Neon Spirit

Tyler Nelson is a student at Louisiana Tech University. He likes to write

THE INFLUENCE OF MISINFORMATION FROM THE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

Over the last decade, conspiracy theorists and larger groups have become much more prominent across the United States, despite conspiracies being present for decades. Previously, they have been dismissed by most, however over the last decade due to an explosive political climate and growing numbers, these groups have begun to act on their beliefs. Events such as the January 6th Insurrection on the United States Capitol building is an unfortunate example as to how far these groups are willing to go. This study’s purpose is to use a nationwide survey to help determine who exactly are these types of individuals who believe and might potentially participate in further criminal activities. The study collected 512 respondents\u27 data over a variety of questions regarding theories and various demographics

The Relationships between Student Veterans\u27 Marital Status, Parental Status, Military Service, Program of Study and Their Perceived Levels of Academic Self-Efficacy

The purpose of this quantitative predictive correlational study is to identify predictive indicators of perceived levels of academic self-efficacy for student veterans enrolled in Alabama community colleges and seeks to determine if the predictor variables of marital status, parental status, military service, and program of study have any relationship to their perceived levels of academic self-efficacy. It is noted by several studies that having low levels of academic self-efficacy is a significant contributing factor leading to student attrition. One way to mitigate this growing problem is to identify key elements that may predict a student\u27s level of academic self-efficacy. This study uses the SELF-A as the instrument and analyzes results taken from N=123 student veterans attending community college in Alabama. The students were identified through ACCS student enrollment records and were asked through email to complete the survey. This non-experimental predictive correlational study looks for relationships between several nontraditional student factors and students’ perceived levels of academic self-efficacy. The study found that both marital and parental status had a significance of p=.000, indicating that both variables were significant predictors of academic self-efficacy. While no other variables were found to be significant, further research that focuses on separating the variables of health science and career technical education (CTE) within the Program of Study variable would help to determine if students who typically enroll in CTE programs are more likely to exhibit low levels of academic self-efficacy than those in health sciences and academic transfer

Stressful Experiences in Children and Adolescents: Initial Report from the PSEI-NCPV Honolulu Study

As part of a federal study of the biology of stress and resilience, a comprehensive, structured stress-history interview (PSEI-NCPV) was administered to 307 participants recruited in Honolulu. A moderate correlation between childhood stress and current depression was found. A relatively high rate of "severe bullying/hazing," and a high mean stress-intensity reating for "blood-drawing induced anxiety" call for further research

ACUTE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT CUSHIONED FOOTWEAR ON THE BIOMECHANICS OF RUNNING

The purpose of this study was to investigate how different footwear (highly cushioned, standard, minimalist shoes) affect peak ground reaction forces, average loading rates and joint kinematics during running. Nine participants ran at a self-selected speed across all shod conditions, minimalist, highly cushioned and standard running shoe. Vicon Nexus was used to analyze joint kinematics of the ankle and knee, a Bertec Instrumented Treadmill was used to analyze the average loading rate and peak ground reaction forces. Results show consist of reductions in ankle and knee joint motion in the minimalist shoe during the stance phase with the standard and highly cushioned shoe being more similar to each other. Evidence suggests that a change in footwear alone, at least in the short-term, will not reducing injury rates in runners

The functional and remodeling response of collecting lymphatic vessels to disruption of lymphatic drainage pathways

The lymphatic system is composed of a network of vessels, nodes, and accessory organs that is present in most soft tissues of the body. The lymphatics play a vital role in maintaining tissue fluid homeostasis, trafficking immune cells from the periphery to the nodes, and transporting dietary lipids from the intestines to the blood stream. Unlike the blood vasculature, the lymphatic system does not have a central pump. Instead, transport is promoted by collecting lymphatic vessels that are composed of a series of contractile segments separated by one-way valves. When the normal function of the lymphatics is compromised a disease called lymphedema may develop, which is characterized by tissue fluid retention, fibrosis, and adipose accumulation. Unfortunately, lymphedema is a relatively common complication of cancer therapies that damage the lymphatic vasculature, such as lymph node dissections and radiation treatment. Despite being integral driver of lymphatic transport, relatively little is known about how collecting lymphatic function and remodeling may influence the development of lymphedema. This work demonstrates the development of novel near-infrared imaging methods with the ability to quantify and phenotype collecting lymphatic failure during lymphatic disease. These methods provide biological insight into the functional and remodeling response of the collecting lymphatic vessels to surgical disruption of lymphatic drainage pathways. Specifically, we demonstrate that diet-induced obesity adversely impacts collecting lymphatic contractility and pump function during lymphedema in a mouse model. Further, in a clinically relevant sheep model, we demonstrate that the uninjured vessel can compensate in vivo by altering its intrinsic functional response and structure; however, through this process, the collecting lymphatic muscle experiences increased oxidative stress due to increased contractility. The results of this work demonstrate that functional adaptations of the collecting lymphatic vessels may influence the development of lymphedema in a clinical setting.Ph.D

