Final Portfolio - SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, 2017-18

Final portfolio of work completed for the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, 2017-18, including the Capstone Project Final Report, the Community Resource entitled “Piloting Faculty OER Grant Programs: A Practical Guide for Librarians,” and the blog Opening Up Liberal Arts Colleges (linked). “Piloting Faculty OER Grant Programs is also available separately in The Cupola

United States Land Cover Land Use Change, Albedo and Radiative Forcing: Past and Potential Climate Implications

Land Cover Land Use (LCLU) change affects Earth surface properties including albedo that impose a radiative forcing on the climate. Recent spatially explicit satellite derived contemporary LCLU, albedo, and projected LCLU data are used to study the impact of LCLU change from 1973 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2050, on albedo and surface radiative forcing for the conterminous United States. Four research hypotheses concerned with past and potential future climate implications of LCLU change are addressed. The research described in this dissertation makes an important contribution to advancing understanding of the role of LCLU change on the climate system, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [2007] currently describes as having a low to medium level of scientific understanding. This research explicitly addresses the recommendation made by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) Radiative Forcing Effects of Climate Change report, for regional studies to better understand climatic responses to LCLU change [NRC, 2005]. This dissertation research has, to date, resulted in one published, one in press and one submitted paper

The effect of memory for serially presented causal information on judgments of contingency

Four experiments investigated whether memory errors might account for errors in contingency judgments. Participants viewed contingencies one event at a time, later recalled the frequencies of the four event types, and judged the extent that they were related. Contingency judgments were more highly correlated with participants\u27 memory of the contingency than with the actual contingency (Experiments 2 & 4); thus implying that inaccurate mental representations of the contingency contribute to erroneous judgments. Decreasing the time to view each event (i.e., from 3 to 5 s) increased the perceived difficulty of recalling event frequencies (Experiments 1 & 2), decreased the percentage of correct frequency estimations (Experiment 1), and increased the likelihood of a differential pattern of errors when recalling event frequencies (Experiment 1). Participants\u27 knowledge of the total number of events (Experiments 2), their knowledge of the distribution of the four event types (Experiments 1-4), and the actual frequency of the event types were found to bias recalled event frequencies (i.e., in Experiments 3 and 4); the latter of which was also responsible for the differential pattern of errors when recalling event frequencies. In closing, the appropriateness of using a statistic calculated on one\u27s memory of the contingency to assess judgment accuracy was discussed

Selecting Affordable Course Materials: Considerations For Faculty

Infographic for faculty illustrating the range of course material options offered by the library and the bookstore at Gettysburg College. Includes information on how assigning each option, from open educational resources to the current edition of commercial textbooks, impacts affordability for students

Factors associated with increased propensity for hamstring injury in English Premier League soccer players

The aim of this study was to concurrently model the influence of a number of physical and performance parameters on subsequent incidence of hamstring injury in a squad of English Premier League soccer players. Thirty six healthy, male, elite, professional soccer players (age 22.6 ± 5.2 years, height 1.81 ± 0.08 m, mass 75.8 ± 9.4 kg, lean mass 69.0 ± 8.0 kg) were assessed during the first week of pre-season training for anthropometry, flexibility, lower limb strength and power, speed and agility. Over the subsequent 45 week competitive season all hamstring injuries were diagnosed and recorded. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to link individual physical and performance capabilities with propensity to sustain a hamstring injury. A model containing age, lean mass, non-counter movement jump (NCM) performance and active hip flexion range of movement (ROM) was significantly (p < 0.05) associated with increased propensity for hamstring injury. Odds for sustaining an injury increased ×1.78 for each 1 year increase in age, ×1.47 for each 1 cm increase in NCM and ×1.29 for each 1° decrease in active range of hip flexion. Older, more powerful and less flexible soccer players are at greater risk of sustaining a hamstring injury. Support staff should identify such individuals and make appropriate interventions to minimise risk without compromising performance capabilities

Reading Methodist Characters the Figure and Politics of Popular Evangelicalism in American Fiction, 1790-1860.

