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The Correlation of Trauma-Informed Classrooms Without Support Infrastructure and Teacher Burnout
Get PDFThis thesis examines the impact of Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) implementation in classrooms on teacher burnout, specifically focusing on settings with insufficient support infrastructure. While TIC is recognized as beneficial for all students, not just students affected by trauma, a synthesis of scholarly literature highlights the significant challenges faced by educators when proper resources, training, and institutional backing are lacking. Existing research indicates that teachers implementing TIC in inadequately supported environments report higher levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and overall burnout. These challenges appear most acute for teachers in schools with limited professional development, insufficient mental health resources, and weak administrative support. Findings across multiple studies reinforce the notion that teacher burnout intensifies in trauma-informed environments lacking sufficient infrastructure. The literature strongly suggests the importance of addressing teacher well-being alongside student needs to sustain TIC practices effectively. This review concludes by highlighting the need, supported by the synthesized evidence for systemic changes that prioritize teacher support, including professional development, mental health resources, and mentorship, to mitigate burnout and improve both teacher and student outcomes. Gaps identified in the literature suggest future research could explore the long-term effects of teacher burnout on student achievement and further identify effective support mechanisms for educators in trauma-informed classrooms
One Health Integration to Control and Prevent Zoonoses: Application of Organizational Theory Literature
Get PDFZoonoses are infectious diseases transmitted between animals and people that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The One Health (OH) approach aims to integrate systems, incentivizing collaboration among animal, human, and environmental systems to address zoonoses and improve health. Innovative solutions for effectively and sustainably achieving systems integration are needed. Organizational theories can facilitate the study of the context of OH implementation, applying comprehensive approaches that recognize the interconnections among organisms, the environment, and social systems, including the diverse entities needing integration (e.g., policy, community, public organizations). This narrative review examines organization and systems literature to provide recommendations for studying the context of OH implementation and integration solutions with implications for research in LMICs. First, we review the concepts of complexity and systems thinking. We describe contingency theory and open systems theory, including the concepts of differentiation and fragmentation, to explain the influence of the environment on the structures of organizations involved in OH implementation. The sociological aspect of organizations is introduced with institutional theory, and recommendations of integration mechanisms for OH are summarized. Finally, we explain the concept of governance for health and provide recommendations for the application of governance theories in the context of LMICs
Creating Possibilities: The Ethelind Pope Brown Collection: An Overview of Who May Have Illustrated America\u27s Oldest Naturalist Paintings
Get PDFThis thesis investigates the Ethelind Pope Brown Collection at the University of South Carolina, a rare assembly of hand-illustrated naturalist artworks depicting an assortment of flora and fauna from the eighteenth century. Despite its artistic and educational value, the creator of the collection remains unidentified. Through close textual and visual analysis, archival research, and comparative stylistic study, this project explores several potential authorship theories while providing background to the necessity of evolving science that facilitated its creation
I Just Kind of Wish People Knew We Existed: Rethinking Queer Visibility, Identity, and Belonging in Rural America
Get PDFThis thesis explores how LGBTQ+ individuals in rural America navigate identity, visibility, and belonging amid the pressures of metronormativity--the dominant cultural narrative that equates queerness with urban life. Through qualitative interviews with five queer adults who lived in rural settings, the study shows that rural queer life is shaped by not only structural erasure and limited resources but also adaptive strategies, emotional labor, and creative community-building. Participants described environments where queerness was often unspoken or denied, yet they developed contingent forms of visibility, online belonging, and grassroots kinship to survive and thrive. Although all participants had migrated to urban areas, their reflections revealed nuanced and ambivalent relationships with both rural and urban environments, complicating the binary that casts cities as liberatory and rural areas as inherently repressive. Drawing on queer spatial theory, this research challenges dominant narratives of queer migration and highlights the complex realities of rural queer existence. The findings contribute to a growing body of rural queer studies and emphasize the need to rethink where and how queer life is imagined, recognized, and sustained
Explaining the 2022 Record Low Great Salt Lake Volume
Get PDFThe Great Salt Lake reached the lowest water volume in its entire 170+ year record in 2022. To explain this record low we develop and apply a lake mass‐balance model and perform four simulations: one where all input and output variables are fixed to their mid‐20th century average resulting in an equilibrium lake volume, and three others where one of the input variables (precipitation or streamflow) or the output variable (evaporation) follows observations while the other two are fixed to their mid‐20th century average. Results show anomalously low streamflow accounting for the largest proportion of the lake volume departure from the equilibrium state by 2022, resulting in about three times the additional water loss over 1950–2022 as increasing evaporation, which played the second largest role. Precipitation changes played a minimal role. Though streamflow had a greater effect, the lake would not have reached the record low volume without increasing evaporation
Neural Visual Synthesis for Graphics, 4D Gaussians and Videos
Get PDFEfficient visual synthesis has played an indirect yet important role in the development of neural networks. Graphics processing units (GPUs) were initially designed for visual synthesis tasks such as rendering graphics. However, their parallel computing capabilities later made GPUs the ideal hardware for training neural networks. Since neural networks have greatly benefited from GPUs, a compelling question arises: How can neural networks, in turn, improve efficient visual synthesis?
Existing visual synthesis methods still require improvement for higher efficiency. For example, Monte Carlo rendering takes over 15 minutes to generate a megapixel frame at a high-quality setting on a GPU, as computing thousands of samples per pixel is time-consuming yet essential for an offline path tracer. This thesis presents three technical contributions based on neural networks for efficient visual synthesis. We explore the performance improvement that neural networks can bring to different applications of visual synthesis, including graphics, 4D Gaussians, and videos.
