Digital Commons Network^™

Enhancing Critical And Creative Thinking For More Effective Teaching, Lora Kosten

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

Gain awareness of the benefits of enhancing creative thinking in your professional and teaching practices by actively engaging in effective strategies for the whole brain.

Ten Tips To Transform Non-Critical Thinkers To Critical Thinkers, Melissa Morris

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

This session will focus on tips to transform non-critical thinkers into critical thinkers. Faculty can integrate these tips to encourage critical thinking in their classroom.

Design Thinking: Alternative Problems And Solutions, Christina Singer

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

Questions to be explored in this workshop: What is design? What is design thinking? How might design thinking be applied outside of traditional design problems?

A 5-Part Solution To Creativity And Critical Thinking, Susannah Lemarquand

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

Find out how a simple 5-part lesson plan structure, can easily incorporate creativity and critical thinking into any class, while keeping students engaged in learning.

Performance As High Impact Practice, Veronica Matthews

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

Performance is an inclusive teaching tool. Sharing through performance promotes celebration of diversity. How can you use performance in the classroom?

Problem Formulation: The Unrecognized Core Of Critical Thinking, Jackson Nickerson

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

The history of critical thinking is built on principles like thinking clearly, logically, and consistently. While necessary, the classical approach to critical thinking overlooks the challenge of solving the right problem the first time, a critical skill that is deficient in today’s economy. Why is coming up with the right problem difficult and what can teachers do to inculcate in students the ability to formulate problems comprehensively? This plenary offers some preliminary responses to these questions.

Using Digital Pedagogy To Navigate Ethics In Technical Communication Classes, Rachel Tanski, Megan Stowe

Critical & Creative Thinking Conference

No abstract provided.

16th Annual Student Research Symposium Program, University Of South Florida, St. Petersburg

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Program of the 16th annual symposium listing participants and the titles of their works.

“We Drew A Map To A Better Place”, Emily Cunningham, Natalie Hawkins, Laneisha Jeans, Daniel Miller

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

The purpose of this poster is to provide a visual representation of the lynching of Frazier Baker, as well as demonstrate significant places of interest regarding the case. Frazier B. Baker, was the first black postmaster in South Carolina. He was lynched in 1898 after refusing to resign from his government position. One primary objective was identifying the location of the case. Rather than being positioned exactly where the lynching occurred, the marker is roughly a mile or so away, closer to the center of Lake City. A major issue we encountered when locating this site was that the location …

Rhythmic Complexity And Preference For Tempo, Bharat Bharat, Dimitra Dimopoulos

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

H1: Rhythmic complexity and preferred tempo would be inversely correlated (people prefer complex rhythmic patterns to be played more slowly, or vice versa). Additionally, participants are expected to demonstrate an anchoring effect, irrespective of complexity.

H2: Participants will prefer a faster tempo for patterns that start extremely fast than patterns that start extremely slow.

Analyzing The Sentiment Of The New York Times, Luke Daniel Cross

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Our era of click bait, fake news and politicized media has cast a critical spotlight onto deceptively structured headlines and how they influence readership. Much of the existing research delves into the implications of phrasing on article headlines -- it is common to find that even minor shifts in the focus of a headline alters what aspects of the article are remembered. While this is a prime example of the need for conscientious, accurate reporting, it offers little for journalists already taking steps to ensure precise diction and clarity. Instead of analyzing how a misleading headline explicitly alters the way …

Factors Associated With Trust In Primary Care Physicians, Emily Lind, Noel Takeuchi, Thomas Smith

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Trust in physician should help reinforce the idea of the physician-patient relationship as a partnership. Since trust is the universally accepted basis for any human interaction (Gundlach & Murphy, 1993), a patient’s trust in a physician is a precondition for successful medical care (Leisen & Hyman, 2004). Trust is also important because the relationships between patients and medical professionals concern life or death and physical wellbeing directly. In addition, the traits of the medical practice often involve uncertainty and irreversibility (Kim et al., 2018). Research shows a trusting physician-patient relationship leads to an increase in patient satisfaction, increase in the …

Maternal Investments In Bats, Yoscelyn Santos, Deby Cassill

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Bats are of the order Chiroptera, they are the only mammals with the ability to achieve true and sustained flight. Around the world, they're over 1,100 known species of bats, 13 of which reside in the state of Florida. The main trophic levels of bats include carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. Diets of carnivorous bats consist of a variety of insects while very few species consume blood. Omnivores bats consume a variety of pollen and nectar from various types of fruits and flowers. Omnivorous bat diets consume a mixture of the two.

