Social Perceptions of Word-Final Alveolar Stop Deletion: Examining the Meaning of a Sociophonetic Variable

Word-final alveolar stop deletion is a form of variation that is found in many dialects of American English, and therefore, has been extensively studied and documented in the literature. Within the available literature, however, there is very little information to be found regarding if and how listeners use this variation to form initial judgments about a speaker’s character. The work described in this thesis is an attempt to begin bridging this literary gap. This thesis studies how both word-final alveolar stop deletion and speaker gender, as well as the interactions between these two factors, affect a listener’s initial opinions about a speaker. To achieve the goals of this thesis, a matched guise experiment was designed and run, the results from which are promising. Word-final alveolar stop deletion shows significant results for several characteristics, especially those most closely aligned with a person’s competency. Gender shows significant results for a number of traits as well, particularly those associated with a person’s likability. There are also several characteristics that have significant results for an interaction between these two factors. This thesis indicates that word-final alveolar stop deletion, though overlooked in perceptual work thus far, is a sociolinguistic variable that does carry social meaning for its listeners. Though these results are just an initial step towards understanding the social meaning of this variable, they promise an interesting path for future research

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY’S ROLE IN ADDRESSING MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS IN MIDDLE SCHOOLERS

Adolescence is a period of time filled with many transitions. The transition from elementary to middle school comes with new academic, social, and environmental demands. Currently, adolescents often lack the skills and the support necessary to cope with these demands, leading to an increase in mental health challenges (Moksnes, Lohre, Lillefiell, Byrne, & Haugen, 2016). While there are many school-based interventions designed to support students throughout this difficult transition, many environmental barriers exist which prevent the effective implementation of these interventions. One category of barriers is the lack of school resources. Although there is significant positive research on social emotional learning (SEL) programs, there is still a gap regarding how to effectively translate these programs into the school settings, which is partly due to the limited school resources available (Dowling, Simpkin, & Barry, 2019). The purpose of this project was to identify and analyze supports and barriers to assisting students in transitioning from elementary to middle school. An analysis of the supports and barriers was completed using an occupation-based model. Additionally, the role of the occupational therapy practitioner was considered during the analysis. An extensive literature review on the identified population and factors affecting the population’s mental health and academic success during transition was conducted. Several databases were used during review: CINAHL, PubMed, Google Scholar, and OT search. To guide the design of this product, the Ecology of Human Performance Model (EHP) and the information gathered from the literature review were both used. To address the identified barriers in implementing effective interventions into middle schools, an educational resource was developed for educators and mentors of middle schoolers. The resulting product presents an analysis of the issue with several potential solutions. Additionally, one product was developed in detail. Titled “Facilitating Successful Transitions to Middle School,” this product is a resource and topic guide created to bridge the gap between current literature and successful implementation of adolescent advisory programs. Included in the guide is a link to a completed module which addresses the topic of roles and routines in middle school adolescents. These resources were created to be used by occupational therapy practitioners, educators and mentors who facilitate adolescent advisory programs

A Cross-Case Analysis of Disciplinary Identities Communicated Through Design Reviews

In post-secondary educational settings, discourse is a mechanism by which students develop occupational identities as they engage in a particular community that communicates attributes of their prospective profession. This study focuses on revealing disciplinary identities and how they are conveyed and negotiated during interactions between design students and project reviewers. We draw upon Gee’s identity framework and focus on the enactments of disciplinary identity in three different disciplinary settings: choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering. A cross-case analysis indicated differences that were epistemological (e.g., subjectivity of reviews) and similarities in ways instructors modeled institutional identities. The results have implications for interdisciplinary activities and suggest that disciplines that engage in design have much to learn from one another

Activist leadership in the Caribbean : The case of the University of the West Indies