Cosmic fossils : the spectroscopic study of stars and comets

Chemical Fossils, i.e. objects which preserve their initial elemental composition, provide vital constraints on the nature and evolution of the Universe. The study of these objects is therefore fundamental for astronomy, from the scales of the Solar System, to the Galaxy and beyond. The unique focus of this dissertation is to advance our knowledge of and apply chemical fossils across a wide range of scales (cometary fossils in the Solar System and stellar fossils on a Galactic scale) to better understand the formation and assembly of our Solar System and the Galaxy in which it resides. The first half of this dissertation considers the evolution of the Universe at the scale of a single star, the Sun, and its Solar System, using comets. I concentrate on characterizing the emission spectrum from the diatomic carbon (C₂) Swan bands. This fragment species is ubiquitous in comets. It is commonly used as a proxy to measure production rates of gas as well as a taxonomic classification tool. However, its parent species and the details of its emission are not well understood. A bimodal rotational temperature has been found in the Swan bands for comet 1P/Halley (Lambert et al., 1990). The following models have been proposed to explain this phenomenon: C₂ inheriting excited states from the parent species (Jackson et al., 1996), properties inherent to C₂ through intercombinational/satellite transitions (Lambert et al., 1990), and multiple populations of C₂ present in the photochemical environment (Lambert et al., 1990). Leveraging a unique library of high resolution, high signal-to-noise optical spectra, collected at McDonald Observatory, I investigate the proposed mechanisms for this rotational temperature bimodality for comets 122P/de Vico, 153P/Ikeya-Zhang, and C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp). I find bimodal temperatures in all spectra studied and supersolar temperatures in C/1995 O1, which is incompatible with the models from the literature. I suggest the supersolar temperatures for Hale-Bopp are a consequence of heating from the Solar wind for material outside the cometopause. The second half of this dissertation considers cosmic fossils at the scale of the Galaxy. Photospheric abundances of stars are mostly conserved over their lifetimes, and therefore stars can act as chemical fossils for the Galaxy. I focus on the use of chemical tagging within the Milky Way. Chemical tagging of stars is one of the pillars of Galactic Archaeology, motivating numerous large scale surveys. It has dramatically reshaped our knowledge of the Galaxy over the last two decades. Chemical tagging relies upon stars which are born together, i.e. co-natal, sharing a common chemical composition. I find observational evidence for an untapped reservoir of co-natal, co-moving pairs of stars, through the application of chemical tagging. Co-natal stars provide an excellent laboratory for numerous areas of astronomy, from stellar physics, to survey calibration. A common application of chemical tagging is relating a wayward star to a possible birthplace. Hyper- velocity stars (HVSs) are gravitationally unbound to the Milky Way. However the physical mechanisms that give rise to the large velocities of late-type HVSs are poorly understood. To solve this problem, I applied chemo-dynamic tagging to a sample of HVS candidates identified in Gaia data. Since these production mechanisms are connected to specific locations or chemical environments within the Galactic neighborhood, chemical tagging can distinguish which production pathways could create these enigmatic fast stars. I present work on the chemo-dynamic tagging, i.e. using both chemical and kinematic tagging, of late-type candidate HVSs. I find conclusive evidence of one unbound late-type HVS and two marginally unbound HVSs. These stars appear to originate in the ‘in situ’ stellar halo based on their chemical composition and orbit properties. These stars are produced by some of the most extreme astrophysical phenomena in the Galaxy. The origins of these late-type HVS constrain their production mechanisms and hence the importance of these energetic processes within the Galaxy. This knowledge can then be applied to models of the Milky Way’s evolution. Furthermore, expanding the number of HVSs is useful for studying the dark matter halo of the Galaxy.Astronom