Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Volume 4, Full Contents

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

A Community's Collective Courage: A Local Food Cooperative's Impact On Food Insecurity, Community And Economic Development, And Local Food Systems, Tabitha C. Barbour

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

According to the USDA’s “Food Security Status of U.S. Households” in 2014, 48.1 million people live in food insecure households. In Indiana, more than 1 million people suffer from food insecurity with rates as high as 19.2% of Marion County’s population according to the Map the Meal Gap 2014 report. The Community Controlled Food Initiative (CCFI) is a local food cooperative operated by the Kheprw Institute and neighborhood residents in the Mid-North Indianapolis Community. The cooperative formed to address food insecurity in August 2015 in response to the closing on the local Double 8 Foods grocery stores. CCFI hosts a …

Volume 4 Table Of Contents

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Rain Rituals As A Barometer Of Vulnerability In An Uncertain Climate, L. Jen Shaffer

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Researchers and aid agencies, seeking to improve their understanding of local climate change responses, adaptation, and vulnerability, frequently interact with communities around the world who strongly emphasize their religious beliefs and practices. Dismissal and misunderstandings of these local perspectives can slow assessments of local climate vulnerability and development of adaptive capacity. In this paper, I show how analysis of rain ritual failure exposes the multiple stressors Ronga communities in southern Mozambique face, and as such, serves as a proxy measure for climate vulnerability at the local level. Oral histories and targeted interviews with participating elders, local chiefs, and community members …

Place-Based Pedagogy And The Creative Writing Classroom, Jennifer Case

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Although compositionists have long appropriated and discussed place-based pedagogy’s ability to encourage environmental awareness and engage community issues, creative writing as a discipline has largely ignored place-based philosophies and environmental education. In fact, creative writing pedagogy often undermines place-based pedagogy by encouraging students to “write what they know” while simultaneously encouraging work with national rather than regional appeal. This article takes the first major step toward addressing this oversight by exploring the field’s assumptions about “place,” how these assumptions are influencing our classrooms, and how place-based composition and pedagogy could—and should—challenge and expand the ways we teach creative writing.

Foreword, Jur Editorial Staff

SWOSU Journal of Undergraduate Research

The SWOSU Journal of Undergraduate Research (SWOSU JUR), a journal developed and run by SWOSU students and faculty, is pleased to present its inaugural issue. The mission of the SWOSU JUR is to showcase the diverse research activities happening at our institution, and we hope to achieve this goal in the following ways: promote a collaborative atmosphere that encourages research and scholarly activities; foster mentor/mentee relationships between faculty and students; publicize original intellectual and creative contributions by students and faculty; and provide opportunities to engage in all aspects of research and scholarly activities.

Selected Poems, Sandra Pratt

SWOSU Journal of Undergraduate Research

Selected Poems by Sandra Pratt includes:

Drowning Doll

Making Out Words

O Poseidon

The Legend Of The Miskito Indians: A Literary Translation Project, Alyssa Friesen

SWOSU Journal of Undergraduate Research

This project began in the spring of 2014 for the class of Intermediate Spanish Composition and Grammar. In class the object was to read this particular legend, but I decided to take that a step further and do a translation of it in order for me to better understand it. This is a literary translation, which is the most difficult type of translation which is why I used certain theories of translation to help get an accurate translation for the textbook Introduction to Spanish Translation by Jack Child. By applying these methods of translation, I was able to get an …

Eroticism Or Neo-Platonism?: The Case In The Sonnet “Detente Sombra De Mi Bien Esquivo,” By Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Juan Manuel Ramirez Velazquez

SWOSU Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay is an in depth analysis of the poem “Detente sombra de mi bien esquivo “, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the most important poet of the Spanish American Baroque period. This sonnet has been traditionally interpreted as a love poem, more specifically from the Neo Platonic traditions of the European Renaissance. Some scholars have also proposed an analysis of the poem based on the mysticism. In my analysis, I propose a new interpretation based on the eroticism tradition and style. This tradition can also be found in the poetry written in Spain by other authors that …

Art, Music, And Poetry: Artistic Documentation During The Holocaust, Lauren Beauregard

SWOSU Journal of Undergraduate Research

According to Theodor Adorno, “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”¹ Of course, poetry was written during the Holocaust as well as after. More accurately, Nina Apfelbaum argued that “reading the memoirs, diaries and works of fiction written by Holocaust survivors provides another dimension to an understanding of the Holocaust.”² During the Holocaust, Jewish artists used their abilities to create works as a way to both document their everyday lives as well as to reclaim humanity in the German concentration camps.

