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Displacement or Transformation: Which Design Strategy Is Most Desirable in Magazine Advertisements
No full textThis study examined the effectiveness of two distinct advertising strategies —Displacement and Transformation — using the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright, 1994) and advertising strategies as the foundation. As individuals encounter countless advertisements daily across various media outlets, understanding consumer preferences is crucial for marketers. The study focused on print advertisements for the Chevrolet Equinox, with Displacement advertisements placing the product in unusual contexts and Transformation advertisements altering the product’s appearance to resemble other objects. A survey of 105 students from a Midwestern liberal arts college was used to gather responses to these advertisements. Findings indicate no significant overall preference between the two strategies, though specific elements like color, high-value and directness in the Displacement advertisements received higher ratings. The study emphasizes the importance of detailed design elements and consumer familiarity with advertising in shaping perceptions. Limitations include the use of a single product and medium, and a narrow sample. Recommendations for future research include exploring diverse products and media, incorporating more varied questions, and recruiting a broader sample to enhance the generalizability and applicability of the findings
Divine Interventions and Human Competition: Horses, Prizes, and the Gods in Homer’s Narrative of the Funeral Games for Patroclus
No full textHomer’s narrative of the Funeral Games for Patroclus in the Iliad reveals two prominent multivocal symbols that permeate archaic Greek culture: the horse and the tripod. This thesis argues that the horse and the tripod fulfill important functions as symbols for aspects of life as diverse as elite status, divine favor, and military power. As multivocal symbols, the horse and the tripod convey fundamental ancient Greek meanings and manifest in diverse ways in myth and ritual.
A main part of my theoretical apparatus for this thesis comes from Victor Turner. Victor Turner was a symbolic anthropologist who made substantial contributions to research on multivocal symbols and rites of passage, and he developed this research in his ethnographic fieldwork with the Ndembu tribe of South Africa. Thus, Victor Turner establishes the foundational concepts for this thesis. As Turner shows, multivocality is an anthropological concept that refers to symbols that have more than one meaning or interpretation, and rites of passage is a ritual that reflects a transformation from one state to another.
This thesis shows that an analysis of the Funeral Games for Patroclus provides evidence for how the Greeks of archaic Greek culture conceptualized the world around them, and the symbols that generated semantic potency
The Effects of Early Christianity on Early Medieval Scottish Mortuary Practices
No full textThe arrival of Christianity to Scotland changed native Scottish culture and mortuary practices, which has continued to affect modern Scotland. I argue that the introduction of Christianity into Scotland changed not only their religious and mortuary beliefs, but that it also affected the ways in which ancient Scots understood and processed death. This can be seen in the changing mortuary practices of ancient Scots. During the Iron Age, the most common ways of disposing a body included excarnation, cremation, and internment, while later in the Medieval Ages, the common disposal changed to include mostly to inhumation. The location of the bodies also shows the changes brought by the Christian ideology. During the Iron Age in Scotland, bodies were mostly individually buried or in a small group, but in the Medieval Ages, larger cemeteries became more common. To attempt to prove my thesis correct, I examined both historical and archaeological data to gain a better understanding of Scotland in general and their mortuary practice prior to Christianity during the Late Iron Age and the Early Medieval Age. The purpose of this study is to show how religion can alter a culture and their mortuary practices and using both archaeology and history to accomplish this. It is important because religion affects many aspects of a culture and understanding the history of a culture is required to accurately examine modern culture. A culture’s mortuary practices can tell scholars how ancient cultures understood death, what their religious beliefs were, and even how cultures interacted with one another
Neuroscience and Public Health: Exploring the Neuroscience of Motivation and Consumption as a Tool for Developing Food Desert Interventions
