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Virginia Junior Academy Of Science 2004 Award Winners

Virginia Journal of Science

Virginia Junior Academy of Science 2004 Awards were presented at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, May 27, 2003. Includes Special Awards and Election Results.

Vas Best Student Paper Awards

Virginia Journal of Science

List of the Best Student Paper Awards by section from the 2004 Virginia Academy of Science Annual Meeting.

Cultural Topology: An Introduction To Postmodern Mathematics, Brent M. Blackwell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

This essay develops a new way of thinking about the cultural relationships among and within the sciences and the arts through a new understanding of the term postmodernism that at once derives from literary theory and the mathematical discipline of topology. While topology forms the main vertebra of this connective approach in its capacity as the mathematics of connectivity, quantum mechanics and non-Euclidean geometry -- the atlas and axis of this spinal column -- form the context through which this “postmodern” approach will develop. However, in order to position topology as a “postmodern” branch of mathematics, some brief …

From Guts To God: Credulity, Postmodernism, And Contemporary Physics, Michael Hardin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In an attempt to remove one of the major misunderstandings made by individuals in the humanities about contemporary physics, the issue of incredulity, this essay examines Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge against contemporary and twentieth-century theories and discoveries in physics. One of the best arguments against incredulity is the frequent use of god as metaphor within physics. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, two physicists, argue that the use of metaphor is one of the characteristics of postmodern science; this essay concludes with a discussion of those elements …

A Privatization Of Politics: Anthony Elliot's Concepts Of The Self (2001), Paula Murphy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate image of selfhood in the modern world than that found in Ezra Pound's poem In a Station of the Metro. It is a selfhood which is at once unique and conglomerative, fleetingly visible then tantalizingly out of focus. It is this slippery, indefinable entity that is the subject of Anthony Elliot's book. The title bears witness to the enormous breadth of its subject matter: Concepts of the Self is an attempt to engage with the various contemporary theoretical frameworks through which selfhood is explicated. Elliot's approach is admirably inter-disciplinary, …

To See More Clearly And Broadly: Science And The Postmodern Sentiment, C. Jason Smith, Robert Froemke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

What we call postmodernism, whether we refer to the sciences or the humanities, is a certain preoccupation with the role of the human observer in the composition and perception -- perhaps even construction -- of reality. The postmodern condition, so to speak, is the moment in history when the hard sciences and the sciences of man seem to be suffering from the same anxieties about the relevance of the self-reflexive interaction between the observer and the subject to the fabric of existence and the web of knowledge. In simplest terms, we would define the postmodern question as this: …

Of Parts And Wholes: Self-Similarity And Synecdoche In Science, Culture And Literature, Dirk Vanderbeke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The discussion here centers on how self-similarity, or parts resembling a whole, has been a recurring aspect in the most diverse fields of human thinking from antiquity to the present. Primary examples are drawn from physics, biology, cybernetics, alchemy, philosophy, myth and, of course, language and literature. The author argues that self-similar patterns are one of the persistent ways in which the human mind structures its experience and knowledge of the world, and then examines some of the questions that arise when an almost ubiquitous concept, structure or linguistic and literary phenomenon resurfaces in a new guise in …

Paradigm Shifts And New Worldviews: Kuhn, Laudan And Discovery In Molecular Biology, Priya Venkatesan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The author poses an alternate set of ideas concerning paradigms, normal science, research traditions and scientific revolution on the basis of the unique and inherently distinctive development of molecular biology and genetics; for, a new set of conceptual tools concerning scientific progress are required for an adequate understanding of how biological processes were elucidated under the scientific auspices of the central dogma of the genetic code. This essay concentrates on a limited study of three aspects in genetics: the study of chromosome structure, dynamics and function, reverse transcriptases, and the discovery of RNA catalysts. In attempting to analyze …

Work-Family Conflict Among Teleworkers: Demographic Effects And Work-Related Outcomes, Katherine A. Selgrade

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the influence of work-family conflict (WFC) on work-related outcomes among teleworkers. Effects of work interfering with family (WIF) and family interfering with work (FIW) on telework satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intentions were examined in a secondary data analysis of 167 teleworkers. The effects of several demographic variables (gender, duration of the telework arrangement, number of children, and frequency of teleworking) on WFC were also examined. Structural equation modeling results support the influence of WIF on telework satisfaction and turnover intentions. The influence of FIW on the work outcomes was not supported. Analysis of the demographic variables …