Effect Of Anthropometric Variability On Middle-Market Aircraft Seating, Tara C. Sriram

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

A middle-of-market aircraft, or MoMA, is defined as an aircraft capable of flying 180-250 passengers without refueling for 2,300-5,800 miles(~2,000-5,000 nautical miles). As the name suggests, middle-of-market aircraft are positioned in between the market segments served by narrow body (single-aisle) and wide body (twin-aisle) aircraft. This paper presents the findings of a study on the effect of anthropomorphic variability on economy class seating on middle-market aircraft currently in service. The study found that among 130 middle-market LOPAs, the mean seat pitch was greater for US airlines than for Asian airlines. Furthermore, the sampled Asian airlines had a higher preference …

Cmsc 2018: 4th Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication Conference, Frances Rosamond

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Join scientists, researchers, teachers, and artists in developing new ways of communicating mathematical and computational thinking. Welcome are contributions in art forms such as dance, graphic art, theatre, and the myriad of ways to communicate science to the public. The conference will feature keynote talks by leading researchers and communicators in the mathematical sciences, sharing their experience, new initiatives, and ideas. The conference will be held in Wellington, New Zealand, at The Learning Connexion (TLC) on 21--23 July 2018. The conference website is http://www.cmsc.nz.

Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal Special Issue Call For Papers: Numbers, Shep Steiner

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Mosaic, an interdisciplinary critical journal, is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue on Numbers. Please submit your essay to the Editor using Mosaic’s online submission portal (http://umanitoba.ca/mosaic/submit) by March 9, 2018. The issue is currently scheduled to appear in September 2019.

Jesus And The Walnuts, Hugh C. Culik

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In “Jesus & the Walnuts,” a hapless English professor invokes fragments of mathematical thought to integrate his hunger for a knowable world with his affection for the logician with whom he shares an office. While “not even wrong” and horribly clumsy, his aspirations are iterations of the drive for order and meaning that are shared across disciplinary knowledge . . . and the hungers of the heart.

Paperback Vs. Cryptanalysis, Terry Trowbridge

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This poem is a defiant challenge against online and app based surveillance of readers. It also questions the guesses that are used to make claims about readers using text analyses.

Theremin, David Pritchard

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Math In Seventeen Syllables: A Folder Of Mathematical Haiku

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In our July 2017 issue, we issued an open call for mathematical haiku, which we defined to be a three-line poem in the “5-7-5” syllabic form that expressed a mathematical idea or experience, and hopefully connected it to the human condition. In deference to traditional Japanese haiku, we encouraged poets to consider using allusions to nature or the seasons in their work, or what is known as a caesura or kire represented by punctuations, space, line-break, or other grammatical break that is intended to compare two images implicitly.

We received haiku on an amazing variety of themes and subjects, from …

Book Review: Algebra In Context: Introductory Algebra From Origins To Applications By Amy Shell-Gellasch And J. B. Thoo, Cindia D. Stewart

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a review of Algebra in Context: Introductory Algebra from Origins to Applications, a textbook authored by Amy Shell-Gellasch and J.B. Thoo. The text presents traditional mathematics through the lens of history, allowing students to gain a rich understanding of how mathematics works and where it comes from. In addition to providing the reader with a summary of the book contents, the reviewer suggests why and how the text may be incorporated into college-level mathematics courses.

Mathematicians Versus Philosophers In Recent Work On Mathematical Beauty, Viktor Blåsjö

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Recent attempts at defining mathematical beauty fall roughly into two schools of thought. One takes its starting point in the subjective experience of the mathematician and characterises mathematical beauty in cognitive terms. The other seeks to reduce beauty to objective notions such as truth, symmetry, or simplicity. This second approach is popular among analytic philosophers, who are committed to seeing mathematics and science as prototypically rational enterprises. I criticise this stance on the grounds that this commitment makes its supporters approach beauty in mathematics not with a genuine desire to sympathetically understand it, but with the preconceived goal of explaining …

The Origin Of The Group In Logic And The Methodology Of Science, Paolo Mancosu

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science at UC Berkeley was founded in 1957. It has been a key institutional element in carrying out Tarski’s vision for making UC Berkeley one of the most important centers of logical research in the world. In this brief history, I look at the emergence of the Group in Logic with an eye towards understanding the circumstances that made it possible.

