Digital Commons Network^™

The Stigmatization Of Autism – Why It’S Still Present And How It Affects Women And Individuals Assigned Female At Birth (Afab), Emma Drauer

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to explain some key factors (the theory of mind notion and the narrow perception of autism) that contribute to the stigmatization of autism and the impact this has on autistic women. Autistic women are heavily underrepresented, especially in the scholarly discourse, so this thesis collected first person accounts of autistic experiences through a survey and interviews. This data revealed important information such as the benefits of a diagnosis, how stigma can prevent this and have consequences, and the struggles autistic women face. Unmasking these struggles can help make the general public aware of their …

The Intersection Of Autism Spectrum Disorder And Mental Health: A Focus On College Students, Sudeepta Matha

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Rising prevalence rates of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), changes in diagnostic criteria, and increased public awareness have all contributed to the growing population of college students with ASD. However, many individuals - commonly referred to as the “lost generation” - go undiagnosed, due to experiencing negative interactions with mental health professionals. As a result, these individuals are not given the proper support and interventions required for a successful transition into adulthood, and often face heightened social isolation, academic problems, mental health challenges compared to their neurotypical peers. A combination of these factors can lead to increased suicidal ideation (SI) and …

Anxiety And Adaptive Functioning In Young Adults: The Moderating Role Of Psychological Flexibility, Makenzie L. Kennedy, Jeffrey E. Cassisi

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Anxiety is highly prevalent among emerging adults and is associated with impairments in academic, social, and daily functioning. While previous research has documented strong associations between anxiety and adaptive functioning, the present study uniquely tested psychological flexibility as a potential moderator that may foster resilience and adaptive coping.

Undergraduate students (N = 522) from the University of Central Florida completed measures of anxiety (PROMIS-A, GAD-7, STAI-S), adaptive functioning (WHODAS 2.0), and psychological flexibility (COMPACT-23). Confirmatory factor analyses supported distinct but correlated latent constructs of anxiety and adaptive functioning. Due to poor subscale intercorrelations, the COMPACT-23 total score was modeled as …

Generation Z’S Perception Of Skin Cancer And How It Relates To Climate Change, Piercen Bogolea

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Skin cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, and climate change has been identified as a significant contributor. Preventative action early on can help reduce occurrence, but it is unknown if Generation Z is aware of this and is taking the necessary action now to protect themselves. This research aims to gauge the perception of Generation Z on the severity of skin cancer, the relationship between climate change and skin cancer, and the prevalence of preventative measures being taken. A survey was distributed to students aged 18 to 27 enrolled at the University of Central Florida through mixed sampling. The …

Genomic Epidemiology Of Staphylococcus Aureus Sequence-Type 97, Eva Armao

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a gram-positive bacterial pathogen that colonizes human nasal passages, mucous membranes, or the skin of carriers, with colonization commonly found in 20-30% of healthy people. S. aureus has the potential for two types of infection within human hosts: methicillin-susceptible (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant (MRSA). These infections can be further classified based on their route of infection, either known as community-associated (CA), healthcare-associated (HA), or healthcare-associated community-onset (HACO). Upon further investigation of infected populations, specific genetic subtypes of S. aureus, known as sequence types (ST), have been identified globally, with some exhibiting increased virulence among …

Uv- Altered Macrophages: Impact Of Uv Radiation On Phagocytic Receptor Expression In M2 Macrophages And Implications For Tissue Repair And Immunosuppression, Hala Hafez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Ultraviolet radiation is an environmental stressor known to suppress immune function in the skin, but its effect on the immunoregulatory M2 phenotype macrophages is poorly studied. This study aims to investigate the impact of UV exposure on key markers of the M2 macrophage, which are critical for tissue repair and immunosuppression. THP-1 monocytes were differentiated and polarized into the M2 phenotype using Phorbol-12 myristate (PMA) and Cytokines IL-4 and IL-10. Once differentiation was confirmed, the macrophages were exposed to varying durations of UV radiation. Real Time Quantitative PCR was used to analyze expression changes in phagocytic receptors (CD206, CD163, Arg-1), …

