Good Vibrations

Through the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) process, our goal was to show VIBCO, a local manufacturing company, that its business could be improved with the help of various six sigma tools. Currently, its daily production includes a large variety of products, such as industrial vibrators, vibratory equipment, and mounting brackets and hardware. The particular production area that we chose to focus on, however, was the large turbine cell. More specifically, the purpose of our project was to create a process improvement, through the use of a kanban system, to better manage the company’s production of large turbines. With this new system, the company is able to save both money and time, as well as better achieve its goal of “same day, next day” shipping. Before we started, the production of the large turbines was solely determined by a schedule, generated by one of the production controllers. This method, however, creates an abundance of waste, such as overproduction, inventory, and poor utilization of talent. Moving the production from an assemble-to-order system to a make-to-stock system was the best solution. With any form of change, there is always going to be some pushback, and we experienced this firsthand. In the end, however, we were still able to successfully implement a trial for our suggested kanban system, allowing us to earn a lean six sigma green belt certification

Short-Term, Faculty-Led Study Abroad and Global Citizenship Identification: Insights from a Global Engagement Program

Short-term, faculty-led study abroad programs are increasingly featured in higher education internationalization efforts. As noted in the literature, such programs can aid in the development of varied student outcomes, including developing global citizenship. This paper presents an examination of the Global Engagement Seminar (GES) program, a short-term, faculty-led program at a private women’s liberal arts college that has expressed a firm commitment to internationalization. A quasi-experimental design was employed to examine whether participation in the GES program influenced participants’ antecedents, identification, and pro-social values of global citizenship (Reysen & Katzarska-Miller 2013a), and how the relationships compare with those of a matched comparison sample. The results of the survey indicated that GES completion moderated some but not all of the paths in the global citizenship model. Completing a GES was associated with non-significant relations among the moderated paths, a finding that emphasizes the need for a nuanced discussion of the complex relationship between short-term study abroad and global citizenship. Implications for faculty-led global engagement programs that aim to promote global citizenship among undergraduates in liberal arts contexts are discussed

The Longitudinal Relationships among Injunctive Norms and Hooking Up Attitudes and Behaviors in College Students

Limited research has explored the influence of perceived injunctive norms for distal (e.g., typical student) and proximal (e.g., close friend and parents) referents on hooking up. The current study examined the longitudinal relationships among perceived injunctive norms, personal approval and hooking up behavior, and the moderating effects of gender in a sample of heavy drinking college students. At Time 1, participants completed web-based assessments of personal approval of hooking up and perceptions of close friend, parent, and typical student approval. Three months later, participants reported on whether they had hooked up. The results of a path analysis indicated that greater perceived friend and parent approval predicted greater personal approval. Further, greater perceived approval by close friends and parents indirectly contributed to hooking up behavior as mediated by participants’ own approval. Multigroup analyses indicated that close friend injunctive norms were a stronger predictor of student approval for males, as compared to females. While previous research has often failed to find an association between perceived injunctive norms and hooking up, the current findings suggest that this may reflect the use of distal referents. The findings underscore that perceptions of close friend and family approval may be useful predictors of hooking up behavior

Rationalizing the many uses of animals:Application of the 4N justifications beyond meat

Past research has uncovered four common justifications for using animals as food—the 4Ns—that eating meat is Natural, Normal, Necessary, and Nice. The current research investigated the extent to which the 4Ns might apply more generally to other animal uses. Two studies examined the moral justifications people spontaneously offered for various animal uses, including household products, clothing, culling, and horse racing (Study1), and in zoos, TV/film, as pets, and for medical testing (Study 2). Participants offered reasons for why it is okay to use animals and the responses were coded by independent raters. The 4N categories accounted for the majority of justifications across most uses. There was great variability in justification categories offered for each use, and some uses generated justification categories not covered within the 4N scheme, including humane treatment, prioritization of human lives, and sustainability arguments. This research provides a large-scope investigation of animal-use justifications that moves beyond meat consumption

Social anxiety and drinking refusal self-efficacy moderate the relationship between drinking game participation and alcohol-related consequences

Background Participation in drinking games is associated with excessive drinking and alcohol risks. Despite the growing literature documenting the ubiquity and consequences of drinking games, limited research has examined the influence of psychosocial factors on the experience of negative consequences as the result of drinking game participation. Objectives The current event-level study examined the relationships among drinking game participation, social anxiety, drinking refusal self-efficacy (DRSE) and alcohol-related consequences in a sample of college students. Methods Participants (n =976) reported on their most recent drinking occasion in the past month in which they did not preparty. Results After controlling for sex, age, and typical drinking, higher levels of social anxiety, lower levels of DRSE, and playing drinking games predicted greater alcohol-related consequences. Moreover, two-way interactions (Social Anxiety × Drinking Games, DRSE × Drinking Games) demonstrated that social anxiety and DRSE each moderated the relationship between drinking game participation and alcohol-related consequences. Participation in drinking games resulted in more alcohol problems for students with high social anxiety, but not low social anxiety. Students with low DRSE experienced high levels of consequences regardless of whether they participated in drinking games; however, drinking game participation was associated with more consequences for students confident in their ability to resist drinking. Conclusion Findings highlight the important role that social anxiety and DRSE play in drinking game-related risk, and hence provide valuable implications for screening at-risk students and designing targeted harm reduction interventions that address social anxiety and drink refusal in the context of drinking games

