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Rethinking the University as a Context for Activism
No full textIn the progressive U.S. imaginary, the university is a bastion of activism. Through a case study of one university’s actions regarding campus activism, this dissertation re-examines this conception to suggest that certain university practices function instead to frustrate campus activism. In some circumstances, “best practices” like leadership development, administrative dialogue, and multicultural programming may reduce campus activism. Because administrators generally govern toward equilibrium, activism, as an upset, can be an effective lever for essential changes. When activism is diverted, so too are certain transformative potentialities. This dissertation grapples with these losses and suggests alternative pathways for university changemaking
Title Page Evaluation of a Caries Education Program in A Trauma Affected Community
No full textObjective. The health of trauma affected communities can be a complex and a multifaceted issue with various contributing factors such as physical health challenges, mental health issues, economic hardships, and social disruption. The objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of a caries education program for individuals from a trauma affected community.
Design. A quasi-experimental pre- and post- educational intervention survey
Setting. Face-to-face educational intervention and surveys in a non-profit organization of Pittsburgh, PA , Neighborhood Resilience Project (NRP), within a Dental Health Professional Shortage Area.
Participants. Study participants were individuals from trauma affected communities over the age of 18 years old and were recruited at community events hosted by NRP. Participation was voluntary.
Method. The caries education program focused on caries prevention and progression. Baseline knowledge was assessed by a pre-program questionnaire which recorded demographic information as well as knowledge questions based on oral health, specifically focusing on caries. The program was administered by an oral health professional and consisted of a virtual presentation followed by an interactive question and answer segment. Lastly, a post-program questionnaire was administered which contained the same knowledge questions as the pre-program assessment to evaluate knowledge gained.
Results: A total of 38 responses were collected between June 2023 to November 2023. Data analysis revealed no significant changes between pre- and post- intervention survey scores.
Conclusion: Currently, there is no literature about oral health knowledge for individuals in trauma affected communities. Through this study, we hoped to establish an understanding of interventions in this community to pave the way for future custom-tailored programs. Although, results of this study did not support the effectiveness of the educational intervention, the limitations of this program help to transform future interventions
Effective Messaging Can Improve Public Trust
No full textThere has been a declining amount of faith and trust between the general public and public health organizations, specifically in how the public perceives government communication sources and healthcare systems. Preserving and strengthening a trusting and transparent relationship between health providers and their community is fundamental for improving healthcare access, quality, and outcomes. This relationship is essential for patient-centered care and vital for promoting community health and well-being.
This essay aims to evaluate why this relationship has and continues to weaken and how to develop solutions that restore trust immediately and effectively. To first illustrate this concern, I identify evidence of the United States population’s declining confidence in domestic health systems and organizations through community responses to COVID-19 vaccination efforts, related vaccine hesitancy, and overall community responses to public health messaging and recommendations. Next, I consider frameworks for the public health system and organizational communication strategies and how the resulting messages are developed and delivered. From this evaluation, I explore why the messaging did not resonate well with some audiences, demonstrated by an increasing distrust towards health systems at an organizational level. Then, I explore why this distrust has seemingly not translated to an individual level, observed from higher trust levels associated with one-on-one relationships between health providers and individuals.
As a result of this exploration, I suggest how communication approaches at an individual level can be implemented at an organizational level, resulting in a stronger relationship between health providers and the community. By analyzing the structure through which public health messages are crafted and delivered by public healthcare systems and the factors that influence their reception by the populations they serve, health organizations and providers gain perspective for strategies to improve public trust
Keyphrasification: Summarizing text into keyphrases - using neural language generation methods
No full textKeyphrases encapsulate the core information of a text, acting as effective tools for organizing and retrieving extensive data. Their utility spans various applications, including information retrieval, document classification, and automatic summarization. Given the cost and limitations of manual keyphrase assignment, there has been a growing interest in automating this process. Traditional approaches to keyphrase assignment are categorized into extraction, which involves selecting phrases directly from the text, and tagging, where pre-defined tags are applied. Both methods often fail to address the complexity of natural language. For instance, a substantial fraction of keyphrases are absent from the source text and are missed by extraction methods. This observation highlights the need to reevaluate the paradigms within keyphrase studies and refine methodologies in automatic keyphrase prediction.
