Digital Commons Network^™

Self-Injurious Behavior Of A Captive Coragyps Atratus, Jennifer Bouchenot

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

As zoos become more numerous the challenge for keepers to ensure animal well-being and identify adverse behaviors becomes immense. Intelligent animals in captivity have a higher likelihood of participating in selfharm activities compared to their wild counterparts. Feather picking in birds is one such adverse behavior characterized by the individual breaking or removing feathers and, in severe cases, excision of the skin. This behavior increases the susceptibility to sickness and infection. In this study, a feather-picking captive Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus) was observed preening, resting, and displaying self-mutilating behavior. Collected data were compared with a second non-mutilating specimen. …

Sanguinus Oedipus In A Habitat Of Brotherly Love, Haley Atkinson

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

This observational study analyzes the social dynamic and agonistic behavior between the two youngest males in a captive troupe of cotton-top tamarins, Sanguinus oedipus, found at the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens located in Sanford, Florida. The troupe consists of a breeding pair, two sets of twins, and a set of triplets– totaling nine individuals. The study focuses on the second-youngest and youngest males in the troupe and how they interact with each other. S. oedipus possess certain social and communication behaviors. The main behaviors observed in this study are vocalizations and movements indicating aggression between the two …

Featured Bookshelf: 2020 Lgbtqia+ Pride Month, Megan M. Haught

Featured Bookshelf

Ready to fly your flag?

Pride Month has arrived! While every day is a time to be proud of your identity and orientation, June is that extra special time for boldly celebrating with and for the LGBTQIA community (yes, there are more than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in the queer community). June was chosen to honor the Stonewall Riots which happened in 1969. Like other celebratory months, LGBT Pride Month started as a weeklong series of events and expanded into a full month of festivities.

In honor of Pride Month, UCF Library faculty and staff suggested books from the …

S2 E10: Hobby To Job, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF Faculty members, answer a parent question about how to pick a hobby or volunter experience that could lead my child with a disability to a jobb? They share practical ideas to help teachers, and parents instill a voice to help students or their child consider future careers. Remember questions can be shared on Twitter @accesspractical. Follow us on itunes or iheart podcasts.

S2 E9: Creativity, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF Faculty members, talk about how to ensure your students or children use their creativity. They share practical ideas to build a students' creative skills by instilling both voice and choice to find their passion. Remember questions can be shared on Twitter @accesspractical. Follow us on itunes or iheart podcasts.

The Virus Is Not Our Enemy Plotting Against Us, Katie Philp

UCF Forum

Anthropomorphism is the term for our tendency to give human characteristics to animals or non-living things. Many of us might recall it from our high school English classes, but there is a psychological basis for our use of anthropomorphism, as well.

University Of Central Florida Graduate Catalog, 2020 - 2021, University Of Central Florida

UCF Catalogs

No abstract provided.

S2 E1: Role Of Multiple Professionals Online And Season 2 Soft Skills And Social Emotional Learning, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF Faculty members, share their thoughts on the role of speech, PT, OT, and other professionals as they end their discussion from Season 1 about online teaching and move into season 2 (May to mid-June) talking about social emotional learning and the importance of soft skills for all students, but especially students with disabilities. In this episode they discuss the importance of what is the target of learning to be shared by all professionals and share tools and strategies to work together in this online environment while highlight future topics. Remember questions can be …

S2 E3: Increasing And Improving Communication Skills, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF Faculty members, share their thoughts on the importance of ensuring strong communication skill by and not for children and students with disabilities. In this episode they discuss the importance of communication at whatever level an individual is capable to create a stronger future. They highlight technology to consider to increase communication and how this skill is critical to both independence and employability. Remember questions can be shared on Twitter @accesspractical. Follow us on itunes or iheart podcasts.

S1 E1: Tips For Teaching Students With Disabilities In Our New Online World, Rebecca Hines, Lisa Dieker

Practical Access Transcripts

Welcome to our first Practical Access Podcast by two UCF Professors, Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker. We provide in this podcast tips for teachers related to immediately moving their instruction online and how to consider tools to support students with disabilities. We share our favorite ideas for supporting students with disabilities.

Books And Bagels 2020 Bibliography, Emma Gisclair

Handouts and Brochures

The Curriculum Materials Center’s Books and Bagels event is an annual book talk of some of the best books of the previous year. This bibliography is a list of the staff’s favorite and notable books of 2019, with a brief description of each book. It includes titles for grades PreK-12—picture books, young adult and middle grade fiction, graphic novels, and nonfiction. Original event held on March 5, 2020.

Book Review: Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence And Rhetoric In The New Science Of Alternative Medicine, Blake Scott

Rhetoric of Health & Medicine

A Review of Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine

J. Blake Scott

Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine. By Colleen Derkatch. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 238 pages. $55 cloth; $10 e-book.

All That Glitters – Could Be Unhealthy, Roy Lenfest

UCF Forum

In my family of mostly teachers, glitter has been known as the “social virus” of the elementary school arts and crafts closet for years. You can ask any school teacher in the primary grades or go to their house and you will find glitter in totally unexpected – and unwelcomed – places

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 1

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 1.

