Bright Half Life Assistant Director

My Theatre Arts thesis project was working as an assistant director (AD) on the play “Bright Half Life,” alongside my director/professor, Dana Resnick. This play ran from August 29 through September 1 at the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester in the Strub Theatre at LMU. For this project I was expected to perform a number of duties and responsibilities. The other assistant director and I were present at every production meeting, rehearsal, and performance to assist our director in establishing, creating, and guiding her vision for the play into life. We all met with the designers for the show’s set, lights, sound, and costumes to collaborate on what physical stimuli to bring together in order to exemplify the feelings we believed the show to hold. The other AD and I were also expected to work together on a script analysis of the play in order to expand our knowledge on the show and focus on many details within the story. This expansive research helped our team work through many of the questions that arose during the rehearsal process regarding the story and the characters’ intentions. Because of the presence of two AD’s, we could each split off with the two student-actors in the show and run lines with them individually, which was beneficial because of the women’s presence onstage for the entire 80-minute run-time, sharing a plethora of lines. By the end of the project, when the rehearsal process and performances were finished, I had successfully played my part in helping to put up a full-length, mainstage play within the theatre department, and I learned innumerable lessons in directing, leading, and general theatre experience that I had not previously had the opportunity to learn

The Effects of Social Pressures on Exercise Motivation and Performance

Though it is recommended that the average person should exercise about 75 minutes a week, so many people barely perform in physical activity at all. Those who do not work out regularly do not do it because they do not find it enjoyable and find that its difficulty outweighs its benefits. If exercising was more enjoyable, more people would do it and care about their health. To make exercise more fun, I plan on introducing a social influence on people and measuring how much they work out in a week. Participants will go to the gym for four consecutive weeks, alternating each week with going alone, going with one exercise partner, going alone again, and going with two exercise partners. They will be measured on how long they are at the gym to see if motivation to exercise increases with number of exercise partners, and they will report on a survey at the end of the study how they think having a partner(s) affects their performance versus when they exercise alone. I hypothesize that if the number of people one exercises with is increased, then performance and motivation to exercise for a longer period of time will also increase

Adoptive Behaviors of Farmers After Training and Their Subsequent Diffusive Behaviors In Uasin Gishu County, Kenya

This study focused on Kenyan farmers in the Moiben area who participated in three agricultural seminars at Twiga demonstration farm. The problem of interest was the need for increased dissemination of improved agricultural practices to enhance production and processing of crops related to food security and socio-economic well-being. The study investigated associations between adoptive behaviors of participants and their subsequent behavior related to diffusing improved practices to others. Data was collected using a demographic questionnaire and two structured interview schedules. Correlational analysis was conducted on post-training behavior variables, using Kendall’s tau calculations. The study found that farmers across the samples who exhibited higher levels of adoption of workshop-recommended innovations also had a moderate to strong likelihood of showing correspondingly higher levels of diffusion-related behavior. It was concluded that these findings align well with Rogers’ (2003) discussion of change-agent credibility, and also with Bandura’s (2006) work on social modeling and perceived self-efficacy. It was recommended that offering community-based agricultural seminars such as those in this study be continued and expanded, as an important component in a pluralistic model of agricultural extension methodology for Sub-Saharan Africa. It was further recommended that farmers who adopt improved practices learned in training be identified specifically for further interventions related to implementation and diffusion of agricultural innovations

Characterization of Organics Consistent with b-Chitin Preserved in the Late Eocene Cuttlefish Mississaepia mississippiensis.

Background: Preservation of original organic components in fossils across geological time is controversial, but the potential such molecules have for elucidating evolutionary processes and phylogenetic relationships is invaluable. Chitin is one such molecule. Ancient chitin has been recovered from both terrestrial and marine arthropods, but prior to this study had not been recovered from fossil marine mollusks. Methodology/Principal Findings: Organics consistent with b-chitin are recovered in cuttlebones of Mississaepia mississippiensis from the Late Eocene (34.36 million years ago) marine clays of Hinds County, Mississippi, USA. These organics were determined and characterized through comparisons with extant taxa using Scanning Electron Microscopy/Energy Dispersive Spectrometry (SEM/EDS), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (Hyperprobe), Fourier Transmission Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Immunohistochemistry (IHC). Conclusions/Significance: Our study presents the first evidence for organics consistent with chitin from an ancient marine mollusk and discusses how these organics have been degraded over time. As mechanisms for their preservation, we propose that the inorganic/organic lamination of the cuttlebone, combined with a suboxic depositional environment with available free Fe2+ ions, inhibited microbial or enzymatic degradation.shell morphology and ultrastructure as a key to coleoid cephalopod phylogen

The Dynamic Mosaic Disturbance and Development of Antarctic Benthic Communities

The continental shelf is the platform for many of the planet’s most productive ecosystems but it is exposed to high disturbance. At high latitudes, massive grounded ice sheets have extended and retreated during glaciations whilst at lower latitudes sea level changes alternately emerse it as land or deepen it below the euphotic zone. The magnitude, frequency and mode of disturbances differ around the planet and in this chapter we describe these for the the Antarctic region, where icebergs and the highest wind speeds and wave heights in the world result in communities in a continuous cycle of disturbance and recolonization. Concepts of disturbance, colonization and early development or succession have been a source of considerable interest to ecologists for more than a century but now, with increasing realisation that the world’s coastal areas are facing unprecedented and accelerating anthropogenic threats (Jackson et al.,2001) these concepts have assumed new importance