Social Capital And Religion: A Quantitative Analysis Of The Relationship Between Religious Participation And Social Capital, Kyshawn Smith

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to confirm the existence of a positive correlation between religious participation and social capital, and to show that such a correlation varies considerably when specific demographic variables, and denominational and organizational dynamics are accounted for. Beginning with the early theoretical works of James S. Coleman, The World Bank and Robert Putnam, research has shown the importance of studying the philosophy and science of social capital, and the significance of measuring interrelated concepts like community volunteerism, political involvement, and religious participation. However, much of this research surveys national audiences and either completely ignores or spends …

Combating Cry Wolf: The Effects Of Urgency And Reliability On Reactions To Verbal Alarms, Corey K. Fallon

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Previous research has shown that manipulating the acoustic features of auditory alarms can alter their perceived urgency. Research has shown that increasing the perceived urgency of nonverbal auditory alarms can significantly improve response degradation due to alarm mistrust. This study determined if the effect of perceived urgency on response performance also applies to verbal alarm systems. Forty graduate and undergraduate psychology students from Old Dominion University were sampled for this study. The experimenter examined participant performance during four experimental sessions. After each session a twelve-item questionnaire designed to measure participants'rust in the alarm system was administered. Two conditions of urgency …

Problem-Focused Coping: Mediating The Link Between Personality And Work-Family Conflict, Lisa M. Germano

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Past work-family research has focused on the general antecedents and outcomes associated with work-family conflict. Recent research has demonstrated that certain individual differences predispose some to experience more work-family conflict. In addition, there is a growing recognition that research needs to move beyond explaining only the causes and effects of work-family conflict and should consider strategies for coping with conflict. The proposed research addressed these gaps in the work-family literature by examining the relationships between the Big Five factors of personality, proactive personality, problem-focused coping, and work-family conflict. This study analyzed a sample of 178 employees from a mid-sized financial …

Application Of Queuing Theory And Procedure Time Estimation In A Local Healthcare System, Galina Tsoy

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

People in the United States pay more for their basic healthcare needs than do people in any other nation in the world. When we consider that the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, controlling the majority of the world's resources, it seems only reasonable to ask: Why should it be this way?

In an effort to address this problem, this thesis examines two possible methods of improving health care efficiency in hospitals. The thesis is thus in two parts: the first part examines resource allocation in medical units using Queuing Theory, and the second part examines a …

"Fictual" Reportage And (Virtual) Reality: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood And Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, Rania M. Mahmoud

English Theses & Dissertations

This study discusses Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. using Jean Baudrillard's theory of the four stages of the image and John Hellmann's notion of the transforming power of consciousness. Examining two landmarks of what is widely referred to as the nonfiction novel, or creative nonfiction, the study suggests that any attempt to record reality ends up as fabulation, whereby the writer produces his/her own version of reality. Thus, we have multiple realities or, in other words, fables woven out of the interpretive consciousness of individual writers. Taking this a step further, since all our …

Effects Of On-Site Reading Clinical Tutoring On Children's Performance, Abha Gupta

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This research was conducted to study the effects of field-based clinical tutoring on struggling readers. Struggling readers from two grade levels, 3rd and 5th were randomly divided into two groups. One group received individualized tutoring in reading for a semester from apprentice reading clinicians (graduate students in Reading Program) and the other group did not. There were 13 sessions of one hour each per week. The reading performance of students in the two groups was compared on the two available measures in the school, (1) letter grade and (2) STAR results (a computerized diagnostic reading assessment program). Observational and anecdotal …

Institutionalizing Gender And Sexuality In A Call-In Radio Advice Program: A Characterization Of Loveline, Meagan P. Storey

English Theses & Dissertations

Previous studies of advice characterized it as a discourse in which authority is afforded to the giver by virtue of being asked for advice. As an authoritative discourse, advice sets the standards by which interlocutors base their judgments of normalcy. The consequences of these judgments are multiplied when advice is given as part of public, institutional talk, such as with radio call-in programs. This thesis examines how the authoritative discourse of global advice (public, commercial advice) is used to construct and normalize human experiences, specifically gender and sexuality. This study is based on an analysis of ten audio-taped episodes, each …

Dead Astronauts, Cyborgs, And The Cape Canaveral Fiction Of J. G. Ballard: A Posthuman Analysis, Melanie Rosen Brown

