Balanced Interaction Design

Over the last two decades, creative, agile, lean and strategic design approaches have become increasingly prevalent in the development of interactive technologies, but tensions exist with longer established approaches such as human factors engineering and user-centered design. These tensions can be harnessed productively by first giving equal status in principle to creative, business and agile engineering practices, and then supporting this with flexible critical approaches and resources that can balance and integrate a range of multidisciplinary design practices

Living with Fragile X Syndrome: Occupations as an Outcome Measure in a Clinical Trial

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of semi-structured interviews as an outcome measure in a clinical trial for children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) ages 2-6. This qualitative approach was used to analyze twenty-five interviews of parents with children in a double-blind medication trial - sertraline or placebo. The aim was to assess occupational improvements in their child that may not have been detected with the use quantitative outcome measures alone. Results showed greater improvements in the sertraline group in areas of behavior, social participation, sensory-related behaviors, receptive language, education, family impact and therapeutic strategies. Our findings support the use of semi-structured interviews as an additional outcome measure in a medication trial to account for the voice and context of family experiences through an occupation centered lens.https://scholar.dominican.edu/ug-student-posters/1066/thumbnail.jp

Check The Rhime!: Hip Hop as a continuation of the African American protest tradition, from David Walker’s Appeal (1829) to Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry”(2015)

My thesis presents Hip Hop as a continuation of the African American protest tradition. Drawing upon literature from recognized African American protest movements, including abolitionism, antilynching campaigns, the Civil Rights movement and Black Power, I present Hip Hop as the current embodiment of the protest aesthetic. My work develops the existing understanding of the African American protest aesthetic through the creation of three rhetorical devices or identifiers, embodied by all canonized protest literature. Through the exploration of each rhetorical identifier, I present Hip Hop as both an embodiment and an advancement of the protest aesthetic. Each chapter focuses on a different identifier, from its formation to its application: these are the shared responsibility, formed in slavery; the nightmare, formed by antilynching literature; and performative distress, a rhetorical device created in the latter half of the 1900s. I then apply my work to the responses to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014 and this also forms part of my conclusion. The comparative analysis of Hip Hop, focusing on rap-music, alongside canonized African American protest literature unearths the immense literary debt that the music genre owes to its predecessors. In doing so, I enhance the understanding of the African American protest aesthetic, while suggesting that the work of rappers including Tupac Shakur, Kendrick Lamar and Nas, draws on and extends this aesthetic

Absolutism in action : Frederick William I and the government of East Prussia, 1709-1730

This dissertation examines the operation of Hohenzollern government in the distant but crucial territory of East Prussia during the reign of Frederick William I, 1713-40 to determine what impact the establishment of the General Directory in late 1722 and early 1723 had upon day-to-day administration within the Kingdom of East Prussia. Particular attention is given to the role and operation of provincial and local government in East Prussia during the decades before and after the setting up of the General Directory (General-Ober-Finanz-Kriegs-und Domänen-Direktorium). This study is part of a broader historiographical tendency which questions both the extent and success of Hohenzollern state building and calls into question the validity of the traditional view which gives most attention to the positive role of central state structures and considers the establishment of the General Directory as the apex of the much-admired and widely-emulated Prussian administrative system. This study demonstrates that further governmental modifications were needed in the Kingdom before and after the General Directory's successful operation in the Kingdom in the 1720s and 1730s. The territorial and local levels were where the Hohenzollern rulers would find it crucial to establish their absolutist power. One difficulty Frederick William I faced was that a large corps of loyal officials was lacking in the Kingdom which was only partially remedied by the end of his reign. In addition, critical administrative disputes continued and new ones arose between the King's administrative agencies. Moreover, the powerful native elites who lived in the Kingdom retained significant authority at the provincial and local levels and resisted many reform attempts by a king who they saw as foreign. Their enduring importance helps to explain the distinctive manner in which absolutism developed over these decades. As a result, authority in the Kingdom still was less than securely established by the final decade of Frederick William I's reign

Critically Appraised Paper for “Adaptive vs. non-adaptive cognitive training by means of a personalized App: A randomized trial in people with multiple sclerosis.”

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a working-memory program to improve the cognitive status of people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Given the increasing use of technology in modern-day society, further research is required to provide evidence supporting working-memory training devices that are easily accessible for people with memory deficits

Check The Rhime!: Hip Hop as a continuation of the African American protest tradition, from David Walker’s Appeal (1829) to Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry”(2015)

My thesis presents Hip Hop as a continuation of the African American protest tradition. Drawing upon literature from recognized African American protest movements, including abolitionism, antilynching campaigns, the Civil Rights movement and Black Power, I present Hip Hop as the current embodiment of the protest aesthetic. My work develops the existing understanding of the African American protest aesthetic through the creation of three rhetorical devices or identifiers, embodied by all canonized protest literature. Through the exploration of each rhetorical identifier, I present Hip Hop as both an embodiment and an advancement of the protest aesthetic. Each chapter focuses on a different identifier, from its formation to its application: these are the shared responsibility, formed in slavery; the nightmare, formed by antilynching literature; and performative distress, a rhetorical device created in the latter half of the 1900s. I then apply my work to the responses to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014 and this also forms part of my conclusion. The comparative analysis of Hip Hop, focusing on rap-music, alongside canonized African American protest literature unearths the immense literary debt that the music genre owes to its predecessors. In doing so, I enhance the understanding of the African American protest aesthetic, while suggesting that the work of rappers including Tupac Shakur, Kendrick Lamar and Nas, draws on and extends this aesthetic

Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome

Velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), also known as DiGeorge, conotruncal anomaly face, and Cayler syndromes, is caused by a microdeletion in the long arm of Chromosome 22. We review the history of the syndrome from the first clinical reports almost half a century ago to the current intriguing molecular findings associating genes from the microdeletion region and the physical and neuropsychiatric phenotype of the syndrome. Velocardiofacial syndrome has a wide spectrum of more than 200 physical manifestations including palate and cardiac anomalies. Yet, the most challenging manifestations of VCFS are the learning disabilities and neuropsychiatric disorders. As VCFS is relatively common and as up to one third of the participants with VCFS develop schizophrenia-like psychotic disorder, the syndrome is the most commonly known genetic risk factor to schizophrenia. Identifying the genetic, cognitive, and psychiatric risk factors for VCFS-schizophrenia is under the focus of intensive research