Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 15

Table of Contents: The Effects of Snorkel-Based Tourism on the Behavior of Reef Fishes / by Savannah Clapp, Lauren Rowsey, and Jordan Grant (p.1-18) -- People Broken Into Pieces Trying to Join: Byzantine Erotica and the Provocative Paradox / by Kendall DeBoer (p.19-28) -- The Legacy of 1830 Land Cover on Present-Day Massachusetts Forest Composition / by Sofie McComb (p.29-58) -- The Role of Labels in Making Inferences about Group Categorization / by Subhashini Madhavan (p.59-76) -- Transcending Autobiography: Simultaneity and Meaning in Elisabet Ney’s Lady Macbeth / by Kendall DeBoer (p.77-92) -- Comparison of Microbial Diversity in Local Wasps and Plant Surfaces / by Dylan Fall and Jo-anne Holley (p.93-104) -- Ambiguity in Biotechnology Patent Policy: Lessons from Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. / by Chari Noddings (p.105-126) -- About the uncountability of the number of irrational powers of irrational numbers evaluated as rationals and solutions’ estimation for xx=y and xx =y / by Anca Andrei (p.127-133)Senate of College Council

Special Education Teachers’ Experiences Of Providing Students With Emotional And Behavioral Disorders Access To The General Education Curriculum: A Phenomenological Study

Given the need for research that emphasizes age and grade-appropriate content in authentic settings, the purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe special education teachers’ lived-experience of providing students with emotional and behavioral disorders access to the general education curriculum in a separate school setting. The research addressed the essential research question: What are teachers’ experiences of providing students with emotional and behavioral disorders access to the general education curriculum? Bandura’s social cognitive theory, concept of self-efficacy, and the associated achievement goal theory and guided the study and provided context for findings. All participants were teachers of students with emotional and behavioral disorders, who have been selected through purposeful, outlier, and criterion sampling methods. Data was collected through questionnaire, focus group interviews, and semi-structured interviews. Data was analyzed using Moustakas’ (1994) processes of epoche, transcendental-phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and synthesis. Four themes emerged from data analysis: positive perspectives of self-efficacy, relativity of defined success, creation of student success experiences, and embracement of pragmatism. The results of this study will provide educational stakeholders with an increased understanding of the challenges of authentic implementation of instructional interventions with grade-appropriate content for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Keywords: emotional and behavioral disorders, efficacy, general education curriculu

Difference and Demand: Toward a Levinasian Psychopathology

Difference and Demand: Toward a Levinasian Psychopatholog

Calm College: Testing a brief mobile app meditation intervention among stressed college students

abstract: College students experience a considerable amount of stress. Unmanaged stress is associated with poor academic performance, health risk behaviors (i.e., inadequate sleep and physical activity, alcohol consumption, poor dietary behaviors), and poor mental health. Coping with stress has become a priority among universities. The most tested stress-related programs to date have been mindfulness-based and face-to-face. These programs demonstrated significant improvements in stress, mindfulness, and self-compassion among college students. However, they may be burdensome to students as studies report low attendance and low compliance due to class conflicts or not enough time. Few interventions have used more advanced technologies (i.e., mobile apps) as a mode of delivery. The purpose of this study is to report adherence to a consumer-based mindfulness meditation mobile application (i.e., Calm) and test its effects on stress, mindfulness, and self-compassion in college students. We will also explore what the relationship is between mindfulness and health behaviors. College students were recruited using fliers on college campus and social media. Eligible participants were randomized to one of two groups: (1) Intervention - meditate using Calm, 10 min/day for eight weeks and (2) Control – no participation in mindfulness practices (received the Calm application after 12-weeks). Stress, mindfulness, and self-compassion and health behaviors (i.e., sleep disturbance, alcohol consumption, physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption) were measured using self-report. Outcomes were measured at baseline and week eight. Of the 109 students that enrolled in the study, 41 intervention and 47 control participants were included in analysis. Weekly meditation participation averaged 38 minutes with 54% of participants completing at least half (i.e., 30 minutes) of meditations. Significant changes between groups were found in stress, mindfulness, and self-compassion (all P<0.001) in favor of the intervention group. A significant negative association (p<.001) was found between total mindfulness and sleep disturbance. An eight-week consumer-based mindfulness meditation mobile application (i.e., Calm) was effective in reducing stress, improving mindfulness and self-compassion among undergraduate college students. Mobile applications may be a feasible, effective, and less burdensome way to reduce stress in college students.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Exercise and Wellness 201

