Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

States Of Mind: Exploring “Energy Sources” To Support Thinking, Stephen R. Seward

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

Submission Title and Descriptor for Review

States of Mind: Exploring “Energy Sources” to Support Thinking

Facing uncertainty, complex problems, and managing non-linear dynamical change are part of our existence. By examining the “States of Mind”—efficacy, craftsmanship, consciousness, flexibility, interdependence—we are able clarify thinking, encouraging divergence and resourcefulness. Aquire strategies to develop mindfulness and thinking dispositions. Participants will learn about the states of mind, design questions to engage thinking, and engage in collaborative dialogue. Explore and plan next steps for becoming more strategic in your capabilities to create positive thinking and adaptive change within yourself and those you interact with.

Método Innovador De Neurociencia Y Coaching Que Reduce El Estrés Y Mejora El Rendimiento Y La Capacidad Cerebral, Sara Dobarro, Javier Simón, Alejandro Marin, Santiago Dobarro

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

Presentación de los resultados obtenidos con la aplicación del Método mSD en el manejo del estrés, la ansiedad, y otros estados mentales motivados por procesos involuntarios. El mSD se ha aplicado sobre niños, jóvenes, adultos, ancianos con y sin patologías clínicas, dando todos ellos excelentes resultados. También se ha trabajado con el mSD en pacientes con Alzheimer en un proyecto de investigación farmacológica.

El Impacto De Las Artes Visuales En Personas Afectadas Por Cáncer, Bettina Ingham

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

El impacto de las artes visuales en el bienestar y la mejora de la calidad de vida de personas afectadas por cáncer.

Un programa diseñado para poner en práctica e investigar el alcance que tienen las artes visuales y el método de Estrategias de Pensamiento Visual para el desarrollo de habilidades de pensamiento que promueven la identificación y expresión verbal de las emociones, minimizando, en el caso de las personas convalecientes, el sufrimiento que va desde el dolor de la enfermedad hasta el miedo a la muerte.

Los efectos que la contemplación (percepción estética), el análisis y la práctica(proceso creativo) …

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy Workshop Evaluation, Reflection, And Theory Building, Cynthia M. Vejar, Diane H. Hall

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

No abstract provided.

Three Essays On The Behavioral Responses To Coastal Hazards And Vulnerability, Fan Jiang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three papers in environmental and natural resource economics. The first paper estimates the value of statistical lives (VSL) from hurricane evacuation behavior through an empirical analysis. I present empirical models that predict individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) for avoiding hurricane risks revealed through their evacuation behavior. Using survey data from Texas residents (who were affected by Hurricane Ike), I analyze the individuals’ hurricane evacuation decisions and their corresponding WTP for evacuation. I also estimate the individuals' WTP for avoiding hurricane risks under both voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders and calculate the associated VSL. The findings can …

Supporting Research, Public Engagement, And Learning Through The Use Of Archives In Digital Humanities, Jamie Rogers

Works of the FIU Libraries

This presentation describes student and faculty initiatives that make use of archives content in digital humanities (DH) coursework, the Florida International University (FIU) Libraries’ role in supporting DH projects, as well as lessons learned in the development and digital preservation of these DH projects. The FIU Libraries have been fortunate to develop strong partnerships with our School of Communication + Journalism and Department of History, where we have collaborated on a number of initiatives, including the exploration of new pedagogical practices as well as public engagement initiatives in environmentally focused DH projects. To support these types of projects, the FIU …

Daily Exchange Rate Pass-Through Into Micro Prices, Renzo Alvarez, Amin Shoja, Syed A. Uddin, Hakan Yillmazkuday

Economics Research Working Paper Series

This paper estimates the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) by using good-level daily data on wholesale prices of imported agricultural products, where the identifcation is achieved by using daily data on the domestic inflation rate. The results of standard empirical analyses are in line with existing studies that employ lower frequencies of data by showing evidence for incomplete daily ERPT of about 5 percent. The key innovation is achieved when nonlinearities in ERPT are considered, where ERPT is doubled to about 10 percent when daily nominal exchange rate changes are above 0.55 percent, daily frequencies of price change are above 3.12 …

Econtent In A Flash: Delivering Digital Resources To Patrons Using Nfc Technology, Christopher M. Jimenez, Barbara M. Sorondo

Works of the FIU Libraries

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is a short-range, wireless communication technology that transfers data between two chips while they remain in close proximity with one another.

