Syracuse University
Syracuse University Research Facility and Collaborative EnvironmentNot a member yet
20376 research outputs found
Sort by
How Can Public Sector Employers Improve the Effectiveness of Email Recruitment?
Get PDFWith the constant deluge of listservs, email advertisements, and phishing scams, many email recipients have become accustomed to deleting emails from unknown sources without ever reading them. Knowing what can increase the likelihood of email engagement may improve the effectiveness of email communications in job recruitment. This brief summarizes findings from a study that reports results from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a mass email campaign to recruit applicants for a training program for K-12 teaching jobs. The authors compared email open rates between emails that contained a letter with university logos signed by a university official versus emails that contained an informational flyer with a photograph. They found that emails presented in an official letter form increased email open rates by 15%
Rewriting Exurbia
No full textRewriting Exurbia explores how cultural diversity is transforming aging suburban sprawl. Lawrence C. Davis highlights design strategies like increased density, mixed-use development, and shared spaces that reimagine sprawl as inclusive, resilient, and community-oriented
“RAISING VOICES TO BUILD BRIDGES”: EXPLORATION OF MUSLIM AMERICAN EARLY ADOLESCENTS\u27 LITERACY PRACTICES IN AN OUT OF SCHOOL BOOK CLUB PROGRAM
No full textThis study investigates the literacy practices and identity formation of Muslim American early adolescents participating in an out-of-school book club. The study is rooted in the need to understand the unique experiences of this marginalized group, particularly in the face of increasing Islamophobia and societal misrepresentations. It aims to explore how societal perceptions, and literary practices shape the self-identities and internal self-conceptions of these adolescents and how these external views impact their narratives. Using a qualitative approach, the research draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), MusCrit, and Reader-Response Theory to analyze data collected over a 12-week period from recorded book club sessions, interviews, participant artifacts, and researcher journals. The participants, who identified as Muslim Americans born in the United States, came from diverse cultural, racial, and gender backgrounds. The book club provided a space for them to engage with literature that reflects their own experiences and identities, thereby fostering a sense of belonging and community. The findings of the study highlight the significant impact of book club participation on the adolescents\u27 literacy engagement, identity development, and social interactions. The book club served as a critical space where participants could freely express their thoughts, challenge stereotypes, and build a positive self-identity. Through discussions of diverse books, the adolescents were able to see themselves reflected in the literature, which helped to validate their experiences and counteract negative societal messages. The study also revealed the importance of having supportive mentors and facilitators who understand the cultural and religious backgrounds of the participants. Furthermore, the research underscores the role of community-based literacy programs in enhancing the academic and personal growth of marginalized youth. By providing culturally relevant and inclusive literacy experiences, these programs can help bridge the gap between in-school and out-of-school learning, supporting the holistic development of students. The dissertation also offers insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with implementing such programs, emphasizing the need for collaboration between educators, community members, and policymakers. This study contributes to the broader discourse on education and literacy, advocating for the recognition and inclusion of diverse voices in educational settings. It highlights the transformative potential of literacy practices in shaping identities and fostering social justice. The research calls for educators to adopt culturally responsive pedagogies that honor the diverse backgrounds and experiences of all students, particularly those from marginalized communities like Muslim American adolescents. In conclusion, this dissertation provides valuable insights into the literacy practices and identity formation of Muslim American early adolescents, demonstrating the profound impact of culturally relevant literacy programs on their lives. It emphasizes the importance of creating inclusive and supportive learning environments that empower all students to raise their voices and build bridges across cultural and social divides
Three Essays on Improving Access to Healthcare in Ethiopia
