Career Center Mural Project

Research for this project started in the fall semester of 2019 when I was assigned my graduate mentor, Erica Lewis, to assist and guide me through the process of my research. I then came up ideas that could be used for the Career Center\u27s mural: (1) Portraits of the famous alumni who attended the University of Louisville, (2) School of Law building with the circular path and landscape, displaying students walking their way through college; contains the first thoughts as a freshman when it comes to choosing a major, progressing to show the students walking through college to graduation, (3) well-known landmarks in the Louisville area to express the opportunity for future employment in the city After coming up with these concepts, I showed the three sketch ideas to Samantha La Mar at the university’s Career Center. We decided that instead of dividing one design across two walls, I would instead use two ideas: the School of Law landscape and the famous alumni portraits. During the 2019 winter break, I started working on the physical mural itself. For the portrait mural, I used a projector to plan out the compositional layout of the alumni portraits with Erica’s assistance. For the larger School of Law mural, also physically started over winter break, I laid down base coats before adding details in the spring. These two murals where both finished around the first week of February 2020. Upon completion, a reception was held on February 26th to showcase my work.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1009/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of Shame on Medication-Assisted Therapy Treatment Outcomes for Individuals with a Severe Opiate Use Disorder

Shame has a significant impact on various psychopathologies including depression (Pinto et al., 2012), anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (Bryan et al., 2013). The gap in this research is the quantitative impact of shame on the relapse cycle in individuals with a severe opioid use disorder. This research study will demonstrate the impact of shame on the expression of addictive behavior in patients that have a diagnosed opiate use disorder and are currently actively enrolled in a medication-assisted therapy treatment program. This research study will illustrate how the presence of increased therapeutic alliance strength can result in the reduction of addictive behavior and shame. This proposal seeks to establish shame as a predictor of addictive behavior. Showing how, even when the biological use cycle is considered with the use of well-established pharmaceutical therapies, the impact of shame is so great that addictive behaviors increase. This study will explore research surrounding the impact of shame on opiate use disorders, the development of therapeutic/working alliances, and the role that this relationship has on shame reduction and the reduction of addictive behaviors

Finite Difference Schemes for Integral Equations with Minimal Regularity Requirements

Volterra integral equations arise in a variety of applications in modern physics and engineering, namely in interactions that contain a memory term. Classical formulations of these problems are largely inflexible when considering non-homogeneous media, which can be problematic when considering long term interactions of real-world applications. The use of fractional derivative and integral terms naturally relax these restrictions in a natural way to consider these problems in a more general setting. One major drawback to the use of fractional derivatives and integrals in modeling is the regularity requirement for functions, where we can no longer assume that functions are as smooth or as well behaved as their classical counterparts. This work outlines the derivation and application of a class of stable and convergent finite difference methods to discretize weakly singular integrals which occur in Volterra integral equations. This derivation is motivated by classical discretizations that arise in Caputo fractional derivatives. We present a time-fractional diffusion equation as a case study to develop the finite difference scheme, where the Laplace transform is used to pose the problem equivalently as a Volterra integral equation, which is then discretized. A generalized scheme is presented to consider a much wider class of integral equations, which allows for the consideration of applications of the Fourier transform. This ultimately allows for a natural discretization of both time- and space-fractional diffusion and differential equations. Some natural physical applications are considered to fully utilize these schemes. The novelty of these schemes is in its simplicity and efficiency when compared to classic methods of discretization, especially for Caputo fractional derivatives. Typical discretizations in the fractional derivative form over-assume regularity to discretize a full derivative term, which subsequently restricts the admissible solution space. Other considerations from discretizing the fractional derivative form include negatively impacting the rate of convergence from the remaining fractional integration term, which is recovered by the use of non-uniform mesh partitions to recover some of the order of convergence

Political Partisanship and Female High School Students Who Carry Handguns

The United States is a gun culture nation, and gun violence is a serious problem. Because there are more than 280 million guns in America with over 65 million handguns in circulation, the Republicans believe that there are too many guns in America to prevent criminals from illegally obtaining them. In addition, only law-abiding residents will honor gun-control laws. As a result, law-abiding residents will become defenseless, which will promote crime. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that the gun-related crime problem will never be solved until actions are taken to eliminate the availability of handguns. After all, it is hard to commit a gun-related crime if a person does not have the means to commit a gun-related crime. According to the Democrats, if the number of handguns in society is not reduced, then the gun-related crime problem will not be solved. According to the differential association theory, individuals become law violators when they are in contact with people, groups, and events that produce an excess of definitions that are favorable toward criminality. Criminal behaviors are influenced by the legal code and are learned via interactions with other people. Furthermore, a person’s behavior will be influenced by the frequency, importance, duration, and intensity of the social learning experiences. By allowing or restricting the carrying of concealed handguns for law-abiding residents, Democrats and Republicans attempt to create the ambience they envision, which they believe will reduce social harm. If high school students carry concealed handguns, which is against the law, then this would indicate that they are learning to do so in that politically created social environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference between Democrat and Republican states in the percentage of female high school students who carry handguns in their respective jurisdictions. This study examined electronic second-hand data collected in 2013, 2015, and 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although Republican states seem to have higher mean rates of female high school students who carried handguns than Democrat states, the results of the logistic regression for repeated measures indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between female high school students who carry handguns and political party. This study is important because it demonstrates that neither political party is better than the other when it comes to creating a social learning environment that discourages female high school students from carrying handguns

Feasibility Evaluation of Commercially Available Video Conferencing Devices to Technically Direct Untrained Nonmedical Personnel to Perform a Rapid Trauma Ultrasound Examination.

