Digital Commons Network^™

Adaptation And Validation Of The Tamil (Sri Lanka) Version Ofthe Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Pethirupillai Amal Dinesh Coonghe, Pushpa Fonseka, Sampasivamoorthy Sivayogan, Ajantha Keshavaraj, Rahul Malhotra, Truls Ostbye

Kesmas

The study aimed to develop the Tamil (Sri Lanka) version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and investigate its reliability and validity as a briefscreening tool for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan elderly with normal cognition and MCI were recruited from a neurology clinic.Adaptation of the English MoCA to the Tamil (Sri Lanka) involved context-specific content modification and translation. The content validity, reliability, sensitivity,and specificity of the tool were evaluated. Study participants were 184 older adults, comprising 85 with normal cognition and 99 neurologist-diagnosed MCI.The tool had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.83). Receiver operating characteristic curve …

Expanded Skin, Jihoo Kim

Masters Theses

Our digital interfaces have been degrading human sensory intelligence by limiting our body to only vision and the first two fingers. Despite the high level of available technologies, we do not fully utilize them due to our lack of awareness of its applicability in more various aspects than just media being consumed. It is also because of its inaccessibility in terms of human–computer interaction (HCI) beyond our sense of sight and touch screens. Those technologies have been key elements in all of my works, since my ultimate position is to redirect the technology in a way that could enhance human …

This Side Of The Air, Madeline Peckenpaugh

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I have chosen to present a collection of stories throughout my life that continue to impact my practice, along with journal entries, gathered notes, and small to large conversations I've had with my peers, parents, visiting artists, and professors. These collection of stories take place in Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Nepal, ranging in small moments to a span of seven years. I've been writing down words and clues that could lead me to find the thesis-worthy definition of my work and practice. As if someone or something else other than myself holds the knowledge I'm incapable of locating. …

Make Yourself At Home, Han Seok You

Masters Theses

“Make Yourself at Home” is a personal journey of self-documentation to discover a definition of “home” and family, and to reenact the missing scenes from my youth. As a child who grew up in many different places far away from home, I missed out on many family moments and a sense of belonging. As a South Korean passport holder who has lived mostly in North America, my identity is unresolved. I find myself in the balance between Korean and American. With the progression of this project, I try to reconcile my past in order to gain an understanding of my …

Madrepora, Elizabeth Burmann Littin

Masters Theses

Exploring materiality and how we’re inextricably entangled with it, this thesis dive into bodily, aqueous, and political engagements for dissolving the human project of separating nature from culture and bodies from environments. This dematerialization practice driven by discursive means has served as an excuse for the industrial exploitation and abuse of the less seen.

Infused by the material turn in feminist theory, I propose to think with materiality in all its wet, slimy, and dusty ongoingness as a way to craft from the living and dying processes that we embody as current wanderers among contamination, scarcity, and ruins.

Proposing a …

Temporal Collisions, Lizzie Baur

Masters Theses

We live during a time of smoothly effortless design that encourages instant gratification. In this sea of pre-existing content, most of which we experience through layers of mediation, my practice encourages drifting. As a graphic designer, I try to decondition myself from reductive thinking. In response, this thesis operates on the fringe, cycling attention to unexpected associations, harnessing temporal collisions and formal play towards diminishing cultural baggage and preconceived notions. I deliberately attune the reader to the labyrinthine as an experience by which to interrogate common sense and steer the imagination towards moments of uncertainty.

This work engages a kind …

Togather: To Gather Together, Kyungah Sohn

Masters Theses

I believe that we can live healthier lives when we address both our mental health and our physical health at the same time, rather than when we focus on only one of them. Currently, however, mental and physical health are treated as separate issues, while actually they are closely connected to each other. In light of this, services and applications that address wellbeing should promote both physical and mental issues in a more integrated way.

As a result, I designed a holistic system where what we do for mental and physical health is intertwined. This is the premise for my …

Ether: A Social Design, Zihan Zhou

Masters Theses

As an individual with an independent consciousness that cannot be shared, it is impossible to have complete empathy. But as a social animal, empathy is also the ability pursued by individuals and society collectively. Empathy is an indispensable element to also achieve social justice which benefits each individual.

