Perceptions of age and gender on victims of financial exploitation

A report by the Center for Victim Research shows that younger adults are more often victims of general and identity fraud (Irvin-Erickson & Ricks, 2019, p. 9); however, research conducted on financial exploitation focuses heavily on older adults. However, a recent study by Gunderson and colleagues (2021) found that older and younger adults are highly susceptible to financial exploitation. The purpose of the current study is to determine if perceptions of vulnerability to financial exploitation vary by the age of the victim. A sample of undergraduate participants will be recruited from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga through an online recruitment system called SONA. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of four vignettes where gender and age have been manipulated and dichotomized: (1) 67-year-old older man victim, (2) 67-year-old older woman victim, (3) 20-year-old young man victim, and (4) 20-year-old young woman victim. Participants will be asked to respond to questions regarding the following: (1) perceptions of vulnerability and susceptibility, (2) perceptions of blame and accountability, and (3) perceptions of empathy and support. The hypothesis is that age and gender will interact such that older women will be perceived as more vulnerable and deserving of empathy and support. The results of this study will begin to lay the groundwork needed to understand how to decrease stigma to increase reporting, develop and market educational training to reduce financial exploitation that is targeted to adults across the lifespan, and improve training for legal and social service professionals

Advances in high-speed store separation for upward-ejected stores and dynamic cavity doors

As technology continues to evolve for aircraft-deployed weapons, computational approaches to store separation analysis face new challenges. Anticipating vehicle designs that require upward store ejection, this study uses computational fluid dynamics and 6DoF motion analysis to predict such store trajectories in high-speed flow. Several store designs are analyzed at various ejection velocities in Mach 4 and Mach 6 conditions. The trajectory results show that streamlined store geometries may not induce sufficient drag to clear the aircraft after ejection. However, store designs with drag-enhancing features show potential for safe separation trajectories. To account for the unsteady effects of a cavity door which opens just prior to store ejection, dynamic cavity door simulations are presented, comparing their results to a quasi-static approach. The results show that such cavity opening effects impact pressure loads on the store, which may be critical for accurate store trajectory predictions

An accessible web-based peer-to-peer remote desktop control and access tool utilizing WebRTC

In the modern tech environment, remote desktop sharing is very popular and often much needed for daily work. Yet, many existing solutions hinge on the conventional client-server model, necessitating additional tools and software for effective desktop access. There exists a notable research gap concerning Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) delivery via a peer-to-peer architecture. This study introduces a browser-centric web application leveraging peer-to-peer communication for seamless remote desktop access. By integrating state-of-the-art technologies including Google’s WebRTC framework, STUN servers, and signaling servers, we offer an in-browser remote desktop experience, evaluating its performance in terms of responsiveness and user-friendliness. Our findings indicate promising prospects for WebRTC-driven remote desktop platforms

Gender performance in “cult” conversion narratives: the Twelve Tribes

While many scholars have attempted to understand the unique contours of the definition of “cult,” there are still rampant disagreements across different disciplines and scholarly persuasions about the way that a “cult” functions differently than other organizations. In this essay, I aim to clarify how the function of a “cult” is contingent upon a set of rhetorical strategies used by the group to systematically remove agency from group members. One of those rhetorical strategies is compelling individuals to perform according to strict heteronormative gender enactments. To understand how this strategy works, I will turn to four spiritually metanoic narratives published by the Twelve Tribes, an aberrant religious organization that exercises identity control over their members and analyze them through the theoretical lenses of gender performance, spiritual metanoia, and identification/consubstantiality

Design, modeling, and simulation of secure X.509 certificate revocation

TLS communication over the internet has risen rapidly in the last seven years (2015--2022), and there were over 156M active SSL certificates in 2022. The state-of-the-art Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), encompassing protocols, computational resources, and digital certificates, has evolved for 24 years to become the de-facto choice for encrypted communication over the Internet even on newer platforms such as mobile devices and Internet-of-Things (IoT) (despite being low powered with computational constraints). However, certificate revocation is one sub-protocol in TLS communication that fails to meet the rising scalability demands and remains open to exploitation. In this dissertation, the standard for X.509 revocation is systematically reviewed and critically evaluated to identify its limitations and assess their impact on internet security. Because of fragmented revocation information and limited scalability, even the latest version of the X.509 revocation standard is susceptible to Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attacks. Blockchain technology can provide a decentralized and peer-to-peer distributed ledger to enable a unified, tamper-proof platform for X.509 certificate authorities to collaborate securely in a trustless environment. To understand blockchain technology\u27s capabilities and limitations in distributing X.509 revocation information, different blockchain platforms are explored and compared in terms of scalability, degree of decentralization, and cost of operation. Moreover, the unification of the revocation lists leads to a massive expansion in the number of revoked certificates to query by a verifying client thus increasing the latency during revocation lookup. And, to minimize revocation-status lookup times, cryptographic constructions and approximate set-membership data structures are prototyped and analyzed. The key contributions of this dissertation are twofold: 1) the novel design of a secure and robust system for distributing X.509 certificate revocation information; and, 2) the prototype, experimentation, and optimization of cascading XOR filter, fuse filter, and cuckoo filter for quick lookup with zero false positives (and zero false negatives). The Secure Certificate Revocation as a Peer Service (SCRaaPS) is designed using the Lightweight Mining consensus algorithm-based Scrybe blockchain protocol to store and distribute certificate revocation lists. And, the cascading fuse filter (demonstrating the highest space efficiency and fastest build time) is applied to minimize the revocation lookup time with zero false positives

