Digital Commons Network^™

Critical Analysis Of Critical Thinking, Jim Potter

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study provides an analysis of how the term “critical thinking” has been defined by authors of articles published in the Journal of Media Literacy Education. It provides answers to three questions: (1) How frequently is the term “critical thinking” mentioned by scholars who write about media literacy?; (2) In what ways do scholars convey the meaning of the term?; and (3) To what extent is the term presented with a consistent meaning? While the term “critical thinking” appeared in more than half of the articles examined, there was a great variety in the way authors presented their meanings …

Are We Centering The Adult In Youth Media Education? Decolonizing The Reception Of Youth-Produced Media Texts, Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article asks media educators to consider how the assumptions and values we hold are reflected in our reception and circulation of youth-produced texts in ways that colonize youth interests, sensibilities, and aesthetics. Drawing from experiences facilitating youth media workshops and focusing on two videos produced by teens in foster care as case studies, I demonstrate how youth media programs overlook the value of “just for fun” youth-produced media texts. Although media educators value play as part of the media production process, I argue that the media we choose to circulate and celebrate are texts that resonate with and reflect …

Improving Children’S Wellbeing Through Media Literacy Education: An Irish Study, Vicky O'Rourke Dr., Sarah Miller Dr.

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Via diverse content including programmes, songs and child-led social media channels, children are constantly exposed to commercially funded messages encouraging purchase behaviour. While there is no definitive agreement that advertising to children is detrimental to their wellbeing (Rowthorn, 2019), there is an enduring concern over the unintended effects of advertising on children (Opree et al., 2019). A substantive body of literature advocates for media literacy education to enable children to critically assess the content of marketing messages (De Pauw et al., 2018; Nelson, 2016). However, there is a dearth of research focusing specifically on the relationship between media practices of …

Nuclear Power Source For Mars Base Tempr, Liam Assenza, Gage Blanchflower, Mitch Dimartino, Adam Fabi, Jack Hogan

Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Projects

Team 12 was tasked with designing a nuclear power system to power a crewed base on Mars. The power system must be robust, reliable, modular, and require minimal maintenance. In September 2022, the team began by conducting research and discovery. Early research into Mars outpost power requirements and environmental factors led to the formation of design specifications. The requirements included a 150 kWe power requirement for a 4 person crewed base, a 30 year lifespan, and requirements for Mars wind speeds, emitted radiation, waste heat reprocessing, and core neutronics properties. Literature and patent searches were then conducted, sparking ideation within …

Rna-Protein Interactions Influencing Ribosomal Subunit Assembly, Caroline Curll

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Nutrition In Uri Athletes Vs. Non-Athletes, Amity Tobias

Senior Honors Projects

Being a student athlete and growing up in sports has had both positive and negative effects on my life. Children often take part in sports at a young age to teach them important life skills such as dedication, hard work, and discipline. While sports are very effective for physical fitness and being a part of a team may be crucial in a kid’s life, there may also be some negative effects. Some sports such as gymnastics, hockey, soccer, etc., have an intensely high demand, both physically and mentally. Athletes are stereotyped to be the fittest, healthiest group of people and …

The Effect Of Cortisol On Abdominal Fat, Zach Guerrieo

Senior Honors Projects

ZACHARY GUERRIEO (Biological Sciences)

The effect of cortisol on abdominal fat accumulation

Sponsor: Brietta Oaks (Nutrition)

Cortisol is the stress hormone of the body, it increases sugars in the bloodstream, enhances the brain's use of glucose, and increases the availability of substances to repair tissues. A healthy person has a daily slope of cortisol where it is high when they wake up and then decreases throughout the day. Cortisol, however, can be high throughout the day for people who live stressful or unhealthy lives. There have been conversations that high cortisol can cause fat gain specifically in the abdominal area. …

Generation Of A More Immunogenic Fh Vlp Platform To Support Covid-19 Vaccine Development, Jewel E. Voyer, Xinyuan Chen Phd.

