Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Different Warm-Up Durations On Subjective And Objective Measures Of Singing In Choral Singers Over The Age Of 55, Jeremy A. Chesman

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Choral singing is a popular activity in the United States. Choral singers are often encouraged to warm up vocally before they sing. Considering voice conditions, like presbyphonia, that can develop shortly after retirement, more research about vocal warm-ups is needed for those over the age of 55. This study assesses the effects of various durations of vocal warm-ups on subjective and objective measures of the singing voice using a within-groups design with randomized condition order. Nine participants performed vocal warm-ups for 0, 5, 10, and 15 minutes. A song sample was then recorded and sent to two expert raters who …

Evaluation Of Different Machine Learning, Deep Learning And Text Processing Techniques For Hate Speech Detection, Nabil Shawkat

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Social media has become a domain that involves a lot of hate speech. Some users feel entitled to engage in abusive conversations by sending abusive messages, tweets, or photos to other users. It is critical to detect hate speech and prevent innocent users from becoming victims. In this study, I explore the effectiveness and performance of various machine learning methods employing text processing techniques to create a robust system for hate speech identification. I assess the performance of Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machines, Decision Trees, Random Forests, Logistic Regression, and K Nearest Neighbors using three distinct datasets sourced from social …

The Rhetorical Use Of The Other: An Analysis Of Symbolic Disability In Contemporary Horror Films, Seth Hadley

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In this research, I examine the concept of the Other in horror films. I use Kenneth Burke’s identification, Jean-Francois Lyotard’s metanarrative concept, and Lennard Davis’s bell curve of normalcy to describe the Other and how otherness relates to disability. First, I discuss how horror films have portrayed the Other historically in a negative context and slowly transition to the virtuous Other, the final girl. Next, I discuss the trend of portraying disability or otherness as an asset or tool in contemporary films like A Quiet Place, Birdbox, and Don’t Breathe. Then, I examine how current horror films explore the implications …

Closeness And Conflict In The Parent-Child Relationship And Parental Self-Efficacy During Childhood, Stephanie Boekweg

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The present study examined the relationship between closeness in the parent-child relationship, conflict in the parent-child relationship, and parental self-efficacy during childhood. Quantitative data from an electronic survey on one hundred eighty-eight participants was collected. Results from a simple linear correlation indicated that parental self-efficacy during childhood and the parent-child relationship quality measures of closeness and conflict were moderately correlated. A simple regression showed that parental self-efficacy during childhood did not predict closeness nor conflict in the parent-child relationship when controlling for current parental self-efficacy. However, parental self-efficacy during childhood significantly predicted current-parental self-efficacy.

The Impact Of Social Connection And Psychological Resilience On Covid-19 Pandemic- Related Mental Health Outcomes, Shelby Lee Powers

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide reaching, well-documented impacts on mental health across demographics. Among these impacts are higher rates of depression and anxiety in adults. Several factors have been shown to mitigate the experience of depression and anxiety, including social connection and psychological resilience. The present study examined social connection and psychological resilience as predictors of depression and anxiety on a U.S. adult sample (n = 535) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were recruited using Qualtrics. Results of this study described that over 30% of the variance in anxiety and depression was predicted by a person’s levels of social …

Murder On The Vr Express: Studying The Impact Of Thought Experiments At A Distance In Virtual Reality, Andrew Kissel, Krzysztof J. Rechowicz, John B. Shull

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Hypothetical thought experiments allow researchers to gain insights into widespread moral intuitions and provide opportunities for individuals to explore their moral commitments. Previous thought experiment studies in virtual reality (VR) required participants to come to an on-site laboratory, which possibly restricted the study population, introduced an observer effect, and made internal reflection on the participants’ part more difficult. These shortcomings are particularly crucial today, as results from such studies are increasingly impacting the development of artificial intelligence systems, self-driving cars, and other technologies. This paper explores the viability of deploying thought experiments in commercially available in-home VR headsets. We conducted …

How To (Not) Do Things With Judicial Opinions: Minding The Performative Power Of Facts And Dicta, Mb Beasley

University of Colorado Law Review

"Three generations of imbeciles are enough."l These words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes are some of the most infamous and evocative penned from behind the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. Beyond the feelings of revulsion reading the opinion causes, the facts that Justice Holmes declared to be true and the dicta he used to bolster the Court's holding in Buck v. Bell helped to create the social world we live in today and continue to affect it. Though previous scholarship has recognized the importance of acknowledging the performative power of words in the legal field, little …

The Persistence Of Ethnopopulist Support: The Case Of Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines, Dean C. Dulay, Allen Hicken, Ronald Holmes

