Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Land Change Modeling: Summer 2015 Internship With Clark Labs, Xiaoyang Kong

Sustainability and Social Justice

My internship with Clark Labs was completed during the summer of 2015, where I worked under the direction of Dr. Ronald Eastman. As a research assistant, the responsibilities of my internship was to process data for a project that intended to develop a web application for land change modeling. I learned a lot of knowledge about land change science and GIS applications from this internship. The experience I gained will definitely increase my competitiveness in my future career. I am fully satisfied with this internship and I would recommend this internship to anybody interested in GIS and land change science. …

Analyzing The Recent, Rapid Tourism Development In Panama's Bocas Del Toro Archipelago: Is Socioenvironmental Justice Attainable?, Olivia R. Bourque

Sustainability and Social Justice

The Bocas del Toro archipelago of Panama has seen a rapid growth in its tourism industry since the 1990s. From a neoliberal perspective, tourism development is beneficial for all. Alternatively, I analyze the recent, rapid tourism development in Bocas from a critical development theoretical perspective, identifying its positive and negative implications, as well as who they accrue to. While there are economic benefits to tourism in Bocas, only foreign investors, the Panamanian government and English-speaking residents appear to earn them. The Bocas residents, and indigenous Ngöbe residents in particular, suffer from a range of economic, sociocultural, environmental and land access …

Comparative Organizational Assessments And Partenship Potential For Sekou Pou Nanm-Yo And Asirans Community Counseling Center, Lauren M. Mawe

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper assesses the organizational capacity of two small Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Port-Au-Prince Haiti. Each NGO has a staff of under 15 members. At the time of the assessment, they were both in early stages of their development, with one in its first year of operations, and the other in its fifth year. Both embody grassroots, community organizations because of their connections to the communities in which they work, their willingness to travel to those communities, and their predominantly Haitian staff. The fieldwork included interviews, focus groups, and three months of participant observation and work with these organizations. In …

Shareholder Advocacy In Corporate Elections: Case Studies In Proxy Voting Websites For Retail Investors, Robin Miller

Sustainability and Social Justice

One of the key rights shareholders retain is the right to vote on issues affecting the companies in which they invest. This voting right is seen as one of the primary means of exercising diligent corporate governance (Cole 2003, Fairfax 2009). Only 28 percent of individual investors vote in corporate elections compared with 91 percent of institutional investors. Informed voting decisions at corporate elections can be very information intensive, and theories of rational apathy and the free rider problem may explain a lack of participation from individual investors.

Many shareholders cannot attend annual corporate meetings, so they …

Gis And Spatial Analysis: Summer Internship With The Center For Health And Global Environment At The Harvard T.H. Chan School Of Public Health, Wensi Hu

Sustainability and Social Justice

The objective of the report is to introduce and discuss my internship at the Center for Health and Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, MA. The internship lasted four months from the middle of May to the middle of September, with 15 hours each week. My tasks included geocoding, developing GIS-calculated variables, data visualization/mapping and documentation. Creation of variables was vital as it included air quality data, land use map, greenness (NDVI), roads data as well as parks data.

I am happy that I have a chance to work under a professional environmental …

Gis And Location-Based Crime Risk Analysis: Summer Internship With Location, Inc., Zhilan Deng

Sustainability and Social Justice

My internship with Location, Inc. took place from May 20th, 2015 to August 24th, 2015. I worked with one direct supervisor, Jonathan Glick, as well as the CEO of Location, Inc. Andrew Schiller. I have four main responsibilities during the summer: 1) collecting U.S. crime point data, 2) geocoding and processing crime point data; 3) collecting and processing Canada Crime statistics and demographic data; 4) updating school performance data and U. S. crime statistics. This report includes the introduction of Location, Inc., where I did my internship, the details of my responsibilities in Location, Inc., and my assessment to Location, …

Gis And Coastal Basemap Research Summer Internship With Clark Labs, Zhuoyue Zhou, Po Hu

Sustainability and Social Justice

Our summer internship with Clark Labs will last for one and half of years, from October 2014 till the end of August 2016, while we’ve worked under the director of Dr. Ronald Eastman. The main duty for this project is to create a basemap for coastal line in three counties in the Southeast Asia, while during this summer, our duties were to wrap up the remaining tasks, such as adjusting the classification images based on the accuracy assessment results, combining all the images, making a final map, and calculating the area for each categories in each province of the three …

