Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Association Between The Epigenetic Lifespan Predictor Grimage And History Of Suicide Attempt In Bipolar Disorder, Camila N C Lima, Emese H C Kovács, Salahudeen Mirza, Alexandra Del Favero-Campbell, Alexandre Paim Diaz, Joao Quevedo, Benney M R Argue, Jenny Gringer Richards, Aislinn Williams, John A Wemmie, Vincent A Magnotta, Jess G Fiedorowicz, Jair C Soares, Marie E Gaine, Gabriel R Fries

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Bipolar disorder (BD) has been previously associated with premature mortality and aging, including acceleration of epigenetic aging. Suicide attempts (SA) are greatly elevated in BD and are associated with decreased lifespan, biological aging, and poorer clinical outcomes. We investigated the relationship between GrimAge, an epigenetic clock trained on time-to-death and associated with mortality and lifespan, and SA in two independent cohorts of BD individuals (discovery cohort - controls (n = 50), BD individuals with (n = 77, BD/SA) and without (n = 67, BD/non-SA) lifetime history of SA; replication cohort - BD/SA (n = 48) and BD/non-SA (n = 47)). …

Assessing The Learning Of Qualitative Research Through A Critical Reflective Essay, Elida Cena, Stephanie Burns

The Qualitative Report

Despite a longstanding commitment to the notion of reflection as an integral part of qualitative research, there are few explicit learning tools or published assignment guides to aid understanding of this important aspect of student learning. Reflection both as a researcher and within the context of an educational perspective can be challenging; however, creating reflective assignments can help students consolidate and assess the learning of qualitative research skills in practice. This article describes a critical reflective assignment highlighting the challenges, rewards, and reflections on designing and conducting an interview process as part of a qualitative research methods module with postgraduate …

AnduinTm: Transforming Manuscripts From The Lord Of The Rings Into A Digital Experience, Brendan Lenzner, Edward Sanchez, William M. Fliss

Library Faculty Research and Publications

For Tolkien enthusiasts, the year 2022 was one of great significance. The culmination of years spent digitizing and arranging Marquette University’s collection of print manuscripts of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and the development of a digital portal to organize the metadata around the digital artifacts, occurred in perfect timing with an exhibition of manuscripts of Tolkien’s work that was greatly enjoyed by scholars and visitors from around the world.

Face Peace Design Brief #1: Communities Of Practice On/Offline, John Porten

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

The FACE Peace Initiative at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice intends to help peacebuilders answer questions about in-person and online collaboration with intention and care. This design brief combines desk research on best practices from other fields with observation of peacebuilding organizations to identify key debates and concerns and provide insight into how to navigate trade-offs between in-person and distanced peacebuilding activities and events.

Peacebuilding organizations often attempt to gather members of the field into “communities of practice” (“CoPs”), which intend to increase skills and knowledge among members through long-term information-sharing and reciprocal mentorship. Facilitators of …

One Pager - “How Scared Are You?” Mapping The Threat Environment Of San Diego’S Elected Officials, Rachel Locke, Carl Luna

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

This one pager includes data summary points from survey sent to San Diego County elected officials.

Targeted threats and the perpetration of physical violence against elected officials have been increasing steadily around the world. Democracy cannot function without individuals serving in elected governance. The presence and growth of threats and harassment undermines community cohesion, further undermining our ability to address our collective challenges.

On The Spectral Density Of Fractional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Process: Approximation, Estimation, And Model Comparison, Shuping Shi, Jun Yu, Chen Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper introduces a novel method for accurately approximating the spectral density of the discretely-sampled fractional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (fOU) process. We utilize this approximated spec-tral density to develop an estimation method called the approximated Whittle maximum likelihood method (AWML) for fOU. Additionally, we develop a likelihood-ratio (LR) test using the approxi-mated spectral densities to distinguish between the fractional Brownian motion (fBm) and fOU pro-cesses, two popular models in the volatility literature. Simulation studies demonstrate that the AWML method improves the estimation speed and accuracy compared to existing ones and that the LR test is effective in distinguishing between the two processes …

Inflation Dynamics And Expectations In Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow-Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Inflation dynamics in Singapore have primarily been shaped by foreign factors, including global inflationary pressures and external macroeconomic shocks. More recently, the normalisation phase of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis has led to domestic price pressures from pent-up demand and supply-chain disruptions. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has resulted in a hike in the global prices of food, energy, and industrial commodities. Using inflation forecasts from the MAS Survey of Professional Forecasters as our measure of inflation expectations, we show that short-term inflation expectations have shifted up recently. Moreover, greater disagreement amongst survey respondents in the more recent surveys suggests individual …

Competing Auctions With Non-Identical Objects, Massimiliano Landi, Domenico Menicucci, Andrey Sarychev