The current media environment is usually that information is aggregated from the bottom to the top, and then transmitted from the top to each individual at the bottom through an announcement of information.

The biggest contradiction arising from this information mechanism is that humans who both send and receive information involuntarily pay …

Urban Palimpsest: Re-Placing Memory In War Torn City Dresden, Xinyi Sun

Masters Theses

Urban landscapes can be envisaged as a palimpsest of historical layers, some of which have disappeared while others remain active in constituting contemporary identities.

Yet memory is tricky and one’s memory can be false, distorted or erased consciously or unconsciously from brain. Like history, some memories can be lost, while others others might be retained and continue to influence the present.

This thesis explores memory as active construction. Construction and reconstruction are ongoing and as layered and nuanced as the history itself. Moreover, memory is both personal and collective. It is shared, appropriated, and reassigned depending on whose personal filter …

Night Knights: Reminding Children That Their Nighttime Fear Isn't Something They Have To Face Alone, Ji Hyung Moon

Masters Theses

Night Knights are shining toy guardians that children bring to life through play. They engage children’s imagination that inevitably fuels their nighttime fear, and provide a chance to create stories of bravely confronting their fears through their Night Knights.

Exploration And Autonomy : Wild Children In The City, Xiaojie Li

Masters Theses

From 1980 to 2000, China adopted a teacher-centered kindergarten model with the main purpose of imparting knowledge, leaving children in a passive learning environment. Since 2001, this system’s adverse impact on child development has become clear to preschool educators. As a result, teachers have begun to consider kid friendly environments and games. However, even these games were arranged with a top-down, teacher-centered structure.

An education revolution has emerged that aims to release the freedom of children by prioritizing their needs, paying respect and trust to exploration, as well as giving children choice. One pioneering philosophy applying this principle is Anji …

Ghostly Entanglements: Exposing Temporal Matter(Ing)S In Social Studies Education With (Re)Photography, Bretton A. Varga

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Visual resources offer a variety of pedagogical advantages. Regardless of content, images can be leveraged to build critically analytical skills and used to cultivate dialogic literacies (i.e., articulations of thinking) about the social world. Further, images can be used to introduce and grapple with complex/abstract ideas. Given the relationship that social studies has to temporality (i.e., subjective engagements with the past, present, and future), visual resources also present teacher(s) (educators) with the opportunity to explore (theoretical) concepts foregrounding manifold relationships making up the social world (i.e., a world consisting of complex entanglements between non/human entities).

The purpose of this research …

I - 0, Sanghyun Koh

Masters Theses

This pack of cards is a provisional collection of encyclopedic thoughts and knowledge selectively hoarded for the artist’s comprehension of the world. These cumulative writings, packaged in a distributive form for intellectual play, cover the artist’s past workings, current studies and dormant plans, amassed in the responsible attitude of selection as well as in the irresponsible method of organization. The content of this 144-card deck is basically oriented to the oscillating status of a self seeking the ‘Grasping Totality’ as a human desire and of the ‘Improbability of Reach’ as a human limitation, whether true or false, proven or unproven, …

Strata : Lessons In Latency, Mukul Chakravarthi

Masters Theses

Every visual artifact, from a street sign to advertising commercials, is an event of culture, a cross-section of time. Crucial to my work as a designer is to build an interpretive understanding of these images as more than surface, more than banal. Embedded in their construction are dense, unseen contextual latencies— social, economic, and political forces — that combine to define a cultural moment.

This thesis offers a series of lessons in making visible visual infrastructure. It emphasizes design’s semiotic potential to examine and leverage a view on what these visual signs represent as ideological constructions. Through a conscious un-layering …

Ethnographemes, Vaishnavi Mahendran

Masters Theses

Spoken and written languages are living processes. As with our own natural systems, they are born, evolve in stages, yet also face the eventuality of death. Current research indicates that there are 7,111 spoken languages in the world. UNESCO lists a total of 577 languages as critically endangered.