The Effect Of Social Hierarchy And Captivity On Behavior In Cercopithecus Petaurista, Haley Bombard

Undergraduate Scholarship and Creative Works

The social hierarchy within three Cercopithecus petaurista individuals was studied to determine how the influence of captivity affects behavior. The three individuals were monitored from August-November, and the data retained was focused on aggression and allogrooming behaviors. The group consisted of one dominant male and two females in the Central Florida Zoo, and behavioral observations were recorded at 10-minute intervals. Results showed that the dominant male infrequently engaged in allogrooming behavior but more often received it from the less dominant females. The hierarchy and social status of the females was shown and influenced by the allogrooming given and received between …

Disparities In Maternal Healthcare: Examining The Impact Of Social Determinants Of Health On Provider Care Quality, Rishita Anumukonda

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Poor maternal health outcomes among racially and socioeconomically marginalized populations are a major public health concern in the United States. Effective clinician discussions during prenatal and postpartum care play an essential role in promoting maternal and infant well-being. However, the content of provider-patient discussions in maternal care and how it varies for patients exposed to different social determinants of health has not yet been well explored. This study aims to examine whether healthcare provider discussions about key maternal health topics, including preventative health tips, risk factors, and available resources, differ based on social factors such as income level and race. …

Rhythm Against Poethics, Jayvyn Dacas

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis stages an auto-poetic ethnography that listens to, and moves with, the anterior spaces of Black life. Those murmurs, hums, musical hesitations, and infrastructural vibrations that refuse capture by dominant epistemic regimes. Drawing from Ramon Amaro’s reading of Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick and Alexander Weheliye’s reflections on sound, Fred Moten’s insights on displacement, and Tendayi Sithole’s attention to the phonographic, the project situates music production as method and unworlding. Through engagements with the 808, sampling, sound systems, and embodied listening across Florida. Spaces like the warehouse, the party, record stores, and community become the work of Black voices, and …

Taiwanese Elementary School Teachers’ Mindset Of Content And Language Integrated Learning (Clil) Instruction, Chin-Wen Chien

Journal of English Learner Education

Teachers need to undergo a mindset shift in language learning and teaching. This study used both qualitative and quantitative data to explore seven Taiwanese Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teachers’ mindsets and led to the following major findings. First, the CLIL teachers had a stronger mindset regarding their instructional strategies, lesson preparations, and efficacy, compared to their more moderate mindset regarding their CLIL training and preparation. Secondly, the CLIL teachers had a different mindset regarding language use in their CLIL instruction due to their learners’ English proficiency levels. Finally, their lesson designs were lacking a 4Cs culture. Based on …

Rethinking Human-Autonomy Teamwork In The Context Of Design And Robotic Fabrication, Iremnur Tokac Celikyay, Caja Thimm, Sigrid Brell-Cokcan

Human-Machine Communication

The integration of autonomous agents in design is challenging due to its unstructured nature. The increasing focus on human-robot interaction (HRI) is driven by its potential to address this issue, enabling human-robot teams to effectively manage creative design tasks. This paper aims to identify interactive processes among the agencies of humans, robots, and materials. We explore how HRI can shift robotic fabrication from a linear deterministic process to an iterative co-creation one. Through reflective analysis of robotic fabrication studies, we illustrated how interaction interfaces can distribute agency among humans, robots, and materials while negotiating the design intent with material and …

University Of Central Florida Undergraduate Catalog, 2024 - 2025, University Of Central Florida

UCF Catalogs

No abstract provided.

The Uncanny Coincidences Of The Russian Joyce, Bradley A. Gorski

James Joyce Literary Supplement

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What Hmc Teaches Us About Authenticity, Katrin Etzrodt, Jihyun Kim, Margot Van Der Goot, Andrew Prahl, Mina Choi, Matthew Craig, Marco Dehnert, Sven Engesser, Katharina Frehmann, Luis A. Grande, Jindong Liu, Diyi Liu, Sandra Mooshammer, Nathan Rambukkana, Ayanda Rogge, Pieta Sikström, Rachel Son, Nan J. Wilkenfeld, Kun Xu, Renwen Zhang, Ying Zhu, Chad Edwards

