Faculty Analysis and Outreach Plan for UNT Scholarly Works

This poster provides an overview of the recent assessment and subsequent outreach plan of the Scholarly Works collection, which functions as our open-access, institutional repository. In the Summer 2016 semester, we began an assessment of the collection’s holdings to assess our progress in archiving UNT faculty research in support of our Open Access policy, particularly as we do not subscribe to a current research information system (CRIS). This assessment was conducted to show us: 1) Who is/isn’t contributing to the Scholarly Works collection, and 2) What types of scholarship the collection contains. This analysis was then used to form an outreach plan for promoting and increasing contributions to the Scholarly Works collection. By executing this plan, we hope to make the collection more visible to departments, increase contributions, and enhance the collection’s value

Avatar And Self: A Rhetoric Of Identity Mediated Through Collaborative Role-play

This project responds to a problem in scholarship describing the relationship between virtual avatars and their physical users. In Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle identifies points of slippage wherein the persona of the avatar becomes conflated with the user‘s sense of self to create an authentic self predicated on both real and virtual experiences (Turkle 184-5). Although the conflation of the authentic self with the virtual has provided various affordances for serious games or other pedagogical projects such as classrooms hosted through the game Second Life, the processes enabling identification with an avatar have been largely overlooked. This project examines several layers of influence that affect how users play with identity to create successful social performances within an online community connected to a work of fiction. In doing so, the user must consider his or her own motivations for creating a persona, how these motivations will allow the avatar to achieve social acceptance, and how these social performances connect to the scene created by the work of fiction. Using an online role-playing forum based on a work of fiction as a site of analysis, this project will borrow from game studies, dramatism, and identity theory to create a framework for discussing processes through which users identify with their virtual avatars

Somatic Anacrusis: An Experiential Poetics of Deborah Hay's Choreography and Practice in the Solo At Once

This project is a kind of doingmovingthinking: a close study of iconic American dancer/choreographer Deborah Hays choreography and practice through my particular dancing experience of her solo At Once. The resulting experiential poetics illuminates both the implicit critique of an instrumental/rational paradigm and also the ethical implications of the particular relationality enacted in Hays work. I characterize Hays work as a radical communication practice, one that moves language through the body in a dynamic torqueing process that both gathers toward and unravels from the edges of meaningfulness in a process of perception. I work at the interdisciplinary intersection of dance, performance, somatics and cultural studies, and my thinking draws substantially on Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological philosophy and language. Aspiring to a balanced integration of moving and writing, of practice and theory, I follow a performance studies approach, attempting, as characterized by performance scholar Dwight Conquergood: to live betwixt and between theory and theatricality, paradigms and practices, critical reflection and creative accomplishment (318). Through personal daily practice and performance of Hays work allied with close description, I apply my devised method of emergent choreographic analysis to Hays choreography and practice. This analysis, conducted from inside the practice of the work, reveals how Hays complex and distinctly linguistic choreography operates as a constructed situation for the practice of perception and that, in performance, this practice moves language through the body in a dynamic torqueing process that engenders a unique lived experience of paradoxical simultaneity. I coin the term somatic anacrusis to articulate this underlying processual phenomenon. Reconsidering the dimension of relationality in Hays work, I re-frame somatic anacrusis as a pre-relational pre-disposing, a kind of suspended or unconsummated relationality. Feminist philosopher Luce Irigarays thinking helps illuminate the ethical implications of Hays work as a practice of perception that opens a new way toward the other. I conclude by appropriating Hays own rhetorical interrogative strategy what if? What if somatic anacrusis offers a possible answer to Irigarays call for a new way to approach the other that respects fundamental difference and yet allows encounter

Developing an Outreach Plan for UNT Scholarly Works

The University of North Texas Scholarly Works collections functions as our institution’s open access repository. This summer, we conducted a preliminary analysis of the collection’s holdings to assess our progress in archiving UNT faculty research in support of our Open Access and Long-term Digital Stewardship policy as passed in 2012. As we do not subscribe to any current research information systems (CRIS), this analysis took the form of a census using current faculty senate data to understand who is and is not contributing to the repository. After looking at our contribution population, we also examined what resource types are contributed to the repository to further leverage those relationships between contributor and resource type. As of August 2016, the UNT Scholarly Works collection contains work from 25% of our current, active faculty members. Although the collection is populated through mediated deposit, this analysis revealed trends for likelihood of contribution to the collection. In looking at these trends, we understand that disciplinary differences exist in terms of support (or not-supporting) open access, particularly as the type of desired scholarly output and its ability to be archived within the repository can change between disciplines. However, the main bottleneck in developing this collection lies in increasing both the number of contributors and the number of items contributed from the UNT community. By identifying contributing and non-contributing faculty, and by drawing attention to their contributed resource types, we can more accurately understand how to perform outreach for the collection. In this presentation we’ll discuss the results of our preliminary analysis of faculty contributions, and our subsequent outreach plan to double our collection’s holdings as well as our contributors