We applied NFC technology across the library and campus in a variety of contexts to promote digital resources, collections, and services. Our @FIULibraries: Tap, Scan, Read project marries digital resources with physical objects, allowing library users to access digital materials and information in a flash. The project has evolved into a multifaceted endeavor that includes smart posters, e-resource cards, a course reserves binder, library displays, and wayfinding tools. Project details are available in our …

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …

China's Eurasian Foreign Policy: Region-Building Through State-Building Since 1991, Zenel Garcia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, its leaders have been preoccupied with efforts to increase state capacity in order to exercise more effective control over their western frontier by controlling their minority population and generating the conditions for economic development in the area. Although these state-building initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, the transnational characteristics of development, and China’s concern around the challenges of terrorism, separatism, and extremism have necessitated an accompanying region-building project in Eurasia. Using a synthesis of the region-building approach and the concept of regionalization, this …

Making African Civil Society Work: Assessing Conditions For Democratic State-Society Relations In Rwanda, Fiacre Bienvenu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers a single case in-depth analysis of factors precluding civil society from democratizing African polities. Synthesizing existing literature on Rwanda, I first undertake an historical search to trace the origins and qualities of civil society in the colonial era. This effort shows, however, that the central authority—commencing before the inception of the Republic in 1962—consistently organized civil society to buttress its activities, not to challenge them. Next, using ethnographic research, I challenge conventional economic and institutional accounts of civil society’s role in democratization. I show that institutional change and the economic clout of organized groups are marginal and …

Buffer States In Sub-Systemic Rivalries: Analyzing Nepal's Role In Sino-Indian Security Dynamics, Bibek Chand

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the relevance and importance of small buffer states for contemporary International Relations. It argues that sub-systemic interactions reinvigorate the role of buffer states in regional security. Using the case study of the triadic relationship among India, Nepal, and China, this study explains the evolving role of buffer states. The technological innovations in weapons systems, transportation, and communication have extended the reach of potential adversaries, rendering intermediate territorial space less significant than in the past. Thus, it is hypothesized in this dissertation that increased sub-systemic rivalry reinvigorates differently the relevance and significance of buffer states. The role of …

Spatial Dispersion Of Retail Margins: Evidence From Turkish Agricultural Prices, Hakan Yilmazkuday

Economics Research Working Paper Series

The farmer share of retail prices is shown to be about 16 percent, corresponding to about 84 percent of a distribution share, on average across agricultural products and regions within Turkey. The share of transportation costs in retail prices is only about 7 percent, while the share of retail margins is about 77 percent of retail prices. The disper- sion of retail prices across regions is shown to be mostly due to local wages and variable markups, while the contribution of traded-input prices is relatively small. Accordingly, the high dispersion of farmer prices across locations is not reáected in the …

Iran And The Constitutionalism: History And Evolution And The Impact On International Relations, Farshad Ghodoosi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The sweeping changes in the Middle East, so-called the “Arab Spring”, necessitate revisiting constitutionalism in the region. This task entails a fresh look at the idea of rule of law and constitutionalism amongst the people of the Middle East. One of the widely misconceived and yet understudied constitutional movements in the Middle East belongs to Iran. A new perspective on the trajectory of constitutionalism in Iran would better equip us to comprehend rule of law in the Middle East. From the 1905 Constitutional movement to the 1979 Revolution, Iran has undergone major changes. Each transformation created a rupture with the …

Monstrous Maternity: Folkloric Expressions Of The Feminine In Images Of The Ubume, Michaela Leah Prostak

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ubume is a ghost of Japanese folklore, once a living woman, who died during either pregnancy or childbirth. This thesis explores how the religious and secular developments of the ubume and related figures create a dichotomy of ideologies that both condemn and liberate women in their roles as mothers. Examples of literary and visual narratives of the ubume as well as the religious practices that were employed for maternity-related concerns are explored within their historical contexts in order to best understand what meaning they held for people at a given time and if that meaning has changed. These meanings …

Truffles Have Never Been Modern: An Actor-Network Theorization Of 150 Years Of French Trufficulture, Eric Van Vleet

