Sex Trafficking and the Attribution of Blame: A Comparison between Vietnamese and American Perception of Sex-trafficked Individuals

Sex trafficking is one of the most persistent issues in Asian countries and specifically in Vietnam. Hundreds of Vietnamese are trafficked daily across the world, but mainly in Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Laos, China, and Thailand. Sexually trafficked individuals are reported to have symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal tendencies, and physical violence. Despite the increasing number of victims, there is a lack of empirical research on issues relating to the impact of human trafficking on Vietnamese people and especially the public attitude about the problem. The current study examined the public’s general knowledge of trafficking myths, their willingness to believe in the trafficking situation, and their tendency to place blame on the victim, in relation to the sex of the participants and the sex of the victims. Vietnamese citizens across the country (N= 922) responded to a vignette portraying a sex trafficking situation and completed the Human Trafficking Myth survey. Results indicated that the sex of the participants and the sex of the victims significantly correlated with the participants’ perception of the human trafficking myths, trafficking story and victim’s responsibility. Acknowledging the paucity of cross-culture empirical research, the current study also compared the Vietnamese sample with the American sample that completed similar scales. The results of study 1 and 2 have the potential to serve the needs of anti-trafficking campaigns in Vietnam and support the collaboration of different countries in their effort of combating human trafficking

Examining the Differences in Beat Perception and Production Between Musicians and Dancers

The ability to perceive and produce a beat is believed to be universal in humans, but there are factors that may give rise to individual differences. The research presented in this dissertation examined four factors that may influence beat processing and sensorimotor synchronization performance: 1) expertise: in music and dance, 2) training style: percussive and nonpercussive, 3) stimulus modality: auditory and visual, and 4) movement type: effector-specific or whole-body. Chapter 2 examined how percussive and nonpercussive music and dance training influence beat perception and production performance using an auditory beat perception task and a finger tapping beat production task. Chapter 3 also examined how percussive and nonpercussive music and dance training influence beat perception and production performance, but using an audiovisual variant of the beat perception task, and a knee bending beat production task recorded with motion capture to assess whole-body movements. Chapters 4 and 5 examined how music and dance training interact with the auditory and visual modalities to influence audiovisual integration measured using a just-noticeable-difference task, and audiovisual synchronization measured using a bimodal target-distractor synchronization task. In Chapter 4, sensorimotor synchronization was tested with finger tapping, whereas in Chapter 5 sensorimotor synchronization was tested with knee bending. Broadly, the data showed that 1) beat processing and sensorimotor synchronization performance differ among musicians, dancers, and their non-musician/non-dancer counterparts, 2) training style did not significantly influence beat perception and production, as performance did not significantly differ between percussionists and nonpercussionists, 3) musicians were biased toward the auditory modality, whereas dancers were biased toward the visual modality when synchronizing to bimodal sequences, and 4) musicians performed better with finger movements, while dancers performed better with whole-body movements. The research presented in this dissertation demonstrate how music and dance—similar, yet different types of training—may affect beat processing and sensorimotor synchronization abilities

Musical Mood and Musical Arousal Affects Different Stages of Learning and Memory Performance

This thesis examined whether the effect of music on memory is attributable to musical mood, musical arousal, context, or some combination of these factors. In Experiment 1, participants performed a face-name paired-association task while music was played in the background. In Experiment 2, the perceptual context (Experiment 2A) and emotional context (Experiment 2B) of music was examined more thoroughly. Experiment 3 examined whether the context effect of musical mood and musical arousal occurs in a recall task (Experiment 3A), a recognition task (Experiment 3B), and an association task (Experiment 3C). The results showed that low arousal music enhanced memory while high arousal music lowered memory, particularly when arousal was paired with negative mood. This effect was most robust when the context at study and at test was similar. The results suggested that musical mood and musical arousal affects different stages of learning and memory performance

Live Birth Bias In Epidemiological Study Of Timing Specific Exposure Effect During Pregnancy And Child Health: A Simulation Study