The relationship between approach to activity engagement, specific aspects of physical function, and pain duration in chronic pain

Objectives:To examine: (1) the relationships between habitual approach to activity engagement and specific aspects of physical functioning in chronic pain; and (2) whether or not these relationships differ according to pain duration.Materials and Methods:Outpatients (N=169) with generalized chronic pain completed a set of written questionnaires. Categories of approach to activity engagement were created using the confronting and avoidance subscales of the Pain and Activity Relations Questionnaire. An interaction term between approach to activity engagement categories and pain duration was entered into analysis with age, sex, pain intensity, the categorical approach to activity engagement variable, and pain duration, in 9 ordinal regression models investigating functioning in a variety of daily activities.Results:The approach to activity engagement category predicted the personal care, lifting, sleeping, social life, and traveling aspects of physical functioning but, interestingly, not the performance skills used during these activities, that is, walking, sitting, and standing. The interaction term was significant in 2 models; however, the effect of pain duration on associations was the inverse of that theorized, with the relationship between variables becoming less pronounced with increasing duration of pain.Discussion:The results of this study do not support the commonly held notion that avoidance and/or overactivity behavior leads to deconditioning and reduced physical capacity over time. Findings do, however, suggest that a relationship exists between avoidance and/or overactivity behavior and reduced participation in activities. Implications for the clinical management of chronic pain and directions for further research are discussed

Kintsugi – identity change and reconstruction following an episode of psychosis: a systematic review and thematic synthesis

AimResearch has shown that experiences of psychosis can have a significant impact on an individual's identity. Moreover, the way those who experience psychosis make sense of these changes appears to affect their recovery journey and hold clinical significance. However, this area of research is still very much developing, and there is a need for reviews, which look to synthesise and understand this process of identity change to guide clinicians working in this area as well as future research. This study looks to meet that gap and aims to synthesise qualitative literature exploring the lived experience of identity change amongst people who experience psychosis.MethodsA systematic review using thematic synthesis was carried out. The PRISMA and ENTREQ guidelines were followed in reporting the study.ResultsNinety-one papers were identified which met criteria for inclusion and 31 papers included in the synthesis at which point conceptual saturation was judged to have been reached. Five themes were created: psychosis as an obliteration of the old self; the futile fight against psychosis; mourning for who I was; the battle for self as a battle against disempowerment; and recovery as rebirth.ConclusionsResults highlighted the substantive impact an experience of psychosis has on an individual's identity, the key role sense making around these identity changes plays in recovery and the crucial impact of clinicians on the sense-making process. The implications for theory, future research and clinical practice are discussed

An exploration of gene therapy and some ethical concerns : what our society knows about gene therapy : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the issue of gene therapy. Background information is given to explain what gene therapy is and some of the ways it is accomplished. A discussion of organizations that regulate gene therapy is given. Also, some of the ethical issues that arise due to gene therapy are introduced. A determination of public knowledge is attempted by the use of a survey that was distributed to students and professionals. Statistical analyses are computed using the survey data to determine whether any correlation exist between certain groups of subjects and their responses to some of the survey questions. Finally, the thesis contains a section devoted to suggestions for further study.Honors CollegeThesis (B.S.

Comparison of the Interactions of Transferrin Receptor and Transferrin Receptor 2 with Transferrin and the Hereditary Hemochromatosis Protein HFE

The transferrin receptor (TfR) interacts with two proteins important for iron metabolism, transferrin (Tf) and HFE, the protein mutated in hereditary hemochromatosis. A second receptor for Tf, TfR2, was recently identified and found to be functional for iron uptake in transfected cells (Kawabata, H., Germain, R. S., Vuong, P. T., Nakamaki, T., Said, J. W., and Koeffler, H. P. (2000) J. Biol. Chem. 275, 16618-16625). TfR2 has a pattern of expression and regulation that is distinct from TfR, and mutations in TfR2 have been recognized as the cause of a non-HFE linked form of hemochromatosis (Camaschella, C., Roetto, A., Cali, A., De Gobbi, M., Garozzo, G., Carella, M., Majorano, N., Totaro, A., and Gasparini, P. (2000) Nat. Genet. 25, 14-15). To investigate the relationship between TfR, TfR2, Tf, and HFE, we performed a series of binding experiments using soluble forms of these proteins. We find no detectable binding between TfR2 and HFE by co-immunoprecipitation or using a surface plasmon resonance-based assay. The affinity of TfR2 for iron-loaded Tf was determined to be 27 nM, 25-fold lower than the affinity of TfR for Tf. These results imply that HFE regulates Tf-mediated iron uptake only from the classical TfR and that TfR2 does not compete for HFE binding in cells expressing both forms of TfR