From usability to secure computing and back again

Secure multi-party computation (MPC) allows multiple parties to jointly compute the output of a function while preserving the privacy of any individual party’s inputs to that function. As MPC protocols transition from research prototypes to realworld applications, the usability of MPC-enabled applications is increasingly critical to their successful deployment and widespread adoption. Our Web-MPC platform, designed with a focus on usability, has been deployed for privacy-preserving data aggregation initiatives with the City of Boston and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. After building and deploying an initial version of the platform, we conducted a heuristic evaluation to identify usability improvements and implemented corresponding application enhancements. However, it is difficult to gauge the effectiveness of these changes within the context of real-world deployments using traditional web analytics tools without compromising the security guarantees of the platform. This work consists of two contributions that address this challenge: (1) the Web-MPC platform has been extended with the capability to collect web analytics using existing MPC protocols, and (2) as a test of this feature and a way to inform future work, this capability has been leveraged to conduct a usability study comparing the two versions ofWeb-MPC. While many efforts have focused on ways to enhance the usability of privacy-preserving technologies, this study serves as a model for using a privacy-preserving data-driven approach to evaluate and enhance the usability of privacy-preserving websites and applications deployed in realworld scenarios. Data collected in this study yields insights into the relationship between usability and security; these can help inform future implementations of MPC solutions.Published versio

Emotion ownership: different effects on explicit ratings and implicit responses

This study is based on the idea that emotion-related processing happens on various different levels. Common methods that are used to measure different aspects of emotion-related processing exhibit specific sensitivities to one or the other of these separate processing levels. Here, the hypothesis was tested that explicit and implicit measures of emotion-related processing are differently influenced by self-referenced versus unreferenced emotion. The explicit measure was self reported valence and the implicit measure was startle reflex modulation. In one session, emotional scenes were paired with short sentences inducing self-reference (e.g. “this dog will attack you” written underneath the image of an aggressive dog), while in another session, emotional scenes were presented without any reference. During both sessions explicit as well as implicit responses were collected. Self-referenced unpleasant images were rated more negative and self-referenced pleasant images were rated more positive than images with no reference. In contrast, the implicit measure indicated greater startle responses related to self-reference regardless of emotion category. Under the common assumption that greater startle responses reflect increased affective negativity, this means that self-referenced pleasant images elicited more negative implicit affect than unreferenced pleasant images. However, in both cases (self-referenced and unreferenced) startle responses demonstrated valence depended modulation as expected. Thus, in our study startle responses demonstrated sensitivity to affective valence as well as self-reference. It is concluded that self-reference is linked to increased motivation, which in turn has been reported to be detectable via startle reflex modulation (SRM) as well

Children with disturbances in sensory processing: a pilot study examining the role of the parasympathetic nervous system.

This study was a preliminary investigation of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) functioning in children with disturbances in sensory processing. The specific aims of this study were to (1) provide preliminary data about group differences in parasympathetic functions, as measured by the vagal tone index, between children with disturbances in sensory processing and those without; (2) determine effect size and power needed for future studies; and (3) to lay the foundation for further examination of the relations of parasympathetic functioning and functional behavior in children with disturbances in sensory processing. Participants were 15 children, nine with disturbances in sensory processing and six typically developing children. Heart period data were continuously collected for a 2-minute baseline and during administration of the 15-minute Sensory Challenge Protocol, a unique laboratory protocol designed to measure sensory reactivity (Miller, Reisman, McIntosh, & Simon, 2001). Groups were compared on vagal tone index, heart period, and heart rate using two-tailed, independent sample t tests. Children with disturbances in sensory processing had significantly lower vagal tone than the typically developing sample (t(13) = 2.4, p = .05). Statistical power analysis indicated that, for future studies, a sample size of 20 in each group would yield adequate statistical power. Although the number of subjects in this pilot study is small, the results from this study support further investigations of parasympathetic functions and functional behavior in children with disturbances in sensory processing

Senior scientists: Engaging the elderly in National Science Week activities

Science and technology outreach events often focus on children and teenagers, intending to incentivise their interest in STEM to the detriment of other age groups. Other populations, including our seniors are afforded few opportunities to interact with technological developments in a positive way, making their encounters with this technology on hospital visits even more distressful. Through a series of outreach activities for National Science Week, we aimed to highlight an approach for interaction with the elderly in a safe and adaptive environment. These events are taken directly to elderly facilities and community spaces in the Perth metropolitan area, using an LED screen truck to display the activities and make the sensory experience accessible to the elderly community. We demonstrate how glass can allow us to capture more than meets the eye with health-integrated examples (e.g. lenses, microscopy and cameras). The event series aimed to stimulate an enhanced sense of agency and comfortability around new technology. Here, we will share the event’s logistical considerations, interest and outcomes of delivering this event to encourage future activities with our elderly population