Senior Honors Projects

The SARS-CoV-2 based pandemic has seen almost a million deaths in just the United States according to the CDC. This number is due to the increase of variants of COVID-19, therefore calling a demand in vaccine production. Vaccine adjuvants and carriers have been studied to increase the immunogenicity and safety of a variety of immunizations. Flagellin fused Hepatitis B core (FH) virus like particles (VLP) has been studied to have beneficial effects of TLR5, IL6 levels, and lack of body temperature rise in murine study. The FH platform also provides an improvement from its predecessors FljB alone which is a …

Ballasting System For An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Noura Rayes, Bahram Nassersharif, Zach Champney, Kyle Alessandro, Jason Mirandou

Senior Honors Projects

NOURA RAYES (Mechanical Engineering); Ballasting System for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Sponsor: Bahram Nassersharif (Mechanical Engineering)

Over the last year, our Mechanical Engineering Capstone team, Nautilus, has been working to design a ballasting system for various Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) sponsored by Raytheon Technologies. Common AUV systems are used for a wide range of applications from environmental monitoring, oceanic exploration, to data collection. AUVs also have many technical advantages that make underwater tasks more efficient, cost-effective, and generally safer. Raytheon Technology, specifically, is looking to improve their existing ballasting mechanism for their AUVs to use for military defense. For this …

Barriers Middle School Students Face In The Pandemic: Addressing And Overcoming Them, Fatine N. Oliveira

Senior Honors Projects

The Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on all factors of society, many still unknown. One of the obvious effects has been how it affects children in school. Middle school students are a part of this unique moment in history. The pandemic and its move to virtual learning has created a lasting impact on middle schoolers’ social skills at the most important time in their development. Quarantine required children to be incredibly isolated from their peers and life activities, in general. Instead, many were overexposed to social media which hindered their ability to interact with peers. I have chosen to …

Means Of Menstruation, Hannah Eddleston

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Describing The Effect Of Thin Layer Sediment Placement On Coastal Microbial Communities Using Foraminifera Diversity, Elizabeth B. Billings

Senior Honors Projects

Salt marshes are rich ecosystems that play an important role in aquatic food systems and prevent erosion while also providing essential habitats for wildlife. Climate change has resulted in rising sea levels and erosion of these coastal wetlands. Thin Layer Sediment Placement (TLP) is a restoration effort being implemented to mitigate the effects of climate change on coastal ecosystems. The TLP process raises elevation of the marsh and provides substrates for vegetative growth by spraying dredged sediment over existing marsh. The impacts of TLP on microbial populations is not widely understood, therefore metrics are required to study the effects of …

How Covid-19 Will Change The Future Of Film And Television In The United States, Isabel Cappo

Senior Honors Projects

March 2020 marked a turning point in U.S. culture as Covid-19 swept across the globe. As of today, the pandemic has taken over six million lives worldwide. Along with the large death toll, Covid has changed so much about the way we interact with others, the way we conduct business and the way we talk about our health. It has even begun to change the film and television we consume and how we consume it. So, what is the future of U.S. film and television in a post Covid-19 society? To answer this question, we can look towards another tragic …

A Pathogen Outside Its Host: F. Tularensis Survival In Water, Aisling Macaraeg

Senior Honors Projects

Francisella tularensis is a Gram-negative pathogenic bacterium and is the causative agent for tularemia. While our understanding of F. tularensis survival in the environment is limited, it is clear they can persist in freshwater aquatic environments for long periods of time. Currently, there is a gap in knowledge with the understanding of the genes involved with the long-term survival of F. tularensis in an aquatic environment. In the laboratory setting, it has been found that lower temperatures seem to allow longer survival. The aim of this project is to identify laboratory conditions that allow F. tularensis to survive longterm in …

Temporal And Spatial Comparison Of Pseudo-Nitzschia Species Composition And Domoic Acid In Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island And The Northeast U.S. Shelf, Isabella Church, Bethany D. Jenkins

Senior Honors Projects

Diatoms are unicellular algae that make up a significant portion of phytoplankton biomass at the base of marine food webs. Narragansett Bay (NB), RI is home to several species of the diatom genus Pseudo-nitzschia (P-n), some of which are known to cause harmful algal blooms through the production of the potent neurotoxin domoic acid (DA). This toxin can lead to Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning in humans through the consumption of affected shellfish. Although the presence of P-n has been well established in NB for over 50 years, DA levels have only recently become a problem, with shellfish harvest closures …