Sharing Stress With A Robot: What Would A Robot Say?, Honson Y. Ling, Elin A. Björling

Human-Machine Communication

With the prevalence of mental health problems today, designing human-robot interaction for mental health intervention is not only possible, but critical. The current experiment examined how three types of robot disclosure (emotional, technical, and by-proxy) affect robot perception and human disclosure behavior during a stress-sharing activity. Emotional robot disclosure resulted in the lowest robot perceived safety. Post-hoc analysis revealed that increased perceived stress predicted reduced human disclosure, user satisfaction, robot likability, and future robot use. Negative attitudes toward robots also predicted reduced intention for future robot use. This work informs on the possible design of robot disclosure, as well as …

Interlocutors And Interactions: Examining The Interactions Between Students With Complex Communication Needs, Teachers, And Eye-Gaze Technology, Rhonda Mcewen, Asiya Atcha, Michelle Lui, Roula Shimaly, Amrita Maharaj, Syed Ali, Stacie Carroll

Human-Machine Communication

This study analyzes the role of the machine as a communicative partner for children with complex communication needs as they use eye-tracking technology to communicate. We ask: to what extent do eye-tracking devices serve as functional communications systems for children with complex communication needs? We followed 12 children with profound physical disabilities in a special education classroom over 3 months. An eye-tracking system was used to collect data from software that assisted the children in facial recognition, task identification, and vocabulary building. Results show that eye gaze served as a functional communication system for the majority of the children. We …

Building A Stronger Casa: Extending The Computers Are Social Actors Paradigm, Andrew Gambino, Jesse Fox, Rabindra A. Ratan

Human-Machine Communication

The computers are social actors framework (CASA), derived from the media equation, explains how people communicate with media and machines demonstrating social potential. Many studies have challenged CASA, yet it has not been revised. We argue that CASA needs to be expanded because people have changed, technologies have changed, and the way people interact with technologies has changed. We discuss the implications of these changes and propose an extension of CASA. Whereas CASA suggests humans mindlessly apply human-human social scripts to interactions with media agents, we argue that humans may develop and apply human-media social scripts to these interactions. Our …

Me And My Robot Smiled At One Another: The Process Of Socially Enacted Communicative Affordance In Human-Machine Communication, Carmina Rodríguez-Hidalgo

Human-Machine Communication

The term affordance has been inconsistently applied both in robotics and communication. While the robotics perspective is mostly object-based, the communication science view is commonly user-based. In an attempt to bring the two perspectives together, this theoretical paper argues that social robots present new social communicative affordances emerging from a two-way relational process. I first explicate conceptual approaches of affordance in robotics and communication. Second, a model of enacted communicative affordance in the context of Human-Machine Communication (HMC) is presented. Third and last, I explain how a pivotal social robot characteristic—embodiment—plays a key role in the process of social communicative …

Ontological Boundaries Between Humans And Computers And The Implications For Human-Machine Communication, Andrea L. Guzman

Human-Machine Communication

In human-machine communication, people interact with a communication partner that is of a different ontological nature from themselves. This study examines how people conceptualize ontological differences between humans and computers and the implications of these differences for human-machine communication. Findings based on data from qualitative interviews with 73 U.S. adults regarding disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (voice-based AI assistants, automated-writing software) show that people differentiate between humans and computers based on origin of being, degree of autonomy, status as tool/tool-user, level of intelligence, emotional capabilities, and inherent flaws. In addition, these ontological boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred as technologies emulate …

Toward An Agent-Agnostic Transmission Model: Synthesizing Anthropocentric And Technocentric Paradigms In Communication, Jaime Banks, Maartje M. A. De Graaf

Human-Machine Communication

Technological and social evolutions have prompted operational, phenomenological, and ontological shifts in communication processes. These shifts, we argue, trigger the need to regard human and machine roles in communication processes in a more egalitarian fashion. Integrating anthropocentric and technocentric perspectives on communication, we propose an agent-agnostic framework for human-machine communication. This framework rejects exclusive assignment of communicative roles (sender, message, channel, receiver) to traditionally held agents and instead focuses on evaluating agents according to their functions as a means for considering what roles are held in communication processes. As a first step in advancing this agent-agnostic perspective, this theoretical paper …

Opening Space For Theoretical, Methodological, And Empirical Issues In Human-Machine Communication, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards

Human-Machine Communication

This journal offers a space dedicated to theorizing, researching empirically, and discussing human-machine communication (HMC), a new form of communication with digital interlocutors that has recently developed and has imposed the urgency to be analyzed and understood. There is the need to properly address the model of this specific communication as well as the roles, objectives, functions, experiences, practices, and identities of the interlocutors involved, both human and digital. Reading these seven articles is an advantageous intellectual exercise for entering this new field of research on Human-Machine Communication. The present volume contributes substantially both at theoretical and empirical levels by …

There Is Power Inherent In Working With Colleagues From Different Disciplines, Chung Park

UCF Forum

When I was an early career academic, I started to hear and read the words “interdisciplinary research” everywhere.