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study a competition model with two sellers that auction non-identical objects, unlike most of the literature on competing auctions. Each bidder has bidimensional private information, his values for the objects, and chooses the auction in which he participates (if any) after each seller has set a reserve price for her auction. We show that in some cases the duopoly reserve price is greater than the reserve price for a monopolist auctioning a single object; thus, an increase in the number of sellers may make some bidder’s types worse off. In our analysis we first characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium …

Growth And Risk: A View From International Trade, Pravin Krishna, Andrei A. Levchenko, Lin Ma, William F. Maloney

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the cross-country patterns of risky innovation and growth through the lens of international trade. We use a simple theoretical framework of risky quality upgrading by firms under varying levels of financial development to derive two predictions. First, the mean rate of quality growth and the corresponding cross-sectional variance of quality growth in a country are positively correlated. Second, both the mean and variance of quality changes are positively correlated with the country's level of financial development. We then test these two hypotheses using data on disaggregated (HS10) bilateral exports to the United States. The patterns in the …

The Mutual Constitution Of Culture And Psyche: The Bidirectional Relationship Between Individuals’ Perceived Control And Cultural Tightness-Looseness, Anyi Ma, Krishna Savani, Fangzhou Liu, Kenneth Tai, Aaron C. Kay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

According to the theory of mutual constitution of culture and psyche, just as culture shapes people, individuals’ psychological states can influence culture. We build on compensatory control theory, which suggests that low personal control can lead people to prefer societal systems that impose order, to examine the mutual constitution of personal control and cultural tightness. Specifically, we tested whether individuals’ lack of personal control increases their preference for tighter cultures as a means of restoring order and predictability, and whether tighter cultures in turn reduce people’s feelings of personal control. Seven studies (five preregistered) with participants from the United States, …

Improved Marginal Likelihood Estimation Via Power Posteriors And Importance Sampling, Yong Li, Nianling Wang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Power posteriors have become popular in estimating the marginal likelihood of a Bayesian model. A power posterior is referred to as the posterior distribution that is proportional to the likelihood raised to a power b∈[0,1]. Important power-posterior-based algorithms include thermodynamic integration (TI) of Friel and Pettitt (2008) and steppingstone sampling (SS) of Xie et al. (2011). In this paper, it is shown that the Bernstein–von Mises (BvM) theorem holds for power posteriors under regularity conditions. Due to the BvM theorem, power posteriors, when adjusted by the square root of the auxiliary constant, have the same limit distribution as the original …

The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Tang Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the distributional impacts of transportation networks in China. We show that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space, and ignoring these variations biases the estimates of travel time. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model that allows for multiple modes and routes of transportation and forward-looking migration decision. We find aggregate welfare gain and less spatial income …

Asset-Rich And Cash-Poor: Which Older Adults Value Reverse Mortgages?, Joelle H. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Home equity represents a substantial share of retirement wealth for many older persons, particularly in Asia where national housing policies have encouraged home-ownership. This paper explored the potential for reverse mortgages to help 'asset-rich and cash-poor' older Singaporeans unlock their home equity while ageing in place. The empirical analysis was based on a nationally representative survey of home-owners age 50+ in the 2018 Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,258). Our analyses showed that the average older home-owner holds some 60 per cent of total net wealth in housing equity, suggestive of high demand potential for reverse mortgage products. Nevertheless, actual …

Is Closing The Agricultural Yield Gap A "Risky" Endeavor?, Nicolas Gatti, Michael Cecil, Kathy Baylis, Lyndon Estes, Jordan Blekking, Thomas Heckelei, Noemi Vergopolan, Tom Evans

Geography

CONTEXT: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the climatic and biophysical potential to grow the crops it needs to meet rapidly growing food demand; however, agricultural productivity remains low. While potential maize yields in Zambia are 9 t per hectare (t/ha), the average farmer produces only 1–2. OBJECTIVE: We evaluate the contribution of responses to weather risk to that gap by decomposing the yield gap in maize in Zambia. While we know that improved seed and fertilizer can expand yield and profit, they may also increase the variance of yield under different weather outcomes, reducing their adoption. METHODS: We use a novel …

Uniform Nonparametric Inference For Time Series Using Stata, Jia Li, Zhipeng Liao, Mengsi Gao

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this article, we introduce a command, tssreg, that conducts nonparametric series estimation and uniform inference for time-series data, including the case with independent data as a special case. This command can be used to nonparametrically estimate the conditional expectation function and the uniform confidence band at a user-specified confidence level, based on an econometric theory that accommodates general time-series dependence. The uniform inference tool can also be used to perform nonparametric specification tests for conditional moment restrictions commonly seen in dynamic equilibrium models.