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary scholars seeking to increase Tuber Melanosporum truffle production rely almost exclusively on technological advancements to increase yields, while failing to place the cultivation of truffles, trufficulture, in its historical or local landscape contexts. In this dissertation, I describe how truffle scholars’ conceptualization of trufficulture and landscapes has changed over 150 years in France, while focusing on the French département of Lot. I examine changing relations between humans and nonhumans and how they impact truffle harvests. I analyzed the history of French trufficulture through a close reading of historic truffle manuals, archival research and the classification of remotely sensed …

Identifying And Intervening On Neural Markers Of Attention To Threat In Children With Anxiety Disorders, Michele Bechor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Attention Bias Modification Training (ABMT) for anxiety aims to train attention away from threatening stimuli and toward neutral stimuli. Although ABMT shows promising anxiety reduction effects in children and adolescents, no study has examined its influence on neural indicators of attention measured using event-related potentials (ERPs) in children or adolescents (i.e., youths). The present study examined the influence of ABMT on the P1, N170, P2 and P3 ERP components during completion of the emotional faces dot probe task in youths with anxiety disorders who failed to respond to cognitive behavioral therapy. Method: Thirty youths (M age = 11.97, …

Mending Identity: The Revitalization Process Of The Muisca Of Suba, Paola A. Sanchez Castaneda

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For over five centuries, the Muiscas have faced direct colonial aggression against their traditional belief systems and sacred practices that have been historically demonized and driven to the brink of extinction. Despite such circumstances, however, the Muisca community has thrived to the present day, and since the turn of the twentieth century has begun to undergo a process of re-identification as an indigenous community in an attempt to revitalize their ethnic identity and practices. These efforts of re-indigenization have challenged their historically coerced identities, actively engaging in returning to traditional practices and beliefs, demand cultural and spiritual liberties, and regain …

Do Community Food Security Assessments Contribute To A Reduction In Food Insecurity At The County Level?, John D. Buschman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity (FI) is a significant risk factor in malnutrition which can lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. The association of FI to undernutrition can additionally lead to impaired cognitive development in children. Nearly $100 billion is spent annually on federal nutrition programs yet FI still affects 1 in 8 American households pointing to the urgent need for the further refinement of our national/regional anti-hunger models. One notable and underutilized tool is the community food security assessment (CFA) which seeks to eliminate FI at the local level by improving food access throughout the community. A major limitation in knowledge …

Dynamics Of Iranian-Saudi Relations In The Persian Gulf Regional Security Complex (1920-1979), Nima Baghdadi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of the dynamics of Iranian-Saudi relations from the earliest days of their encounter in the 1920s through 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. This is a period in the relations of the two states that has rarely been the subject of intellectual inquiry in the existing literature. This present research provides an analytical historiography of Iranian-Saudi relations with an aim to examine the elements constituting the dynamics of their relations. This is attained by contextualizing the milestones of Iranian-Saudi relations, triangulating historical accounts to identify the narrative among alternatives that best fits the meaningful causal processes …

The Development Of Spatial Vocabulary, Rosalie Odean

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has shown a link between the spatial words children use and their performance on spatial reasoning tasks. There is a dearth of measures of spatial language, especially those that focus on a specific type of word. This dissertation introduces three studies, using two measures of dimensional adjective comprehension, one in English and one in Spanish. Study one found that bilingual children’s knowledge of dimensional adjectives in one language is not predictive of their performance on dimensional adjectives in the other language, but that general vocabulary within a language predicts performance in that language. This study also showed that …

Jewish Women’S Transracial Epistemological Networks: Representations Of Black Women In The African Diaspora, 1930-1980, Abby S. Gondek

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political …

The Development And Initial Validation Of A Self-Assessment For Global Leadership Competencies, Sabrena A. O'Keefe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Global leadership has been a growing area of research as our world becomes interconnected. The National Association for College Employers (NACE) Career Readiness Competencies Work Group even added an eighth competency: global/intercultural fluency. Employers have also expressed a skill crisis regarding students graduating from college without the necessary global leadership skills. However, there are often not enough resources at institutions of higher education to add specific co-curricular programs around global leadership. At the same time many institutions have begun to use the Student Leadership Competencies (Seemiller, 2013) as learning outcomes for their co-curricular programs.

