Being Listened to With Empathy: The Experience and Effect for Emerging and Middle-Aged Adults

This study examined the experience of being listened to with empathy for two lifespan cohorts, using survey methodology to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 223 emerging adults (ages 18–25) and 61 middle-aged adults (ages 35–64). While both cohorts described the impact of empathic listening with similar positive themes, including feeling cared for and happy, chi-square analyses revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups in the frequencies of nine of the twenty-seven themes (33.3%). Independent t-tests also identified statistically significant differences in perceived empathy based on the listeners’ age cohort. First, respondents rated middle-aged listeners higher on the Responding subscale of the Active-Empathic Listening Scale–Partner-Report Single-Event (AELS–PRSE), suggesting that middle-aged listeners are more empathically responsive than their emerging adult counterparts. Additionally, the AELS–PRSE correlated positively with the Feeling-with Scale, reflecting prevailing definitions of empathy that include a listener’s feeling-with state, and suggesting that future research of empathic listening should include feeling-with items. Finally, the AELS–PRSE correlated positively and strongly with the Caring Scale, suggesting that future research of empathic listening should including caring items in order to clarify the currently contested role of caring in empathic responsiveness

Radiative Transfer in the Martian Environment: In-Situ Results from the MSL Curiosity Rover and Laboratory Experimentation on Martian Regolith and Crystalline Rock Analogs

Global circulation models predicted a suppressed planetary boundary layer within Gale Crater prior to the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory. Images from Mars allow the amount of suspended dust near the crater floor to be estimated numerically. The atmosphere within the crater is shown to be relatively dust free compared to the amount of dust inferred in the atmospheric column, suggesting little mixing between the upper and lower layers. The dust within the crater appears to be well mixed horizontally, implying that dust events (such as dust devils or lateral dust transport) in the northern plains of Gale Crater are rare, even during the most convective time of day. This supports the notion of a suppressed planetary boundary layer within Gale Crater. Radiative transfer modeling of the martian atmosphere benefits from this quantification of low-lying dust. This dissertation aims to expand our knowledge of the radiation environment of Mars into its surface and subsurface. The scattering of radiation through analog martian materials is an area with little research. A mini-goniometer is built to collect transmission spectra as a function of scattering angle for martian analog regoliths and crystalline rock samples. Materials show strong forward or isotropic scattering profiles through the samples. The transmission through the materials is assessed at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Kieserite and the majority of the rock samples exhibit an isotropic scattering profile and attenuate ultraviolet radiation significantly. Ultraviolet shielding materials are potential ecological niches for biosignatures, and this dissertation aims to guide the search for these environments on present day Mars. Studies into the habitability of martian surface analogs typically assess the amount of radiation transmitting perpendicular into a surface. This does not fully characterize the multiple surface scattering that exists within these materials. The depths at which radioresistant microorganisms can exist on present day Mars are estimated by modeling the isotropic transmission scattering profiles for kieserite and crystalline rocks under martian insolation. A depth between 2 and 10 mm into the martian subsurface is enough to attenuate ultraviolet radiation to levels suitable to terrestrial radioresistant microorganisms

Constructing Social Media, Constructing Fear: A Research Proposal

As the amount of social media users increase, upwards of 66% of US adults in 2017, it can be expected that media corporations will follow. (Shearer and Gottfried 2017) Social media accounts for 35% of pathway to news (Mitchell et al. 2017) and considering 66% of online news content developers are owned by media conglomerates, it is likely to believe that many of the stories seen by users are recycled and reinforced. The relevance of this becomes clearer once noting that 33% of news is strictly crime focused. (Callanan 2012) Not only does social media provide users with content that has traditionally influenced a tinted sense of reality, but it also provides ample opportunities for follow-up actions. With 53% of social media news receiving a follow-up actions of sorts, it is likely to believe that follow-up actions may also be influential to a person’s sense of crime. (Mitchell et al. 2017) Furthermore, the increase in access to news is accompanied with an increase in access to “fake news.” 64% of US adults agree that fake news can cause great confusion, yet only 16% realizing the falsity of the news after sharing. (Barthel et al. 2016) In other words, misleading news stories have the potential to cause much harm by going unnoticed, thus the need for understanding the relationship of news and social media becomes that much more relevant. The purpose of this literature review is to address the following themes: the cognitive impact of news, crime, and social media usage, the symbolic underpinnings of news and crime, and the sociological impact of news and crime. After addressing all major exports of the literature, I will be connecting the dots in order to address the potential social impacts of crime infotainment and news through social media

