A Sense of Place: A Personal Exploration, Analysis and Re-interpretation of Diverse Places

Every city/place has unique, distinctive qualities. Individuals acquire a sense of place in accordance with their own experiences and perspectives, which may not be the same as the experiences and viewpoints of another person. In this project, I explore, analyze, and re-interpret three places that have creatively and emotionally influenced me and remained in my memory: Times Square, New York City; Insadong, Seoul, South Korea; and Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia. To comprehend and draw a sense of place, I observe, feel, and document the characteristics of each place through different methods and processes, based on my own experiences. In addition, I integrate, apply, and transform my experiences and emotional reaction to the objects, obtained from each place, into new visual form to grasp how the built environment can be used as inspiration and stimulus in developing creative methods and processes in graphic design

Language Skills, Oral Narrative Production, and Executive Functions of Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

This study assessed the language skills, oral narrative abilities, and executive functions (EFs) of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and normal hearing (NH), and examined the differences between two groups as well as the relationships between oral narrative production and EFs. Eleven children who are DHH and ten who are NH, between 9 and 11 years of age, participated in the study. All of the children in the DHH group had bilateral hearing losses ranging from moderate through profound, and had no other diagnosed social, emotional or intellectual problems. All had more than 4 years 10 months of hearing experience with hearing aids or cochlear implants, used oral communication, and were educated in mainstreamed classrooms. The NH group included typically developing children with no diagnosed social, emotional or intellectual problems. Language ability was assessed by a standardized test and narrative microstructure analysis. Narratives were elicited through story retell and story generation, and measured their organization structures. EFs were assessed two ways. One was through parent report and the other was through performance based measures. Results of the language assessments indicate that even though scores on the standardized language test were significantly different between groups, the language ability of the DHH group as assessed through microstructure analysis was generally comparable to their NH peers, and that they used their language knowledge appropriately at the discourse level. Their language ability was related to the well organized story structure in the story retell condition more than in the story generation condition. The macrostructure narrative analysis showed that the DHH group understood and produced age-appropriate story grammar and complete episodes, but had some problems in using their knowledge when making up their own stories. Their problems in presenting the logical relations of episodes on the story generation condition indicate that the DHH group may not fully understand the temporal and causal relationships between characters and events. The correlations that were found between narrative structures and EFs with the DHH group support the idea that problems in narrative organization may be associated with EFs for this population. Although some relations were found between narrative macrostructures and EFs with the NH group, more EFs were implicated in the organization of narrative structures especially in story generation with the DHH group. This result indicates that EFs may have a greater influence on narrative organization for children who are DHH than those who are NH. Although the sample is limited and the results preliminary, the findings also suggest that the narrative problems seen in children who are DHH should be considered from both linguistic and cognitive perspectives in assessment and treatment

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS AND HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE IN KOREAN WOMEN AGED 50 YEARS AND OVER

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Korean women.Methods: Participants (n=2068) aged 50 years or older were selected from Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2005-2008. Sociodemographic characteristics, medical history of RA, and EuroQol-5 dimension were obtained from the KNHANES dataset.Results: The results revealed that demographic variables, including age, education level, income, exercise, smoking, and alcohol drinking, were important factors associated with HRQoL. In this study, RA was an important factor affecting HRQoL in Korean women. The adjusted odds ratio for HRQoL in participants with RA was 2.15 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.46-3.18, p=0.001) in mobility, 2.30 (95% CI: 1.60-3.32, p<0.001) in usual activities, and 3.41 (95% CI: 2.20-5.28, p<0.001) in pain/discomfort.Conclusion: These findings suggest that there is a strong associationbetween RA and HRQoL and preventing and controlling RA may significantly improve the quality of life for elderly Korean women.Â

Graduate Recital: Hyejin Park

Kemp Recital HallApril 14, 2012Saturday Afternoon1:30 p.m

DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH ORAL CONTRACEPTIVE USE IN KOREAN WOMEN

Objective: We determined the prevalence of oral contraceptive (OC) use and the demographic factors associated with OC use in Korean women.Methods: A descriptive epidemiologic study was conducted using data for women aged 20-54 y collected by the 2005-2009 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. OC use and demographic characteristics were obtained from the participants by questionnaire.Results: During the study period, the prevalence of OC use ranged from 14.8% to 16.0%. Longer duration of OC use was positively associated with age and with increased cigarette smoking and decreased education. However, the use of OCs was not associated with body mass index, household income, alcohol drinking, or regular exercise.Conclusion: Oral contraceptives are used widely by Korean women, and their use is associated with several demographic factors.Keywords: Oral contraceptive, Prevalence, Demographics, KNHANE

Comparing Semantic and Syntactic Expectation between Verbs and Thematic Roles: Evidence from Eyetracking

