Understanding the Syrian Revolution Through Nontraditional Art

In my thesis, I will explore the Syrian Revolution through the nontraditional arts that are being produced. I will be focusing on several different modes of creation, including street art, digital art, comics and cartoons, and installation. Social media is the primary tool for artists working in Syria to distribute their work, so I will also be discussing the importance of social media, both as a means to publish their work and also spread their message. I will answer the following questions: what role does street art and other nontraditional mediums play in the revolution? What are the artists’ purposes and intents when creating such pieces? How is social media relevant to the revolution? The answers to these questions and more will help to legitimize nontraditional arts, not only as examples of art themselves, but also as a means of communication. I hope to shed some light on the Syrian Revolution by looking at the war through the lens of an artist

Ethics Readiness: An Analysis of Community College Students\u27 Moral Sensitivity Scores

In this retrospective causal-comparative study, the readiness of Virginia community college students to receive an accounting ethics curriculum was analyzed by measuring and comparing their moral sensitivity scores to the moral sensitivity scores of a group of four year university students. A sample of college students attending community college principles of accounting courses and a sample of college students attending four year university principles of accounting courses were administered a nationally recognized moral sensitivity survey instrument, the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). The survey results were analyzed using a t-test for differences between means. It was found that there was no statistically significant difference in the mean moral sensitivity scores between the two groups. In addition, a t-test for differences between means indicated that there was no significant difference in the mean scores of the community college group compared to the DIT2 norms scores of students across the United States at the community college level students. A third t-test was performed comparing the community college group to the national norms scores of junior level college students who traditionally receive accounting ethics courses if offered in a college curriculum. A final t-test assessed the impact of gender on moral sensitivity scores. Although the mean score for females was higher than males, gender was found to have a low relationship to moral sensitivity scores. The implications of this study include a greater understanding of the moral sensitivity of community college students in comparison to four year college students who may traditionally receive ethics courses

Learner-centered social support: enhancing online distance education for underserved rural high school students in the United States

Over the past decade, federal programs in the United States have largely addressed the well-documented problem of differences in basic access to technology between rural schools and their suburban and urban counterparts. Consequently, rural schools are better able to prepare their students for post-secondary education and the workplace where digital literacy is essential. As technology access improves, online distance education (ODE) is seen as a solution to significant challenges faced by rural schools, including a lack of highly-qualified teachers and declining population. However, ODE has high attrition rates, partly because participants’ social needs are often neglected. Additionally, students' success depends on their abilities to engage in self-regulated learning, effective time management and self-reflection, skills that many high school students are still developing. This paper describes an experimental research study funded by the U.S. Department of Education, currently underway in rural high schools across the U.S. The research adds to a growing body of work that attempts to expand understanding of the digital divide. Increasingly, schools realise that this is no longer an issue of mere access to equipment; education technology projects should incorporate strategies that ensure the success of previously marginalised communities. Our intervention, based on the APA’s Learner- Centered Principles, involves training on-site facilitators to provide social support for students involved in ODE. Preliminary findings indicate that the intervention group has a significantly lower dropout rate

Ongoing Revisions to a First-Year Seminar Program: Building Students’ Digital Literacies through Podcasts

A discussion of ongoing revisions to a First-Year Seminar program at a small liberal arts college. We discuss integrating digital literacies through a podcasting assignment, consider faculty development necessary to support these changes, and share key takeaways from students who participated in revised sections

Independent Study: Understanding the Pharmaceutical Industry

An undergraduate Healthcare Sales student wanted to understand the pharmaceutical (pharma) industry better to determine if the industry was a good fit. She approached her professor to gain support for an independent study to understand better the history and challenges of selling in the pharma industry. Once completed, the pair recognized this information\u27s value and collaborated in editing the document to share these findings to provide this entry-level salesperson\u27s guide to understanding the pharma industry. Six semi-structured interviews of pharma professionals showed three primary areas of knowledge and ethics required of the entry-level pharma industry salesperson. These suggestions are for the salesperson to 1) focus on patient safety, 2) establish trust-based relationships, and 3) comply with industry guidelines. The study concludes with an overview of three prominent industry guidelines: the PhRMA Code, the Sunshine Act, and the Fair Balance practices

Digital Literacy in the Age of Virtual Reality: Lessons from a Digitally Infused Pilot in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Seminar Course

Because Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming widely used across many sectors of society, it is imperative that we prepare students for the next level of digital literacy skills necessary in a virtual workspace/place. Lessons from the infusion of VR technology into the first-year research program will be shared

The Effect of Water Extracted Silibinin on Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) Production of Macrophages

The world is actively looking for technology to produce sustainable liquid fuels to replace our reliance on petroleum-based fuels. Biomass can be converted either through the thermochemical or saccharification platforms into fuels such as ethanol or butanol. In addition to converting the biomass into liquid fuels, valuable phytochemicals can be extracted prior, during, or after the conversion. Extracting useful phytochemicals, as a part of the overall conversion of biomass to fuels, is included in the concept of the biobased biorefinery. However, the key to effectively and economically extract phytochemicals from biomass is the ability to couple the extraction to the energy conversion steps; that is, extraction with either dilute acid or water. Phytochemical extraction with organic solvents cannot be easily coupled with an energy conversion process because the solvents must be removed before proceeding to energy conversion, thereby complicating and increasing the cost of the process. By extracting the phytochemicals with water or dilute acid, a simple unit operation can be added to the existing biomass conversion technology, ultimately adding value to the biomass

Methodological Underestimation of Oceanic Nitrogen Fixation Rates

The two commonly applied methods to assess dinitrogen (N2) fixation rates are the 15N2-tracer addition and the acetylene reduction assay (ARA). Discrepancies between the two methods as well as inconsistencies between N2 fixation rates and biomass/growth rates in culture experiments have been attributed to variable excretion of recently fixed N2. Here we demonstrate that the 15N2-tracer addition method underestimates N2 fixation rates significantly when the 15N2 tracer is introduced as a gas bubble. The injected 15N2 gas bubble does not attain equilibrium with the surrounding water leading to a 15N2 concentration lower than assumed by the method used to calculate 15N2-fixation rates. The resulting magnitude of underestimation varies with the incubation time, to a lesser extent on the amount of injected gas and is sensitive to the timing of the bubble injection relative to diel N2 fixation patterns. Here, we propose and test a modified 15N2 tracer method based on the addition of 15N2-enriched seawater that provides an instantaneous, constant enrichment and allows more accurate calculation of N2 fixation rates for both field and laboratory studies. We hypothesise that application of N2 fixation measurements using this modified method will significantly reduce the apparent imbalances in the oceanic fixed-nitrogen budget