Multicopy Suppression Of Ribosomal Protein Deletion Mutants, Jacqualine Cerbone

Senior Honors Projects

To suppress the ribosome assembly defective phenotype of a ribosomal protein uS17- deficient mutant, various ribosomal proteins were used to act as multicopy suppressors. Ribosomal protein uS17 is a highly conserved component of the 30S (small) ribosomal subunit and is important for 30S subunit assembly. Mutants with a deletion of rpsQ (the gene encoding uS17) are viable but have a severe 30S subunit assembly defect and a temperature-sensitive (ts) phenotype. While fully assembled 30S subunits do form, incomplete ("20S") particles lacking several proteins accumulate. We hypothesized that increasing the intracellular concentration of one or more of the proteins missing from …

How Sensory Enrichment Influences The Behavior Of Two-Toed Sloths In Captivity, Jessica Daltorio

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Ciliate Endosymbiont Imaging Methodology, Aidan Boving, Roxanne Beinart

Senior Honors Projects

Ciliates, a phylum of diverse microbial eukaryotes, are found in a wide range of environments, including anoxia. Anaerobic ciliates host intracellular methanogenic archaea – a unique type of symbiosis. Despite their importance, anaerobic ciliates and their symbiotic relationships remain understudied. Included in this is the ability to image and quantify the intracellular methanogenic symbionts in a precise, timely and replicable procedure. This project aimed to improve the current fluorescence microscopy methodology used for endosymbiont quantification. The proposed method is intended for use with the Opera Phenix, a high throughput spinning disk confocal microscope which can count large amounts of individual …

Love And Romance In Early Modern British Literature, Sophia Szeneitas

Senior Honors Projects

This paper seeks to describe and analyze the way in which themes of love and romance were presented in literature in early modern Britain, and how those may differ from or be similar to romantic themes in the media of today. The works being analyzed include plays by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, as well as some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A few different lenses will be explored, including the interaction that love could have with the societal power structure and hierarchy present within the literature (such as the ways in which someone being the lover of a powerful person might …

The Impacts Of The United States Healthcare System On French-Speaking Immigrants: A Shorty Story, Allison Vanasse

Senior Honors Projects

Stories are a powerful tool that can be used to educate others on topics requiring attention in the world, such as healthcare. In the United States, the structure of the current healthcare system affects disadvantaged populations and minority groups in adverse ways, making adapting to and living under this system difficult. This project brings to light these issues in the form of a short story. French speaking-immigrants of various ages, countries of origin, and perspectives were interviewed regarding their experiences with the U.S. healthcare system. Five individual interviews were conducted over the phone lasting 15-30 minutes each in order to …

The Future Is Female, Tori Hansen

Senior Honors Projects

Historically, both within the United States and globally, women have not entered into science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) associated fields at the same rate as men. Several explanations have been set forth to understand this gender gap, most of them centering around women not being encouraged to go into STEM. In recent years, the percentage of women STEM workers has exponentially increased, but women still make up a minority of STEM workers. However, with women’s enrollment in college and graduate school increasing, and men’s enrollment dropping, STEM fields may start becoming predominantly women. Thus, the goal of this study …

Investigating The Role Of Bs21 In Vancomycin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, Daniel Floyd

Senior Honors Projects

Staphylococcus aureus is a Gram-positive pathogenic bacterium commonly known for being the causative organism of staph infections in clinical settings. In previous literature, it has been observed that mutations in certain genes in S. aureus can result in resistance to commonly used antibiotics. Specifically, mutations in the gene rpsU, encoding the ribosomal protein bS21, have been present in strains of S. aureus resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin. The aim of my project is to validate these findings by creating a strain of S. aureus without bS21 and performing an antibiotic assay to determine the level of resistance to vancomycin …

Multi-Scale Computer Modeling For Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Bodhi Chaudhuri

Amgen Seminar Series in Chemical Engineering

Drug development and manufacturing are one of the significant processes in the pharmaceutical industry. Various computational methods have been dramatically reducing the time and cost of drug discovery and development. Improved algorithms, overgrowing powerful computing architectures and the accelerating growth of rich data sets are driving advances in multiscale modelling methods capable of bridging chemical and biological complexity from the atom to the manufacturing scale. In this talk, the roles of physics based multiscale modeling and simulations in the areas of (i) continuous manufacturing of complex dosage forms and (ii) electrostatic behavior of pharmaceutical powders will be discussed. These research …