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In Dead Astronauts, Cyborgs, and the Cape Canaveral Fiction of J.G. Ballard: A Posthuman Analysis, Melanie Rosen Brown explores the ways in which the so-called Cape Canaveral short stories of J.G. Ballard anthologized in the collection Memories of the Space Age exemplify the promises of posthumanity as articulated by posthuman theorists such as Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles. Although Ballard's fiction is viewed by many as a needlessly pessimistic and derogatory portrayal of NASA's space program, viewed through a posthuman lens, Ballard's fiction instead reveals him to be optimistic about the future of space exploration -- cautiously …

On Mitchell's Me++: The Cyborg Self And The Networked City, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Reminiscent of books by other MIT luminaries like Neil Gershenfeld's When Things Start to Think (2000) and Rodney Brooks' Flesh and Machines (2002), William Mitchell's Me++ reminds me, yet again, of why it is so exciting to be alive in an age of wireless phones, high-speed data transmission, and cybernetic systems. Unfortunately, after a couple of years of reading Wired and developing a festering cynicism for high-tech solutions to social problems that have been caused by previous high-tech solutions (like titanic ships, combustion engines, splitting atoms, and all kinds of really horrible weapons), I am more interested in …

'Who Are You?': Alien/Woman As Posthuman Subject In Alien Resurrection, Ximena Gallardo C.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

Traditionally considered a monster in outer space series, the four films comprising the Alien saga: Alien, Aliens, Alien³, and Alien Resurrection, contain a vision of the Alien creature as an agent of human evolution that, taken to its logical extreme in Alien Resurrection, produce an uncommon posthuman subject: the Alien/Woman protagonist named Ripley. In the following article, Ximena Gallardo C. explores the introduction of the series' conception of human evolution through fusion with the Alien as a driving theme in Alien. It then briefly follows through Aliens and Alien^{3, …}

Schizophrenics, Cyborgs And The Pitfalls Of Posthumanism, Angela Woods

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In Schizophrenics, Cyborgs and the Pitfalls of Posthumanism, Angela Woods invites us to revisit two canonical analyses of the postmodern: Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and Donna Haraway's A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. Jameson and Haraway introduced to contemporary cultural criticism two posthumanist icons: the schizophrenic, a pathologized victim of postmodernity, and the cyborg, a vision of strategic posthuman subjectivity. In her timely and critical analysis of these articles, Woods challenges the established notion of an oppositional relationship between the schizophrenic and the cyborg. She turns …

X-Men, Emerson, Gnosticism, Geoff Klock

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

Continuing his work in How to Read Superhero Comics and Why Geoff Klock, in “X-Men, Emerson, Gnosticism,” argues that two writers of the superhero comic book the X-Men suggest a whole new definition of the Post-Human, an alternative to what Hayles, Haraway, and Moravec have to offer. He begins by connecting a moment in Mark Millar’s Ultimate X-Men with a passage in Ralph Waldo Emerson: an ancient heretical second-century sect of Christianity called Gnosticism is the common factor. Klock argues that Millar’s X-Men incorporates Gnosticism’s radical notion of subjectivity into its Post-Human narrative, but not without cost: Millar’s …

Idiomatic Expressions And Marital Relationships Over Three Stages Of The Family Lifespan, Meredith T. Raynor

Institute for the Humanities Theses

In interpersonal communication language shared between two people becomes important in the everyday life of relational participants. Even more so, the language shared between married couples is vital because of their "unique relationship". Part of that language involves the symbols, gestures and words called idioms that have specialized meaning for the marital dyad.

This thesis sought to discover what idioms are identified among married couples at three stages of the family lifespan, newlyweds, couples with children and empty nest couples as they seek to maintain a system of "personalized communication" as it relates to their marital satisfaction (Breuss & Pearson, …

Euthanasia: An Exploration Of Public Opinion, Debra M. Babylon

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The acceptance of euthanasia is examined using the 1972-2002 GSS cumulative dataset. The dataset contains a total of 43,698 respondents. The euthanasia question, "Should a terminally ill patient be allowed the right to die?" was asked beginning in 1977. The number of respondents answering the euthanasia question totals 22,039. The independent variables age, race, gender, political view, religious affiliation, and education were reviewed to assess their impact on support of euthanasia. Additionally, in order to test the "slippery slope" hypothesis, the abortion question, "Should abortion be allowed under any circumstance?" was added to the independent variable list. Cross tabulation was …