Value and utility in a historical perspective

Since value and utility are the highest profile abstractions that underlie an epoch’s intellectual climate and ethical principles, their evolution reflects the transformation of socioeconomic conditions and institutions. The “Classical Phase” flourished during the first global system, laissez-faire/metal money/zero multilateralism (GS1); the second, “Subjective/Utilitarian” phase marked the long transition to the current epoch of “Modern Subjectivism/General Equilibrium,” tied to the second and extant global system, mixed economy/minimum reserve banking/weak multilateralism (GS2). History has witnessed the material de-essentialization of value and substantialization of utility. But now the two concepts face a thorough transvaluation as the world’s combined demographic and economic expansion encounters ecological/physical limitations. An extended macrohistoric implosion may lead to a third form of global self-organization: two-level economy/maximum bank reserve money/strong multilateralism (GS3). If history unfolds along the suggested path, not only economics, but also thinking about economics would change. It would be considered an evolving hermeneutic of the human condition expressed through global-system-specific texts. The implied critical alteration, with the recognition of the entropy law’s importance as its focal point, matches the prediction of Swiss thinker Jean Gebser (1905-1973) about the impending mutation of human consciousness into its integral/arational structure. Such extrapolations form the context in which the fourth historical phase of value and utility is hypothesized, leading to the material re-essentialization of value and de-substantialization of utility

A “Defect of Justice”: Congregationalism, the Calvinist Problem, and the Unitarian Solution in Sylvester Judd\u27s Margaret

This article contributes to a small body of criticism concerning Sylvester Judd’s 1845 novel Margaret. Largely described as a “Transcendentalist” novel that critiques the Calvinist theology prevalent in late-eighteenth-early-nineteenth century New England village society, I argue for an interpretation of the novel that is concerned the interaction between Calvinism and the Congregationalist model of social and religious organization over time. Rather than just exposing the negative social ramifications Calvinist doctrines like total depravity can have on New England society, I assert that the novel exposes the limitations in Puritan Congregationalist ideals espoused by early figures such as John Winthrop through the example of Livingston. The new Unitarian-congregationalist model Livingston adopts in discarding Calvinism suggests Judd’s resolute faith in Winthrop’s original Congregationalist mission. Judd does not imagine a radical Utopia, but instead offers a more pragmatic reform that is fundamentally Unitarian in its emphasis on humanity\u27s essential goodness and limitless capacity for moral improvement

Multi-agent decision-making dynamics inspired by honeybees

When choosing between candidate nest sites, a honeybee swarm reliably chooses the most valuable site and even when faced with the choice between near-equal value sites, it makes highly efficient decisions. Value-sensitive decision-making is enabled by a distributed social effort among the honeybees, and it leads to decision-making dynamics of the swarm that are remarkably robust to perturbation and adaptive to change. To explore and generalize these features to other networks, we design distributed multi-agent network dynamics that exhibit a pitchfork bifurcation, ubiquitous in biological models of decision-making. Using tools of nonlinear dynamics we show how the designed agent-based dynamics recover the high performing value-sensitive decision-making of the honeybees and rigorously connect investigation of mechanisms of animal group decision-making to systematic, bio-inspired control of multi-agent network systems. We further present a distributed adaptive bifurcation control law and prove how it enhances the network decision-making performance beyond that observed in swarms