Application Of Sound For Bone Loss Detection, Iliana E. Simo

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Osteoporosis (OP) is a very difficult disease to diagnose due to the initial stages being asymptomatic. Usually, the bone disease is not diagnosed until extensive damage has already occurred. The purpose of this project was to explore a noninvasive method of detecting bone abnormalities in individuals through the application of sound waves. An extensive literature review was conducted of studies which explored the use of ultrasound and acoustic emission (AE) techniques.

The Migrants Above: A North American Shorebirds Investment, Natalie Jesski

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Shorebirds are athletes in nature. North American shorebirds (order Charadriiformes) migrate thousands of kilometers a year between Artic nesting grounds and wintering grounds in Central and South America. Migration routes typically follow coastlines or interior water sources. Staging areas and stopover sites in North America provide abundant food resources crucial for supplying the energy needed to complete migration. About 70 species migrate through North America each year. However, declining numbers have been observed at many staging grounds.

Shorebirds have the greatest diversity of parental care of any order of birds. This diversity ranges from fully biparental, with incubation and broodrearing …

Student Perceptions Of Helicopter Parenting Motivations, Adam Lashley, Michael Avery, Jen Ramsdell, Wendy Rote

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

• Helicopter Parenting (HP) is characterized by inappropriately high levels of parental involvement in children’s lives and actions (Cullaty, 2011)
• HP is associated with poorer youth self-image and well-being (Lemoyne & Buchanan, 2011).
• Motivations underlying parenting behaviors (especially child perceptions of parents motivations) can have a strong impact on a child’s experience of parenting behaviors (Camras et al., 2012).

State Emotion Regulation As A Mediator Of The Relationship Between State Attachment Security And State Mindfulness, Jamie Onufrak, Lindsey M. Rodriguez, Dimitra Dimopoulos

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Adult attachment theory. Adult attachment theory is a conceptual framework that describes the dynamics of ones actions in interpersonal relationships (Hazen and Shaver, 1987).

Mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” and “the self-regulation of attention and the non-evaluative acceptance of one’s immediate experiences” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p.14).

Emotion regulation refers to the ability to influence, experience and express emotions in a manner that is conducive to one’s well-being (Gross, 1998).

There is a large body of correlational research demonstrating a positive correlation between attachment security and mindfulness. However, there are no …

“The Baker Family: A Story Of Injustice Amid Reform”, Verna Peddi, Ashley Schipae, Alexis Slacum, Yvonne Solis

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

No abstract provided.

Perfecting The Polony Method To Quantify Marine Viruses, Shelby Mahank, Natalie Sawaya, Nava Baran, Debbie Lindell, Mya Breitbart

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

No abstract provided.

Cellular Immunotherapy: Up & Coming Applications To Major Neurodegenerative Diseases, Kimberly Sprenger

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Inflammation is often a sign of a healthy immune system— contrary to the unregulated propagation and damage caused by irregular, chronic inflammation present in neurodegenerative diseases. Regular inflammation is a means by which the body creates an environment inhospitable by microbes, such as bacteria or viral particles. The most apparent physical representation of inflammation in the body is a fever— the body’s method of increasing the blood pressure to allow the delivery of immune cells to the site of infection more rapidly and efficiently.

A fever, however, is a response that is largely the first resort, meaning that it is …

The Melrose Lead Site Mystery, Crystal Mcclendon, Christine Joyner

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

No abstract provided.

Mind Over Matter? Mindfulness Matters In Big Five Traits Predicting Resilience, Dimitra Dimopoulos, Jamie Onufrak, Marcia Gralha, Michael Avery, Samantha Booth, Lindsey M. Rodriguez

USF St. Petersburg campus Student Research Symposium

Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994).

Conscientiousness displays a strong, positive relationship with mindfulness. Of the Big Five personality traits, conscientiousness is the least likely to be investigated with respect to mindfulness (Gulik, 2009).

Mindfulness is expected to be positively related to agreeableness with both constructs holding similar tendencies such as care, empathy, and understanding towards others.

Resilience has been found to be negatively correlated to neuroticism and positively correlated to the rest of the Big Five traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion) (Oshio, Taku, Hirano, & Saeed, 2018). …

Design And Modeling Of An Automatic Radio Direction Finder, Moshe Acevedo

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

The purpose of this paper is to present the design and modeling of an automatic Radio Direction Finding (RDF) system. The system to be modeled will be a vertically mounted omnidirectional antenna along the axis of a rotating directional antenna. Signal strength detected from the omnidirectional an- tenna will be used as a reference for the directional antenna. A mathematical model of the system will be built using MATLABTM, modeling the antenna output and the motor control system. A Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller will be used for motor control. The finalized design should be able to rotate and point an antenna …

Thermo-Responsive Hydrogels As Actuators For Biomedical Applications, Marilu Ortiz, Shani Abraham, Romina Zeine, Roscelin Figueroa, Zoltan Varga, Christian Mendoza, Sang-Eun Song

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

Extended research is being conducted in developing soft actuators for biomedical applications. Electroactive polymers, shape-memory alloys, shape-memory polymers and hydraulic or pneumatic actuators that will change the volume of a chamber to induce movement are some of the technologies being used.