Perkinsus Marinus Suppresses In Vitro Eastern Oyster Apoptosis Via Iap-Dependent And Caspase-Independent Pathways Involving Tnfr, Nf-Kb, And Oxidative Pathway Crosstalk, Erin M. Witkop, Gary H. Wikfors, Dina A. Proestou, Kathryn Markey Lundgren, Mary Sullivan, Marta Gomez-Chiarri

College of Nursing Faculty Publications

The protozoan parasite Perkinsus marinus causes Dermo disease in eastern oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and can suppress apoptosis of infected hemocytes using incompletely understood mechanisms. This study challenged hemocytes in vitro with P. marinus for 1 h in the presence or absence of caspase inhibitor Z-VAD-FMK or Inhibitor of Apoptosis protein (IAP) inhibitor GDC-0152. Hemocytes exposure to P. marinus significantly reduced granulocyte apoptosis, and pre-incubation with Z-VAD-FMK did not affect P. marinus-induced apoptosis suppression. Hemocyte pre-incubation with GDC-0152 prior to P. marinus challenge further reduced apoptosis of granulocytes with engulfed parasite, but not mitochondrial permeabilization. This suggests P. marinus-induced apoptosis suppression …

Surviving Child Pornography: Fifty Years On, Jeanette M. Westbrook

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Waves: A Contemporary Piece, Zoie Green

Senior Honors Projects

Contemporary dance is a style that has transformed over the years with various interpretations. It is a style of dance that can vary demographically as well as temporally. While some consider it as something that has evolved from the modern dance style, others view it in a more competitive and commercial aspect, evolving from techniques and motions that can typically be seen in ballet and jazz styles of dancing. Dancing is not only something that can be physically beneficial, but it can also be mentally beneficial as it is a very expressive form of art. This is especially true when …

Exploring The Strength Of Relationships Between Group Exercise Instructors And Participants Through Social Media Outreach, Angela Rossi

Senior Honors Projects

Here at the University of Rhode Island, the department of Campus Recreation is a major component of student life on campus, offering substantial activities and employment opportunities that encourage students to get involved, in addition to increasing their overall physical and mental well-being. Campus Recreation hosts a wide variety of group exercise classes taught by students from within our facilities each week, including popular formats such as yoga and cycle. This project aims to strengthen the relationship between group exercise instructors and their participants by increasing opportunities for engagement both inside and outside the exercise studio. Campus Recreation social media …

Alignment Of Optical Backscatter Measurements From The Exports Northeast Pacific Field Deployment, Zachary K. Erickson, Ivona Cetinić, Xiaodong Zhang, Emmanuel Boss, P. Jeremy Werdell, Scott Freeman, Lianbo Hu, Craig Lee, Melissa Omand, Mary Jane Perry

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Backscattering of light is commonly measured by ocean observing systems, including ships and autonomous platforms, and is used as a proxy for the concentration of water column constituents such as phytoplankton and particulate carbon. Multiple on-going projects involve large numbers of independent measurements of backscatter, as well as other biologically relevant parameters, to understand how biology is changing in time and space throughout the global ocean. Rarely are there sufficient measurements to test how well these instruments are inter-calibrated in real-world deployment conditions.This paper develops a procedure to align multiple independently calibrated backscatter instruments to each other using nearby profiling …

Transformation Of Lipid Vesicles Into Micelles By Adding Nonionic Surfactants: Elucidating The Structural Pathway And The Intermediate Structures, Igor Kevin Mkam Tsengam, Marzhana Omarova, Elizabeth G. Kelley, Alon Mccormick, Geoffrey D. Bothun, Srinivasa R. Raghavan, Vijay T. John

Chemical, Biomolecular, and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

The phospholipid lecithin (L) and the nonionic surfactant Tween 80 (T) are used together in various contexts, including in drug delivery and oil spill remediation. There is hence a need to elucidate the nanostructures in LT mixtures, which is the focus of this paper. We study these mixtures using cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), coupled with dynamic light scattering and small-angle neutron scattering. As the concentration of Tween 80 is increased, the vesicles formed by lecithin are transformed into spherical micelles. We identify bicelles (i.e., disc-like micelles) as well as cylindrical micelles as the key stable nanostructures formed at intermediate …

Political Ecology For Environmental And Life Sciences Maf-Saf 547, Joanna Burkhardt

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.