This research study aimed to combine …

Financial Sector Development, Economic Growth And Stability, Wenjun Xue

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation investigates financial sector development, economic growth and stability through the analysis of Chinese and international evidence. My first chapter is the introduction. The second chapter investigates the effects of Chinese financial and fiscal policies on the Chinese economic recovery in the 2008 economic stimulus Plan, covering the period from the Great Recession to 2014. This chapter explores the effects of the increase in bank credit growth with significant strain of banking health on firm-level output, employment and investment. The results demonstrate that the increase in government expenditure due to the fiscal policies has the significant effects on the …

Seeking Friends With Benefits In A Tourism-Based Sexual Economy: Interrogating The Gambian Sexscape, Mariama Jaiteh

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation engages with the driving motivations behind the actions of all those involved in The Gambia’s tourism-based sexual economy: the Gambian and other West African male and female sex workers, the Global North (habitually European) male and female tourists, the Gambian and expatriate Lebanese bar and restaurant owners, the Gambian state, and the semesters (members of the Gambian diaspora on vacation in The Gambia). It presents thick ethnographic accounts of interactions with Gambians and tourists, as they form temporary couples or friendships for the duration of tourists’ vacations, and sometimes for longer. This ethnography-rich dissertation pays careful attention to …

The Development Of Early Spatial Thinking, Carla Abad

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The different spatial experiences in the lives of young boys and girls may partly explain sex differences in spatial skills (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1995; Nazareth et al., 2013; Newcombe, Bandura & Taylor, 1983). While several studies have examined the influence of spatial activities on the development of spatial skills (e.g., Nazareth et al., 2013) there currently exists no widely used comprehensive measure to assess children’s concurrent participation in spatial activities and engagement with spatial toys. Study 1 of the current dissertation filled this gap in the field of spatial research through the creation of the Spatial Activity Questionnaire, a comprehensive …

Longitudinal Effects Of Peer, School, And Parenting Contexts On Substance Use Initiation In Middle School Adolescence, Barry Allen Ladis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Substance use initiation (SUI) among adolescents is a critical public health concern. Research indicates SUI in middle adolescence increases the risk of substance use in adulthood and later dependence, which can result in deleterious consequences for youth, family relationships, and community (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, [SAMSHA], 2014). This study investigated the role of involvement with deviant peers, school connectedness, and parenting quality on SUI (e.g., alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana) in middle adolescence using secondary data from a 5-year longitudinal study (N = 387). First, exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses with a separate independent sample …

For Those About To Rock: Gender Codes In The Rock Music Video Games Rock Band And Rocksmith, Elisa M. Melendez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores gender codes within the intersection of two American pop culture staples, video games and rock music, by conducting a feminist analysis of two video games (Rock Band and Rocksmith). Both video games and rock music have had their share of feminist academic critique: Musicologists point out how lack of canonical inclusion, gendered attitudes towards instruments, and messages from supporting media create an unwelcome environment for women to pursue a rock music career. Game studies scholars have examined similar attitudes, including a lack of women represented in both the video games and the studios that create them.

Through …

Two Ways Of Burning A Cotton Field, David James Lindstrom

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

TWO WAYS OF BURNING A COTTON FIELD is an ethnographic memoir concerning the narrator’s experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, South America. The plot is structured around a moral crisis in his rural Paraguayan village. The narrator’s neighbor, a man in his late twenties, threatened to kill his partner and her two children. The Paraguayan police were made aware of the situation but did nothing. Peace Corps management also instructed the narrator to do nothing.

In TWO WAYS OF BURNING A COTTON FIELD, this moral crisis is explored within the contexts of post-colonial power structures, including economic and …

Socialism & Universal Basic Income, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) has taken on new life as people experience greater inequality and greater exploitation than ever before—combined with the recurrence of the historically-cyclical fear of mass unemployment driven by rapid advancements in automation technologies. But the idea of providing every person with a certain amount of money, regardless of their socioeconomic status or (in)ability to or (dis)interest in working, is far from universally-accepted by socialists. This essay offers replies to three common socialist criticisms of various basic income proposals, in an effort to defend the radical potential of UBI; a potential that is consonant …