Introduction: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a rapidly expanding discipline that has proven to be a valuable modality in the hospital setting. Recent evidence has demonstrated the utility of commercially available video conferencing technologies, namely, FaceTime (Apple Inc, Cupertino, CA, USA) and Google Glass (Google Inc, Mountain View, CA, USA), to allow an expert POCUS examiner to remotely guide a novice medical professional. However, few studies have evaluated the ability to use these teleultrasound technologies to guide a nonmedical novice to perform an acute care POCUS examination for cardiac, pulmonary, and abdominal assessments. Additionally, few studies have shown the ability of a POCUS-trained cardiac anesthesiologist to perform the role of an expert instructor. This study sought to evaluate the ability of a POCUS-trained anesthesiologist to remotely guide a nonmedically trained participant to perform an acute care POCUS examination. Methods: A total of 21 nonmedically trained undergraduate students who had no prior ultrasound experience were recruited to perform a three-part ultrasound examination on a standardized patient with the guidance of a remote expert who was a POCUS-trained cardiac anesthesiologist. The examination included the following acute care POCUS topics: (1) cardiac function via parasternal long/short axis views, (2) pneumothorax assessment via pleural sliding exam via anterior lung views, and (3) abdominal free fluid exam via right upper quadrant abdominal view. Each examiner was given a handout with static images of probe placement and actual ultrasound images for the three views. After a brief 8 min tutorial on the teleultrasound technologies, a connection was established with the expert, and they were guided through the acute care POCUS exam. Each view was deemed to be complete when the expert sonographer was satisfied with the obtained image or if the expert sonographer determined that the image could not be obtained after 5 min. Image quality was scored on a previously validated 0 to 4 grading scale. The entire session was recorded, and the image quality was scored during the exam by the remote expert instructor as well as by a separate POCUS-trained, blinded expert anesthesiologist. Results: A total of 21 subjects completed the study. The average total time for the exam was 8.5 min (standard deviation = 4.6). A comparison between the live expert examiner and the blinded postexam reviewer showed a 100% agreement between image interpretations. A review of the exams rated as three or higher demonstrated that 87% of abdominal, 90% of cardiac, and 95% of pulmonary exams achieved this level of image quality. A satisfaction survey of the novice users demonstrated higher ease of following commands for the cardiac and pulmonary exams compared to the abdominal exam. Conclusions: The results from this pilot study demonstrate that nonmedically trained individuals can be guided to complete a relevant ultrasound examination within a short period. Further evaluation of using telemedicine technologies to promote POCUS should be evaluated

The 3 P\u27s: Pewdiepie, Popularity, and Profitability

This article takes an in-depth look at the most subscribed individual YouTube channel, Pewdiepie, as of 2019. Using the theoretical framework of Parasocial Interactions Theory, Hegemonic Masculinities Theory (HMT), and Inclusive Masculinities Theory (IMT), it is possible to better understand the factors of Pewdiepie’s popularity that have led to profitability. By surveying 50 Pewdiepie experts (via Instagram and YouTube), data about this particular relationship between popularity and profitability was obtained. This article puts forth the argument that factors such as Pewdiepie’s consistent uploading and sense of humor contribute to his immense popularity which only makes him more profitable. The more viewers that watch Pewdiepie’s videos, the more money he can make based on ad revenue and merchandise sales. This research contributes to a greater understanding of YouTube, consumer behavior, and Parasocial relationships. Pewdiepie’s ability to grow with the gaming industry and overcome controversy makes him a character of resilience

Developing Wound Moisture Sensors: Opportunities and Challenges for Laser-Induced Graphene-Based Materials

Recent advances in polymer composites have led to new, multifunctional wound dressings that can greatly improve healing processes, but assessing the moisture status of the underlying wound site still requires frequent visual inspection. Moisture is a key mediator in tissue regeneration and it has long been recognised that there is an opportunity for smart systems to provide quantitative information such that dressing selection can be optimised and nursing time prioritised. Composite technologies have a rich history in the development of moisture/humidity sensors but the challenges presented within the clinical context have been considerable. This review aims to train a spotlight on existing barriers and highlight how laser-induced graphene could lead to emerging material design strategies that could allow clinically acceptable systems to emerge