Get PDFAbstract Achieving universal health coverage necessitates equitable access to healthcare services. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly half of the global population lacks full coverage of essential health services, with Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) being disproportionately affected. The situation is further exacerbated by the increasing frequency and severity of climate change-induced extremes, which are deepening health equity challenges in these regions. In response, governments and various international and national organizations have implemented numerous policy initiatives to improve healthcare access for marginalized populations in LMICs. Given the growing emphasis on achieving universal health coverage in developing countries, there is a pressing need for more research to inform evidence-based policies aimed at enhancing healthcare accessibility. This dissertation addresses this critical issue by examining the extent to which insufficient health services worsens health outcomes in remote regions and exploring policy measures that can effectively enhance healthcare access in rural and remote areas. This dissertation is divided into three chapters. The first chapter focuses on the impact of drought on child health, utilizing panel data from the Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) collected in the Borana Zone of Ethiopia\u27s Oromia region between 2012 and 2015. This data is combined with remote sensed satellite data, specifically the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which serves as a drought indicator by capturing photosynthetic activity and assessing the greenness of a location. Child nutrition outcomes are measured using Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC). The study estimates the prevalence of undernutrition and the effect of drought on these outcomes using multivariate regression models. The findings reveal that 11.2% of the sampled children in the Borana Zone experience moderate undernutrition, and a one standard deviation decrease in NDVI z-score is associated with a more than 7% increase in the probability of undernutrition among children under five. Chapter two presents’ findings from a discrete choice experiment to examine the preferences of health workers in South Omo Zone of Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia regarding rural job attributes. This zone was selected because it is where I served as a head of health department from 2010 to 2016, enabling me to leverage my professional network and apply my in-depth knowledge of the Ethiopian public health system to interpret the results. Four focus group discussions and eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted to identify job attributes and their levels. A fractional factorial experimental design was used to minimize the number of job options presented to health workers to allow elicitations of preferences in a discrete choice experiment with a feasible number of alternative choices. The discrete choice experiment produced sixteen choice sets with two alternatives per set. Survey data was collected from 314 health workers in eight districts in southwestern Ethiopia between mid-September and mid-November 2022. Using a mixed logit model with full correlation between utility coefficients, I estimated the relative importance of job attributes, willingness to pay, probability of job uptake, and cost of policy options. The results show that educational opportunities, improved salary, and housing are the most significant factors influencing the attraction and retention of health workers in remote and rural regions. Job uptake rate estimation indicates that offering educational opportunities after one and three years of service at base salary makes remote and rural jobs attractive to 80% and 67.5% of health workers, respectively. In the third chapter, I further investigate the most important attributes of rural and remote jobs to attract graduating health science college students to these areas. Additional focus group discussions were conducted with students at Arbaminch College of Health Sciences, which is also located in the southwestern corner of Ethiopia near where I served as a head of health department and where I attended graduate studies in public health. A total of 332 final-year students participated in the discrete choice experiment survey. Separate analysis was required because combining student and practicing health workers could potentially overestimate the willingness of qualified health workers to accept specific job conditions. Using a mixed logit model with full correlation of utility coefficients, I estimated the relative importance of job attributes, willingness to pay, and probability of job uptake. The findings indicate that educational opportunities, improved salary, and housing are the most important attributes influencing graduating students’ job location decisions. The simulated probability of job uptake shows that at base salary, providing educational opportunities after one year of service makes the job attractive to 76.4% of respondents. Both health workers and students prioritize future educational opportunities, but key differences exist. While salary is valued similarly, it is structured differently in the choice experiment. Health workers values housing and workplace management greatly, whereas students\u27 decisions are more heavily influenced by education opportunities. Additionally, health workers value all job attributes, while students do not place much importance on infrastructure and facility location. Conducting research with both groups is crucial to capturing these differences, ensuring that policy interventions effectively address the motivations of both current health workers and future workforce entrants. This dissertation contributes to the development of evidence-based policies aimed at improving healthcare accessibility in low-resource settings, with a focus on mitigating the impacts of drought and enhancing rural health workforce retention