Gifts Among Strangers: The Social Organization Of Freecycle Giving, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Freecycle Network, with its millions of members gifting objects to strangers, is a stalwart fixture of the increasingly popular sharing economy. Unlike the wildly profitable Airbnb and Uber, the Freecycle Network prohibits profit-making, or even barter, providing an altruism-based alternative to capitalist markets while keeping tons of garbage out of landfills. Why do millions of people give through Freecycle instead of selling, donating, or throwing away items? Utilizing participant observation of two overlapping Freecycle groups and a survey of their members, I investigate motivations for giving and the social norms that guide it. I find that while members of …

Efficiency Of The Male Effect With Photostimulated Bucks Does Not Depend On Their Familiarity With Goats, A. L. Muñoz, M. Bedos, R. M. Aroña, J. A. Flores, H. Hernández, C. Moussu, Elodie F. Briefer, P. Chemineau, M. Keller, J. A. Delgadillo

Reproductive Behavior Collection

In ewes, the ovulatory response of females exposed to familiar rams is lower than the response of those exposed to novel ones. In goats, males rendered sexually active by exposure to long days are more efficient to induce ovulation in seasonal anestrous females than untreated males. Two experiments were conducted to determine 1) whether male goats remain familiar to females after 45 days of separation; and 2) whether photostimulated males are able to stimulate the sexual activity of females, independently of their familiarity with them. In Experiment 1, three groups of goats (n = 10 goats per group) were put …

Are Domestic Pigs (Sus Scrofa Domestica) Able To Use Complex Human-Given Cues To Find A Hidden Reward?, Christian Nawroth, Mirjam Ebersbach, Eberhard Von Borell

Social Cognition Collection

Understanding human-animal interactions in livestock production systems is crucial for improving animal welfare. It is therefore of general interest to investigate how livestock animals obtain information from humans. By using an object-choice paradigm, we investigated whether domestic pigs (n = 4) are able to use a variety of human-given cues, such as different pointing gestures, to find a hidden food reward. In Experiment 1, an experimenter pointed towards a baited location in front of the pig while the extent of the protrusion of his hand from the upper body was varied. Pigs had problems using pointing gestures that did not …

An Ethogram For Benthic Octopods (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae), Jennifer Mather, Jean S. Alupay

Physiology Collection

The present paper constructs a general ethogram for the actions of the flexible body as well as the skin displays of octopuses in the family Octopodidae. The actions of 6 sets of structures (mantle–funnel, arms, sucker–stalk, skin–web, head, and mouth) combine to produce behavioral units that involve positioning of parts leading to postures such as the flamboyant, movements of parts of the animal with relation to itself including head bob and grooming, and movements of the whole animal by both jetting in the water and crawling along the substrate. Muscular actions result in 4 key changes in skin display: (a) …

Language Use Statistics And Perceptual Simulation In Language Processing, Alena Hejl

Linguistics Honors Projects

Humans’ ability to comprehend language seems to rely on both mental reconstructions of what we have experienced in the world and statistically-based expectations of how language is used. This study adapted a comparison of perceptual and statistical explanations of word comprehension in the auditory modality. Participants completed a series of trials in which they heard cue words, some of which were spatially oriented (e.g., sky, ground), and then completed a letter identification task. In this task, the letter appeared on the computer screen in either a congruent location or an incongruent location. The position of the letter at the top …

Interconnections Between Perceptions Of Blame, Mind, And Moral Abilities, Alex Ropes, Steve Guglielmo

Psychology Honors Projects

Theories of blame, mind, and moral attribution consider an individual’s perceived agency, operationalized in part as perceived intentionality and self-control. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may display social deficits and a greater tendency to engage in problem behavior (PB; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) than neurotypical (NT) people, which may lead people to perceive that individuals with ASD act less agentically. Study 1 shows that the mitigated perceived agency of people with ASD leads to mitigated blame attribution. In addition to perceived agency, theories of mind and moral attribution account for perceptions of an individual’s capacity to experience emotions, pleasure, …

Student Engagement Spotlights, Uno Office Of Academic And Student Affairs

Accreditation

Community engagement and service are fundamental components of UNO’s identity. The following students exemplify commitment to community engagement. Their work represents the breadth of UNO’s involvement in various causes.

To learn more about these students and others, visit the UNO Campus Commitment website (to be published soon).

Information Technology Proposal For The Town Of Spencer, Vijay Basava, Corey Kenyon, Mahdi Soltani

School of Professional Studies

The Town of Spencer came to us looking for a plan to build and maintain their own personal fiber network for connection between departments and to improve data security for important information. After assessing the existing landscape and determining the various paths forward, we created network diagrams and plans for the movement forward of this project.

After assessing a variety of plans, we found that a full single-mode fiber network would be the best system for the implementation in Spencer. While it was the highest cost, it also scored the highest in our assessment.