Relational intersection of youth sport participation and identity development

Youth sport has continued to grow in attraction, particularly in the United States. Many youth, at younger and younger ages, are entering the confines of sport yet expansive research is still lacking in fully exploring the many facets that are a part of youth sport participation. It is of the upmost importance that research in this area is conducted, as youth are participating in sport at a significant time in their growth and development. Youth development is not only impacted by internal processes but also through experiences, such as sport. This analysis explores the positive, neutral, or negative relationship of identity development with sport participation in the hopes of bringing awareness and understanding to the relationship of youth sport participation on the development of youth

Fluid-rich damage zone of an ancient out-of-sequence thrust, Kodiak Islands, Alaska

The Uganik Thrust is a fossil out-of-sequence thrust fault which was active over a period of 3 Ma during the early Tertiary until activity ceased with the subduction of the Kula-Farallon spreading ridge at 57 Ma. During this period the fault experienced at least 1 km of throw and developed a strongly asymmetric damage zone. The brittle damage zone in the footwall of the fault acted as a conduit for fluid advection during the active faulting. A similar asymmetrical footwall damage zone has been interpreted as a fluid conduit at the Nobeoka Thrust, Shimanto Belt, SW Japan. Thermal indicators in the uppermost footwall give similar maximum paleotemperatures to those in the hanging wall (280C), while previous work elsewhere in the footwall formation suggests maximum burial temperatures of 240C. In this case, similar to the Irish Canyon thrust in the Franciscan accretionary complex, the location of the thermal anomaly is spatially offset from the structural fault which caused it owing to thermal overprinting in the vicinity of the fault

Improved Underwater Excitation-Emission Matrix Fluorometer

A compact, high-resolution, two-dimensional excitation-emission matrix fluorometer (EEMF) has been designed and built specifically for use in identifying and measuring the concentrations of organic compounds, including polluting hydrocarbons, in natural underwater settings. Heretofore, most EEMFs have been designed and built for installation in laboratories, where they are used to analyze the contents of samples collected in the field and brought to the laboratories. Because the present EEMF can be operated in the field, it is better suited to measurement of spatially and temporally varying concentrations of substances of interest. In excitation-emission matrix (EEM) fluorometry, fluorescence is excited by irradiating a sample at one or more wavelengths, and the fluorescent emission from the sample is measured at multiple wavelengths. When excitation is provided at only one wavelength, the technique is termed one-dimensional (1D) EEM fluorometry because the resulting matrix of fluorescence emission data (the EEM) contains only one row or column. When excitation is provided at multiple wavelengths, the technique is termed two-dimensional (2D) EEM fluorometry because the resulting EEM contains multiple rows and columns. EEM fluorometry - especially the 2D variety - is well established as a means of simultaneously detecting numerous dissolved and particulate compounds in water. Each compound or pool of compounds has a unique spectral fluorescence signature, and each EEM is rich in information content, in that it can contain multiple fluorescence signatures. By use of deconvolution and/or other mixture-analyses techniques, it is often possible to isolate the spectral signature of compounds of interest, even when their fluorescence spectra overlap. What distinguishes the present 2D EEMF over prior laboratory-type 2D EEMFs are several improvements in packaging (including a sealed housing) and other aspects of design that render it suitable for use in natural underwater settings. In addition, the design of the present 2D EEMF incorporates improvements over the one prior commercial underwater 2D EEMF, developed in 1994 by the same company that developed the present one. Notable advanced features of the present EEMF include the following: 1) High sensitivity and spectral resolution are achieved by use of an off-the-shelf grating spectrometer equipped with a sensor in the form of a commercial astronomical- grade 256 532-pixel charge-coupled-device (CCD) array. 2) All of the power supply, timing, control, and readout circuits for the illumination source and the CCD, ancillary environmental monitoring sensors, and circuitry for controlling a shutter or filter motor are custom-designed and mounted compactly on three circuit boards below a fourth circuit board that holds the CCD (see figure). 3) The compactness of the grating spectrometer, CCD, and circuit assembly makes it possible to fit the entire instrument into a compact package that is intended to be maneuverable underwater by one person. 4) In mass production, the cost of the complete instrument would be relatively low - estimated at approximately $30,000 at 2005 prices

Time optimal quantum state transfer in a fully-connected quantum computer

The speed limit of quantum state transfer (QST) in a system of interacting particles is not only important for quantum information processing, but also directly linked to Lieb-Robinson-type bounds that are crucial for understanding various aspects of quantum many-body physics. For strongly long-range interacting systems such as a fully-connected quantum computer, such a speed limit is still unknown. Here we develop a new Quantum Brachistochrone method that can incorporate inequality constraints on the Hamiltonian. This method allows us to prove an exactly tight bound on the speed of QST on a subclass of Hamiltonians experimentally realizable by a fully-connected quantum computer.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, accepted versio