Frustration and Functionality : Geometry and Topology in Mechanical Metamaterials
No full textThis dissertation is concerned with a study of the effect of geometry in complex few body mechanical systems. The problems that we set out to solve lie on the interface of soft condensed matter physics, geometry and topology. In the first problem, I developed an effective elasticity theory of thin mechanical metamaterial sheets. This work explored the elastic response of thin metamaterial sheets draped on a uniformly and weakly curved substrate. The model spells out an elegant screening law that shows that a metamaterial alleviates elastic stresses by actuating the soft modes accessible to it. In the second problem, we extend this framework and show how geometrically frustrated metamaterials leverage their inherent floppy modes to reshape stress accumulation and self-assembly thermodynamics. These metamembranes exhibit a significantly extended size range for accommodating Gaussian curvature and self-limiting assembly compared to conventional elastic systems. This opens up new design possibilities in sub-micron level organizations like DNA origami or colloidal assemblies. In the third problem, we zoom into the micro-scale mechanics of metamaterial chains and sheets with varying unitcell geometries to understand the macro-scale consequences. This approach guides us towards a coarse-grained elasticity theory of disordered metamaterials. This model serves as a unifying framework for both topological kinematics of un-frustrated mechanical systems as well as topological features of mechanically incompatible frustrated systems. This model helps us understand deformations in disordered systems and capture their effective non-linear mechanical behavior. All these problems exemplify how geometry affects the topological and mechanical properties of these floppy materials and alter their macro-scale elastic response
The Importance of National Government Participation in Local Smart Cities Planning
Get PDFThe arrival of the smart city paradigm represents a significant shift in urban planning, integrating technology and data analytics to enhance urban environments\u27 livability, workability, and sustainability. This thesis explores the critical role that national and local governments play in planning and executing smart city initiatives across a nation state, examining the impacts of policy in such technologically advanced urban spaces. With a multiple case study research design and the use of secondary data it seeks to understand how important national policies are in supporting and influencing the endeavors of local governments in deploying smart city solutions that cater to the unique needs of their communities. Three smart city indices are used as reference points for selecting the case study cities (Zurich, Singapore, Seoul, Philadelphia and Cape Town), which provided an opportunity to consider the extent to which national governance may or may not have influenced their positions on these and other points of reference. Using a mixed methods research design, the results indicate that the policies, strategies, frameworks and levels of engagement by national governments play a major role in determining the success or otherwise of smart city planning and implementation. Based on this, appropriate conclusions are drawn and recommendations made
Exploring the longitudinal impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on later psychological outcomes
Get PDFAbstract Experiencing adversity in childhood (ACEs) can significantly affect an individual’s health across the lifespan. However, most prior research has relied on a cumulative risk approach, focusing on the association between the total number of ACEs and psychological outcomes. Additionally, limited studies have explored how ACEs influence depression across different developmental stages. Meanwhile, most research focuses on individuals’ health outcomes without considering the profound impact of ACEs on parenting, which can affect the developmental outcomes of future generations. Furthermore, few studies have examined how protective factors at multiple levels (e.g., family, school, and neighborhood) buffer the effects of various ACE combinations on adolescent depression. To address these gaps, this dissertation comprises three research projects that investigate how different ACEs patterns affect individuals’ depression across adolescence and emerging adulthood, and parenting satisfaction and stress, and how multi-level protective factors mitigate the impact of ACEs on adolescent depression. