Syracuse University
Syracuse University Research Facility and Collaborative EnvironmentNot a member yet
20376 research outputs found
Sort by
Why Money Matters: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Differences Between U.S. Public And Commercial Media Journalists And Their Work
Get PDFThis study, based on survey responses from 1,491 commercial and 394 public media journalists working in the United States, as well as in-depth interviews with 44 U.S. broadcasters, shows how boundaries created by each group’s interpretive community separate them from the other group because of their professional roles, norms, and routines. While U.S. public and commercial journalists do not necessarily see one another as competitors, this study examines whether they exhibit in- and out-group preferences and prejudices, which might lead them toward excluding each other’s work from in-group considerations
Investigating the Impact of Contextual Semantic Information on L2 Garden Path Sentence Comprehension
Get PDFThis study investigates whether contextual information aids syntactic reanalysis in garden-path sentences and whether native (L1) English speakers and L1 Chinese learners of English (L2) differ in using such cues. Using a self-paced reading paradigm, 29 participants (5 L1, 24 L2) read sentences varying in syntactic ambiguity and contextual plausibility. Reading times in key disambiguation regions (e.g., auxiliary verb, participles) and comprehension accuracy were analyzed. L1 participants showed longer reading times when context mismatched syntax, indicating context-sensitive online processing consistent with constraint-based models. In contrast, L2 participants showed no significant context effects, suggesting difficulty using context in real-time parsing. No significant comprehension differences were found across context conditions for either group, possibly due to the small L1 sample, subtle contextual cues, or discourse-level memory demands. These findings highlight a gap in L2 learners’ ability to integrate contextual cues, which has direct implications for language teaching. Drawing on Processing Instruction approaches, the study proposes instructional strategies that explicitly train learners to attend to and utilize contextual cues for syntactic disambiguation. By fostering greater sensitivity to discourse-level cues, language educators can improve learners\u27 real-time processing and language comprehension skills
Heart Attacks are on the Rise among Young and Middle-Aged Adults in the United States
Get PDFHeart attacks are on the rise among young and middle-aged adults in the United States. This brief describes these increases, the role of behavioral, lifestyle, and societal factors, and provides recommendations for organizations, healthcare providers, and policymakers to combat the increase in early-onset heart disease
Military Spouse Employment Landscape: Trends, Barriers, and Opportunities
Get PDFMilitary spouses remain a uniquely positioned but persistently underleveraged segment of the U.S. labor force. Despite being well-educated, resilient, and highly mobile, their employment outcomes continue to lag behind civilian peers. This report draws primarily on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), offering a comparative view of active-duty spouses alongside veteran and civilian spouses across industries, occupations, and geographies. To provide a more comprehensive perspective, these findings are considered alongside other national research efforts that offer deeper insights into the lived experiences, household dynamics, and employment challenges specific to military-connected families
Mannose: The Hands of Fate – Overexpressing a Pinus taeda hemicellulose biosynthesis gene in Populus tremula × alba leads to increased height and a modified cell wall sugar profile
Get PDFLignocellulosic biomass as an input for biofuel generation has gained popularity in recent decades due to attainable feedstock ubiquity and an anatomical propensity to fix and sequester carbon. A major challenge facing the integration of such feedstocks is the presence of recalcitrant polymers that are extant in their cell walls, namely lignin and various hemicellulose species. Many studies have illustrated methods in which cell wall modification through genetic means has produced phenotypic improvements with regard to biomaterial generation, though to this point, none have overexpressed exogenous hemicellulose genes to shift the composition of the Populus tremula × alba cell walls. If this were to be performed, a hemicellulose sugar profile more akin to cellulose would be possible, limiting pitfalls in biomaterial production due to more uniformity in cell wall biochemistry. The present study independently expresses Pinus taeda GDP-mannose pyrophosphorylase 2 (PtGMP2) and phosphomannose isomerase (PtPMI) in the Populus tremula × alba 717 INRA-B4 hybrid poplar species. Both genes are associated with glucomannan production, a hemicellulose composed of six-carbon sugars, in contrast to the dominant xylan, composed of five-carbon sugars. Several GMP2 lines experienced greater change in height relative to the wild type, and a single line experienced an increase in mannose, a constituent of glucomannan. Such beneficial phenotypes suggest this modification has potential for integration into biomaterial feedstocks.The following describes the process by which individuals with such phenotypes were achieved, beginning with an extensive analysis on the nature of the plant cell wall along with the knowledge gaps that drove the conceptualization of this project. Following an introduction, the second chapter discusses the nature of functional diversification in the plant cell wall,characterizing the numerous families with diverse members responsible for its construction. Chapter 3 then focuses on the aforementioned study, uncovering physiological responses to the overexpression of the genes of interest and nutrient stress. Prior to beginning the project described in Chapter 3, significant time was spent characterizing the nature of functional duplicates associated with the biosynthesis and maintenance of the Populus cell wall, namely members of the Korrigan and Cobra families. Chapter 4 discusses the progression and necessary shift away from this project. A conclusion is present that discusses the nature by which findings and overall intellectual merit fit with the field of plant biotechnology, along with future directions of pursuit