Human-Machine Communication

This paper delves into what the application of authenticity to Human-Machine Communication (HMC) can teach us about authenticity and us as HMC researchers and as a com- munity. Inspired by the 2023 pre-conference “HMC: Authenticity in communicating with machines,” two central questions guide the discussion: How does HMC contribute to our understanding of authentic communication with machines? And how can the concept of authenticity contribute to our sense of self as researchers within the HMC field? Through the collaborative effort of 22 authors, the paper explores the re-conceptualization of authenticity and presents recent areas of tension that guide the HMC …

External And Internal Attribution In Human-Agent Interaction: Insights From Neuroscience And Virtual Reality, Nina Lauharatanahirun, Andrea Won, Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang

Human-Machine Communication

Agents are designed in the image of humans, both internally and externally. The internal systems of agents imitate the human brain, both at the levels of hardware (i.e., neuromorphic computing) and software (i.e., neural networks). Furthermore, the external appearance and behaviors of agents are designed by people and based on human data. Sometimes, these humanlike qualities of agents are purposely selected to increase their social influence over human users, and sometimes the human factors that influence perceptions of agents are hidden. Inspired by Blascovich’s “threshold of social influence’, a model designed to explain the effects of different methods of anthropomorphizing …

Feminist Cybernetic, Critical Race, Postcolonial, And Crip Propositions For The Theoretical Future Of Human-Machine Communication, Paula M. Gardner, Jess Rauchberg

Human-Machine Communication

The authors review theoretical trends in HMC research, as well as recent critical interventions in the HMC journal that usefully reshape and expand our research terrain. Conventional research such as positivist and quantified approaches are identified as restraining research questions and delimiting understandings of concepts including subjects, agency and interactivity. Feminist cybernetic, critical race, postcolonial and crip theoretical approaches are offered, examining how they fill research gaps in HMC, expanding content areas explored, and addressing diverse intersectional pressures, situated, and time/space dynamics that impact human machine interaction. The authors suggest these shifts are essential to expanding HMC research to address …

Machine Ex Machina: A Framework Decentering The Human In Ai Design Praxis, Cait Lackey, Zizi Papacharissi

Human-Machine Communication

Artificial intelligence (AI) design typically incorporates intelligence in a manner that is affirmatory of the superiority of human forms of intelligence. In this paper, we draw from relevant research and theory to propose a social-ecological design praxis of machine inclusivity that rejects the presumption of primacy afforded to human-centered AI. We provide new perspectives for how human-machine communication (HMC) scholarship can be synergistically combined with modern neuroscience’s integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. We propose an integrated theoretical framework with five design practice recommendations to guide how we might think about responsible and conscious AI environments of the future: symbiotic …

Epic Modernisms, Hamid Farahmandian

James Joyce Literary Supplement

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Enhancing Experience Through The Integration Of Demonstrations And Simulations, Michael Mckenzie, Amy Mckenzie

Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository

This strategy utilizes demonstrations and simulations in an online environment to improve student engagement. It first explains the literature behind demonstrations/simulations and then provides the reader with a plan to implement and examples to reference.

Jason D. Phillips Cv, Jason D. Phillips

Libraries' Documents

No abstract provided.

Transferring Field Based Experiences Into Multiple Sources Of Online Content, Nicole Stahl, Wendy Howard

Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository

Finding and/or gathering course content can be a great challenge for faculty and course designers. By taking advantage of the time to acquire media content while out in the field, this can provide a great opportunity to turn those resources into multiple types of online content for students.