Land Use Analysis On Vertiports Based On A Case Study Of The San Francisco Bay Area, Wenbin Wei, Kerry Rohrmeier, Tiffany Martinez, Michael Winans, Heungseok Park

Mineta Transportation Institute

Vertiport research and development trails in the emerging commercial air taxi sector known as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). Published scholarship remains limited as federal, state, and local governments have yet to create or implement policies for the rapidly progressing larger AAM ecosystem, which is designed around autonomous electric vehicle takeoff and landing aircraft. With the potential for frequent low altitude flights, long-range planning must demonstrate awareness, knowledge, and utilization of geographic information science to select safe and just vertiport locations. This study summarizes the AAM literature and offers planners a set of stakeholder-informed parameters to use in a no-cost preliminary …

Perceived Safety And Equitable Access: An Investigation Of The Northwest Arkansas Regional Greenway, Jessica Shearman

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

In today’s world, designers, planners, and policymakers are grappling with conflicts of climate change, habitat loss, and increasing diversity all during a migratory trend towards urban areas and higher densities of living. Creating public spaces that are both resilient ecologically and environmentally, while also creating a sense of place is essential for providing a higher quality of life equitably for all citizens. Through case studies and literature review, the public’s safety perceptions when accessing public spaces is key to equitable access. Specifically, differing perceptions of safety based on gender, race, and backgrounds. Perceived safety can be defined as an awareness …

Smart Transportation In Small- And Medium-Sized Cities In Central California, Hongwei Dong

Mineta Transportation Institute

The research on smart transportation in the United States has centered on large metropolitan areas. The adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities outside of large metropolitan areas is less studied and understood. This study examined the adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities in Central California. The analysis was based on the online survey responses from 29 transportation officials and professionals who worked for 18 municipal government departments and six metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in Central California as well as in depth semi-structured interviews with seven of them. The study showed that smart transportation in …

Experimental Investigation Of The Self-Healing Potential Of Bacteria For Sustainable Concrete Structures, Pitiporn Asvapathanagul, Simone Galano, Andrea Calabrese, Mehran Rahmani, Maggie Ly, Daniela Flores, Michael Hernandez, Nicholas Banuelos

Mineta Transportation Institute

Although concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, its limited tensile strength makes cracking a common phenomenon in concrete elements. This study investigates the potential of autonomous self-healing as an eco-friendly and lowcost method to increase the durability of concrete. The crack-healing potential of different types of high-alkaline-tolerant bacteria or calcite-precipitation microorganisms is investigated. High-alkaline-tolerant bacteria and calcite-precipitation microorganisms were used to retrofit lab-fractured concrete samples. The samples healed with each of these bacteria groups were cast and tested under compressive load up to failure to measure the compressive strength of the concrete samples. The outcomes …

Preconstruction Support Cost Hours Estimating On Caltrans Pavement Rehabilitation Projects, Nigel Blampied, Tariq Shehab, Elhami Nasr, Laxmi Sindhu Samudrala

Mineta Transportation Institute

Because the construction phase accounts for the majority of project costs for pavement rehabilitation projects, most research on infrastructure project cost estimating focuses on that phase, rather than on the preconstruction phases. Nevertheless, costs incurred prior to construction, referred to in this report as "preconstruction costs" are significant and worthy of consideration (See Section 2.1 of the report for a more detailed and precise definition of preconstruction). In the 20202021 fiscal year, for instance, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) spent more than $169 million on preconstruction work for pavement rehabilitation projects. This report presents the results of a study …

Impact Of Personalized Interactive Storytelling On Suspension Of Disbelief In Clinical Simulation, Audra Renee-Smith Xenakis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The literature review found suspension of disbelief (SOD) in clinical simulation heavily weighted on educators alone within high-fidelity environments. The project examined a co-created narrative background story applied to a simulated patient’s clinical profile to determine achieving an improved connectedness toward the simulated patient leading to enhanced SOD and enhanced levels of learning and reaction. The studied population was third-semester associate degree nursing students over 18 years of age with prior clinical simulation experience who were not repeating the semester. The research methodology used a quantitative experimental design with cluster sampling, randomization, and post-Likert-scored questionnaires. The intervention group co-created personalized …

Healthcare Workers’ Perceptions, Practices, And Knowledge Of Trauma-Informed Care In The Hospital Setting, Emily Gayle Tippens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychological trauma has become a pervasive term throughout the mental health field but has been slow to gain momentum in the healthcare field. Hospitals have always been a place where people with mental health concerns or psychosis seek help, but hospitals have historically not implemented a trauma-informed care (TIC) approach. As the mental health crisis continues to become more detrimental, trauma-informed care skills will become more valuable. This study measured the knowledge, opinions, perceptions healthcare professionals in West Texas have regarding trauma-informed care. This study hypothesized that healthcare workers in West Texas would benefit from TIC training. This study hypothesized …

