Miami University, Ohio
Not a member yet
805 research outputs found
Sort by
Tell Me About Your Mother/s: A Genealogy of Contemporary Organizing in South Africa
No full textThe presentation examined the political and social strategies and the ethical percepts, which the African women had to go through. They survived migration and intervened in the shape and structure of the forces of involuntary migration and the construction of rural and urban spaces
How OPEN SCHOLARSHIP is CHANGING RESEARCH
No full textA talk about how new digital capabilities -including electronic publishing, social media, institutional repositories, and copyright legislation- are profoundly impacting traditional scholarly communication
Skate to Where the Puck is Going to Be: Aligning Library Services to Faculty Teaching, Research, and Scholarship
No full textOverview of a new library service established in response to changing dynamics in academic libraries and faculty need in the digital age
Unpacked | A Girls Inc. Design Analysis
No full textOrganizations today communicate their missions and values primarily through the Internet and promotional materials. They are able to reach wider audiences, however they are also faced with the challenge of anchoring the abstract “audience” to concrete individuals with stories, thoughts, and experiences. Communicating with younger audiences adds a layer of complexity to this issue. How does an organization of adults create materials that connect with younger audiences? This is precisely the position of Girls Inc., a national nonprofit that works to inspire girls between the ages of six and eighteen to be strong, smart, and bold.
This question is not only complex, but also broad. I therefore chose to analyze Girls Inc. messaging and materials in a holistic way by examining the materials from several angles. I applied two different visual rhetoric frameworks. Anne Wysocki’s The Multiple Media of Texts focuses primarily on the visual elements of texts including color, proportions, typeface, and the relationships between elements on a page. Roland Barthes’s Rhetoric of the Image focuses on the symbolic nature of linguistic and iconic messaging including cultural and societal contexts. In order to better understand what resonated with and empowered the actual young women who are the audience for these materials, and to give them a voice in the designs that address them, I conducted an IRB-approved focus group with high school women in Girls Inc.'s Teen Impact Initiative.
Based on the feedback from the focus group with high school women, I identified strategies for ways visuals and texts may work together to resonate and create a sense of empowerment with these young women. Lastly, I created a mockup of a Girls Inc. website homepage based on the strategies identified in the focus group and design principles from Wysocki and Barthes
Maps of Ohio's 60 Plus Population by County 1990-2050
No full textMaps of Ohio showing the change in the 60 plus population (reported and projected) from 1990 through 2050
Developing a Course: What Liberal Education Means for Miami
No full textWhile Miami University prides itself on being a liberal arts institution, it is not clear that our liberal education curriculum is as effective as it could be in meeting the learning objectives set out for it. This senior project created a model course that can serve as an introduction to curricular life at Miami for first-year students. Offering such a course could significantly enhance students' appreciation of the Miami Plan in particular and liberal learning in general
Temporal aspects of Ciliary Neurotrophic Factor on the Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling 3 Expression and the JAK/STAT Pathway in Rat Retinal Müller cells
No full textThe cytokine ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) is a neuroprotective agent in the central nervous system. CNTF activates the JAK/STAT signaling pathway to induce protein expression, which subsequently levels off due to negative control. One class of negative regulators is the suppressors of cytokine signaling (SOCS) proteins. The goal of my research was to study the temporal aspects of CNTF on SOCS3 gene expression and its relationship to the JAK/STAT pathway; and examine the effects of CNTF on levels of other proteins involved in the JAK/STAT pathway.
Retinal Müller cells were treated with CNTF for different time periods from 0 to 90 minutes. The total RNA collected was converted into cDNA for use in quantitative real-time PCR. At 15 minutes, the CNTF-treated cells showed a 2.5 fold increase in SOCS3 mRNA, which increased to 3.5 fold by 30 minutes. The level of SOCS3 mRNA returned to baseline by 90 minutes.
