Don\u27t Panic: A Music Therapy Student\u27s Journey

Many college students change majors at some point in their undergraduate study. Studies have found that students who change their major late in their education are more likely to graduate from the institution at which they started than those who switch before their 5th semester. At its conception, the purpose of Don\u27t Panic: A Music Student \u27s Journey was to serve as an informative source for those interested in the Music Therapy Program at Utah State University, reflecting on both the requirements and the process through the experience of one student. In the time since, the author changed majors, and additional intentions were added - to provide an experiential model that could support students who may find themselves in a similar position of change and self-discovery. In order to achieve this goal, the author developed a program of music to best embody her emotions through the undergraduate experience. A script was then written, detailing the events around each song, and a PowerPoint presentation was created to support the music, and house narrations of the script. The presentation took place on April 3rd, 2018

Master of Science

thesisAn electrostatic microvalve for the pneumatic control of microfluidic devices is designed, modeled, fabricated, and characterized. The valve consists of several, individually manufactured pieces assembled to form a microvalve. This creates an inexpensive microvalve that can be easily and quickly manufactured. The unique feature of this microvalve is its ability to be integrated with a microfluidic system for good portability. The valve was manufactured by depositing a thin chrome layer on a Poly(methyl methacrylate) substrate. Thin copper foil was used as a flexible membrane that would deflect to allow air flow. When a voltage was applied between the chrome layer and the copper foil, the electrostatic force pulled the foil closed against the substrate and stopped the air flow. Parylene C was selected as a dielectric layer to provide insulation and prevent short circuiting between the chrome and copper electrodes. The valve was designed using a flexible, proximal electrode concept that decreased the required closing voltage. A mathematical model was developed to predict the voltage required to close the valve. Tests were performed to determine the closing voltage and flowrate through the valve. The parylene dielectric thickness and the valve cavity depth were varied to find the best valve parameters. It was determined that a valve with a 6 ?m layer of parylene with a 58 ?m cavity depth provided the best combination of low closing voltage and high flowrate. These valves were tested to work at pressures up to 40 kPa with an average closing voltage of 680 V and an average flowrate of 1.05 mL/min. The valve showed that it also may be able to function as a flowrate control valve at higher pressures, i.e., greater than 40 kPa. It was found that dielectric charging was occurring in the valve during operation. Switching the polarity of the control voltage with each actuation was a proposed solution that was tested and found to delay the onset of dielectric charging. Finally, the valve was successfully used to pneumatically control flow in a simplified microfluidic device

Positive and negative contact as predictors of attitudes toward law enforcement

Using intergroup contact theory (ICT), which posits that contact experiences with members of outgroups relate to attitudes toward those outgroups as a whole, the current study examines how positive and negative experiences with members of law enforcement predict general attitudes toward law enforcement. It specifically examines how attitudes toward individual members of law enforcement from contact experiences generalize to law enforcement as a whole, and how this generalization process is more or less effective when members of law enforcement are seen as more or less representative of law enforcement as a group (i.e., when law enforcement group membership is salient). I predicted that positive contact experiences with members of law enforcement would relate to positive attitudes toward those individuals, which in turn would predict positive attitudes toward law enforcement in general. However, this process should be more effective when the individuals from those experiences are seen as typical and representative of law enforcement. A similar process should occur for negative contact experiences, except that negative experiences would predict less favorable attitudes. To assess these relationships, I collected data from an online sample of Americans (N = 505) through Amazon Cloud Research. The primary predictions were mostly supported. While the relationship between contact experiences with members of law enforcement and attitudes toward those individuals was inconsistent across analyses, attitudes toward individual members of law enforcement strongly related to general attitudes toward law enforcement, and this depended on the degree to which those individuals were seen as typical and representative of law enforcement. This was true for positive and negative contact. These findings make theoretical contributions to ICT by examining negative contact in conjunction with group salience and have important implications for how law enforcement should interact with members of their communities

PIDoc: Wiki style Literate Programming for Prolog

This document introduces PlDoc, a literate programming system for Prolog. Starting point for PlDoc was minimal distraction from the programming task and maximal immediate reward, attempting to seduce the programmer to use the system. Minimal distraction is achieved using structured comments that are as closely as possible related to common Prolog documentation practices. Immediate reward is provided by a web interface powered from the Prolog development environment that integrates searching and browsing application and system documentation. When accessed from localhost, it is possible to go from documentation shown in a browser to the source code displayed in the user's editor of choice.Comment: Paper presented at the 17th Workshop on Logic-based Methods in Programming Environments (WLPE2007

Validating and optimizing the effects of model progression in simulation-based inquiry learning

Model progression denotes the organization of the inquiry learning process in successive phases of increasing complexity. This study investigated the effectiveness of model progression in general, and explored the added value of either broadening or narrowing students’ possibilities to change model progression phases. Results showed that high-school students in the ‘standard’ model progression condition (n = 19), who could enter subsequent phases at will, outperformed students from a control condition (n = 30) without model progression. The unrestricted condition (n = 22) had the additional option of returning to previous phases, whereas the restricted condition (n = 20) disallowed such downward progressions as well as upward progressions in case insufficient knowledge was acquired. Both variants were found to be more effective in terms of performance than the ‘standard’ form of model progression. However, as performance in all three model progression conditions was still rather weak, additional support is needed for students to reach full understanding of the learning content

CML: the commonKADS conceptual modelling language

We present a structured language for the specification of knowledge models according to the CommonKADS methodology. This language is called CML (Conceptual Modelling Language) and provides both a structured textual notation and a diagrammatic notation for expertise models. The use of our CML is illustrated by a variety of examples taken from the VT elevator design system