Via Sapientiae: The Institutional Repository at DePaul University
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“The work is never finished…” A Tribute to John Earl Rybolt, C.M.
No full textDistinguished scholar of the life and work of Elizabeth Ann Seton and longtime member of the VSI Board, Sr. Betty Ann McNeil, D.C., provides a thoughtful and heartfelt tribute dedicated to the accomplished career, scholarship, and immense contributions made to Vincentian studies made by the Rev. John E. Rybolt, C.M
Video label refinement and temporal localization using motion signal patterns
Get PDFPerforming video analysis for activity recognition presents challenges beyond classification, including obtaining class labels and performing temporal localization. One such challenge is precisely labeling a video with class labels having the exact start and end frames of an activity - a difficult task for a human to perform. Moreover, the task of annotating a video at any level of precision can quickly become tedious, impacting the attentiveness of the annotator and resulting in class label errors. Temporally localizing an activity within a video presents a second challenge. This dissertation investigates novel signal and image processing methods for motion features extracted in reference to the subject of the video. Our results show that shapes found in motion data (such as the speed of the subject) can provide an indication of where activities begin and end and have the potential to improve the class label refinement and temporal localization
Clutter and Control: A Regional Analysis of the Effect of Decluttering
Get PDFThe Covid pandemic impacted the whole nation, with 72% of Americans reported disruption in their everyday lives, and 45% of Americans reported negative health impacts in response to the pandemic (Kirzinger et al. 2020). However, there are some populations of citizens that are more vulnerable to the negative mental health effects of the pandemic (Czeisler et al. 2020). Fear and psychological reactance, triggered when individuals feel their freedoms are threatened, surged during the pandemic (Taylor and Asmundson, 2021; Wortman & Brehm, 1975). Yet, little research explores how decluttering projects affect this behavior.
The current study explored the impact of successful decluttering projects as a measure of regaining control to reduce Covid fear for women living in regions experiencing high levels of reactance. To examine the impact of decluttering on fear and reactance, a dataset of 156 women, recruited by the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD) was utilized. Five validated psychometric scales were used: Fear of Covid-19 Scale (Ahorsu et al., 2020), Hong Psychological Reactance Scale (Hong & Faedda, 1996), Personal Project Analysis (Little, B.R. 1983), Social Desirability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960), and Action Control Scale (Diefendorff et al. 2000). Results were mixed in support for the current study. However, when including situational control, results highlighted a notable connection: increased control through decluttering related to reduced fear and reactance. This finding holds significance, especially for women navigating societal pressures around household responsibilities.
The study highlights vital implications for community psychology. It emphasizes the need for gender-specific approaches in crisis response and intervention designs, urging attention to women\u27s mental health during crises like the pandemic. Understanding control\u27s impact, acknowledging cultural differences, and promoting decluttering initiatives are key takeaways. However, the study\u27s limitations include a non-representative sample primarily composed of educated, white women. Additionally, the data collected early in the pandemic might not fully encapsulate evolving concerns or reactions. Future research should aim for more diverse samples and consider evolving societal responses to crises
Shall We Invent the Saints We Need? Pope Francis, the Politics of Canonization, and Vincentian Saints
Get PDFAs the Church reforms and includes more laypeople in its power structure, a similar movement for inclusion should be made among the people who are considered for sainthood. In the past, most saints have been European men who led consecrated lives or who were martyred. This reflected the Church’s previous priorities, ideals, and demographics. But clericalism does not guarantee holiness, as recent sexual abuse revelations have shown, and martyrdom is an uncommon experience. Pope Francis and others have recognized that laypeople can lead extremely holy lives on both a small and large scale. Even the fulfillment of ordinary duties of daily life, if done with love, can be considered holy work. The recognition of the holiness of lay life would also allow for greater gender parity among future canonizations. As the number of clerics decreases and the number of Church members in the Global South increases, more non-European laypeople should be put forward as saints. This would be more representative of the Church’s contemporary makeup and would reflect the common life experiences of its members. This article also explains Vincentianism’s role in the lives of saints and in the lives of people who should be made saints
Stemming the Flow: Strategies to Address the Production Arts Skills Shortage Within Australian Theatre and Performance Practice
Get PDFThe lockdown, cancellations, and uncertainties of COVID-19 triggered a large-scale exit of skilled professional technicians, managers, and designers from the Australian arts industry. A significant gap in the national workforce of production artists has since emerged, forcing arts organisations to work with smaller teams and employ younger people with little to no training or knowledge. These pressures are beginning to impact the industry’s ability to meet the post-COVID demand to stage live performances, yet little information has been collected to fully comprehend the issue or to suggest solutions.