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The past few years have seen an emergence of populist leaders around the world, who have not only accrued but also maintained support despite rampant criticism, governance failures, and the ongoing COVID pandemic. The Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte is the best illustration of this trend, with approval ratings rarely dipping below 80 percent. What explains his high levels of robust public support? We argue that Duterte is an ethnopopulist who uses ethnic appeals in combination with insider vs. outsider rhetoric to garner and maintain public support. Moreover, we argue that ethnic affiliation is a main driver of support for Duterte, and …

Deconstruction Of A Dialogue: Creative Interpretation In Comparative Philosophy, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is common knowledge that Martin Heidegger’s attempts at engaging non-Western philosophy are very much a construct of his own making. This article in no way seeks to disagree with those observations, but argues two things: first, that Heidegger’s “dialogue” with his two main other sources of inspiration, the ancient Greek thinkers and the German poets, is not different in kind or in principle from his engagement with East Asia. One can of course quite easily argue that Heidegger’s main interest was the ancient Greek thinkers, and then the poets, and only lastly Asia. But this hierarchy in preference does …

“My Work Doesn’T Need To Be Perfect As Long As The Effort Is There”: A Case Study Of Multilingual Student Perceptions Of Labor-Based Grading Contracts In The First-Year Writing Classroom, Allison M. Hosman

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Recent developments in the fields of both TESOL and Composition indicate a need for conceptualizing and developing assessment practices that support the needs of multilingual writers that are in line with the aims of justice-oriented pedagogies. One such specific pedagogical practice, assessment, has been proposed as an area of pedagogy in which to operationalize approaches that maintain and sustain justice in the multilingual composition classroom. Although contract grading, and more specifically labor-based grading contracts, have been at the center of such recent conversations, few investigations have centered multilingual students, asking how they perceive and understand such an assessment method in …

Celebrity, Music, And Public Persona: A Case Study Of Taylor Swift, Elaina K.M. Junes

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Studies have shown that celebrity culture is one of many significant sources of influence that inform the construction of individuals’ identities as well as their outlook on work, life ambitions, and accomplishment. Celebrity also offers a unique window with which to examine both how social structures operate in the mainstream, and how social inequalities are reproduced. This study utilizes qualitative research methodology by way of longitudinal content analysis to examine how Taylor Swift’s public persona has evolved comparatively throughout the early and late stages of her career, specifically in regard to her gender, age, and music. This study identifies ten …

Removing Barriers And Establishing Gender And Sexuality Alliances In Schools: A Qualitative Analysis Of Gsa Advisor Experiences, Maxwell L. Keller

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Current movements within the field of education include a focus on the ability of educators to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) students within schools. As LGBTQ+ students are at increased risk for a variety of mental health and lifetime negative factors, it is vital to identify evidence-based supports for these students. School-based extra-curricular organizations such as Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) have been found among the literature to increase positive educational outcomes for all students and serve as a protective factor for LGBTQ+ students who face these increased risks by virtue of their identities. However, …

Academic Dishonesty: The Ghost Of Papers Past, Wayne T. Whitmore

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This research project examined student’s acts of academic dishonesty and their beliefs regarding whether acts of academic dishonesty were acceptable through survey research conducted online at a two-year college and a four-year university in the Minnesota State (MinnState) system in southern Minnesota. This research aimed to build on existing research related to academic dishonesty in higher education. The sample included 195 students enrolled at a two-year comprehensive college and a four-year state university. Outcomes indicated a majority of students engaged in acts of academic dishonesty. Second, outcomes indicated men are more likely to engage in academic dishonesty than women. Third, …

Immigrant Muslim Women’S Belief And Practice Of The Veil In Southern California, Fatimah Alsuhaibani

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The literature lacks a thorough examination of why a Muslim woman decides to veil or not. Thus, utilizing interviews and the theoretical frameworks developed by Tweed, Vasquez, and others, my study investigated the practice and beliefs of Sunni immigrant Muslim women in the Inland Empire in terms of the veil. Because of the global nature of Islam and the transnational Muslim community, their framework may be utilized to evaluate immigrant Muslim women in the United States, who exemplify principles of transnationalism and globalization. Furthermore, my research found that once Muslim women relocate to the Inland Empire and adjust to life …

The Impact Of International Student Mobility On Multicultural Competence And Career Development: The Case Of Students From Latin America And The Caribbean In Barcelona, Robert G. Valls-Figuera, Mercedes Torrado-Fonseca, Judith Borrás Andrés

Artículos científicos

Every year, an increasing number of students decide to study abroad in non-Englishspeaking countries, and Spain is recently a very popular destination within Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) communities. This paper attempts to deepen our knowledge of the impact of international student mobility (ISM) on students’ multicultural identity and career development. To do so, the experiences of 10 LAC students who completed a one-year degree programme in Barcelona are examined. Semi-structured interviews were employed to evaluate the international experiences one year after their completion. During their post-mobility interviews, participants were able to reflect on the ISM through a structured dialogue …