The Effect Of Humor On Elderly Well-Being, Mary M. Boone

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The main objectives of this study were to identify the connections between the sense of humor and well-being in the elderly population, examine the benefits of humor as a coping mechanism, explore the role of humor as a preventative and therapeutic measure, and to attempt to gain a greater understanding of these connections. Humor has been the focus of study within many different domains, including psychology and medical research (immunology, pain management, cardiology, and psychoneuroimmunology), but there is a distinct lack of theory and research within the sociological realm on this topic (except in social psychology), especially involving the aging …

An Experimental Examination Of Equivalence Failures In Multi-Cultural Comparative Research, F. Mark Case

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

As the global economy integrates, there is an increased need to understand international business phenomena. This forces a reliance upon multi-cultural marketing research, which is evidenced by a marked increase in international studies, particularly multi-cultural comparative research (Sin, Cheung & Lee 1999). Central to the usefulness of this research is the question of the validity and comparability of results, which is greatly affected by a property known as equivalence of test instruments; or the degree to which the scales and the items in them are seen to be the same across cultures.

To date, no research exists that approaches the …

How The U.S. Military's Equal Opportunity Training Program Impacts Operational Readiness And Effectiveness: An Exploratory Study, James R. Camic

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The Department of Defense is dedicated to creating an environment that recognizes individuals' diverse backgrounds. The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) was developed to train Equal Opportunity Advisors (EOAs), implement training programs at the unit level, and evaluate the Equal Opportunity Climate of the military. Many of the programs developed at DEOMI were developed with the belief that diversity appreciation and prejudice avoidance (DAPA) lead to combat readiness and operational effectiveness (CROE).

A qualitative, grounded theory approach was employed to help understand how DAP A is related to CROE. Interviews were conducted with retired EOAs in which they related …

Pavlivian Conditioning To Insulin-Induced Hypoglycemia As Indicated By Glycemic Response Motor Activity And Anxiety, Jermaine Dionte Jones

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this experiment was to demonstrate the responses to stimuli predicting the onset of hypoglycemia {HG), specifically the overt behavioral and glycemic conditioned responses to insulin-produced HG. When drug-opposite compensatory responses become associated with situational and environmental cues that predict drug administration, compensatory mechanisms can be elicited solely by drugassociated cues. Several studies have been conducted to determine the conditioned bloodglucose responses as elicited by stimuli predicting hypoglycemia. However, only a few studies have examined the behavioral conditioned responses associated with hypoglycemia. Insulin-induced HG and the elevated plus maze (EPM) procedure were utilized to determine the direction of …

A Community Assessment Of Drinking And Driving Predictors: Alcohol Outlets And Socioeconomic Factors, Cynthia L. Shier

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to examine drinking and driving behaviors among different socioeconomic status neighborhoods. This study included a telephone survey that measured demographics, characteristics of the environment, and self-report alcohol use. In addition to the telephone survey, the researcher examined archival data such as alcohol-related traffic crash reports. Geographical information systems (GIS) programming was used to graphically plot alcohol-related traffic crash locations simultaneously with the locations of alcohol outlets. A review of the literature on drinking and driving was inconsistent; therefore, the researcher hypotheses were chosen to clear up some of these contradictions. The hypothesis that alcohol …

A Cross-National Analysis Of The Impact Of Conscription On Crime Rates, Nicolette G. Rose

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Research has repeatedly shown that males in the age range of 16 to 24 years account for a disproportionately large volume of crime (Sampson and Laub 1993 ). The armed forces are major employers of young males in this crime-prone age range and could thus play an important role in crime prevention. The military provides many varied opportunities including a highly structured and regimented institution in which rigid behavioral norms and close monitoring are imposed. Some other incentives that service provides include educational opportunities through the" Advanced Individual Training", the GI Bill, in-service tuition assistance, and world-wide travel. All these …

The Effects Of Firearm Use On Police Officers, Quinn M. Beers

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The use of firearms by police officers is a subject that has not received much attention in past research. It is a rare occurrence for police officers to have fire their weapon in the line duty, which has also made this area of law enforcement difficult to study. In addition, little data is kept on the extent of firearm use by police officers. Several theories have been proposed to explain firearm use by police officers as well as how officers decide to use their weapon or not.

Ninety-two police officers from the city of Newport News, Virginia completed a survey …