BETTER WRITERS: OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GRADUATE STUDENT WRITERS IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND WRITING STUDIES
Get PDFMy dissertation studies graduate students and how we teach them disciplinary writing conventions. Following the work of rhetorical genre theorists such as Catherine F. Schryer and Caroline R. Miller, I question how our mainstay academic genres in graduate school influence writing habits and the extent to which they are incommensurate with disciplinary genre expectations and the workload of faculty. I believe studying graduate students as writers is an ironically underexamined area of research in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies (RCWS)—a field committed to undergraduate writing. The data in this dissertation comes from a large national study that I distributed to 67 universities in the United States. I received 289 completed responses from both faculty and graduate students from a broad spectrum of writing related fields. 203 responses—those who identified being in RCWS or allied fields—were coded for analysis using grounded theory. I use storytelling and phenomenology to illustrate many diverse embodied experiences of learning to write. Additionally, I completed 23 one-on-one interviews and include profiles, transcripts, and dialogue in this manuscript. In this dissertation, I identify broad themes for analysis to understand the systematic problem of teaching graduate students to write. Some of the major themes indicate that graduate students largely learn to write outside of the classroom, they value practicing relevant genres, their relationship with faculty mentors is crucial, the importance of learning by doing, and many more. Through these themes, I explore the relationship between graduate student writing pedagogy and the field of RCWS by reflecting on both my own experience and the data shared with me by my participants. I derive pedagogical interventions from the data and make suggestions on how to value writing processes in the classroom and beyond. Inspired by the Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson and his framework for relational accountability, I broaden our examination of graduate student enculturation to attend not only to writing and writing processes but to the relational—the relationships between our embodied identities as writers and disciplinary genre expectations, the relationships between graduate students and faculty. This is me advocating for a more sustained conversation about how to do the labor of the academic writer
Measurements and modeling of phonon-mediated quasiparticle poisoning in superconducting qubit arrays
Get PDFThe realization of a quantum computer that can correct for random errors on its constituent quantum bits, or qubits, is one of the primary goals in the quantum information science community. One of the leading protocols to correct these errors on a quantum processor relies on nearest-neighbor coupling of an array of physical qubits that act collectively as a single logical qubit. Superconducting circuits are a leading implementation of a physical qubit and have been used in some of the first demonstrations of this error correction scheme. A key assumption of this protocol is that errors on the physical qubits are random and uncorrelated. However, high-energy particle impacts from background radiation can deposit large amounts of energy into the device substrates, causing correlated errors in superconducting qubit arrays. In this thesis, we present experimental results where we reduced the sensitivity of a superconducting qubit array to background radiation by adding 10-m-thick Cu islands to the back side of the device substrate, which downconverts the energy of athermal phonons, quantized lattice vibrations, via phonon scattering. These structures serve to channel excess energy away from the qubits in the device layer. We then present a detailed Monte Carlo-based simulation of these devices experiencing a particle impact and resolve the spatial and temporal effects on a simulated qubit array. We present an experiment where we intentionally increased the radiation flux by adding a radioactive source outside of the cryostat that houses the qubit chips. Using the resulting data, we can develop a detailed model of the charge dynamics from ionizing impacts within the device substrates. Finally, we present evidence of an additional source of correlated errors with superconducting qubit arrays that likely originate from differential thermal contraction between the thin metal films of the device layer and the insulating substrate. The results presented in this thesis serve to characterize various sources of correlated errors and inform future superconducting qubit device designs that are robust against correlated errors