First, we propose speeding up Monte Carlo rendering by significantly reducing the number of pixels required for sampling. We introduce a neural network to predict future frames instead of rendering future frames. For each predicted future frame, certain pixels may not be accurately projected from existing frames due to challenging conditions, such as quick motion and large occlusion. Therefore, our method estimates a mask together with each subsequent frame. The estimated mask indicates the particular pixels requiring ray sampling to correct prediction results.
Second, we introduce a feature splatting method based on 4D Gaussians, named Spacetime Gaussians. It is composed of three important components for dynamic view synthesis in a volumetric rendering way. The proposed Spacetime Gaussian is formulated by adapting 3D Gaussians with temporal opacity and parametric motion/rotation. This simple yet clean formulation enhances Spacetime Gaussian to capture static, dynamic, as well as transient content within a scene. Besides a new representation, we develop splatted feature rendering by replacing spherical harmonics with neural features. The neural features improve the rendering of appearance, which varies with viewpoint and time, while keeping the model compact. Additionally, with the guidance of training error and coarse depth, we sample new Gaussians in areas where current pipelines struggle to converge.
Last, we apply neural visual synthesis to the general video prediction task. To produce high-quality results, we explore a trending architecture, Vision Transformers (ViTs). ViTs have made great progress in many low-level computer vision tasks like frame interpolation. However, video prediction is more challenging than video frame interpolation. Additionally, existing ViTs for video prediction are computationally expensive. Hence, we develop an efficient transformer for video prediction. We decouple temporal and channel features and employ transposed attention to reduce computation. We also implement a global query strategy to capture global information for motion. A depth shift module is introduced to better integrate cross-channel and temporal information, enabling efficient and high-quality video prediction
Gait Characteristics in People with Friedreich Ataxia: Daily Life Versus Clinic Measures
Get PDFGait assessments in a clinical setting may not accurately reflect mobility in everyday life. To better understand gait during daily life, we compared measures that discriminated Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) from healthy control (HC) subjects in prescribed clinic tests and free, daily-life monitoring.MethodsWe recruited 9 people with FRDA (median age: 20, IQR [12, 48] years). A comparative healthy control (HC) subject cohort of 9 was sampled using propensity matching on age (median age: 18 [13, 22] years). Subjects wore 3 inertial sensors (one each foot and lower back) in the laboratory during a 2-min walk at a natural pace, followed by 7 days of daily life. For daily life analysis, a total of 99,216 strides across 1,008 h of recording were included. Mann–Whitney U test and area under the curve (AUC) compared gait differences between FRDA and HC when assessed in the laboratory and daily life. Pairwise Wilcoxon tests also compared if participants exhibited different metric values between the two environments.ResultsThe FRDA group exhibited lower levels of daily activity. Measures that best discriminated gait characteristics of FRDA from HC differed between environments. Variation in elevation of the feet at midswing best discriminated in-clinic (Clinic AUC = 1, Home AUC = 0.69), whereas slow gait speed performed best in daily life (Home AUC = 1, Clinic AUC = 0.64). Of the 17 measures tested, 11 had an AUC \u3e 0.8 in-clinic and 8 had an AUC \u3e0.8 at home. Variability of swing time (Clinic AUC = 0.97, Home AUC = 0.94) and double-support time (Clinic AUC = 0.94, Home AUC = 0.94) were the most sensitive and specific for FRDA in both environments.ConclusionDigital gait characteristics from inertial sensors are sensitive and specific for FRDA in both environments. However, different gait measures were more sensitive and specific during free-living versus prescribed gait, suggesting that in-clinic gait does not reflect daily life gait
Improving Student Support on a Decentralized Campus
Get PDFProject management has been a key tool in many industries, such as technology and construction, yet it remains underutilized in the higher education sector. In 2013, Portland State University’s Office of Student Success adopted a project management framework to improve student outcomes. This article describes how in using project management we developed a pilot program that helped administer hardship funds to students, what the outcomes were, and how it advanced the project across a decentralized landscape
Navigating the Neoliberal Assemblage: The Role of a Nonprofit Organization Shaping Disaster Governance and Community Resilience
Get PDFThis dissertation examines the evolving role of Nonprofits Active in Disasters ( NADs ) in disaster governance through a case study of the Cascade Relief Team, a nonprofit organization responding to the 2020 Echo Mountain Complex Fire in Oregon. Utilizing governmentality and assemblage theory frameworks, the study investigates how CRT navigates the complex interplay between neoliberal rationalities, community needs, and disaster response practices.
The research reveals CRT\u27s multifaceted role in shaping disaster knowledge, mediating between official frameworks and local realities, and influencing the formation of resilient subjectivities. While CRT\u27s practices often align with neoliberal approaches to disaster management, emphasizing individual responsibility and market-based solutions, the organization also challenges dominant narratives through its community-centered methods and advocacy for local knowledge.
Key findings highlight CRT\u27s position as a crucial intermediary, and at times bulwark, in disaster governance, bridging gaps between state agencies and affected communities. The organization\u27s practices both reinforce and contest neoliberal notions of resilience, revealing the complex negotiations inherent in contemporary disaster response.
This study contributes to a nuanced understanding of how NADs shape and are shaped by disaster governance assemblages, offering insights into the potential for more equitable and context-sensitive approaches to disaster management. The findings have significant implications for disaster governance policy and practice, suggesting the need for more flexible, community-driven frameworks that can better integrate local knowledge and address systemic vulnerabilities