Healthcare Facility Location: A Breast Cancer Alliance Case Study, Alexandra Knopf

Sustainability and Social Justice

Community health is impacted by the location of a health advocacy agency. This commissioned report for the Breast Cancer Alliance of Greenwich, CT, consists of a location analysis to review potential cities in which they might locate expansion efforts. Such cities include Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, Greenwich, CT, Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, D.C. This report will look at five ways (4 mathematical and one spatial) of conducting a location analysis that require specialized knowledge for interpretation. For this study, a Spatial Geographic Information System methodology is preferred because of the visualization component, which can ensure that …

Assessment Of The Environmental Sector And Climate Change In Malawi: Relationships Between Environmental Policy, Scientific Literature, And Development Projects, Esther A. Baumann

Sustainability and Social Justice

As funding increases for climate change related issues in Sub-Saharan Africa there should also be an increase in research to understand how scientific literature in the environmental sector can assist in developing policy and implementing development projects. Using secondary research, this paper centers on Malawi to develop an understanding of what is occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole in regards to climate change and environmental policy, science and development projects. It sought to determine if scientific thematic areas of research and recommended courses of action were being incorporated into actual government policies and on the ground development projects. This …

Redefining The Impact Of Public-Access Media In Worcester, Ma, Anthony Ortiz

Sustainability and Social Justice

This research presents findings from a study of how Worcester’s current public-access media center can serve as an anchor institution for two-way communication between the producers and the audience. More generally, it addresses two questions: 1) How to ensure maximum participation and 2) How can active communication be preserved (or maintained) between the producers and the audience. Drawing on case studies done around the U.S. this paper offers a model of community based media that can be essential for empowering people to serve as active receivers of information. The concept for community based media should allow as a grassroots oriented …

Does Crime Correlate With Fear?: Analyzing The Spatial Relationship Between Perceptions Of Safety And Crime Using Sketch Maps And Geographic Information Systems (Gis) In The Main South Neighborhood Of Worcester, Ma, Marina Khananayev

Sustainability and Social Justice

The relationship between reported crime and residential perceptions of safety is understudied and inconclusive due to its highly complicated nature. This study seeks to narrow this gap by using sketch maps collected from residents about their safety and crime data. Two methods, one visual, the other statistical (Bivariate LISA), were tested using data from sketch maps drawn by about 95 survey respondents and crime data spanning three years (2011-2014). Data was disaggregated by gender, age, and length of residency. Visual analysis of results show that perceptions of safety occur at a fine scale. Respondents marked sketch maps at varying scales …

Gis And Coastal Basemap Research Summer Internship With Clark Labs, Po Hu, Zhuoyue Zhou

Sustainability and Social Justice

Our summer internship with Clark Labs will last for one and half of years, from October 2014 till the end of August 2016, while we’ve worked under the director of Dr. Ronald Eastman. The main duty for this project is to create a basemap for coastal line in three counties in the Southeast Asia, while during this summer, our duties were to wrap up the remaining tasks, such as adjusting the classification images based on the accuracy assessment results, combining all the images, making a final map, and calculating the area for each categories in each province of the three …

"Refugee Industrial Complex," Neoliberal Governance Within The Resettlement Industry And Its Effects: Is An Alternative Structure Possible?, Amira F. Al-Dasouqi

Sustainability and Social Justice

Within the current political climate and discussions surrounding displacement, refugee resettlement is a ‘hot-button’ issue. While working at one of the largest resettlement agencies in New England, the author began to analyze how power itself is structured within the Refugee Resettlement Industry (RRI) nationally. This paper argues that the RRI is embedded within neoliberal governance and can be better understood and improved with this understanding. The author argues for the term “Refugee [Resettlement] Industrial Complex,” to more adequately understand the ways that power is enacted through the current structure, and how it inhibits social justice work rooted in advocating for …

Evaluation Of Alternative Strategies To Prevent Leopard Predation On Livestock Around Yala National Park, Sri Lanka, Sanjiv Fernando

Sustainability and Social Justice

In recent years, many livestock herders living near Yala National Park, Sri Lanka have reported livestock losses due to predation by leopards (Panthera pardus kotiya). Despite herders’ attempts to safeguard their cattle, livestock depredation remains an issue, sometimes causing herders to kill leopards in retaliation. In an effort to mitigate the human-leopard conflict, protective cattle enclosures made from steel pipes and mesh wire were introduced to prevent leopard attacks on cattle. This study aims to assess the severity of leopard predation on livestock, understand the methods used in retaliatory killings, examine the effectiveness of existing livestock protection methods, …

