Coping Resources, Coping Styles, Mastery, Social Support, and Depression in Male and Female College Students

Depression is one of the most commonly-diagnosed disorders in college counseling centers (Adams, Wharton, Quilter, & Hirsch, 2008), so effective diagnosis and treatment are paramount to providing adequate care to college students. Treatment direction may depend on gender, however. Not only do males and females experience depression at different rates (Kessler et al., 2003), but there also is some evidence that factors predict depression differently by gender (Tamres, Janicki, & Helgeson, 2002). Specifically, the literature suggests that the choice of coping strategies may be gender-related; that perceived control is higher in males, yet more important to females; that social connectedness in particular may be valued more strongly and used more frequently as a coping style by females than males; and that coping resources seem to mitigate the harmful effects of stressful events. Consequently, it seems important to examine the relationships of coping resources, coping styles, mastery, and social support to the experiences of depression. The purpose of this study was to gain a clearer understanding of the predictors of depression and methods for coping with depression in college students and to determine how these differ by gender. Results demonstrated gender differences in the experiences of many variables studied as well as the prediction of depression. High levels of perceived stress factored in as an important predictor of depression for both genders. Prediction models of best fit for females also included low mastery and low social support, while few coping resources along with high perceived stress appeared to be the most important factors in depression prediction for males. Mastery was also found to moderate the relationship between social support and depression for males. Results have implications for increasing college students’ abilities to cope with depression, thus reducing the negative academic, psychological, and physiological effects of depression

Using an Inductive Learning Algorithm to Improve Antibody Generation in a Single Packet Computer Defense Immune System

Coherent optical sources in the mid-infrared region (mid-IR) are important fundamental tools for infrared countermeasures and battlefield remote sensing. Nonlinear optical effects can be applied to convert existing near-IR laser sources to radiate in the mid-IR. This research focused on achieving such a conversion with a quasi-phase matched optical parametric oscillators using orientation-patterned gallium arsenide (OPGaAs), a material that can be quasi-phased matched by periodically reversing the crystal structure during the epitaxial growth process. Although non-linear optical conversion was not ultimately achieved during this research, many valuable lessons were learned from working with this material. This thesis reviews the theory of nonlinear optics and explores the importance of accurate refractive index measurements to proper structure design. The details of four nonlinear optical experiments are presented recommendations are offered for the design of future OPGaAs crystals. Recommendations are also made for improved experimental techniques

Shorebird Foraging Habitat in Southeast Arkansas

Approximately 500,000 shorebirds travel through the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) each spring and fall. During migration, the average 45g shorebird needs to eat approximately 8g of invertebrates per day. While shorebird stopover habitat guidelines for the MAV are based on an expert estimate of 2g of invertebrates/m2, this estimate has not been quantified in Arkansas. Invertebrate biomass available for shorebird foraging was examined on five properties in southeastern Arkansas during spring and fall migration (fall 2010, spring and fall 2011, and spring 2012). Macroinvertebrate biomass was less than the estimated 2 g/m2 in three of the four sampled seasons. Further validation of the expert invertebrate biomass estimate should be undertaken in the other regions of the MAV. These results suggest that current land management of shorebird stopover habitat in southeastern Arkansas is not providing adequate invertebrate forage to reach the current habitat management goals

BootBandit: A macOS bootloader attack

Historically, the boot phase on personal computers left systems in a relatively vulnerable state. Because traditional antivirus software runs within the operating system, the boot environment is difficult to protect from malware. Examples of attacks against bootloaders include so‐called “evil maid” attacks, in which an intruder physically obtains a boot disk to install malicious software for obtaining the password used to encrypt a disk. The password then must be stored and retrieved again through physical access. In this paper, we discuss an attack that borrows concepts from the evil maid. We assume exploitation can be used to infect a bootloader on a system running macOS remotely to install code to steal the user\u27s password. We explore the ability to create a communication channel between the bootloader and the operating system to remotely steal the password for a disk protected by FileVault 2. On a macOS system, this attack has additional implications due to “password forwarding” technology, in which a user\u27s account password also serves as the FileVault password, enabling an additional attack surface through privilege escalation

Customer dissatisfaction

The initiative chosen should improve services within the Division of Procurement Services of the South Carolina Budget and Control Board. The Division of Procurement Services does not have a formalized customer complaint management system. This project recognizes customer complaints to be a key factor in providing quality services and address the issue

Managing plagiarism in programming assignments with blended assessment and randomisation.

Plagiarism is a common concern for coursework in many situations, particularly where electronic solutions can be provided e.g. computer programs, and leads to unreliability of assessment. Written exams are often used to try to deal with this, and to increase reliability, but at the expense of validity. One solution, outlined in this paper, is to randomise the work that is set for students so that it is very unlikely that any two students will be working on exactly the same problem set. This also helps to address the issue of students trying to outsource their work by paying external people to complete their assignments for them. We examine the effectiveness of this approach and others (including blended assessment) by analysing the spread of similarity scores across four different introductory programming assignments to find the natural similarity i.e. the level of similarity that could reasonably occur without plagiarism. The results of the study indicate that divergent assessment (having more than one possible solution) as opposed to convergent assessment (only one solution) is the dominant factor in natural similarity. A key area for further work is to apply the analysis to a larger sample of programming assignments to better understand the impact of different features of the assignment design on natural similarity and hence the detection of plagiarism