My Sets And Sexuality, Andres Sanchez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

It was only with the application of set theory to my own personal life that I discovered my true identity and sexuality. In this exploratory, personal essay, I detail my own discovery of my sexuality through mathematics and how this math has become a lens through which I view the world. And, with new knowledge of literary criticism in hand, I can now retroactively describe the thoughts I had in this discovery process.

Fun, Not Competition: The Story Of My Math Club, Johanna Hardin

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

For almost three years, I have spent most of my Sunday afternoons doing math with my daughters and a group of their school friends. Below I detail why and how the math club is run. Unlike my day job, which is full of (statistical) learning objectives for my college students, my math club has only the objective that the kids I work with learn to associate mathematics with having fun. My math club has its challenges, but the motivation comes from love of mathematics, which makes it fun, and worth every minute.

In Memory Of Professor Andrei Nikolaievitch Tikhonov (1906-1993) On The 25th Anniversary Of His Death, Hayat Rezgui

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Thursday, November 8, 2018, is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of the celebrated Professor A. N. Tikhonov, one of my most favorite mathematicians. The idea of writing this paper to honor his life and scientific activities came to me as I was reading many of his works; I was impressed by his knowledge, amazing research, profound scholarship, perspicuity and eloquence of expression, painstaking accuracy, and big ideas. My aim is to be clear and evocative, for in this way I feel more in touch with my subject that is very interesting.

Cello Tangents Of Quartic Polynomials, Robert Haas Ph.D.

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This note uses easy calculus and linear algebra to analyze the situation of a line being tangent to two points of a fourth-degree polynomial curve.

Seen With Other Eyes: A Service Learning Project For High School Mathematicians Working With Visually Impaired Learners, Özgür Akas

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Seen With Other Eyes (SWOE) is a community involvement project that focuses on mathematics education for the visually impaired. In this essay I describe this project, which I developed together with my students at Robert College, a private high school in Turkey, and share some of our story. In the past few years, our work was welcomed by the global mathematics education community, as a testimony to the power of social media to connect like-minded educators with one another.

Balancing Entertainment And Learning In The Popularization Of Mathematics: The Seven Light Bulbs Problem, Man Keung Siu

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Popularization of mathematics plays a significant role in drawing more “friends of mathematics” from the public, which is important for the healthy and prosperous development of the discipline. The issue of a suitable balance between entertainment and learning is constantly on the minds of those who put effort into this task. This article discusses this issue in the context of mathematical museums and describes a simple problem involving seven light bulbs to illustrate its main points.

To Fall In Love With Math, Do This, Susan D'Agostino

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In the viral New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” Mandy Len Catron details an experience she and an acquaintance had as they shared responses to psychologist Arthur Aron’s thirty-six questions intended to make participants fall in love. She notes that, “we all have a narrative of ourselves that we offer up to strangers and acquaintances, but Dr. Aron’s questions make it impossible to rely on that narrative.” In this paper, we claim that we also have narratives of our relationship to mathematics that we offer up to ourselves and others. Following, we offer a …

The Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal: A Bibliographic Report, Nurullah E. Goren, Tiffany Zhu

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The content of the Humanistic Mathematics Network Newsletter was reviewed by Claire Skrivanos and Qingcheng Zhang in [1]. This report reviews the content of the Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal (1992-2004).

A Survey Of The Math Blogosphere, Katherine Thompson

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This article provides an overview of different types of mathematical blogs currently available. There are over twenty blogs highlighted, ranging from the technical to the recreational, from those sponsored by national mathematical organizations to those run by individuals--including students.

Rolling Dice On A Date, Francesca Raphael, Jennifer Switkes

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

When a young mathematician faces the prospect of a date, all kinds of mathematics ensue. Here we explore her innovative way to keep the conversation going through rolling dice to decide which conversation starter to utilize. In the course of our exploration, we solve an interesting generating function problem.