Remote Sensing Specialist Summer Internship At Geoadaptive Llc., Zehan Li

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper describes my summer internship experience during the summer of 2015, as a requirement toward my master's degree. I worked as a full-time remote sensing specialist at GeoAdaptive LLC., which locates at downtown Boston. My work covers a variety ranging from providing technical support like data collecting and visualization to other research groups at the firm, to conducting a pioneer project regrading the large scale drought monitoring using publicly available data. As someone who learnt a great deal and valued this experience greatly, I would love to recommend this internship to other fellow GISDE students when they take on …

The Gendered Politics Of Natural Resource Management: Gender Mainstreaming In Un-Redd+ Programs In Latin America, Hannah Yore

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper uses a feminist political ecology framework to critically examine rural women’s relationship with UN-REDD programs throughout Latin America. It looks at the ways in which UN-REDD has attempted to integrate women into the larger REDD+ development paradigms vis-à-vis gender- mainstreaming. I pay particular attention to how gender dynamics operate in the context of REDD+ with respect to cultural sovereignty, access to land, and benefit sharing and draw on Ecuador’s National REDD+ Socio Bosque program to illuminate how National REDD+ programs can adversely affect rural women’s livelihoods despite UN-REDD’s discourse of “gender equality”. In light of these considerations, I …

Environmental Conservation As An Instrument Of National Political Economy: Culture, Livelihoods, And Territorial Rights Of The Emberá Of Panama, Sara M. Taylor

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper argues that areas of environmental conservation in the Panama Canal Watershed Zone were originally designed to fit an economic utility rather than to protect habitat. As a result there was an exclusion of forest-based communities in policy design and implementation, creating lasting impacts on indigenous Emberá territorial rights, livelihood opportunities, and traditional cultural practices. Based on recent fieldwork and a review of relevant secondary literature, this paper discusses how Emberá communities in in Chagres National Park have adapted their culture and livelihoods to accommodate environmental regulation and explores what prospects the Emberá see for future generations if they …

The Effect Of Descriptive Norms On Resistance Exercise Self-Efficacy In College-Aged Females 2016, Justin Kompf

Master's Theses

Resistance training is a form of physical activity that provides substantial health benefits. Despite these widespread benefits, participation in resistance training is considerably low, particularly among females. To engage in a skill-related activity such as resistance training, individuals need to have confidence in their abilities. Self-efficacy is a cognitive construct that is used to describe situation-specific self-confidence. Descriptive norms are a type of social norm that describes the behavior of others. Descriptive norms have been useful in positively changing health related behaviors. The exact mechanism of how descriptive norms alter behavior is unknown. However, it has been show in research …

No. 02: Approaching Sustainable Urban Development In China Through A Food System Planning Lens, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott

Hungry Cities Partnership

After more than two decades of rapid urbanization, Chinese cities now face severe sustainability chal- lenges in terms of balancing economic viability, social justice, and environmental protection goals. While various types of planning have long been adopted to cope with these challenges, food as a centrepiece of daily life and of social and economic activity in cities has rarely been considered as a focus of urban planning in China, despite a lot of recent attention to food waste and food safety concerns. China’s food policy is largely fragmented in terms of its multiple regulatory agencies and diverse policy goals. Amid …

No. 01: Hungry Cities Of The Global South, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

The recent inclusion of an urban Sustainable Development Goal in the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda represents an important acknowledgement of the reality of global urbanization and the many social, economic, infrastructural and political challenges posed by the human transition to a predominantly urban world. However, while the SDG provides goals for housing, transportation, land use, cultural heritage and disaster risk prevention, food is not mentioned at all. This discussion paper aims to correct this unfortunate omission by reviewing the current evidence on the challenges of feeding rapidly-growing cities in the Global South. The paper first documents the magnitude of the …

'The Letter Killeth': The Obscurity Of Language And Communication In Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure 2016, Victoria T. Corning

Master's Theses

While the epistolary novel is a genre closely associated with 18th century England, 19th century Victorian literature also incorporates letter writing as a significant form of communication. Written messages convey what can often not be said out loud, as it is easier to hide behind a pen and paper, write in solitude, and be absent when the letter is read by the recipient. Impulsive and emotional thoughts and feelings can be written down immediately and then later edited, which makes writing an unstable form of communication. Is the author conveying true feelings or concealing true feelings? Layering multiple modes of …

Does Inclusion Really Mean Included?, Nicole M. Aldrich

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Classroom inclusion is currently one of the most debated issues in education. The debate is whether inclusion serves as the most appropriate way to provide education for students with disabilities. According to Heyne et al. (2012) social interactions are important to an individual, however, throughout an inclusion classroom environment social inclusion might not always be found amongst children with disabilities and their peers. Throughout the course of eight months I collected observations in a preschool inclusion classroom where one student has a one-to-one aide present at all times. This study examines this child’s degree of social inclusion amongst peers. Findings …