Forming And Maintaining Intimate Friendships As A Twentysomething, Molly S. Burke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emerging adulthood is a life stage of great change, and often instability in relationships and attachment (Demir et al., 2015; Lane et al., 2017; Shulman & Connolly, 2013). Intimate friendships can be a moderating factor and assistance in gaining stability and increasing life satisfaction (Demir, 2021; Demir et al., 2015; Sanchez et al., 2020). This study used grounded theory methodology (Creswell & Poth, 2018) to develop a model of the process which Twentysomethings undergo while forming and maintaining intimate, or best, friendships. Through interviews with best friend pairs, this study found three main phases of the best friend process: forming …

Attitudes Towards Mental Health, Spiritual Seeking, And Well-Being, David Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Religion plays a crucial role in many peoples’ lives, shaping the way they interact with the world and react to stressors. The Relational Spirituality Model (Sandage & Shults, 2007) posits that individuals’ relationship with God resembles humans’ relationships with one another. That is, relationships consist of intimacy and closeness as well as independence and time away from each other, otherwise known as dwelling and seeking. Previous literature has analyzed the relationship between spiritual coping and well-being, yet none have analyzed the relationship between spiritual seeking and overall well-being using attitudes towards mental health as a moderator. Participants were 84 undergraduate …

Goal Setting And Student Retention, Hugh Castillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Student retention has been a problem with which higher education institutions must face. Institutions have employed numerous different programs and services to improve student retention. This study sought to open up a new way to improve student retention by utilizing a goal-setting intervention that focused on creating SMART goals for student areas of weaknesses. This study employed the use of a quasi-experimental interrupted time series to better understand how goal-setting interventions could impact the participant attitudes correlated to retention. It was shown that goal-setting interventions had no significant impact on likelihood of retention but did exhibit improvement in client engagement …

The Effects Of Personal Growth Initiative, Grit, And Spirituality On Competition Anxiety In Student Athletes, Taylor Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Personal growth initiative (PGI) is an intrinsically motivated engagement in growth processes that contribute to their ability to excel in sporting performance (Robitschek, 1998), and PGI may also predict their grit as well. Like PGI, team cohesion influences both performance and well-being in athletes, and little research has explored how spiritually oriented coaching influences team cohesion. This study explored PGI, grit, competition anxiety, intrinsic motivation, and the impact of spiritual involvement in sports on team cohesion. A sample (N = 45) of collegiate athletes at private Christian universities completed self-report measures in a survey. PGI was not a significant predictor …

Crossing Over: A Description Of Dual Status Youth In Taylor County, Texas, Kimberly S. Putnam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores and describes the experiences of ten dual status youth in Taylor County, Texas by examining the factors of race, sex, child welfare allegation, and juvenile justice offense. A review of the literature suggests that this population has unique challenges in and outside the courtroom, including being at increased risk for disparate outcomes in later adolescence and adulthood. This study compared single-system child welfare and juvenile justice data from Texas DFPS Region 2 and Taylor County to raw data provided on a sample of ten dual status youth identified in Taylor County from 2017–2021. Findings included a disproportionately …

Perceived Outcomes And Barriers Of Advance Care Planning From Healthcare Professionals, Faith Parsons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Advance care planning (ACP) is the process of aligning patients’ values and preferences to their future medical care. ACP is important in promoting patient autonomy and helping patients and their families prepare for end-of-life conversations. Healthcare teams, made up of physicians, nurses, or social workers, carry the responsibility to engage patients into such conversations. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of healthcare professionals regarding ACP outcomes and barriers. This cross- sectional study used survey responses of a convivence sample of 18 allied healthcare professionals and 4 physicians in a not-for-profit, faith-based hospital system in …

A Systematic Review Of Studies Of Self-Compassion Interventions For Trauma And Stress-Related Disorders, Kayla Wilkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to explore how the effectiveness of self-compassion interventions can reduce symptoms of trauma and stress-related disorders. Self-compassion can be an essential part of treatment for trauma and stress-related disorders. Self-compassion consists of three components: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Self-compassion also relies on an individual to use emotional intelligence (e.g., emotional processing theory, meaning-making theory, polyvagal theory) to aid with increasing the level of self-awareness and appraising traumatic memories. For example, identifying post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms using self-compassion can promote emotional regulation, enabling awareness and acceptance of negative emotions caused by trauma. In addition, self-compassion can help …

Impact Of Community-Based Care Model On Child Welfare Professionals: A Study Of Workload, Job Satisfaction, And Turnover Intent, Kerri Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Much of the research on child welfare workers is in a traditional service model. However, there is a lack of empirical studies regarding childcare workers in a community-based care model. This study examines whether transitioning to the community-based model has positively impacted workers’ perspectives regarding turnover intention, job satisfaction, and workload manageability. A cross-sectional survey design was used with convenient sampling from a Texas Department of Family Protective Service Region that transitioned to the CBC model. The single source continuum contractor employed a sample of 125 potential respondents in the selected region. A total of 43 permanency workers responded to …