Rewriting the story : videogames within the Post-Gamergate Society

English honors thesisStaring through the scope in Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2007), as you navigate through the boggy swamps of some exotic jungle, there is never any doubt that you are in control. The operator's thumbs roll over the toggles of the controller signaling to the consul how the character on screen must move. By enacting actions within the real world, players affect the actions of the avatar within the game world. To any well-versed videogame player, this is common knowledge; when one plays a videogame it is to be engaged within the world of the game and to ultimately achieve the programmed goal of the game

Effect of Land Use Change on South Texas Bats

Bats were acoustically recorded in South Texas over the summer of 2017. Nine species of bats were recorded and identified

Aging Out of the Foster Care System to Adulthood: Findings, Challenges, and Recommendations

To assess and ultimately help meet the needs of youth who age out of foster care in the United States, the Joint Center Health Policy Institute (JCHPI) -- with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and in partnership with the Black Administrators in Child Welfare Inc. (BACW) -- conducted reconnaissance on the unmet needs of these youth. This project was undertaken to guide the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in thinking about steps they might take to help meet the needs of youth who age out of foster care in this country. Conducting a literature review, a telephone survey, and listening sessions enabled us to develop insights into the workings of the foster care system and the experiences of youth while in the system and when aging out of it

Pop psych: the impact of music and lyrics on emotion

This item is only available electronically.While the effects of music on emotion have been heavily researched, the added influence of lyrics is notoriously difficult to measure. Generally, negative music has been linked with decreased wellbeing and increased aggressive behaviour, but the specific contribution of lyrics remains largely unexplored. To further understand this interaction, original pop songs were written and produced to test the effect of lyrics while controlling for the effect of music. Using a 3 x 2 within-subject design, participants (N = 61) listened to songs in three categories – vitality, unease and sublimity – building on research by Zentner et al. (2008). Each category had two versions with either positive or negative lyrics. 172 words (86 positive, 86 negative) were selected from Warriner et al.’s (2013) database and incorporated into the three song pairs. The track order was counterbalanced between participants. After each song, perceived emotions were reported using the three-dimensional model (Schimmack & Grob, 2000). Participants also responded with felt levels of prosocial (or antisocial) sentiment induced by the stimuli. Intended music emotions were accurately perceived by participants. Importantly, songs with negative lyrics led to lower feelings of prosociality than songs with positive lyrics. This is the first empirical demonstration that lyrics have an effect on felt emotion above and beyond music category. By using such stimuli in future research, along with the use of more subconscious measures, the effects of music and lyrics could be harnessed to facilitate emotions associated with wellbeing and prosocial behaviour. Keywords: music, lyrics, pop, emotion, valence, stimuli, prosocialThesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 201

The Ontogeny of Whistle Production in Infant Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins (\u3ci\u3eTursiops truncatus\u3c/i\u3e) During the First Thirty Days of Life

The manner in which dolphin calves acquire their whistle repertoire is largely unknown. This paper focuses on whistle development in four bottlenose dolphin calves during the first thirty days of life in order to increase our understanding of the early emergence of whistles and whistle-like vocalizations. The acoustic parameters of whistle-type vocalizations (i.e., whistles and whistlesquawks) that coincided with a bubblestream emission from the focal calf and/or its mother were analyzed, as were the behavioral states of the mother-calf pair during the emission of such vocals. Mother and calf whistle rates are inversely related, with the mother whistling more often in the first ten days of the calf’s life, and the calf whistling most often in the third ten days. Maternal whistles are most common when the calf and mother are less than one meter apart whereas the calf whistles are likely to occur when the calf is greater than one meter away from the mother. Only one of the four calves showed a generally stereotyped whistle contour in the first thirty days (day 27), a whistle that has the “tremulous and quavery” quality commonly attributed to young calf whistles (Caldwell & Caldwell, 1979). Whistle-squawks are much more common than adult-like, clear narrowband whistles throughout this developmental period. The maximum frequency, frequency range, and duration of calf whistles and whistle squawks increase with age, suggesting that the acoustic prowess of dolphin calves develops during the first month of life

Animal scavengers as agents of decomposition: the postmortem succession of Louisiana wildlife

Four adult pig carcasses were placed within a wildlife center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in order to determine what conditions animals utilize carrion and which animal species engage in scavenging. The cadavers were deposited without any protective covering and wildlife cameras were placed around the pigs in order to document animal scavenging. In two cases cameras showed that coyotes were the initial animal scavengers followed by opossums. In another case coyotes were inferred to have scavenged the pig due to discovering a similar pattern of disarticulation as compared to the previous two scenes. In the third case turkey vultures skeletonized the pig within twenty-four hours. In this case, the site had less tree cover than the other sites, thus making the cadaver more accessible to avian scavengers. In cases where coyotes interacted with the carrion, the skeletal remains were recovered in a linear distribution with the cranium in the original location of the body, the mandible a few feet away from the cranium in the direction of coyote movement and the remaining skeletal remains in line with the first two skeletal elements in the direction of movement. One bone was found with discernable animal gnaw markings. Because this bone was recovered in the late stages of decomposition I infer that carnivorous animals are more likely to gnaw on bones near or after full skeletonization of a body. Precipitation was found to be a determining factor in animal scavenging as animals did not interact with the cadavers on days when it rained on a day following a day when it rained

HD 179949b - a close orbiting extrasolar giant planet with a stratosphere?

The original article can be found at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com Copyright Blackwell Publishing. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13831.xWe have carried out a search for the 2.14-μm spectroscopic signature of the close orbiting extrasolar giant planet, HD179949b. High-cadence time-series spectra were obtained with the Cryogenic high-resolution InfraRed ´ Echelle Spectrograph at Very Large Telescope, Unit 1 on two closely separated nights. Deconvolution yielded spectroscopic profiles with mean signal-to-noise ratios of several thousand, enabling the near-infrared contrast ratios predicted for the HD179949 system to be achieved. Recent models have predicted that the hottest planets may exhibit spectral signatures in emission due to the presence of TiO and VO which may be responsible for a temperature inversion high in the atmosphere.We have used our phase-dependent orbital model and tomographic techniques to search for the planetary signature under the assumption of an absorption line dominated atmospheric spectrum, where T and V are depleted from the atmospheric model, and an emission line dominated spectrum, where TiO and VO are present. We do not detect a planet in either case, but the 2.120–2.174-μm wavelength region covered by our observations enables the deepest near-infrared limits yet to be placed on the planet/star contrast ratio of any close orbiting extrasolar giant planet system. We are able to rule out the presence of an atmosphere dominated by absorption opacities in the case of HD179949b at a contrast ratio of Fp/F∗ ∼ 1/3350, with 99 per cent confidence.Peer reviewe