Reading Methodist Characters examines the imaginative appropriation of Methodist and anti-Methodist discourse by U.S. fiction writers working within the Calvinist tradition between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. From the early national novels of Brackenridge and Sedgwick to Hawthorne’s romanticism and Stowe’s sentimentalism, this dissertation establishes and decodes Methodism’s central yet ambivalent significance within American literary history. Whether metonymically representing all evangelical upstarts or metaphorically evoking the enthusiastic, illiterate, and emotional character that distinguished them from their establishment counterparts, Methodism was the figurative vehicle through which authors depicted the dramatic rise of popular evangelicalism and its ramifications for the development of American letters. Controversial from its inception in the 1730s, John Wesley responded to the mockery of his reform movement by declaring the distinguishing mark or “character” of a Methodist to be emotional rather than doctrinal or liturgical. Their emphasis on religious affect set Methodists apart in Britain and would continue to do so in America, but it was the paradox of Methodism that made it so appealing to nineteenth-century fiction writers. “Illiterate” in their lack of literary training or formal schooling, Methodists nevertheless were eloquent and powerful preachers. Often extravagantly emotional, they were also known, as their name implies, for the methodical way they went about securing salvation. Unrepentantly enthusiastic, Methodists nonetheless exhibited an unswerving commitment to practical piety and experimental Christianity. Finally, their fierce opposition to fiction was waged while skillfully employing narrative, imagery, theatricality, and a keen understanding of human psychology in their mission to evangelize every person in the rapidly expanding republic. The Methodist characters this dissertation examines, from Teague O’Regan to Uncle Tom, embody these paradoxical qualities and reflect their creators’ conflicting opinions about Methodism’s miraculous rise to dominance in the nineteenth-century United States. Reliance on a monolithic evangelicalism has prevented literary scholars from discerning the complex ways these writers employed the ongoing competition and confrontation between Methodists and Calvinists to critique emerging religious attitudes about literature, inspiration, education, and the means of appealing to a mass audience. Reading Methodist Characters rectifies this critical oversight by recovering the literary and political significance of Methodist identity.PHDEnglish Language and LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110391/1/barnesch_1.pd

Cosmic Texture from a Broken Global SU(3) Symmetry

We investigate the observable consequences of creating cosmic texture by breaking a global SU(3) symmetry, rather than the SU(2) case which is generally studied. To this end, we study the nonlinear sigma model for a totally broken SU(3) symmetry, and develop a technique for numerically solving the classical field equations. This technique is applied in a cosmological context: the energy of the collapsing SU(3) texture field is used as a gravitational source for the production of perturbations in the primordial fluids of the early universe. From these calculations, we make predictions about the appearance of the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) which would be present if the large scale structure of the universe was gravitationally seeded by the collapse of SU(3) textures.Comment: 28 pages, latex, 11 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

The physiological and emotional effects of touch: Assessing a hand-massage intervention with high self-critics

Research demonstrates that highly self-critical individuals can respond negatively to the initial introduction of a range of therapeutic interventions. Yet touch as a form of therapeutic intervention in self-critical individuals has received limited prior investigation, despite documentation of its beneficial effects for well-being. Using the Forms of Self-Criticism/Self-Reassuring Scale, 15 high- and 14 low- self-critical individuals (from a sample of 139 females) were recruited to assess how self-criticism impacts upon a single instance of focused touch. All participants took part in a hand massage- and haptic control- intervention. Salivary cortisol and alpha amylase, as well as questionnaire measures of emotional responding were taken before and after the interventions. Following hand massage, analyses revealed cortisol decreased significantly across all participants; and that significant changes in emotional responding reflected well-being improvements across all participants. Supplementary analyses further revealed decreased alpha amylase responding to hand massage as compared to a compassion-focused intervention in the same (highly self-critical) individuals. Taken together, the physiological and emotional data indicate high self-critical individuals responded in a comparable manner to low self-critical individuals to a single instance of hand massage. This highlights that focused touch may be beneficial when first engaging highly self-critical individuals with specific interventions.This research was part funded by the Compassionate Mind Foundatio

Thermally Activated Magnetization and Resistance Decay during Near Ambient Temperature Aging of Co Nanoflakes in a Confining Semi-metallic Environment

We report the observation of magnetic and resistive aging in a self assembled nanoparticle system produced in a multilayer Co/Sb sandwich. The aging decays are characterized by an initial slow decay followed by a more rapid decay in both the magnetization and resistance. The decays are large accounting for almost 70% of the magnetization and almost 40% of the resistance for samples deposited at 35 $^oC$. For samples deposited at 50 $^oC$ the magnetization decay accounts for $\sim 50$ of the magnetization and 50% of the resistance. During the more rapid part of the decay, the concavity of the slope of the decay changes sign and this inflection point can be used to provide a characteristic time. The characteristic time is strongly and systematically temperature dependent, ranging from $\sim1$x$10^2 s$ at 400K to $\sim3$x$10^5 s$ at 320K in samples deposited at $35 ^oC$. Samples deposited at 50 $^oC$ displayed a 7-8 fold increase in the characteristic time (compared to the $35 ^oC$ samples) for a given aging temperature, indicating that this timescale may be tunable. Both the temperature scale and time scales are in potentially useful regimes. Pre-Aging, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) reveals that the Co forms in nanoscale flakes. During aging the nanoflakes melt and migrate into each other in an anisotropic fashion forming elongated Co nanowires. This aging behavior occurs within a confined environment of the enveloping Sb layers. The relationship between the characteristic time and aging temperature fits an Arrhenius law indicating activated dynamics