This chapter investigates how a cross-national university (the University of the West Indies), in a transitional region such as the Caribbean, implements its third mission. We employ a broad understanding of the third mission as engagement in society including entrepreneurial and innovative efforts. Drawing on the entrepreneurial architecture framework, the chapter discusses how systems, structures, strategy, leadership, and culture form a unique mandate to engage in national, regional, but also international challenges.publishedVersio

Exploring Grades 3-5 Mathematics Activities Found Online

We investigate resources on TeachersPayTeachers and discuss how what is available affects our teaching practices

Microbial communities of the Lemon Creek Glacier show subtle structural variation yet stable phylogenetic composition over space and time

Glaciers are geologically important yet transient ecosystems that support diverse, biogeochemically significant microbial communities. During the melt season glaciers undergo dramatic physical, geochemical and biological changes that exert great influence on downstream biogeochemical cycles. Thus, we sought to understand the temporal melt-season dynamics of microbial communities and associated geochemistry at the terminus of Lemon Creek Glacier (LCG) in coastal southern Alaska. Due to late season snowfall, sampling of LCG occurred in three interconnected areas: proglacial Lake Thomas, the lower glacial outflow stream and the glacier’s terminus. LCG associated microbial communities were phylogenetically diverse and varied by sampling location. However, Betaproteobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes dominated communities at all sampling locations. Strict anaerobic groups such as methanogens, SR1, and OP11 were also recovered from glacier outflows, indicating anoxic conditions in at least some portions of the LCG subglacial environment. Microbial community structure was significantly correlated with sampling location and sodium concentrations. Microbial communities sampled from terminus outflow waters exhibited day-to-day fluctuation in taxonomy and phylogenetic similarity. However, these communities were not significantly different from randomly constructed communities from all three sites. These results indicate that glacial outflows share a large proportion of phylogenetic overlap with downstream environments and that the observed significant shifts in community structure are driven by changes in relative abundance of different taxa, and not complete restructuring of communities. We conclude that LCG glacial discharge hosts a diverse and relatively stable microbiome that shifts at fine taxonomic scales in response to geochemistry and likely water residence time

MetaCAM: Ensemble-Based Class Activation Map

The need for clear, trustworthy explanations of deep learning model predictions is essential for high-criticality fields, such as medicine and biometric identification. Class Activation Maps (CAMs) are an increasingly popular category of visual explanation methods for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). However, the performance of individual CAMs depends largely on experimental parameters such as the selected image, target class, and model. Here, we propose MetaCAM, an ensemble-based method for combining multiple existing CAM methods based on the consensus of the top-k% most highly activated pixels across component CAMs. We perform experiments to quantifiably determine the optimal combination of 11 CAMs for a given MetaCAM experiment. A new method denoted Cumulative Residual Effect (CRE) is proposed to summarize large-scale ensemble-based experiments. We also present adaptive thresholding and demonstrate how it can be applied to individual CAMs to improve their performance, measured using pixel perturbation method Remove and Debias (ROAD). Lastly, we show that MetaCAM outperforms existing CAMs and refines the most salient regions of images used for model predictions. In a specific example, MetaCAM improved ROAD performance to 0.393 compared to 11 individual CAMs with ranges from -0.101-0.172, demonstrating the importance of combining CAMs through an ensembling method and adaptive thresholding.Comment: 9 page

Women’s empowerment in agriculture: Lessons from qualitative research

There is growing recognition of the importance of women’s empowerment in its own right and for a range of development outcomes, but less understanding of what empowerment means to rural women and men. The challenge of measuring empowerment, particularly across cultures and contexts, is also garnering attention. This paper synthesizes qualitative research conducted conjointly with quantitative surveys, working with eight agricultural development projects in eight countries, to develop a project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI). The qualitative research sought to identify emic meanings of “empowerment,” validate the domains and indicators of the quantitative index, provide greater understanding of the context of each project and of strategies for facilitating empowerment, and test a methodology for integrating emic perspectives of empowerment with standardized etic measures that allow for comparability across contexts