Conducted throughout 2023, this research sought to understand the current situation of the skills shortage in the live performance industry of one Australian state – Queensland – considering viable strategies as well as how tertiary institutions could work with performing arts organisations to address this issue. Employing a qualitative, action research inquiry method, this research partnered with six leading arts organisations as co-researchers in focus group data collection. The resulting data revealed the ten major factors influencing the skills shortage in Queensland. This paper examines both these factors and the existing strategies that organisations have adopted in an attempt to reduce the loss of production artists. We then present three aims for Australian arts organisations attempting to restore their production workforce and provide healthier, more sustainable careers for production artists. This research is the first evidence-based, co-designed Australian strategy for engaging and retaining production artists within the industr
DePaul Digest - Moments - Finals Breakfast
Get PDFPhoto spread of DePaul University leaders serving a late-night breakfast to students at the end of fall quarter
Measuring Up
Get PDFDePaul alumnus Ge Wang trade trades law for a career as a men\u27s clothier, specializing in custom suits for professional athletes, entertainment luminaries, businessmen, celebrities and grooms
The robot on the hill
Get PDF“The Robot on the Hill” is a rogue-like autobattler that procedurally models the state of the individual in the information age. The game abruptly transitions between diverse framings - a hill, a bedroom, a pond, a chessboard, the void - in order to highlight the disjointedness that is present in the informationalizing of self and reality. It dialogues with Byung Chul Han and Heidegger to portray what Han describes as a ‘narrative crisis’ in modernity and the devaluation of experience. When the value of experience diminishes and disintegrates, “all that is left is bare life, a kind of survival.” (Han) This survival state lives from moment to moment - “from one crisis to the next, from one problem to the next…” (Han) Life becomes a series of problems to solve.
Throughout the game, players encounter “axioms”, which are abstract representations of states and ideas such as “anxiety”, “spite”, “ideology”, or “pride”. Each of these axioms serve as a resource to manage or an enemy to confront. Progressing in the game requires players to arrange these axioms on a chess-like board in a strategic way. This strategizing is called “Ordering your Being” within the game, and serves as an ironic misreading of Heidegger’s concept of being where being itself is made out to be manipulable or exploitable.
The journey explores a drama depicting the resulting deterioration from this internal rational game set forth by the propositions of the information age and the poverty of experience flowing from it. It is a projection of the deteriorated individual in the information age, wherein the technic itself invades on the understanding of being
Exploring Total Graphs of Complete Bipartite Graphs
Get PDFIn a proper vertex coloring for a graph G, we call a vertex a b-vertex whenever this vertex is adjacent to at least one vertex of every color class. The b-chromatic number of a graph is defined to be the greatest integer k such that there exists a proper coloring on the graph with k colors where there is at least one b-vertex in every color class. This paper is on the b-chromatic number of the total graphs of complete bipartite graphs. We find bounds of the b-chromatic number for the total graphs of complete bipartite graphs and provide a method to calculate the b-chromatic number of the total graphs of complete bipartite graphs in specific conditions
Disentangling Drivers of Metacommunity Structure for Small Mammals Throughout Paraguay
Get PDFParaguay is home to a unique precipitation gradient, receiving progressively more precipitation from east to west. It has previously been suggested that metacommunity structures for order Chiroptera assemble along precipitation gradients such as this one. Metacommunities have also been shown to assemble along other bioclimatic gradients such as temperature. This study seeks to expand upon other findings by using a larger dataset, partitioned bioclimatic variables, and more mammalian orders. It also seeks to determine how metacommunities assemble along this gradient in Paraguay, investigate the differences between different ecological metacommunity assemblages, and to further understand which bioclimatic variables have the greatest impact on these assemblages. For this study various geospatial and statistical analyses, using ArcGIS Pro and R, were performed to achieve the goals of this project. It was found that for all orders studied and all three orders combined, the east of the country generally had a greater alpha-diversity. It also found that Rodentia, Chiroptera, and all species combined exhibit a Clementsian metacommunity structure while order Didelphimorphia has a Gleasonian metacommunity structure. These metacommunities, generally form boundaries near the Rio Paraguay along the precipitation gradient, except for order Didelphimorphia which had a larger metacommunity in the north of the country, but in the south, the two smaller metacommunities formed a boundary along the Rio Paraguay and precipitation gradient as well. For all orders and all orders combined, every bioclimatic variable had a significant influence on metacommunity assembly, except for temperature seasonality for order Didelphimorphia. For Rodentia, Chiroptera, and all species combined it was determined that precipitation during the coldest month is the most influential bioclimatic variable for metacommunity assembly, for Didelphimorphia, it was longitude. Understanding the way these metacommunities are assembled and what variables influence them can also influence our understanding of how climate change and deforestation impact these species, improving conservation methods