Stimuli-responsive hydrogels as actuators is a subject of current research. Stimuli-responsive hydrogels are water absorbent polymer networks that change their volume in response to a given stimulus. The stimulus may be physical (temperature variability), biological (DNA molecules), or chemical (pH variability). Their capability to reverse their response when the stimulus is removed make them suitable to be used in …

Fea-Based Determination Of Stiffness Matrices For Compliant Mechanisms, Max Stein, Michael Griffis, Carl Crane

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

This study begins to explore the use of 3-D printed compliant mechanisms for the simultaneous control of position and force of a robotic end-effector using kinestatic control. An important step in realizing this goal is developing a methodology to efficiently determine the stiffness and compliance matrices of the target mechanism. In this study, finite element analysis (FEA) was used to determine the stiffness matrices of a 3-D printed beam element and spring-like compliant mechanism. The FEA-based results for the beam matched analytical results from beam-bending theory and literature. The FEA-based results for the spring-like compliant mechanism were consistent with the …

An Automated Toll Collection System For Bangladesh: An Experimental Approach, Saifuddin Mahmud, Hasib Iqbal, Chandra Mondol Tusher, Alfred Shaker

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

Automation has a great impact in our everyday life and making our life easy. Day by day the number of vehicles passing over the road is increasing due to which traffic jam; wastage of human effort is taking places. And our existing manual toll collection system of Bangladesh can’t handle this with limited amount of time. So, we propose an experimental approach of running a system 24 hours a day without interruption concerned with fully automated toll collection system using active RFID tags which is able to reduce human effort and time and most importantly traffic jam. In this system …

Design Evaluation Of Self-Learning Line Following Robot, Nadia Camacho, Jared Butcher, Nate Kanyok, Xiangxu Lin, Jong-Hoon Kim

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

The development of a line-following robot is, for many, a building block into further applications of robotics. One of the main focuses is pathfinding without prior knowledge of the route or environment. In the case of a simple line- following robots, the task is limited, allowing for much room in experimenting with different approaches. In this paper, we present our dual-control line following robot - ATR LineBot. The first control mechanism uses two series of line sensors in combination with a custom PID controller for speed optimization. The additional sensors allows for sophisticated planning and correction to be done. Our …

Increasing User Confidence In Privacy-Sensitive Robots, Raniah Bamagain, Marius Silaghi

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

As the deployment and availability of robots grow rapidly, and spreads everywhere to reach places where they can communicate with humans, numerous new beneFlorida Institute of Technologys and services can be provided, but at the same time, various types of privacy issues appear. Indeed, the use of robots that process data remotely causes privacy concerns. There are some main factors that could increase the capability of violating users’ privacy. Here we analyze these factors and propose solutions that assist in mitigating the problem of privacy violation while using social robots. These solutions assist in solving the limitations of current robots …

Design Of A Low-Cost, Open Source, And Open Hardware Educational Drone, Hyunjae Jeong, Xiangxu Lin, Alfred Shaker, Irvin Steve Cardenas, Jong-Hoon Kim, Jeremy Robins, Yong-Seok Chi

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

In today’s technology-driven world, innovation is high-paced and the importance of learning the skills surrounding emerging technologies has become crucial. One of such emerging technologies are drones, and the need for drone education has become apparent. However, current educational drones are inaccessible to many individuals, and instead are aimed at collegiate education. Furthermore, drones are hazardous, difficult to manipulate, and costly. To address these issues, in this paper we present the ATR-Drone Project. We have developed a safe mechanical platform, composed of 3D printed components and a simple round metal rod that serves to adjust the balance of the drone …

Rotational Slip Meter For The Measurement Of Coefficient Of Friction Of Walking Surfaces, Oren Masory

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

The measurement of coefficient of friction is an important issue in different fields: Walkways safety, Vehicle stopping distance, Robot’s Gripper design, Manufacturing, and more. The measurements have to be accurate, repeatable and most of all identical across different measuring devices. Moreover, the measurement devices should read the correct value of under different surface conditions: Dry, Wet or Contaminated.

This paper describes a rotational slip meter where the pad (or foot) is mounted on a horizontally rotating arm with an axis perpendicular to the tested surface. The pad is installed at a given distance from the arm’s axis of rotation and …