Pick Me! Pick Me!: Using Aristotelian Rhetorical Persuasion and Advertising Appeals for Self-Promotion

This project combines contemporary and classical rhetorical persuasion and applies them to self-promotion. Aristotle’s triad of modes of persuasion, ethos, pathos, and logos, represents classical persuasion. Appeals from advertising, such as humor, fear, music, and argumentum ad populum, represent the contemporary, but also are modern extensions of Aristotle’s triad. These concepts are then applied in such a way that the reader can see how they could use them to their benefit in influencing others. Each concept is defined and shown how it can be used in a spoken communicative way rather than a visual representation. Advertising appeals are typically put into place in commercials to visually show off the positive attributes of a product. For this project’s purpose, the reader is the product being shown off and both the Aristotelian modes and advertising appeals showcase how the reader can advertise himself or herself. To create a better understanding of the concepts outlined, they are then applied to three winners of the elimination-style competition reality show Survivor. On this show, contestants must vote out their fellow cast members, but subsequently stay in their good graces because the eliminated contestants get to decide the winner. Richard Hatch, Sandra Diaz-Twine, and Sarah Lacina all used the outlined concepts and create a verifiable example of how the concepts can be successfully used for the reader’s benefit

A polymer coated cicaprost-eluting stent increases neointima formation and impairs vessel function in the rabbit iliac artery

Drug-eluting stents have been successful in reducing in-stent restenosis but are not suitable for all lesion types and have been implicated in causing late stent thrombosis due to incomplete regeneration of the endothelial cell layer. In this study we implanted stents coated with cicaprost, a prostacyclin analogue with a long plasma half-life and antiproliferative effects on vascular smooth muscle cells, into the iliac arteries of rabbits. At 28-day follow-up we compared neointima formation within the stented vessels and vascular function in adjacent vessels, to assess if cicaprost could reduce restenosis without impairing vessel function. Arteries implanted with cicaprost eluting stents had significantly more neointima compared to bare metal stents. In adjacent segments of artery, endothelium-dependent relaxation was impaired by the cicaprost-eluting stent but vasodilation to an endothelium-independent vasodilator was maintained. We conclude that the presence of the polymer and sub-optimal release of cicaprost from the stent may be responsible for the increased neointma and impaired functional recovery of the endothelium observed. Further experiments should be aimed at optimising release of cicaprost and exploring different stent polymer coatings

Multilingual adaptive search for digital libraries

This paper describes a framework for Adaptive Multilingual Information Retrieval (AMIR) which allows multilingual resource discovery and delivery using on-the-fly machine translation of documents and queries. Result documents are presented to the user in a contextualised manner. Challenges and affordances of both Adaptive and Multilingual IR, with a particular focus on Digital Libraries, are detailed. The framework components are motivated by a series of results from experiments on query logs and documents from The European Library. We conclude that factoring adaptivity and multilinguality aspects into the search process can enhance the user’s experience with online Digital Libraries

Levelling Up Learning: Exploring the Impact of Gamification in Flipped Classrooms

In recent years, the integration of gamification into educational settings has garnered significant attention as a means to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. By leveraging gamified elements such as points and leaderboards, educators aim to promote active participation, motivation, and deeper understanding among students. This study investigates the effects of gamification on student engagement in a flipped classroom environment. The findings suggest that gamification strategies, when effectively implemented, can have a positive impact on student motivation and engagement. This paper concludes with recommendations for educators, potential challenges such as superficial engagement and demotivation, and future directions for research to address these challenges and further explore the potential of gamification in fostering student success.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Cosmic string scaling in flat space

We investigate the evolution of infinite strings as a part of a complete cosmic string network in flat space. We perform a simulation of the network which uses functional forms for the string position and thus is exact to the limits of computer arithmetic. Our results confirm that the wiggles on the strings obey a scaling law described by universal power spectrum. The average distance between long strings also scales accurately with the time. These results suggest that small-scale structure will also scale in expanding universe, even in the absence of gravitational damping.Comment: 13 pages,7 figure

The Effects of Dissolved Methane upon Liquid Argon Scintillation Light

In this paper we report on measurements of the effects of dissolved methane upon argon scintillation light. We monitor the light yield from an alpha source held 20 cm from a cryogenic photomultiplier tube (PMT) assembly as methane is injected into a high-purity liquid argon volume. We observe significant suppression of the scintillation light yield by dissolved methane at the 10 part per billion (ppb) level. By examining the late scintillation light time constant, we determine that this loss is caused by an absorption process and also see some evidence of methane-induced scintillation quenching at higher concentrations (50-100 ppb). Using a second PMT assembly we look for visible re-emission features from the dissolved methane which have been reported in gas-phase argon methane mixtures, and we find no evidence of visible re-emission from liquid-phase argon methane mixtures at concentrations between 10 ppb and 0.1%.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures Updated to match published versio