This thesis examines the role of graphic design and its potential contribution to the preservation of endangered languages and writing systems of indigenous communities. My interest lies in exploring possibilities of the script serving as a vessel to share and celebrate deeper stories of each of these communities’ heritage.

Through my practice, …

Invisible: A Guide To Understanding & Designing For Introverts, Ashesh Gohil

Masters Theses

The Extrovert Ideal has been an unspoken pillar of society: a vocal, go-getting person with a Carpe Diem mindset has become a requirement that most are told to strive for in order to be successful. Fundamental institutions like schools and workspaces are designed for extroverts and their need for stimulation, which becomes a hurdle for introverts since it obstructs them from being their dispositionally quiet and thoughtful selves. Such spaces need to be inclusive to allow introverts to be present in the way they prefer. One way to make space for introverts in settings otherwise designed for extroverts is through …

The Association Between Deaf Identity And Emotional Distress Among Adolescents, Tal Lambez, Maayan Nagar, Maayan Nagar, Anat Shoshani, Ora Nakash

School for Social Work: Faculty Publications

The sociocultural approach regards being deaf as a cultural characteristic in the identity of a deaf/hard-of-hearing (D/HH) person. The degree to which one integrates the hearing and Deaf cultures ("acculturation") is an important factor for the well-being of deaf adolescents. We examined the relationship between acculturation patterns and emotional distress among D/HH (n = 69) compared to hearing (n = 60) adolescents in Israel. We used culturally and linguistically accessible measures. Our findings showed no significant differences in emotional distress between D/HH and their hearing counterparts. Acculturation played an important role predicting emotional distress. Identification with both the Deaf and …

Food Waste, Wasted Food: Reframing Waste And Edibility, Catherine Pedtke, Thomas Pedtke

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

No abstract provided.

Establishing Best Practices In Institutional Repository Organization, Scott Bacon

Digital Commons Southeastern User Group Meeting (2020) (Archived)

On the one-year anniversary of the CCU Digital Commons repository the organization of the Collections / Communities.html page was reviewed to gauge the need for revisions. Over 100 Digital Commons sites were examined to see how other repository managers organized their Collections pages. Top-level communities were coded into Community Types and were analyzed to surface trends in current practice. This presentation reviews trends in practice that emerged during research, as well as some of the best practices that were identified, including planning, iteration, labeling, limiting jargon, and finding a balance with top-level and nested content. Suggestions for improvement are given …

Financing Our Future’S Health: Why The United States Must Establish Mandatory Climate-Related Financial Disclosure Requirements Aligned With The Tcfd Recommendations, Colin Myers

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Songs And The Soil, Mark Garry, Louise Reddy

Books/Book Chapters

Published in conjuction with an exhibition. The exhibition engages with the subjects of landscape and music/sound—exploring each element from historical, social and culturally associative perspectives; where landscape is recognised as a fluid term articulating physical space, idealised space and social space that reflects a convergence of physical processes and cultural meaning, and where song act as a response to, or archive, of personal, historical or socio-political instances. Several works engage landscape and musical sound intersect. The exhibition integrates a broad range of media,positions and responses to these research subjects; including two film works, a six-hour soundtrack for a room, sonic …

Footnotes: Church As Place, Bob Turner

Footnotes: Curated Resources for Ministers

No abstract provided.

Toward "English" Phonetics: Variability In The Pre-Consonantal Voicing Effect Across English Dialects And Speakers, James Tanner, Morgan Sonderegger, Jane Stuart-Smith, Josef Fruehwald

Linguistics Faculty Publications

Recent advances in access to spoken-language corpora and development of speech processing tools have made possible the performance of “large-scale” phonetic and sociolinguistic research. This study illustrates the usefulness of such a large-scale approach—using data from multiple corpora across a range of English dialects, collected, and analyzed with the SPADE project—to examine how the pre-consonantal Voicing Effect (longer vowels before voiced than voiceless obstruents, in e.g., bead vs. beat) is realized in spontaneous speech, and varies across dialects and individual speakers. Compared with previous reports of controlled laboratory speech, the Voicing Effect was found to be substantially smaller in …

Crime And Punishment: Considering Prison Disciplinary Sanctions As Grounds For Departure Under The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, Madison Peace

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

There are currently over 175,000 federal inmates in the United States, 146,000 of whom are held in custody by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. When an inmate in federal prison commits a federal crime, he can be both sanctioned by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and referred to a United States Attorney for prosecution of the crime in federal district court. In the federal district court, a judge will look to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines as a starting point to determine an appropriate sentence.

