Understanding Memetic Media and Collective Identity Through Streamer Persona on Twitch.tv

Video game livestreamers on the leading platform Twitch.tv present a carefully curated version of themselves - negotiated in part via interactions with their viewers - resulting in collectively performed personas centred around individual streamers. These collective personas emerge from a combination of live performance, platform features including streamer-specific emoticons and audiovisual overlays, the games that streamers play, and how they play them. In this paper, I interrogate how these elements culminate in a feedback loop between individual streamers and non-streamer participants, specifically how platform features mediate and facilitate interactions between users. I also examine streaming persona as both a product and expression of this dynamic and the subsequent emergence of streamer-based social arrangement and collective value systems. I do this with particular attention to how memes operate uniquely within the livestreaming mode

Evolutionary history of isolation and dispersal in North American ground skinks (Scinella lateralis)

The geographical range, abundance, and cohesion of populations can track landscape and climatic dynamism in ways that help set (and reset) the evolutionary trajectory of a species. Understanding the nature of this interaction can elucidate both evolutionary and geographical history as well as clarify the parameters that govern diversification. In this study, I apply multilocus genetic data from populations of the North American ground skink, Scincella lateralis, to investigate phylogeographic history as well as the interaction between population genetic and geographical processes that have shaped it. First, I examined the geographic distribution of genetic diversity for S. lateralis and tested whether an interaction between riverine barriers and climate-mediated population contractions have contributed to observed patterns. I found evidence for extensive mtDNA fragmentation resulting in 14 lineages and more moderate fragmentation of nuclear loci resulting in seven populations. The distribution and bounds of diversity are consistent with differentiation in response to riverine barriers that were rendered more isolating in the past when populations likely resided in southern refugia. I next applied multilocus sequence data and several analytical methods to reconstruct hierarchical relationships among S. lateralis populations and determine how dispersal has impacted divergence. In doing so, I explored the robustness of methods to assumption violations inherent when evaluating natural populations that have diversified recently and without complete isolation. Discordant hierarchical structure was recovered when using different methods and estimates of divergence and migration were invoked to evaluate population relationships. Rejection of a model of isolation-with-migration is largely contingent upon whether regions near adjacent populations are sampled, suggesting that recent gene flow following allopatric isolation is the primary mode of divergence. Finally, using mtDNA and microsatellite data I investigated the role of rivers in population genetics in more detail by estimating the current rate of S. lateralis migration across the Mississippi River and testing whether migration can be facilitated by meander loop cutoff, a common feature of major rivers. I found that gene flow across the river is high and largely asymmetrical in the direction predicted by cutoff-mediated dispersal, supporting one mechanism that may intermittently contribute to the permeability of riverine barriers

Bolognini Competition 4th Annual Alumni Recital

Program listing performers and works performe

Vehicular Electrification for a Sustainable ERAU Campus

Nathan Dills, Even Jackson, and Brandon Rigby are senior civil engineering students who are passionate about sustainable infrastructure and transportation solutions. Throughout their academic careers, they have demonstrated a keen interest in researching and implementing innovative technologies and practices that promote environmental sustainability and enhance quality of life. As part of a class project, they have conducted research on vehicular electrification and its potential to create a more sustainable campus environment at their university. Together, they are excited to present their findings and contribute to the ongoing dialogue around sustainable transportation and infrastructure

Inferring the evolutionary history of divergence despite gene flow in a lizard species, Scincella lateralis (Scincidae), composed of cryptic lineages

Although recent radiations are fruitful for studying the process of speciation, they are difficult to characterize and require the use of multiple loci and analytical methods that account for processes such as gene flow and genetic drift. Using multilocus sequence data, we combine hierarchical cluster analysis, coalescent species tree inference, and isolation-with-migration analysis to investigate evolutionary relationships among cryptic lineages of North American ground skinks. We also estimate the extent that gene flow has accompanied or followed diversification, and also attempt to account for and minimize the influence of gene flow when reconstructing relationships. The data best support seven largely parapatric populations that are broadly concordant with mitochondrial (mt)DNA phylogeography throughout most of the species range, although they fail to fully represent extensive mtDNA divergence along the Gulf Coast. Relationships within and among three broad geographical groups are well supported, despite evidence of gene flow among them. Rejection of an allopatric divergence model partially depends on the inclusion of samples from near parapatric boundaries in the analyses, suggesting that allopatric divergence followed by recent migration may best explain migration rate estimates. Accounting for geographical variation in patterns of gene flow can improve estimates of migration-divergence parameters and minimize the influence of contemporary gene flow on phylogenetic inference. © 2012 The Linnean Society of London