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) (N = 3,342), Study 1 aimed to identify patterns of ACEs and examine gender differences in the association between different patterns of ACEs and depressive symptoms across adolescence and emerging adulthood. Gender differences were observed in the Parental Alcohol Use and Divorce class, Abuse and Neglect class, and Multiple ACEs class in middle adolescence and emerging adulthood. The aim of Study 2 was to examine how different combinations of maternal and paternal ACEs may affect parenting satisfaction and parenting stress using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; N = 2,578, 60.4% female). The study found nuanced differences between maternal and paternal ACEs class memberships. Parenting satisfaction differed across ACEs classes for both mothers and fathers, even though some ACEs classes might not differ from the Low ACEs class in the post-hoc tests. ACEs class memberships were not significantly associated with parenting stress. The aim of Study 3 was to examine the association between ACEs class memberships at age 5 with depressive symptoms at age 15, and explored whether protective factors including parental warmth, school connectedness, and neighborhood collective efficacy at age 9 buffered the negative impact of earlier ACEs on adolescent depression. Using data (N = 3,425) from the Future Families and Child Wellbeing Studies (FFCWS), the study found that compared to the Low ACEs class, both the Domestic & Neighborhood Violence, Parental Depression and Material Hardship class and the Abuse, Parental Divorce, Material Hardship and Neighborhood Violence class had higher levels of depressive symptoms. Parental warmth, school connectedness, and neighborhood collective efficacy were not found to moderate the association between ACEs class memberships and adolescent depression. Taken together, this dissertation emphasizes how ACEs can have a far-reaching impact on individuals’ mental health and parenting practices. Through LCA, it offers a deeper understanding of how different ACE patterns shape psychological outcomes over time and how these effects may extend across generations. The dissertation contributes to the field by revealing the importance of considering age, gender, different combinations of ACEs and multi-level protective factors in prevention and intervention programs. Key words: adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), depression, parenting, protective factors, latent class analysis (LCA), time-varying effect modeling (TVEM
Hacking ADHD: Activating Adaptations Through Technological Affordances
Get PDFThe last two decades have brought about the actualization of powerful new affordances in online information environments. Online networking platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok have enabled individuals across the globe and in various marginalized groups to access information, take action, and form communities in ways that were never before possible. In the last decade, hacker culture has taken root in communities bound not by their passion for technology but empowered by the affordances of technology and bound by a shared need, motivation, and ethic. The accessibility of online affordances for marginalized populations combined with the re-emergence of hacker culture within new non-technical communities, such as the ADHD community, has led to numerous phenomena, including the online #adhdhacks phenomenon being examined through this study. This research aims to explore affordances and hacks being activated by users of online ADHD content and to increase understanding of the perceptions, motivations, and outcomes related to this behavior so that it may contribute to a deeper understanding of the impact of access to affordances on members of the ADHD community
The Investigation of Lateral Foraging Patterns in Fin and Sei Whales
Get PDFLateralization is the specialization that enhances an organism’s survival by dedicating specific tasks to the hemispheres of the brain, strengthening neural pathways to enhance speed and dexterity of task performance. First described in humans in 1861, lateralization has also been observed in non-human organisms where it often plays a critical role in predator-prey dynamics. Lateralized behaviors for prey foraging, social interactions, and communication have been described in some species of marine mammals from across all three distinct taxonomic orders. In the Order Cetacea, toothed and baleen whale species exhibit lateralized foraging behaviors for prey capture. In this study, I investigated the lateral foraging patterns of two Rorqual whale species, the fin (Balaenoptera physalus) and sei (B. borealis) whales. Rorqual whales use lunge feeding to capture small shoaling prey. Fin whales feed on more maneuverable prey and at a higher trophic level than sei whales. Based on the prediction that lateralization of behavior should enhance speed and dexterity of an action, I predict that evidence for lateralization will be stronger for fin whales than sei whales in lateral lunge feeding behaviors. Data were collected in the nearshore waters of the Gulf of Maine and Southern New England. A total of 28 tag deployments were used in this study (fin whales, n = 16; sei whales, n = 12). The roll data from the tag was analyzed through the accelerometer sensors to identify lateral lunge feeding events, and a lateral index (LI) was calculated alongside generalized linear mixed models for statistical analysis. Despite my predictions, I found no significant difference between the two species with regards to lateralization of their lunge feeding behaviors. Future studies should refine data analysis by incorporating direct behavioral observations, other kinematic variables, and conducting prey sampling to better understand their influence on lateralized lunge feeding behaviors