Intentionally So: Morality in Children’s Literature

There are tales that follow us from childhood and into adult life: they take the shape of children’s stories. Within these books there are moral lessons to be learned; often times these lessons are communicated through enchanting characters and strange settings. However, in addition to the morality that can be found in the pages of these texts, I believe there is also a morality surrounding their creation. More specifically, the way their authors approach their writing. By looking at the two works The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a relationship between the author’s intentions and the way the moral narrative presents itself in a story comes to light. This is no simple relationship, and this project will prove that the connection between intention and morality easily becomes blurred. However, before this dynamic is revealed arguments by theorists Roland Barthes and E.D. Hirsch, Jr. are presented to first identify what the significance an author brings to their text, if there is any significance at all. A journey filled with rabbits, a world underground, and angry neighbors, it certainly may feel as though we have fallen down a rabbit hole. However, the moral of this particular story eventually becomes apparent: an author who writes their children’s story intentionally lends their text a clearer moral narrative

Against The Odds With A Red Solo Cup, T-Shirt, And A Bible: Motivations And Expectations Of Non-Drinking Fraternity Men

Extensive research has consistently linked high-risk alcohol use and fraternity membership. However, not all men who join fraternities are high-risk drinkers. This qualitative descriptive case study describes the experiences and motivations of six nondrinking fraternity men to better understand who they were before they arrived on campus, why they joined the organization they did, and how they navigate the fraternity environment. The research conducted for this study indicates that their experiences and motivations for joining and staying in fraternities are identified in three primary ways: (1) their upbringing and the role that parental expectations play, (2) the influence of faith in fraternities and how religious beliefs and spiritual values guide decision making; and (3) the ways in which the individuals socialize and manage the party scene without alcohol. This study informs the body of literature from an anti-deficit approach and tells a story that is currently not available. The findings for this study have implications for students and for campus administrators. Insights can inform more strategic efforts in addressing non-drinking students on campus. In addition, the findings can influence potential change within the fraternity system and current research on the little known experiences of nondrinkers. Future directions for research include the non-drinking sorority women experience and comparisons of groups and relationships with non-drinking members

Exceptional Configurations with the Clover Action

We study exceptional modes of both the Wilson and the clover action in order to understand why quenched clover spectroscopy suffers so severely from exceptional configurations. We show that a large clover coefficient can make the exceptional modes extremely localized and thus very sensitive to short distance fluctuations. We contrast this with the case of the Wilson action where exceptional modes correspond to large instantons. These modes are broadly extended and suffer much less from discretization errors.Comment: LATTICE98(improvement

I Just Can\u27t Make Eyes Behave

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/1662/thumbnail.jp

Experiential Learning Enhances Physical Therapist Student Confidence in Management of Neurologically-Involved Adults and Children

Purpose/ Hypothesis: As physical therapy (PT) students advance through an entry-level professional program, clinical decision making skills improve, though self-confidence in treating individuals with neurological impairments does not. One technique to improve PT student self-confidence with this population is the addition of experiential learning opportunities, which uses direct student interaction with community volunteers to simulate clinical application of didactic material. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of experiential learning using community participants who were neurologically-involved, on PT students’ perceived self-confidence. It was hypothesized that PT students would report greater levels of self-confidence in their neurological patient management skills following the 4 week experience. Number of subjects: 129 Materials/ Methods: As part of their curriculum, PT students at the University of St. Augustine are required to participate in Patient Oriented Integrated Neurological Treatment (POINT) labs in both their final neuromuscular and pediatric classes. The POINT labs are divided into an adult and pediatric section, requiring the students to evaluate and treat a volunteer from both sections once weekly for 4 weeks. A survey study was conducted over 3 semesters to assess students\u27 perception in how confident they felt with evaluation and treatment of neurologically involved people across the lifespan. PT students (N = 129) were given the survey immediately prior to the start of the first POINT lab. The survey contained 10 questions and took 5 minutes to complete. The same survey was given to the PT students immediately after the final POINT lab. Results: Paired samples t-test was performed on each student\u27s summed pretest and posttest scores. On average, students reported more self- confidence in the posttest survey, -7.91, BCa 95% CI [-8.98, -6.75], which was significant t(128) = -13.841, p\u3c.001, and represented a large effect size, d = 1.70, indicating increased self-confidence after the POINT labs. Principal access factor analysis was conducted on the 10-item questionnaire. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure varied the sampling adequacy for the analysis, KMO = .876. Eigenvalues were obtained for each factor in the data. Two factors had eigenvalues over Kaiser’s criterion of 1, and in combination explained 35.72% of the variance. We retained two factors based on the scree plot and Kaiser’s criterion. All items in the first factor had high reliabilities, Cronbach’s a = .848 and the items in the second factor had a good reliability, Cronbach’s a = .743. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with our hypothesis that PT students perceive greater levels of confidence in their neurological patient management following the POINT lab experience. Clinical Relevance: Experiential learning with neurologically involved community participants is an effective strategy to prepare students for their clinical internships. This study supports the use of a 4 week POINT lab in entry-level professional PT curriculum