I Came As A Visitor, But I Stayed': An Erasmus-Sojourn In An Elf Country, Zeynep Köylü, Judith Borrás Andrés

Artículos científicos

This study qualitatively explores how studying abroad in an English as alingua franca context promotes student-sojourners’ interculturalawareness (ICA) taking a longitudinal perspective. A group of Catalan/Spanish bilinguals and Turkish-L1 speakers were interviewed regardingtheir past ERASMUS experiences in terms of ICA following a stimulatedrecall protocol and later participated in an L1-based focus groupinterview. The results foreground that ELF use contributed to theconceptualisation of ERASMUS as an ELF community of practice whilethe participants developed a supranational identity with traces of ICA,which was maintained as a long-term effect of their semester-longsojourn.

The Impact Of Peer Interventions On Physical Activity For Individuals Living With Mental Illness, Julia Wolfe

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Individuals living with mental illness have significantly reduced physical health compared to the general population, leading to a significantly decreased life expectancy. Physical activity has been shown to be an effective strategy to address many of the conditions contributing to this disparity. However, many people with mental illness do not meet the recommended levels of daily physical activity. Peer support has been shown to be effective in some aspects of recovery for individuals living with mental illness, but its effectiveness in increasing engagement with physical activity in that population is not well established. The specific aim of this report is …

A State Within A State: Re-Examining The Federal Lands Question And Its Effect On State Sovereignty, David Wilde

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Though the path of the public lands debate is well-trodden, this Note will seek to answer the question in novel ways. First, it uses the Corpus of Founding Era American English to perform an objective linguistic analysis of the phrase “dispose of” in the Property Clause. Through this analysis, it appears that an ordinary person at the time the Constitution was adopted would most likely have read the phrase “dispose of” in the Property Clause to mean sell, give away, bestow, or put into another’s hand or power.

Next, this Note investigates the historical and philosophical understandings of state sovereignty …

Use Gpt-J Prompt Generation With Roberta For Ner Models On Diagnosis Extraction Of Periodontal Diagnosis From Electronic Dental Records, Yao-Shun Chuang, Xiaoqian Jiang, Chun-Teh Lee, Ryan Brandon, Duong Tran, Oluwabunmi Tokede, Muhammad F Walji

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

This study explored the usability of prompt generation on named entity recognition (NER) tasks and the performance in different settings of the prompt. The prompt generation by GPT-J models was utilized to directly test the gold standard as well as to generate the seed and further fed to the RoBERTa model with the spaCy package. In the direct test, a lower ratio of negative examples with higher numbers of examples in prompt achieved the best results with a F1 score of 0.72. The performance revealed consistency, 0.92-0.97 in the F1 score, in all settings after training with the RoBERTa model. …

The Immigrant Experience Of Latina Mothers From A Strengths Perspective: A Focused Ethnography, Esperanza Gutierrez

Open Access Dissertations

Latina mothers are part of a rapidly growing ethnic minority group in the United States (U.S.). Researchers have largely illuminated their challenges and problems in their immigration process. A problem-oriented approach leads to labeling of the individual based on vulnerabilities, pathologies, and deficits. Nursing needs a greater emphasis on the strengths perspective, empirical studies, and a broader culturally based conception of strengths, including Latina mothers who immigrate to the U.S. A strengths perspective would be beneficial in encompassing Latina mothers’ capabilities and potentialities.

Focused ethnography was used to identify and describe the strengths of Latina mothers who immigrated to the …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Experiences And Teaching Strategies Of Private Music Instructors Working With Elementary School Students, Ana Maria Fusu-Kommidi

Theses and Dissertations

The lack of consistent elementary musical education in the United States has sustained a steady demand for private music instruction. Private instruction, however, does not usually align with the general music education standards, or the school requirements. There is a lack of research about private music instructors’ role in music education for elementary-aged students. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences and teaching strategies of private music instructors who supplement elementary students' school-based music education. The two research questions were

RQ1: What are the experiences of private music instructors who supplement elementary students' school-based music education?

RQ2: …

“Wilfrid Sellars And Pragmatism”, Willem A. Devries

Faculty Publications

A brief survey of Wilfrid Sellars' relation to Pragmatism, focusing on the priority of the practical in the constitution of meaning, the critique of the given, and sociality of thought and inquiry.

