to determine if and what conservation steps should be taken. Monitoring biodiversity across the various scale of life is an undertaking and traditional monitoring practices are not always sufficient. The use of environmental DNA and subsequent analysis may aid in this endeavor. Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is extraorganismal and collected from soil, water, and air and can be multiplied with PCR. Collected DNA can be digitally compared with the DNA of known species to establish identity through a process called metabarcoding. The use of eDNA as a conservation tool is promising for monitoring biodiversity as it is inexpensive, fast, and noninvasive. This thesis aims to discuss the benefits and failings of eDNA as a conservation tool, as well as discuss practical applications and the direction future research may take this technology
SOME OF THESE PEOPLE ARE CRIMINALS: AN AUDIO-ONLY MUSICAL
No full textA serial killer has left a trail of victims. A policewoman, an investigator, and a young girl are all trying to find the culprit, each for their own reasons. The innocence or guilt of these three characters is quite ambiguous, and they are spurred on by very diverse ideas of morality. “Some of these People are Criminals” is an audio-only musical, formatted as a narrative album composed of primarily solo songs. There is no unscored dialogue nor any accompanying visual data to aid in storytelling. Drawing inspiration from musical works that tackle narrative from a similar angle, this piece endeavored to develop a compelling mystery under the limits of nine roughly three to five minute songs that shift back and forth from different characters’ perspectives. In terms of content, this musical also strives to spark reflection and discussion on the spectrum of morality. And regarding process, part one of this essay presents the challenges of scope and craft that arose, and how they were addressed
ON TOLSTOY: LITERARY PEDAGOGY AND THE MORALITY OF DEATH
No full textThis undergraduate thesis explores the themes of death and morality in both the fictional and nonfictional works of the 19th century Russian novelist Count Leo Tolstoy. The first chapter contains an analysis of the author’s personal and religious beliefs concerning death and examines his role of author as educator. The second chapter examines death within several of Tolstoy’s short works and explores the moral implications of their deaths for Tolstoy’s readership, keeping in mind the conclusions of the part first
GAME CHANGER MOBILE APP
No full textAlphanumeric passwords are the predominant form of identity verification online, but alternate forms of passwords could perform better. Graphical passwords have the capability of being as strong as alphanumeric passwords while also being more memorable. To test this, I built a mobile app using game based graphical passwords in Android Studio. The app utilizes Chess, Monopoly, Clue, and Scrabble, each with slight alterations in order to make them more usable or secure, as its games. I then ran a usability study to see how various users react to the app and how likely they would be to actually use it. I found that with some alterations, the system I built could easily perform as an alternative authentication system to alphanumeric passwords
PREY CAPTURE AND RELATED BEHAVIORS OF THE BIG CLAW SNAPPING SHRIMP, ALPHEUS HETEROCHAELIS (Say, 1818) (Crustacea; Decapoda; Alpheidae)
No full textThrough this research, the prey capture mechanism of the organism Alpheus heterochaelis was observed. Alpheus heterochaelis are a type of pistol shrimp that are more commonly referred to as big claw snapping shrimp. Alpheus heterochaelis are often characterized by their large dactyl claws. For this study, the entire feeding sequence of the pistol shrimp with different prey items was recorded using high speed photography. The pistol shrimp responded to three different prey items; amphipods, grass shrimp, and fouling assemblage crabs. The pistol shrimp were also given chunks of frozen herring to document their behaviors towards nonliving prey. However, the pistol shrimp were successful with larger prey types that were similar in size to themselves, and through this process they used their dactyl claw to first stun their prey, and then tear their prey apart into smaller pieces. Recently molted pistol shrimp sometimes shared a burrow with another pistol shrimp. This may have been for mating or protection as pistol shrimp will often molt before mating. However, mating was not observed, nor were mated pairs formed in the tanks
TOWARDS A NEO-FOLK STORYTELLING TRADITION
No full textThis thesis seeks to make room for a new tradition of storytelling dubbed ‘neo-folk’ and a means through which readers can understand my own creative work and process. The first chapter examines ideas of folk cultures/societies and storytelling and its elements in order to make clear what is entailed by the idea of the neo-folk. This chapter asserts that neo-folk storytelling is a tradition that emerged from the displacement of the diaspora which, in turn, forces those subject to diaspora to create new forms of understanding and meaning production in order to reconcile the lives that they or their ancestors lived in their homelands with the experience of being in a vastly culturally disparate country. The next chapter then analyzes certain contemporary releases that are understood to be in the tradition of neo-folk storytelling and highlights the elements of the texts that designate them as such. The final section of the thesis is a reflection on my own creative work, how I see it as fitting into the tradition of neo-folk storytelling, and then my own work (three short stories) itself