A separate set of cells were transfected with a dominant-negative STAT3 mutant prior to the treatment with CNTF at different time periods from 0 to 90 minutes. The total RNA collected was converted into cDNA for use in quantitative real-time PCR. The dominant-negative STAT3 mutant appears to negate up-regulation of SOCS3 in response to CNTF. These experimental results indicate SOCS3 as a negative feedback regulator of CNTF activation of the JAK/STAT pathway.
CNTF-treated cells were analyzed using Western immunoblotting techniques to study the levels of other proteins such as P-AMPK, P-MAPK, and P-AKT that are involved in the JAK/STAT pathway. There were no significant changes in levels of P-AMPK and P-AKT over 90-minutes. A large increase in the level of P-MAPK was observed at 15 minutes and a substantial decrease was observed at 30 minutes. The P-MAPK level returned to baseline by 60 minutes. The role of P-MAPK in the JAK/STAT pathway of retinal cells is under further investigation
El Excepcionalismo Costarricense Redefinido: La identidad “tica” en la literatura costarricense contemporánea
No full textAside from its reputation as the “Switzerland of Central America,” Costa Rica is rarely mentioned in international headlines or academic studies. The tendency to compare one Central American nation to another has defined Costa Rica as the exceptional country of the region due to its stable democracy, abolition of the military, and social equality. However, by focusing on just Costa Rica, this study questions such assumptions and suggests that the nation has not received the attention that its unique society deserves. From an exterior perspective, it appears that the pacifist country, amidst a region plagued by political corruption, civil wars, and severe poverty, is an uninteresting subject, but an interior perspective reveals a contrary conclusion. The influence of American capitalism, the presence of subcultures, and the existence of social inequality exposes a discrepancy between the “official” and the “real” versions of Costa Rica. The image of “pura vida” limits the country to a unitary national identity – happy, educated, and “white” citizens that live in harmony, connected by a culture of peace – that does not admit to the existence of cultural diversity outside the center of the country, from where the dominant vision originates. Although some of the scholars who have studied Costa Rica are beginning to expose the myth of Costa Rican excepcionalism, almost none have considered Costa Ricans’ thoughts of their own country’s national identity. Therefore, this work investigates to what extent the official representation of Costa Rica corresponds to the individual experiences and individualities of Costa Ricans themselves. In order to achieve this “tico” perspective, I analyze a selection of prose taken from contemporary national literature, the most authentic portrayal of the Costa Rican voice. The works of Tatiana Lobo, Alfonso Chase, and Uriel Quesada, despite the variety of their styles, do not represent a completely pacific Costa Rica with social equality and perfect democracy, but instead reveal how the official national identity excludes the experiences of many marginalized Costa Ricans – immigrants, women, the poor, and gay individuals – that do not fit the image of a “legitimate” Costa Rican. Instead of the typical pattern of defining Costa Rica based upon observations from the outside, these authors insist that Costa Ricans are the ones that must determine Costa Rican identity. In this way, the contemporary literature of Costa Rica tries to encourage citizens to examine what is really happening in the country beyond the guise of “pura vida.
The Cute Chameleon: The Effect of Attractiveness Level on Behavioral Mimicry Within Same-Sex Dyads
No full textBehavioral mimicry is the changing of movements or mannerisms to match that of an interaction partner. The phenomenon occurs nonconsciously and has been shown to increase the level of liking between interaction partners (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Moderators of mimicry include in-group membership (Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin, 2008), desire to be liked (Lakin & Chartrand, 2003), and social exclusion (Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin, 2008). Attractiveness level has been shown to have a substantial effect on how individuals perceive a person (Ahola, Angela, Christianson, & Hellstrm, 2009). The current study addressed whether attractiveness level of a female in a projected video would impact the amount of mimicry exhibited by females participating in the study. Additionally, this study compared two interactions for each participant to determine not only a baseline comparison for each action performed, but also to determine which action performed by the confederate was more likely to be mimicked. Finally, this study investigated whether using a video projection of a confederate as an interaction partner would be as effective as a live confederate in the room through the comparison of the results of the current study with previous work