Determining The Advantageous Acute Migraine Treatment: Rimegepant And Lasmiditan Review Of Literature, Tiffany A. Johnson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research aims to evaluate two new pharmaceuticals on the market. Rimegepant and Lasmiditan target the trigeminovascular system and respectively, are characterized in the gepant and ditan classes of pharmaceuticals. Based on a review of studies, Rimegepant was determined to be the advantageous acute treatment. This is not conclusive due to inequivalent comparison in sample size and amount of research completed. It is encouraged for additional research to be imposed before a conclusive determination of the advantageous acute treatment can be distinguished.

Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease And The Gut Microbiome: The Effects Of Gut Microbial Metabolites On Nafld Progression In A 2-Organ Human-On-A-Chip Model, Rachel H. Boone

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Using a novel, adipose-liver, two-organ, human-on-a-chip system, the metabolic disease non-alcoholic fatty liver disease was modeled. This model was then used to test the effects of the gut microbiome on NAFLD progression. Two products of the gut microbiome, Trimethylamine-n-oxide and butyrate, were selected as representatives of potentially harmful and potentially beneficial compounds. A dose response, adipocyte and hepatocyte monocultures controls, and HoaC systems were run for 14 days. Through this experimentation, it was found that a dysbiosis of the gut microbiome could be influencing NAFLD progression. Additionally, further development and discovery regarding adipose-liver systems was added to the ongoing conversation …

The Effect Of Using Crispr/Cas9 Treatment To Delete The Myostatin Protein In Vivo And In Vitro, Marco Cardone

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis proposal shows the efficiency of different methods of Myostatin inhibition by using CRISPR/CAS9. With the data cataloged by this thesis, researchers will have a better understanding of what methods are better to achieve their goals. The data was collected by reading multiple scientific articles involving the usage of CRISPR/CAS9 to inhibit the Myostatin protein. The data collected from all the different studies were analyzed in the same categories. The experiment that used CRIPSR/CAS9 on in vitro specimens had a superior Myostatin inhibition overall, therefore presenting higher muscle mass. The method using CRISPR/CAS9 to inhibit the Myostatin in vivo …

Detection Of A Peptide Hormone - Somatostatin - Label-Free Split-Aptameric Probes, Charles A. Dowis

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Peptide hormones are important biomolecules that transduce downstream effects such as cell proliferation, regulation, and gene expression. Their levels have been upregulated in various disorders such as cancer, yet detection methods are lacking. We designed two split aptamer-based assays for the detection of a peptide hormone – Somatostatin (SST) – with different signal readouts: fluorescent readout based on light-up aptamers and the colorimetric readout of ABTS peroxidation from a G-quadruplex. We used an already selected split-aptamer –SSTA5–for SST for our designs and we had expected the developed detection systems to exhibit detection and quantification capabilities that would hopefully allow their …

Evaluating The Nutritional Status Of Peruvian Born Children, Chantelle Garcia Medina

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Background: Rural areas of Peru lack access to healthcare resources and poor nutritional knowledge of what should be given to their children throughout their growth and development. The majority of the rural areas rely on a high carbohydrate, moderate vegetable diet, and lacking a protein source. Lower protein intake can lead to problems of malnutrition and growth stunting. Families rarely have monetary resources to provide a protein at every meal for the entire family. There is also a lack of a clean water supply, free of parasites and helminths. Caregivers often rely on replenishing intake with other fluids high …

The Effect Of A Senolytic Drug On Messenger Rna And Micro Rna Expression In Perigonadal Adipose Tissue Of Young And Old Mice, Catalina Hernandez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

As we face an expanding elderly population and increased age-related chronic diseases, we must seek solutions that address interconnected problems. Dasatinib plus quercetin (D+Q), a novel combination drug, is a proposed solution to improve the health and longevity of aged individuals with minimal side effects, exceptional efficacy, and maximum convenience. In this experiment, intermittent D+Q treatment was completed on young and old mice. RNA was extracted from perigonadal adipose tissue and cDNA libraries of mRNA and miRNA were made. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to assess relative gene expression for mRNA and miRNA pertaining to cell senescence, inflammation, …

Nature Contentedness Through Nature's Affordances, Fatima Khan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

There have been many studies conducted in the realm of nature that look at explanations behind human beings’ tendency to revert to nature as a way to relieve themselves from the real world while giving them feelings of well-being and positive emotions for a place. This study aimed to explore how humans feel more presence while also using this information to explore a more nature-oriented environment and the influence this has on human behavior. The present study is determining whether engaging with affordances of nature increase an individuals’ sense of presence. It was hypothesized that individuals that spend more time …

Investigating Aggression In Huntington Disease, Chloe E. Larochelle

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Huntington Disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that is caused by a CAG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene. The onset of the disease is defined by the presence of motor deficits, such as chorea. However, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms often develop before motor onset and typically have a larger impact on patient quality of life. Psychiatric symptoms include depression, anxiety, and OCD, but also aggression and irritability, which have been comparatively understudied due to stigma. Currently, treatments to modify these behaviors in premanifest HD patients are not consistently effective and often have side effects, creating a need for …