Via Sapientiae: The Institutional Repository at DePaul University
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From the President - Designing DePaul
Get PDFDePaul President Robert L. Manuel shares how the university is looking ahead to designing its future. With students and alumni who make a difference in their local and national communities, DePaul seeks to become the national model for higher education
Telehealth Fraud and Abuse Before and “After” the Pandemic: Are Things Going to Get Better?
Get PDFTelehealth and telemedicine have become increasingly useful to both patients and health care providers. The ease and comfort of attending a doctor’s appointment in the comfort of one’s own home made telehealth and telemedicine convenient, safe, and effective options for seeing a doctor during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, with increased usage of telehealth and telemedicine came increased health care fraud and abuse. With increased health care fraud and abuse came increased regulations, both on the federal and state levels. This Note provides a brief analysis of health care fraud and abuse in the telehealth and telemedicine space. It also provides insight on state and federal telehealth and telemedicine regulations implemented both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Note, I analyze and discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced health care fraud and abuse and how Congress and other regulators are responding
Hacker, influencer, counter-culture spy: cyberspace actors’ models of misinformation and counter-operations
Get PDFAs misinformation continues to spread on social media, its residents have begun to fight back, independent of any platform. This organic resistance to the diffusion of misinformation is a clearly observable phenomenon with roots in Anonymous’ distributed campaigns from the 2010s outwards. Hacker and information security communities are acting in defense of some of their favorite spaces, most notably, Twitter. Security researchers of all stripes use it for sharing indicators of compromise but, as the diffusion of misinformation becomes more problematic it becomes more difficult to find signals in the noise.
These actors’ response to the issues at hand is polarizing, some convinced that political (counter) argumentation is a perpetual nuisance while others passionately attack the roots of misinformation, wherever they perceive it. In this study, researchers interview twenty-three cyberspace actors, highly active on Twitter & Discord, to better understand their mental models of misinformation, how they conceptualize counter operations and their thoughts on the efficacy of the tactics, tools and procedures involved therein
A Spotlight on Teachers’ Culturally Sustaining Beliefs and Responsive Practices for Students of Color in Mathematics
Get PDFSchool leaders and educators across the country are striving to improve instruction for ethnically, culturally, and socio-economically diverse students for long term learning and growth. For years, researchers and scholars praised the tenets of culturally responsive instruction as the solution to meeting the needs of this growing diversity in schools. Unfortunately, many students from ethnically and culturally diverse communities do not have schooling experiences that validate and affirm their knowledge. Culturally responsive teaching is still an area that is under researched, specifically in mathematics. Drawing on the theoretical lens of culturally responsive pedagogy, this mixed methods case study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of mathematics teachers who have culturally sustaining beliefs of their students of color. The study collected information on their planning and implementation of culturally responsive practices and sought to learn about what contributes to or limits their practices on a daily basis. A survey was administered to mathematics teachers in a suburban public school district in the Midwest to identify participants for an interview. Six 3rd-5th grade teachers were interviewed and the findings were organized around six major elements tied to the Culturally Responsive Framework. Overall, the findings illuminated some aspects of the Framework as well as areas of continued growth. Two areas of significance were districtwide culturally responsive training and a newly adopted math curriculum and its impact on the teachers’ use of culturally responsive practices. The findings may provide guidance to district leadership on district initiatives and the alignment with other areas of focus, such as culturally responsive training and adopting new curriculum
Identifying and transforming sites of power in collaborative community-based research
Get PDFFor this dissertation, I analyzed collaboration practices and power structures within three community-based participatory research (CBPR) studies I conducted for my Ph.D. I ask: 1) How do dominant power structures, epistemologies, and narratives manifest in HCI research and praxis? 2) How can we structure research to support our community partners\u27 goals while resisting dominating and extractive practices in academic research? To respond to these questions, I conducted member checking interviews with my collaborators and a duoethnography with my dissertation advisor, Dr. Sheena Erete, about our experiences in the studies as a Black female professor and a white female graduate student. I grounded my findings in Black feminist thought by employing the intersectional analysis method developed by Erete, Rankin, and Thomas (2022).