An Environmental History Of The Armed Occupation Act Of 1842: Empire, Cultivation, And Securing The Southernmost Frontier In The Contiguous United States, Gary Desantis

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Armed Occupation Act of 1842 (AOA) remains important to Florida's environmental history because it brought a stalwart band of white pioneers to take advantage of 200,000 acres of relatively untouched wilderness south of Gainesville. The basic tenants of the Act called for heads of households to bear arms against Seminoles, bestowed 160 acres of land to those who farmed at least five acres as well as constructed a domicile, and so succeeded in attracting new migrants that Florida achieved statehood three years later in 1845. The Act was effective in boosting the population-at least in giving Florida the 60,000 …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Bennett, Florida Explored: The Philadelphia Connection in Bartram's Tracks. by Jane H. Plummer; Kushlan, Seeking the American Tropics: South Horida's Early Naturalists. by Roger Chapman; Cecere, March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776, by David Head; Denham and Honeycutt, eds., The Letters of George Long Broum: A Yankee Merchant on Rorida's Antebellum Frontier. by Mark R. Cheathem; Levin, Searching for Black Confederares: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth. by Joshua Butler; Castillo, Working In the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami. By Martin T. Olliff; Mormino, Millard Fillmore Caldwell: Governing on the Wrong Side …

"The Nature Of Their Country": Florida's Environment And Military Learning The Second Seminole War, 1835-1842, Jacob Hagstrom

Florida Historical Quarterly

In the summer of 1839, after four years of inconclusive military campaigns, the army's adjutant in Washington asked Zachary Taylor why his troops had not yet removed all of the Seminoles from Florida. One of Taylor's opponents, Coacoochee, turned to nature as well to explain his ultimate failure to remain in Florida. Coacoochee's followers were among the last of about four thousand Seminoles to depart the peninsula for Indian Country in the west. The Indigenous resistance leader, sometimes known as Wild Cat, explained the reason for his surrender with reference to the densely wooded "hammocks" that dotted the Florida landscape. …

Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 100, No. 3, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Charting A Path Toward An Indigenous History Of Florida, Denise I. Bossy

Florida Historical Quarterly

In 1743, with the naive belief that the Calusas were finally interested in Catholic conversion, two Jesuit missionaries traveled to South Florida from Havana, Cuba. For decades Europeans described the region-in documents and on maps-as all but devoid of human life and, in particular, its Indigenous populations as being virtually extinct. Instead, the Jesuits discovered that South Florida was very much still under Indigenous control. A number of distinct Native confederacies-including one that consisted of Calusas, Bocarratons, and "Key" Indians and another of what one Spaniard called Maymies, Santaluzos, and Mayacas-exerted not only territorial control but also control over the …

Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 100, No. 1, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Invading Eden: Exotic Pets And Invasive Species In South Florida, Andrew Pemberton

Florida Historical Quarterly

On July 8, 2019, South Floridians woke up to a headline describing the removal of a sixteen-foot-long Burmese python and fifty of its eggs from beneath a suburban home near the Everglades. This is a common spectacle in South Florida. Floridians, long accustomed to their scaly, cold-blooded co-habitants, have seen these types of headlines since the 1980s. With increasing frequency, non-indigenous species are entering the state's public eye. Perhaps more remarkable than these snakes' presence beneath Floridia homes is their welcomed presence in households across the country. However, this trend in pet-keeping poses the most risk to ecosystems in Florida, …

Seagrass-Roots Environmentalism: The Lee County Conservation Association, Chris Wilhelm

Florida Historical Quarterly

After World War II, Florida crafted a new identity: the Sunshine State. This concept was not solely based on Florida's hot weather and sunny skies although the relationship between sun and water was implicit in the new identity. Tourists enjoyed the sun on boats and beaches, retirees and snowbirds fled northern winters for new sunny coastal cities. The heat of Florida's sunshine was thus balanced by the state's coastal waters. The Sunshine State is a convenient slogan, but Florida is actually defined by its coast. Other states have more sunshine, but none in the continental U.S. have more coastline or …

A Movement For The Birds: Pelican Island And The Origins Of The First American Wildlife Refuge, Evan B. Jaynes

Florida Historical Quarterly

"Very well then, I So Declare It." This is supposedly what President Theodore Roosevelt said early in 1903 when he was informed that there was not any law that would prevent him from making Pelican Island a federally protected wildlife reserve. Shortly thereafter, on March 14, 1903, Roosevelt issued an executive order that established Pelican Island-a small and seemingly unremarkable piece of land off Florida's Atlantic-facing coast-as the nation's first wildlife sanctuary. Proclaiming that the island be "reserved and set apart for the use of the Department of Agriculture as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds," the action …