In reproductive and perinatal epidemiological studies, measurement of child health outcomes that can only be ascertained in live born children may be incomplete since only 60 – 70% of fertilized eggs result in live births and early pregnancy loss is often undetected. Studies assessing outcomes among live born children are subject to live birth bias, a phenomenon previously proposed as a form of collider-bias in which conditioning on live-birth status induces a non-causal association between exposure and outcome. In this study, we expanded a previously proposed common structure of this bias to evaluate its impact on the estimation of time-specific prenatal exposure effects on child health outcome, using causal diagrams. We used Monte Carlo simulation techniques to investigate two scenarios in which prenatal exposures led to pregnancy loss. Our findings confirmed previous simulation findings showing biased estimates of prenatal exposure effects on child outcome risk, assuming a true null association between each exposure and the outcome and using trimesters to characterize the exposure timing. We observed larger bias sizes when the effect size of the exposure-fetal survival relations increased and/or when other unmeasured and uncontrolled risk factors had stronger effect on both fetal survival and the outcome. Our study underlines the needs for the development of analytic methods that adjust for live birth bias in scenarios accounting for time-specific exposure effects and time-specific selections

Student Engagement: The Effects of Goals, Personality, Relations, and Society

Undergraduate Applie

Phenomenology of Spiritual/Faith Growth Among College Students at a Christian University

Undergraduate Applie

Mira

As time goes on and generations pass by each other, both society and its needs develop. Therefore, we need to be constantly adapting to the change happening around us. The mirror is an object that we use in everyday life that could use some adapting. It performs a very simple function, one with no flair, yet it is one of the most commonly used objects in the world. It is designed with only one purpose in mind: let the user see their reflection. Despite the amount of time we spend looking in a mirror, it has not evolved or developed past this singular function. We designed our product, Mira, to evolve the experience of using a mirror. Our company\u27s mantra is to create technology that advances along with society. Our vision for the future includes the idea that every household comes along with a set of smart mirrors designed to accustom any room. The following items are some of the features that Mira offers: functional mirror clock weather/temperature Mirrors are a thing of the past, we need something new at last! Introducing Mira

Evaluation of local feed resources for hybrid catfish (Clarias macrocephalus x C. gariepinus) in smallholder fish farming systems in central Vietnam

The aim of this thesis was to examine the current feeding situation for fresh water fish in Central Vietnam, to evaluate the potential nutritive value of locally available feed resources for hybrid catfish (Clarias macrocephalus x C. gariepinus) and Nile tilapia, to determine the dietary requirement of lysine for hybrid catfish, to estimate the requirements for the other essential amino acids (EAA) by using ideal protein concept, and finally to evaluate the suitability of cassava leaf meal and shrimp head meal as a partial replacement for fish meal in the diet, without or with lysine supplementation, for hybrid catfish fingerlings. The survey indicated that, in total, 22 feed ingredients were used by the farmers. The main ingredients were cassava root meal, rice bran, cassava residue, groundnut meal, soybean meal and fish meal. Furthermore, several more unconventional feedstuffs were also commonly used, such as cassava leaves, coconut meal, shrimp head meal, sesame husk and squid by-product. The combination of ingredients used in farm-made fish feeds varied among farms and districts leading to a large variation of nutrient composition and energy content. The fish yield varied among districts and ranged from 0.8 to 6.5 t ha-1. The digestibility trial showed that the apparent digestibility (AD) of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM) and crude protein (CP) in cassava leaf meal was significantly lower than in groundnut meal, soybean meal, sesame husk meal and shrimp head meal in both hybrid catfish and Nile tilapia. The AD of DM and OM in cassava leaf meal was higher in hybrid catfish than in Nile tilapia. Most EAA in the selected feedstuffs were equally well utilized by the two fish species. In the third experiment, the dietary lysine requirement of hybrid catfish fingerlings was found to be 56 g kg-1 of CP, corresponding to 16.8 g kg-1 of dry diet. In the feeding trial with hybrid catfish, replacing fish meal with shrimp head meal had no effect on final weight (FW) and specific growth rate (SGR), while replacing fish meal with cassava leaf meal led to impaired FW and SGR. Supplementing cassava leaf meal and shrimp head meal diets with lysine improved FW and SGR