Through my intersectional analysis, I identified how systems of power and disciplinary norms influenced Dr. Erete\u27s and my decisions about how to structure our collaborations and organize our time and labor. These decisions impacted the distribution of benefit and harm within our collaborations. Systems of power also manifested in cultural narratives imbued within the studies; these narratives informed our methods and interactions with our collaborators and community members. I organize these findings into five saturated sites of power (a term developed by Collins, 2019) within CBPR. These are sites where intersecting systems of power acutely impact collaborators\u27 experiences and study outcomes. To support researchers in developing a non-extractive and mutually beneficial CBPR practice, I offer a set of reflexive prompts that address three themes: 1) evaluating researchers’ capacity for the work; 2) distributing resources through CBPR; and 3) using narratives as a reflexive tool. This dissertation contributes to critical human-computer interaction (HCI) literature and offers recommendations that researchers can use to intentionally co-design studies that mitigate harm and advance community-defined goals
OPTICAL VARIABILITY OF GREEN PEA GALAXIES
Get PDFIn this thesis, I am investigating the optical variability of Green Pea galaxies (GPs). GPs are good analogs to high-redshift galaxies, enabling us to learn more about the first galaxies in the universe. One of their key properties is their strong emission lines, some of which indicate the presence of an active galactic nucleus (AGN). An effective way to identify AGN is to look for stochastic variability in the optical light from the galaxy. Finding AGN in these galaxies would help us learn more about the formation and evolution of the supermassive black holes that power AGN. In this thesis, I analyzed 317 observations of 216 GPs taken with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). These data are comprised of nearly continuous observations of the GP on a 27-day timescale. I used these data to create light curves and used the inverse von Neumann ratio (1/η) to quantify the variability. Considering sectors with a value of 1/ η \u3e 0.588 as having a high confidence of variability, 11 sectors showed indications of variability and 3 of those sectors had significant variability when compared to other nearby TESS pixels. Since those 3 sectors correspond to 2 GPs, we conclude that 2 GPs (GP# 41 and GP# 219) show significant optical variability on 30-day time scales, therefore likely containing AGN. This is supported by other independent methods for finding AGN such as mid-infrared colors and X-ray luminosity for one of these two GPs (GP# 219)
Badges of Honor: Professional Conduct, Consumer Protection, and Accolades in Lawyer Advertising
Get PDFProfiles of Violence Victimization and Mental Health Outcomes among LGBTQ Survivors in Illinois: A Cluster Analysis
Get PDFDespite legal and social progress, the LGBTQ+ community faces persistent vulnerability to different forms of violence and negative life experiences, including adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and bigotry motivated violence, as well as gender-based violence (GBV). Consistent with the Minority Stress Model, exposure to these experiences are associated with negative mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ individuals. Traditionally, research has focused on subpopulations when examining these relationships, and has often failed to account for the ways individuals experience multiple types of violence across the lifespan, and how this may influence development of mental health problems. This study (n=204) uses the Minority Stress Model to explore how different profiles of violence exposure may relate to mental health outcomes among LGBTQ+ survivors in Illinois. Using a latent class analysis, four classes emerged: Low Adult Exposure, Low Overall Exposure, High Adult GBV (gender-based violence), and High Overall Exposure. Results of a 3-step regression indicated that when controlling for racial/ethnic minority status, gender minority status, bigotry motivated violence exposure, adaptive coping, and maladaptive coping, class membership did not significantly predict depression scores, but did significantly predict PTSD scores. Notably, the class with Lower Overall Exposure had significantly lower PTSD scores when compared to the Lower Adult Exposure class, as well as the High Adult GBV class. The Lower Overall Exposure class also demonstrated significantly lower depression scores compared to the High Adult GBV class. Implications of these findings are discussed
Peer Victimization and Post-Traumatic Stress Problems among Latinx Youth: The Role of Emotional Reactivity and Gender
Get PDFPeer victimization is widespread and well-established as a risk factor for youth; however, few studies have examined the relation between peer victimization and post-traumatic stress symptoms among ethnic minority children and adolescents. Additionally, existing studies rarely investigate potential moderators of the relation and often utilize retrospective reports of peer victimization from adults. This study expands on the Regulatory Theory of Temperament (Strelau, 2008) by examining the role of emotional reactivity on the association between peer victimization and post-traumatic stress problems. The sample includes 275 predominantly low-income, Latinx (86.5%), and Mixed-Latinx (13.4%) Chicago Public School students ages 10-14 (M = 11.44 years, 55.3% female). Measures were collected at three time points, including reports of post-traumatic stress problems approximately one year apart. Peer victimization significantly predicted post-traumatic stress symptom changes. Additionally, emotional reactivity moderated the relation between peer victimization and changes in post-traumatic stress symptoms such that youth with low and moderate levels of emotional reactivity had lower post-traumatic stress symptoms one year later. Further, gender was not found to moderate the association between peer victimization and post-traumatic stress or the moderation effect of emotional reactivity on the association between peer victimization and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Implications of these findings and study limitations will be discussed
The Moderating Effects of Acculturative Stress and Ethnic Identity on the Relation between Peer Victimization and Depressive Symptoms among Latinx Youth
Get PDFDepressive symptoms disproportionately affect the burgeoning U.S. population of Latinx youth and adolescents. Peer victimization in school settings is a particularly pervasive stressor among youth, and it can have detrimental effects on mental health. Literature highlights multiple cultural factors unique to Latinx youth that could impact their experiences with peer victimization. The current study analyzed data from 297 Latinx youth (Mage = 11.4; 55.6% female) to examine three domains of acculturative stress (language conflicts, cultural conflicts, and discrimination) and ethnic identity as moderators of the relation between peer victimization and depressive symptoms. A series of two- and three-way interaction analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses, and gender was included as a covariate. While ethnic identity was not found to be a significant moderator, one domain within acculturative stress – cultural conflicts – was found to significantly moderate the relation between peer victimization and depressive symptoms [β = -.12, 95% C.I. (-.04, -.002), p = .03]. Suggestions for interventions, implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed