CampusPartner: An assistive technology for pedestrians with mobility impairments

Route-planning applications such as Google Maps and Apple Maps are used by millions of people each month. However, these mapping applications are optimized for vehicle navigation, and although they provide pedestrian routing, the route customization options aren’t sufficient for pedestrian users, especially those with mobility impairments. CampusPartner is an assistive mobile application that was designed with the purpose of supporting people with mobility impairments in planning and previewing their walking routes. By viewing routes in advance, users can see an overview and detailed information about them as well as turn-by-turn instructions. CampusPartner integrates existing services, GraphHopper, OpenStreetMap, and Mapbox, to provide navigation functionality. Users are able to create a profile upon opening the app, which will include information such as obstacles and road types to avoid, as well as their bookmarked or most commonly used routes. For example, if someone was looking for a route from one side of campus to the other and they couldn’t take stairs due to a mobility impairment, this app would assist them in determining the best route to take or notify them if they should look for an alternative form of transportation, such as a bus. Additionally, users are able to correct missing or inaccurate information, such as the absence of stairs on the map or temporary obstacles

A very large array

The Very Large Array is a radio telescope in a remote area of western New Mexico. An array is a single telescope made out of multiple satellite dishes. The satellite dishes move in and out on tracks to focus on different distant points in the solar system. These multiple dishes are functioning together to look at one single point, the combined powers of the satellite dishes results in a sharper focus. This book is an array. The objects included are my observations, interests, experiences and ideas. My thesis is a point in the distance, and I am looking at it using these multiple sources for greater clarity

Cascade Lake: A Novel

Twenty-two-year-old Macy Oman narrates the book in retrospect from Cascade, Oregon, where she is visiting her mother. Macy\u27s father moved with her to Portland shortly after the accidental death of her brother, Nick, seven years before the narration begins. Macy\u27s mother stayed behind in Cascade. Thematically the work centers on the emotional repercussions of these losses. Macy\u27s, and her older lover Jason\u27s, involvement with Nick\u27s death is unknown to everyone. Her guilt and her mother\u27s perceived betrayal are disabling. Taking her longing for closeness to nature and to her reclusive friend Celia, Macy discovers folklore that inspires a vision quest to seek her own personal healer, a shaman inside. When Macy accepts and reveals her part in Nick\u27s death, it opens the way to further revelations about the real root of her parents\u27 separation, the divisive nature of assumptions, and the healing power of acceptance. This story attempts to loosely rewrite, subvert or reclaim the early life of the mythological Medea, who betrayed her father and her brother by aiding her lover, Jason the Argonaught, in his quest to obtain the golden fleece that hung on an oak tree, guarded by a dragon. In this story, the golden fleece is represented by an Apollo scarf that Macy\u27s father Richard, an eccentric art-history buff, bought for her mother. Mythologically, the fleece was a powerful artifact, heavily guarded, worthy of war. In this rendition, the value of the scarf, rather than being material, is emotional. In comparison with the golden fleece, the Apollo scarf, an expensive item that is only appreciated for the relationships it represents, is meant to signal the superiority of the emotional over the material. Ultimately Macy does not betray her family; it is Mari who stays behind and Macy who instigates a reconciliation when she reveals the truth about her somewhat inadvertent participation in Nick\u27s death. (352 pages

Composing a Literary Adoption Memoir and Self Through Creative Nonfiction Memoir Writing

Adoption writings span across various forms, such as fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, theatre, and scholarly fields of study. While many of these adoption writings speak to the complexities of adoption, the general public still tends to see adoption “such a beautiful thing” to do—as the best plan for the child, a noble act, a selfless decision, and a solution to a long-standing social issue. This thesis explores the “literary adoption memoir”—artful writings about real life happenings; my contribution to this genre addresses the complexities of the closed adoption era, transnational/transracial adoption, and parenting an adoptee as an adult adoptee. For this project, I share my process and the theories that validate and inform my felt experiences as an adoptee and as an adoptive mom. I use the literary tools in the creative nonfiction genre to write not a mere record of events of my adoption, of adopting our daughter, of searching for my birth family. I offer pieces of creative nonfiction that represent my desire for a final project: a literary adoption memoir—a memoir of real life that borrows from the literary world, and a memoir that speaks to the complications in adoption—to loss, abandonment, belonging, identity, and rejection