Do People Perceive Alexa as Gendered? A Cross-Cultural Study of People’s Perceptions, Expectations, and Desires of Alexa

Mainly, the scholarly debate on Alexa has focused on sexist/anti-woman gender representations in the everyday life of many families, on a cluster of themes such as privacy, insecurity, and trust, and on the world of education and health. This paper takes another stance and explores via online survey methodology how university student respondents in two countries (the United States, n = 333; and Italy, n = 322) perceive Alexa’s image and gender, what they expect from this voice-based assistant, and how they would like Alexa to be. Results of a free association exercise showed that Alexa’s image was scarcely embodied or explicitly gendered. Rather, Alexa was associated with a distinct category of being—the VBA, virtual assistant, or digital helper—with which one talks, and which possesses praiseworthy technical and social traits. Expectations of Alexa and desires regarding Alexa’s ideal performance are presented and compared across the two country samples

Can Social Networking Be Used to Promote Engagement in Child Maltreatment Prevention Programs? Two Pilot Studies

Introduction: Child maltreatment is one of the United States’ most significant public health problems.In efforts to prevent maltreatment experts recommend use of Behavioral Parent Training Programs(BPTs), which focus on teaching skills that will replace and prevent maltreating behavior. eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. While there isresearch to support the effectiveness of BPTs in maltreatment prevention, the reach of such programsis still limited by several barriers, including poor retention of families in services. Recently, newtechnologies have emerged that offer innovative opportunities to improve family engagement. Thesetechnologies include smartphones and social networking; however, very little is known about thepotential of these to aid in maltreatment prevention. The primary goal of this study was to conduct 2pilot exploratory projects. Methods: The first project administered a survey to parents and providers to gather data about at-risk parents’ use of smartphones and online social networking technologies. The second project tested asocial networking-enhanced brief parenting program with 3 intervention participants and evaluatedparental responses. Results: Seventy-five percent of parents surveyed reported owning a computer that worked. Eightyninepercent of parents reported that they had reliable Internet access at home, and 67% said theyused the Internet daily. Three parents participated in the intervention with all reporting improvement in parent-child interaction skills and a positive experience participating in the social networking-enhanced SafeCare components. Conclusion: In general, findings suggest that smartphones, social networking, and Facebook, in particular, are now being used by individuals who show risk factors forma treatment. Further, themajorityof parents surveyed in this study said that they like Facebook, and all parents surveyed said that they useFacebook and have a Facebook account. As well, all saw it as a potentially beneficial supplement forfuture parents enrolling in parenting programs

Investigating and Optimizing the Chiral Properties of Lattice Fermion Actions

We study exceptional modes of both the Wilson and the clover action in order to understand why quenched clover spectroscopy suffers so severely from exceptional configurations. We show that, in contrast to the case of the Wilson action, a large clover coefficient can make the exceptional modes extremely localized and thus very sensitive to short distance fluctuations. We describe a way to optimize the chiral behavior of Wilson-type lattice fermion actions by studying their low energy real eigenmodes. We find a candidate action, the clover action with fat links with a tuned clover term. We present a calculation of spectroscopy and matrix elements at Wilson gauge coupling beta=5.7. When compared to simulations with the standard (nonperturbatively improved) clover action at small lattice spacing, the action shows good scaling behavior, with an apparent great reduction in the number of exceptional configurations.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX with 24 eps figures; Due to the suggestion of a referee, the previous version of this paper has been merged with hep-lat/9807002. Otherwise no major change in the contents of either pape