No full textPoor food environments are a chronic public health issue primarily affecting poor and minoritized communities. Many of the current solutions for food deserts are short-lived and largely ineffective. This thesis proposes using neuroscientific theory on consumption and motivation a possible tool in food-desert-solution development that will help achieve the behavioral shift needed for successful interventions. Using this approach, the brain areas most susceptible to alterations by junk food consumption must first be identified. Second, solutions that consider the altered brain physiology accompanying food desert inhabitancy must be developed and implemented. This thesis begins by reviewing the background of food deserts and the neuroscience of consumption and motivation. It then focuses on a study done on the ventral pallidum to better understand its role in junk food consumption. The ventral pallidum (VP) is an area of the brain that is activated during reward consumption. We investigated whether reversible unilateral optogenetic inhibition would reduce consumption of 100% coconut oil, a highly palatable reward. We hypothesized that unilateral inhibition of the VP would reduce oil consumption. We injected the inhibitory opsin Archaerhodopsin 3.0 unilaterally into VP and used a transgenic Cre-recombinase mediated approach to selectively target VP GABAergic neurons. Following surgery, VGAT-ires-cre mice were trained on a Pavlovian head-fixed oil consumption task. Oil was dispensed four seconds after a digital tone. Closed-looped optogenetic inhibition using a 5mW or 10mW 532nm laser was triggered by the first lick on every 4th trial (laser on in 20% of all trials). We concluded that inhibition had no effect on coconut oil consumption. Further studies, including the pairing of optogenetic stimulation with the digital tone, are needed to determine the role of VP GABAergic neurons in perceived palatability and consumption. The thesis ends by contextualizing the findings of the study into food desert research. By better understanding the neuroscience of food desert inhabitancy, we can create interventions that consider the behavioral changes spurred by environmental influence on the brain
And Call It Mercy: A Collection of Poetry
No full textThis collection of poems explores my family history, including their immigration from Yugoslavia, experiences with war, and assimilation to new lands. I allude to several Serbian poets, like Charles Simic and Vasko Popa, who motivated my work with their surrealist influences. I also include meditations on the natural environment in connection to culture and grief, inspired by writers like Ai and Mary Oliver. The collection embodies different speakers for each poem and follows a loose chronology based on the intergenerational tales I learned through interviews with my grandmother
Ciclo de la Historia Repetida: El Juego de Espera de los “Dreamers”
No full textMi estudio independiente pretende arrojar luz sobre la tendencia en los Estados Unidos de usar los talentos de los inmigrantes desde la década de 1950 hasta hoy. No importa lo mucho que los inmigrantes indocumentados contribuyan y hayan contribuido al país, siempre serán instrumentos y vistos como extranjeros y criminales . Desde el principio de la historia, han utilizado a los inmigrantes como máquinas de trabajo, deportándolos cuando le conviene a los Estados Unidos y aprovechándose de sus habilidades sin reconocimiento. La discriminación de los inmigrantes ha estado siempre presente en los Estados Unidos. Voy a considerar el efecto del programa DACA y el esfuerzo general de los inmigrantes por ser parte del sueño americano. Para este estudio realicé dos entrevistas a beneficiarios de DACA para ver cómo el programa ha afectado sus vidas y para evaluar su eficacia. Los Dreamers viven en un juego de espera en el que no saben si en cualquier momento les pueden quitar este programa y se va la vida que construyeron en los Estados Unidos. Sin ninguna reforma migratoria para las personas cuyos padres y antepasados construyeron y vivieron en este país, siempre vivirán con miedo. Las contribuciones y experiencias de los inmigrantes en Estados Unidos son una parte esencial de la historia y la cultura de esta nación
Gesture-Based Interactive Nature Simulation
No full textThis project implements a nature simulation-like game, designed to be used by a crowd of people during the Independent Study Symposium. Users are able to influence the growth of a small field of grass by controlling the weather of the simulation. User input is taken through hand gestures using Google’s MediaPipe solution, with different gestures providing control to the various features of the application. Furthermore, a custom set of shaders was created to improve the visuals and create a consistent art style for the project