Vital Bodies: A Visual Sociology of Health and Illness in Everyday Life

This thesis addresses theoretical and methodological concerns to embody sociology. It offers an account of the body, health and illness in everyday life that uses a sensorially attentive research practice to take the body seriously and make it audibly, visibly and viscerally present. The thesis is based on empirical research conducted over a year using a multi-method approach to unlock everyday bodily experiences. Thirteen participants aged between twenty-three and forty-three were interviewed about their experiences of living with a long-term physical or mental health condition (asthma, bi-polar disorder, chronic pain, depression, type 1 diabetes, epilepsy, joint hypermobility syndrome, muscular dystrophy, and rheumatoid arthritis) and asked to make a video diary and/or keep a journal to show and tell about their body and their condition. In addition Polaroids and hand-drawn questionnaires were used to add dimensionality. The accounts that were made are presented in this written thesis and in the film that accompanies this text, with the aim of conveying a sociological analysis of illness that keeps the vitality of bodies alive. In doing so, the thesis offers an account of illness that is not based on anguish, isolation and powerlessness but on the embodied activity of living

Two Tongues for a Dream: A Hermeneutic Study

Although bilingualism is a common feature of clinical work with patients, the specific aspects of working with the dreams of the bilingual patient have not been much discussed. This qualitative study explored the discrepancies that arise in the linguistic expressions of the psychological complexes when dreams are worked simultaneously in the dreamer\u27s native and second language. The aim was to learn more about the significance of including the bilingual patient\u27s native tongue when working with dreams in a dreamer\u27s second language. Key concepts on the study of language, dreams, psychological complexes, linguistics and psychoanalysis situated the research using various theoretical perspectives, such as Merleau-Ponty\u27s and Ricoeur\u27s understanding of language, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as Jungian and post-Jungian\u27s analytical psychology. The focal point was the important role of words, phonetics, and grammar in the unconscious association process, particularly as it was revealed in the presence of complexes in dreams. This literature review served as a framework for an empirical investigation in which bilingual participants\u27 dream texts written down in both languages (i.e., Spanish and English) were compared to find linguistic discrepancies between them. The data was collected after the administration of the Spanish version of Jung\u27s Word Association Experiment to five participants to obtain a map of their psychological complexes. The participants wrote down three personal dream narratives in both their native and second languages, and they included their associations to each dream. The results demonstrated that the mother tongue describes better the dream ego\u27s experience and brings in childhood and family of origin life, while revealing complexes more straightforwardly. However, for a person who has a life in two languages, both tongues would potentially carry the emotional tone of complexes in dreams. Clinically, these results suggest an analytic attitude that is sensitive to the intrinsic and lively link between words and complexes, and is alert to the sound of words in their polysemy and metaphorical dimensions in bilingual patients

Take a walk in my shoes : A narrative account of the experiences of community mobility among older adults living with age-related vision loss (ARVL)

This study aimed to co-construct the accounts of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) regarding their community mobility experiences. The study was based on a constructivist paradigm, and the collection and analysis of data adopted the narrative methodology. Participants included four older adults with one of the following conditions: macular degeneration, glaucoma, and/or diabetic retinopathy; all were at least 60 years old. Participants were recruited from Optometry clinics in London, Ontario, with one participant recruited using snowball sampling. The collection of data comprised three narrative interviews, all of which were audio recorded. These interviews took place over the phone as per the older adults’ request. This study conducted thematic and structural narrative analyses (Riesman, 2008) on participants\u27 stories and identified six dominant themes, including: (1) Moving from private vehicles to public transport, (2) Elements of the physical environment act more as barriers than facilitators to community mobility, (3) The use of assistive devices and compensatory strategies to support community mobility, (4) Social networks and their influence on community mobility, (5) Ableist perceptions of older adults with ARVL & its impact on community mobility, and (6) Community mobility barriers stemming from political factors. The research findings expand our understanding of the community mobility experiences of older adults with ARVL and highlight the benefits of more inclusive age-friendly environment in facilitating their community mobility. The study\u27s future directions and implications are also discussed. Keywords: Age-related vision loss, older adults, environment, community mobilit