This dissertation introduces KKeyPhrasification to formulate the task of keyphrase prediction. By developing a conceptual framework and defining essential properties, this work aims to deepen the understanding of keyphrase prediction and facilitate the development of more effective techniques. Furthermore, I propose a novel modeling approach, keyphrase generation (KPGEN), utilizing neural language generation to learn the mapping between texts and keyphrases directly from data to predict contextually relevant phrases in varied forms. The dissertation further presents various enhancements and mechanisms to refine this approach.
This work makes several pivotal contributions. It reformulates keyphrase prediction as a specialized form of summarization, thereby broadening the previous research scope. It innovates in automatic keyphrasification with a data-driven approach, employing neural networks to predict context-relevant phrases, overcoming the limitations of prior methodologies. Furthermore, the study explores a range of advanced language generation techniques, from basic to pre-trained and large language models, making it a comprehensive investigation into the task of keyphrasification
First Impressions: Empirically Evaluating the Initial Website Experiences Encountered by Visually Impaired Users
No full textAs the internet increases in size, our body of research into what visitors prefer for website design is leaving out a growing group of people. Those with visual impairments are one of the fastest growing minorities with a disability online. This extremely under-studied group uses the internet for as many different purposes as sighted users do, but comparatively little is known about their preferences or experiences online. This qualitative study is intended to serve as an initial exploration to increase understanding and serve as a foundation for future research. Using a blend of grounded theory, thematic analysis, and content analysis techniques, it focuses on the interactions blind and low vision visitors have when visiting websites for the first time.
To accomplish this, 31 individuals with vision levels falling on the blind or low vision spectrum were interviewed about their online experiences. It examines the problems they encounter that detract from their experience of the site, possibly causing them to leave immediately or discourage them from using the site further. Divided into structural, content, and ad-related issue categories, the issues reported by both low vision and blind participants are compared within each group and to each other for commonalities and differences. Finally, the reported issues are compared to the currently accepted accessibility guidelines to evaluate how well the guidelines cover the issues
Enhancing Social Studies at the Elementary Level through Inquiry-Based Instruction: Effects of Collaboration with an External Academic Partner
No full textProviding engaging, rigorous social studies education at the elementary level is a challenge faced by school districts across the country. In K-12 schools nationwide, social studies education is often neglected so that more time can be devoted to ELA and math, both of which have annual standardized tests associated with them that often carry high stakes for schools in terms of funding and reputation. Also, over the past decade, the political environment has grown increasingly divisive, leading teachers and administrators to avoid discussions of current and historical events that could lead to classroom controversy. In Pennsylvania, the standards for social studies have not been updated in a decade or more, and they are not written in a way that encourages engaging instructional practices.
In the school district where the research for this study took place, several teachers and administrators expressed an interest in new approaches to social studies instruction at the elementary level. This study paired an external academic partner with an elementary teacher to develop and strengthen the teacher’s use of inquiry in social studies lessons. The findings conclude that the external academic partner was effective in supporting the teacher’s growth and development in planning inquiry-based lessons, using primary source materials, and adopting interdisciplinary approaches in social studies. The results suggest that this approach may be successful in the future for districts that wish to strengthen the provision of elementary social studies
Prospected: Mining the talent of Black and Latinx boys in college preparation programs
No full textCollege access remains challenging for Black and Latinx boys. These boys, on average, lag boys who are White or Asian, and peers who are girls in both college enrollment and college graduation rates (Bell, 2014; Noguera, 2012). College preparation programs have helped close the racial and gender gaps by providing students with relevant navigation skills and financial resources. However, Black and Latinx boys face the lowest recruitment and retention rates in college preparation programs. With over a decade of working with dozens of college and career staff – called talent miners here, I noticed many of these programs did not demonstrate culturally responsive (Gay, 2010) practices or invest sufficiently in engagement of mothers which could support recruitment and retention of Black and Latinx boys.