Something holy

This thesis contains two parts: a craft paper on interiority and seven chapters of a young adult social realism novel. The craft paper explores different strategies for “showing and telling” as a means of conveying interiority in faith-based characters, and it analyzes these strategies in two YA novels, Let’s Call it Doomsday by Katie Henry and Autoboyography by Christina Lauren, both of which center around queer, Mormon characters. The novel chapters in the thesis are from Something Holy, which follows Beck Taylor, an eighteen-year-old, mostly closeted bisexual boy who only has a few months until he leaves on a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Determined to make the most of his time left, he and his cousin Emilia follow Evergreen, their favorite local band, on tour, but when Beck falls for the male drummer Julius, feelings and faith complicate his perfect summer

The role of the Tennessee 4-H specialist as perceived by 4-H agents

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the perception of 4-H agents in terms of the role of the state level Extension 4-H specialist. The population included 225 county level 4-H agents employed by either University of Tennessee or Tennessee State University Extension. Data analyses for this study included an examination of demographic factors and 13 questions related to perception (quantitative) as well as three open ended questions (qualitative). Five research questions were examined to determine the perceived role of the 4-H specialists from the perspective of the current 4-H agents and identify what differences exist between role perceptions of the specialist and generational or demographic differences among the agents. The questions were: • Is there a difference between the perceptions of the role of the Extension 4-H specialist based on different ages of 4-H agents? • Is there a difference between the perceptions of the role of the Extension 4-H specialist based on different genders of 4-H agents? • Is there a difference between the perceptions of the role of the Extension 4-H specialist based on different years of experience of 4-H agents? • Is there a difference between the perceptions of the role of the Extension 4-H specialist based on different geographical locations of 4-H agents? • How do 4-H agents perceive that Extension 4-H Specialists are performing their duties? The quantitative results of this study, gleaned from research questions 1 – 4, concluded there was no significant difference in perception of the role of the 4-H specialist due to age, gender, years of experience, nor geographical location of the respondent. Additionally, the open-ended questions, which addressed research question five, provided mixed responses. Some respondents indicated that the Extension 4-H Specialists were performing their duties well. Other respondents provided feedback and methods for improvement

Covering problem with minimum radius enclosing circle

This study extends the classical smallest enclosing circle problem in location science to optimize healthcare communication hubs. Given a set of demand points and potential groups, we identify the optimal number of subgroups to cover all points and the circle enclosing them with minimum radius. The center of this circle serves as the communication hub location, minimizing the distance between demand points and facilities subject to customer demand. We develop a nonconvex-nonlinear optimization model and propose a quadratic programming-based approximation algorithm to solve it. Tested on various hypothetical and real scenarios, our model effectively reduces the facility setup cost and identifies the optimal communication hub location

The portrayal of dissent and the Anglican Church in Victorian literature

The reduction of the power of the Church of England during the Victorian era was inevitably reflected in the work of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë. In this paper, I will examine one novel from each writer to explore how each responded to the decline of the Church of England and the growth of other denominations. This thesis project rests on the idea that Gaskell presents religious dissent in a sympathetic light and Dickens and Brontë respond to this topic with trepidation. Although the Victorian era brought a new religious standard, Dickens’s and Brontë’s fear of Gaskell’s dissent novel betrays the tight grip which traditionalism still had on Victorian society. The examination of North and South, Hard Times, and Jane Eyre will show how the larger conversation about the cultural shift away from Anglicanism was manifesting itself on the literary page

Assessing mindfulness as a moderator between trait worry and working memory capacity performance in undergraduates

Mindfulness and worry have some antithetical qualities, yet mixed or non-significant findings suggest that practicing mindfulness alone will not disrupt worry. Working memory capacity (WMC) has been implicated in the relationship between worry and mindfulness, with some research showing that the combined practice of mindfulness and WMC test exercises had the greatest impact on reducing worry. The present study sought to test the relationship between worry, trait mindfulness, behavioral mindfulness as assessed by a Mindfulness Activities Questionnaire (MAQ) created by the researcher, and both the verbal and visuospatial domains of WMC. Worry was shown to be negatively associated with mindfulness. All WM scores showed non-significant associations apart from a weak positive association between verbal WM efficiency and behavioral mindfulness. Both domains of WM predicted similar outcomes in mindfulness. Mindfulness was not shown to moderate the relationship between worry and WMC. Implications and future directions for research are discussed