Discovering Child Sexual Abuse Material Creators’ Behaviors And Preferences On The Dark Web, Vuong Ngo, Rahul Gajula, Christina Thorpe, Susan Mckeever

Articles

Background: Producing, distributing or discussing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) is often committed through the dark web in order to remain hidden from search engines and regular users. Additionally, on the dark web, the CSAM creators employ various techniques to avoid detection and conceal their activities. The large volume of CSAM on the dark web presents a global social problem and poses a significant challenge for helplines, hotlines and law enforcement agencies.

Objective: Identifying CSAM discussions on the dark web and uncovering associated metadata insights into characteristics, behaviours and motivation of CSAM creators.

Participants and Setting: We have conducted an …

Toward Inclusive Online Environments: Counterfactual-Inspired Xai For Detecting And Interpreting Hateful And Offensive Tweets, Muhammad Deedahwar Mazhar Qureshi, Muhammad Atif Qureshi, Wael Rashwan

Articles

The prevalence of hate speech and offensive language on social media platforms such as Twitter has significant consequences, ranging from psychological harm to the polarization of societies. Consequently, social media companies have implemented content moderation measures to curb harmful or discriminatory language. However, a lack of consistency and transparency hinders their ability to achieve desired outcomes. This article evaluates various ML models, including an ensemble, Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM), and Linear Support Vector Classifier (SVC), on a public dataset of 24,792 tweets by T. Davidson, categorizing tweets into three classes: hate, offensive, and neither. The top-performing model achieves a weighted …

An Entropy-Based Risk Index (Eri) Of Mining Health And Safety Using Clustering And Statistical Methods, Dharmasai Eshwar Reddy Sirigiri

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Over the last decade, the mining industry has seen a significant reduction in the number of fatalities in the United States. However, the annual employee hours have also decreased during the same period. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the historical mining data and identify the potential risks of a mine through the mine risk index. The risk indicators also describe the severity of accidents and injuries at mine sites. The variables such as citation, order, significant & substantial citations, lost time, and no lost time injuries and penalties are considered for the determination of the risk index. However, using …

Combating Fake News: A Gravity Well Simulation To Model Echo Chamber Formation In Social Media, Jeremy E. Thompson

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Fake news has become a serious concern as distributing misinformation has become easier and more impactful. A solution is critically required. One solution is to ban fake news, but that approach could create more problems than it solves, and would also be problematic from the beginning, as it must first be identified to be banned. We initially propose a method to automatically recognize suspected fake news, and to provide news consumers with more information as to its veracity. We suggest that fake news is comprised of two components: premises and misleading content. Fake news can be condensed down to a …

Southern Adventist University Annual Report 2022-2023, Southern Adventist University

Annual Reports

The Annual Report for Southern Adventist University for 2022 to 2023.

Navigating Femininity: Queen Elizabeth I And The Armada Portrait, Julia Maurer

Capstone Showcase

By analyzing the iconographic program of the Armada Portrait, this essay demonstrates the various visual strategies that Queen Elizabeth I employed in order to navigate certain gendered, cultural barriers present in Early Modern England. I argue throughout this essay that Elizabeth was meticulous in her delicate dance of bolstering her individual authority, while not radically undermining the patriarchal dispensation in which she lived and ruled. In particular, I demonstrate that Queen Elizabeth I effectively utilized the visual arts to control the public perception of her reign in ways unique to female regnants, as she both confirmed and denied her femininity. …

Women's Work With Wool In Fairy Tales: From Baroque Text To Textile Craft, Sophia Frye

Scripps Senior Theses

Fiber art has a complex, long-standing history; the relationship between the craft and the craftsman is intimate and goes beyond the commodification of the product. Business records from Florentine guilds give insight into the wool industry, but are unable to capture the social history of wool crafts in Renaissance-Baroque era Italy. In response, this project turns to Italian Baroque fairy tales: Giambattista Basile’s The Pentamerone (1634-36) and Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s Le Piacevoli Notti (1555). These fairy tales depict scenes of women engaging in fiber crafts, which reveal the poverty of the women textile laborers, the women’s relationship to textile work, …

Neo-Whorfian Examination Of Cross-Linguistic Temporal Discounting Behavior, Piper Connelly

Scripps Senior Theses

This study examines differences in temporal discounting tendencies in German and French participants (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) through the lens of Neo-Whorfian cognition and the Linguistic Savings Hypothesis (Chen 2013). The LSH proposes that tendencies towards future-oriented economic decisions can be cognitively explained by literal morphosyntactic conventions of one’s native language. Our experiments (sooner-smaller/larger-later choices, endowment-investment task) failed to produce results aligning with the LSH, but uncovered the importance of controlling for risk appetite when specifically investigating intertemporal choice. There are several fruitful improvements to consider for the future, such as stricter sampling, taking richer detail of time preferences, …