It has been shown with priming paradigms at the single word level (e.g., Edmonds & Mizrahi, 2011; Ferretti, McRae, & Hatherell, 2001) and eyetracking methods at the sentence level (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 1999; Kamide, Scheepers, & Altmann, 2003) that a verb generates semantic expectations about an upcoming noun (McRae, Ferretti, & Amyote, 1997). In addition to semantic relationships, syntactic constraint is also involved in the expectation process (e.g., Friederici, Steinhauer, & Frisch, 1999; Gunter, Friederici, & Schriefers, 2000). Therefore, both semantic and syntactic constraints are important for fast and accurate language comprehension. However, previous studies have investigated the importance of each constraint independently and have not compared the two constraint effects. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of semantic and syntactic constraint to evaluate whether one constraint plays a more important role in expectancy generation. We presented pictures of objects representing the thematic roles of patient (a receiver of the action) and instrument (an object used to do the action) with simultaneous auditory presentation of verbs. With respect to syntax, the patient (bathtub) would be required after a 2-place verb (scrubbing), but the related instrument (sponge) would be optional and not syntactically required. To evaluate semantic expectation, we manipulated the degree of the semantic relationship (see Materials) of the patients and instruments as they related to the presented verb. Using eyetracking, we hypothesized that if participants looked at the patient picture regardless of how strongly the patient was semantically related to the verb, it would indicate that syntactic expectation overrides semantic expectation. Alternatively, if participants looked at the highly-related picture regardless of whether it was a patient or instrument, it would indicate that semantic expectation overrides syntactic expectation

Theme Park Visitor Experience and Satisfaction: A Case of TripAdvisor Reviews of Three Theme Parks in Orlando

The significant growth of user-generated content on social media has received a lot of attention and big data has been acknowledged as a key source for understanding customer behaviors in tourism. Most of the existing research of this sort has focused on tourist destination and hospitality, but not on theme parks. The purpose of the study was to empirically identify the experience structure and satisfaction of visitors to three theme parks in Orlando by using TripAdvisor reviews. A total of 40,978 online customer reviews from 2016 were utilized for sentiment analysis and text analysis. The findings revealed that visitors rate the three theme parks differently and both unique and similar experience themes were identified. We propose that similarity and uniqueness are crucial for theme park satisfaction, where appealing to tourist needs is important for establishing distinctiveness in areas of similarity and creativity is important for enhancing uniqueness

Synthesis of High-energy density Li- and Mn-rich Cathode Materials via Morphology Control and Surface Modification

School of Energy and Chemical Engineering (Energy Engineering (Battery Science and Technology))Li- and Mn- rich cathodes (LMRs) are considered as next-generation cathode materials with their high theoretical specific capacity to realize high-energy-density Li-ion batteries. However, LMRs have difficulty in practical applications due to their intrinsic problems. Generally synthesized LMRs with small particle size have trouble achieving high volumetric energy density. Also, the presence of Li2MnO3 phase which requires chemical activation process at a high-voltage range triggers chemical irreversibility, resulting in low initial Coulombic efficiency (I.C.E), severe voltage decay and low rate capability. In order to solve these problems, a simultaneous modification is introduced to the particles: morphology control and surface coating. Flake-type morphology with increased primary particle size not only enables to achieve high electrode density nearly up to 3.0gcc-1, but also reduces the contact area with electrolyte to enhance the cycle stability. The flake-type LMRs exhibit a good capacity retention of 95.9% and a low voltage decay of 0.045V after 40 cycles. High irreversibility caused by large particle size is improved by the surface coating with AlF3. The Li2MnO3 phase can be activated rapidly in the first cycle with the AlF3 coating layer, which makes the initial reversible specific capacity much higher. As a result, AlF3-coated LMRs with flake-type shape show high I.C.E of 84.6% with a superior discharge capacity of 265mAh/g. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the AlF3 coating layer prevents the severe phase transition to the rock salt phase by mitigating the extraction of excess lithium ions and oxygen gas at the interface. This work suggests that AlF3 surface coating on flake-type shaped particles is an effective strategy for achieving both the high volumetric energy density and high performance LMR cathode materials.ope

Short-term Slope Changes on Dokdo Island Identified from Ground-based 3D LiDAR Data

This study was designed to determine the slope changes on Dokdo Island, focusing on Seodo islet (slopes consisting of colluvial debris) and Dongdo islet (slopes consisting of large-scale tafoni). To do so, we obtained high-resolution 3D LiDAR data in May and November 2020 and calculated the changes in slope shape and volume over this period. Our results showed that during this time, approximately 136 m3 of colluvial debris was removed from the slopes of Seodo islet and a boulder that had separated from the massive tuff breccia migrated approximately 5 cm downslope. The major causes of such rapid changes on the slopes of Seodo were sediment movement caused by heavy precipitation and load variation by slope-toe erosion due to high waves during typhoon events in September. On the contrary, no significant changes were observed on the slopes on Dongdo islet. While we predicted that weathering would cause major changes on the slopes, the measurement interval of this study was too short to observe such changes on the slopes consisting of tafoni. The 3D LiDAR data measures reflection intensity as well as 3D information on the surface of the earth. We measured the reflection intensity ranges of breccia, tuff, and vegetation, and subsequently ordered the intensity to increase from vegetation, breccia, and tuff. The reflection intensity ranges of the three different materials could be used to analyze the weathering rates according to the material types in future studies. In addition, the 3D scanning data on the Dokdo slopes could be used to monitor long-term slope changes and weathering rates