This study used Critical Race Theory to guide continuous improvement – ImproveCrit (Anderson & Hayes, 2023). I utilized a PDSA Cycle to measure improvement in the recruitment of Black and Latinx boys following the intervention of a culturally responsive recruitment training module with a recruitment team. I also used a Case Study approach (Yin, 2009) to investigate the impact of mothers in retention. Borrowing from participatory action research (Brown & Rodríguez, 2009), much of the study’s methods and recommendations were co-created with two recent program graduates—called junior practitioners. Mining talent is akin to mining gold; therefore, I presented my findings using gold mining metaphors. To this end, I find that self-perception was equally important as the talent miners’ perception, mothers support their Black and Latinx sons as advocates or coaches, Black and Latinx boys are either overlooked or feared, and different skills were needed to recruit and retain the Black and Latinx boys in groups and Black and Latinx boys as individuals. By the class of 2026, Genesys Works - National Capital Region aimed to: (1) increase recruitment from 20% to 35% among students who identify as Black or Latinx boys and (2) achieve a retention rate of 80% among Black and Latinx boys (versus their current rates of 43% and 60%, respectively). The results of the study showed improvement and progress towards the aim
Spectrum and Decay of Hybrid Mesons in a Constituent Gluon Model
No full textFor fifty years, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) has been accepted as the fundamental theory of strong interactions. The confirmation of the theory took place with the discovery of asymptotic freedom in 1973 and it now represents one of the crowning jewels of the current standard model of particle physics. However, a thorough understanding of strong interactions in the low-energy regime is still out of reach. We still do not have an analytic description of confinement and many of the properties of hadrons remain enigmatic. The need for phenomenological models is therefore apparent. In this work we develop a constituent gluon model of hybrid mesons based on QCD in Coulomb Gauge.
This thesis is organized as follows. In Chapter 1 we give a brief introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics and its symmetries. We also discuss the SU(3) structure of QCD and provide the details of the QCD Hamiltonian in Coulomb Gauge, which forms the basis for our model. In Chapter 2 we extensively discuss the properties of conventional and hybrid mesons, starting with the basic properties of quarks. We then give an overview of constituent quark models, mainly non-relativistic models. Prior hybrid models are also covered in this chapter. An extensive overview of hybrid models deserves much more space that is given to it in this thesis. Here, our main goal is to present the various approaches of describing hybrids (bag models, relativistic string models, flux tube models, and constituent gluon models) and see how they they compare to lattice data and experiment. We close the chapter with a discussion of hybrid decay models.
The details of our model, including the construction of the hybrid state and the Hamiltonian employed are presented in Chapter 3. This chapter also contains the results for the spin-averaged spectrum of charmonium hybrids, which is then compared to the large body of lattice data. A short section with heavy quarkonium results is also included.
Hybrid decays of charmonium and light hybrids are presented in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, respectively. Conclusions are contained in Chapter 6
Microstructure Evolution In Al-(Cu,Ag) Alloy Thin Films During Pulsed Laser Induced Rapid Solidification
No full textObserving rapid transient processes during solidification has proved to be a challenge for conventional characterization techniques due to their inability to meet the required spatiotemporal resolution. However, recent advances in ultra-fast time-resolved in-situ transmission electron microscopy have enabled the characterization of pulsed laser-induced melting and rapid solidification processes in Al-(Cu,Ag) alloys with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution using the unique Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope (DTEM). The DTEM achieves its high spatiotemporal resolution by modifying a conventional TEM with two laser systems: the image formation laser system and process initiation laser system. This study utilized in-situ Movie-Mode Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope (MM-DTEM) experimentation to document rapid solidification processes in Al-(Cu,Ag) alloy thin films. The use of machine learning techniques, in conjunction with post-mortem characterization tools, has unveiled a promising approach for comprehending morphological evolution during rapid solidification processes. Specifically, the binary analysis of STEM images, empowered by advanced machine learning algorithms, provides an in-depth look into the key metrics that describe these morphological transitions. This study enables accurate determination of average velocity of solidification evolution and associated crystal growth mode changes during rapid solidification process in hypo-eutectic (Cu concentration below 17.1 atomic percent) and hyper-eutectic (Cu concentration above 17.1 atomic percent) Al–Cu alloys and hypoeutectic Al-(Cu,Ag) alloy.
This interdisciplinary approach harnesses STEM's high-resolution capabilities and machine learning's computational prowess to extract nuanced details from complex solidification patterns. Furthermore, this intricate analysis is essential for underpinning the integrity and validity of computational models predicting rapid solidification behavior.
Moreover, the synergy of in-situ MM-DTEM observations with these post-mortem characterization techniques amplifies our capacity to derive quantitative markers. These markers are invaluable for understanding the fundamental behaviors of alloys during rapid solidification and ensuring the accuracy and precision of computational models.
This study offers a robust and comprehensive framework to validate and refine rapid solidification models, promising enhanced predictive accuracy and a deeper understanding of alloy behavior under rapid cooling conditions