One question that the U.S. Sentencing Commission has not addressed, and on which federal appellate courts …

Identification Of Patterns And Disruptions In Ambient Sensor Data From Private Homes, Yan Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The world’s population is rapidly aging and the increasing demand for home and health care services from this aging population brings unprecedented challenges to the economy and society. Ambient-assisted smart homes, residences equipped with ambient sensors to monitor the resident’s daily activities in a continuous and unobtrusive way, present great potential to manage the growing care service needs of this older population segment, and enable them to age-in-place.

Despite growing research, using ambient sensor data from private homes to monitor daily activities, health and wellness still faces significant challenges. To study ambient sensor data from private homes where annotated data …

Responding To Health Needs Of Women, Children And Adolescents Within Syria During Conflict: Intervention Coverage, Challenges And Adaptations, Chaza Akik, Aline Semaan, Linda Shaker-Berbari, Zeina Jamaluddine, Ghada E. Saad, Katherine Lopes, Joanne Constantin, Abdulkarim Ekzayez, Neha S. Singh, Karl Blanchet, Jocelyn Dejong, Hala Ghattas Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Background:

Women and children suffer disproportionately in armed-conflicts. Since 2011, the protracted Syrian crisis has fragmented the pre-existing healthcare system. Despite the massive health needs of women and children, the delivery of key reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH&N) interventions, and its underlying factors are not well-understood in Syria. Our objective was to document intervention coverage indicators and their implementation challenges inside Syria during conflict.

Methods:

We conducted 1) a desk review to extract RMNCAH&N intervention coverage indicators inside Syria during the conflict; and 2) qualitative interviews with decision makers and health program implementers to …

Effect Of Solution-Focused Therapy On Resilience In Athletes: An Eeg Study, Lori Napier

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

The purpose of this study is to investigate what areas in the brain change activation levels among college athletes following a solution-focused therapeutic intervention, and how these changes are related to levels of resilience. Participants were recruited from three undergraduate psychology classes at a private Christian university with the intervention group (n = 14) consisting of current collegiate athletes, and a control group (n = 12) of non-athletes. The experiment consisted of a pre and post intervention trial spaced approximately seven weeks apart. At the completion of Trial 1, those in the athlete group participated in six weekly sessions of …

Collection Development Policy, Writing And Rhetoric, John Venecek

Libraries' Documents

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Difficulties And Instructional Support Related To Spoken Interaction In An Emi Course For Higher Education Students, Mei-Ying Chien, Martin Valcke

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in higher education is considered a vehicle in non-English speaking countries for the purpose of internationalization, enhancing students’ employability, and international competition. Many higher education institutions in Europe adapted their curriculum and started teaching in English, while enrolling international students from Erasmus programs and non-European countries. This study builds on an EMI course set within a Belgian university. Six L2 (English as a second Language) students were interviewed to identify and explore their motivation, difficulties, and instructional support as it relates to their spoken interaction during the class. The findings …

Locative Food: The Future Of Food Is A Peach, Adrian Bregazzi

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Locative food releases food from the hegemony of the restaurant, its rituals, codes, performative narratives, complexities, paraphernalia, processes, and entry fees; taking food out into a wider world, to locations that function along with the food to create provocations of the senses and a way of making us discern gastronomic possibilities afresh. This paper looks at Heston Blumenthal’s Sound of the Sea as the epitome of restaurant complexity; Roland Barthes’ experiences and responses to food in Japan in the late 1960s; Kenya Hara’s concepts of design and the design ethos underpinning MUJI; a brief overview of the picnic; and my …