The combined effects of rivers and refugia generate extreme cryptic fragmentation within the common ground skink (Scincella lateralis)

Rivers can act as both islands of mesic refugia for terrestrial organisms during times of aridification and barriers to gene flow, though evidence for long-term isolation by rivers is mixed. Understanding the extent to which riverine barrier effects can be heightened for populations trapped in mesic refugia can help explain maintenance and generation of diversity in the face of Pleistocene climate change. Herein, we implement phylogenetic and population genetic approaches to investigate the phylogeographic structure and history of the ground skink, Scincella lateralis, using mtDNA and eight nuclear loci. We then test several predictions of a river-refugia model of diversification. We recover 14 well-resolved mtDNA lineages distributed east-west along the Gulf Coast with a subset of lineages extending northward. In contrast, ncDNA exhibits limited phylogenetic structure or congruence among loci. However, multilocus population structure is broadly congruent with mtDNA patterns and suggests that deep coalescence rather than differential gene flow is responsible for mtDNA-ncDNA discordance. The observed patterns suggest that most lineages originated from population vicariance due to riverine barriers strengthened during the Plio-Pleistocene by a climate-induced coastal distribution. Diversification due to rivers is likely a special case, contingent upon other environmental or biological factors that reinforce riverine barrier effects. © 2009 The Society for the Study of Evolution

Influence of Container Color, Media Depth, and Subsequent Light Availability on Stem Elongation of Longleaf Pine

Nathan G. Bolner is an undergraduate student in the School of Agricultural Sciences and Forestry at Louisiana Tech University. D. Paul Jackson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Agricultural Sciences and Forestry at Louisiana Tech Universit

Factors of Group Design Decision Making

Design is a decision-making process. Designers make decisions between alternative solutions,decisions about feasibility of individual solutions, decisions about narrowing or broadening the problem scope. They also make logistical decision about when teams will meet, how decisions will be made. Recent analysis of high school student design activities revealed that groups and individuals are not spending much time on decision processes and it can be assumed that the faculties of beginning college students are in a similar vein. In the past year changes were made to a freshman level design thinking course to improve student approaches to decision making.Accompanying these changes, the instructors, as researchers, have attempted to understand student decision processes in order to improve instruction.This paper will discuss the development of an instrument to help evaluate student decision priorities. Understanding and measuring the decision processes among group decisions poses challenges. Based on an initial review of the literature, an instrument to measure group design decisions was not identified. Literature was reviewed to identify elements of effective design decisions as well as useable items from existing instruments. Literature on effective strategies for decision-making in related fields of study. The survey instrument developed included 16 questions about decision processes that related to four proposed latent constructs. Prior to administration of the instrument, a team of teacher educators and educational researchers provided feedback on content validity. The survey was administered to 218 students following reflection on a group design project at the end of the semester.Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), several results are elucidated. By focusing only on questions in the survey relevant to decision processes, a nascent model was formed with 13 indicators loading on three factors (6, 4, and 4 questions respectively, with one item weakly cross-loading). The model explains 61.814% of the variation in the items and each factor has strong internal consistency as measured by Cronbach’s alpha (α = .898, α = .877, and α = .80).The accompanying results also support a new survey instrument for understanding sources of design decision processes revolving around the three factors: processing data, considering alternatives, and understanding decisions.The model is currently undergoing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a 670 student sample,which will be completed in December 2014. The CFA process may confirm the suggested model as well as evaluate its validity through convergence and discrimination with appropriate metrics of group behavior. Once confirmed, this model could be used in other environments to gauge the ubiquity of these constructs. Regardless of these results however, these findings provide focus areas for subsequent instructional design based on student perceptions of group decision-making processes