A Narrative of Charitable Acknowledgment: Reframing Interpersonal Communication in Intimate Relationships

The field of interpersonal communication conducts many descriptive studies. However, guidance for healthy communication within intimate relationships is more difficult to come by--a condition stemming in part from an emotivist ethical paradigm. MacIntyre (1984) describes emotivism as the current state of society where individual preference serves as the ethical decision making compass. Emerging from Enlightenment scholarship (e.g., Hobbes, Rousseau, sociobiology), individual preferences have become main tenets in intimate interpersonal research. In the interpersonal theories of social exchange and goal-orientation, emotivism is encouraged in the emphasis placed on self-interest and technique. This exposes itself metaphorically through descriptions of communication as a tool, an economic bartering system, and a means of gaining emotional satisfaction. As a result, communication phenomena such as love and trust in intimate romantic relationships are difficult to express due to the difficulties self-interested language has in moving beyond the dichotomy of egoism and altruism. This interpretive study hopes to reinvigorate the philosophical ground for other-focused action in today\u27s historical moment in regard to the study of interpersonal intimate romantic relationships. To do this, communication must first be interpreted in an active paradigm. Communicative praxis (Schrag, 1986) provides the texture for this shift, describing the subject as decentered, and thus interpreted as multiple, temporal, and embodied. In the embodied connection of word to deed (the act of being to, for, and with the other), ethical conduct can be determined, thus providing ground to pose an interpretive framework for healthy romantic relationships--a narrative of charitable acknowledgment as defined in the work of Hyde, Schrag, and Augustine. The connection between charity and acknowledgment focuses on rhetorical competence, the emphasis on connecting word to deed, and the importance of will and habit. Acknowledgment serves as a hermeneutic to open up charity to a postmodern society on an axiological level, explored through transversal interpretations of faith, hope, and charity. Charitable acknowledgment, then, is the enactment (within a nexus of will, habit, and ethic) of unconditionality, sacrifice, and forgiveness. This approach to romantic relationships opens the door for new research and future discussion on the ethical implications of the narrative shift

Foraging Ecology And Nutritional Stress Of Tufted Puffins (Fratercula Cirrhata) Inferred From Stable Isotopes, Fatty Acid Signatures, And Field Endocrinology

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2008Prey availability has a major impact on the reproductive output of seabirds, yet information on seabird diets throughout the breeding season is often lacking. Although reduced prey availability is known to affect the growth and survival of nestling seabirds, few studies have demonstrated similar effects on indices of adult body condition. I used stable isotopes and fatty acid (FA) signatures to investigate seasonal and age-related variation in the foraging niches of tufted puffins (Fratercula cirrhata). I conducted captive feeding experiments to determine whether inferences based on these techniques are affected by moderate food restriction during growth. I also examined how adult puffins prioritize the competing goals of maximizing the growth rate of their offspring and maintaining their own condition, as measured by body mass and by the stress hormone, corticosterone (CORT). Food restriction during nestling growth affected adipose tissue FA signatures and resulted in blood that was depleted in 15N and 13C relative to well-fed controls. However, effects of nutritional restriction on delta 15N, delta13C, and FA signatures were small compared to variability in prey, indicating physiological effects do not preclude use of these techniques as dietary tracers. Stable isotopes and FA signatures of free-living adults indicated foraging niches changed over the course of the breeding season. Stable isotopes suggest chick-rearing adults and nestlings feed at the same trophic level while FA signatures indicate that parents feed nestlings a diet different from their own. Body mass of adult puffins declined between incubation and chick rearing periods. For females the magnitude of mass decline did not differ between years, whereas for males the decline was greater in the year where young puffins fledged at a lower mass. In a separate analysis, baseline CORT values of adults of both sexes did not differ between years, but were lower than those observed in a separate study area during two consecutive years with low rates of nestling growth and survival. Assuming elevated CORT and reduced body mass impact survival and/or future fecundity, these results suggest the cost of reproduction may be higher for those adults able to fledge young in years characterized by low productivity

Expressing the operations of quantum computing in multiparticle geometric algebra

We show how the basic operations of quantum computing can be expressed and manipulated in a clear and concise fashion using a multiparticle version of geometric (aka Clifford) algebra. This algebra encompasses the product operator formalism of NMR spectroscopy, and hence its notation leads directly to implementations of these operations via NMR pulse sequences.Comment: RevTeX, 10 pages, no figures; Physics Letters A, in pres

A preferred vision for leading the secondary school : a reflective essay

Why do I want to be a principal? When I started the UNI Educational Leadership program, I had no idea. I do now. I want every child to feel safe in my school. I want them to know they can come to school and learn without having to worry about being picked on. I want each student to be challenged and stimulated to learn with great teachers. I want the students to be healthy. I want to make a significant change in the lives of students. Teachers are not the only professionals who impact student\u27s lives. Administrators can make an equal or even greater impact by providing a safe loving environment in which all students can learn and high expectations are the norm

Making the Digital Humanities More Open

BrailleSC will undertake its second stage of development by designing and deploying a WordPress-based accessibility tool that will create braille content for endusers who are blind or low vision. Specifically, we plan to extend the use of Anthologize--a free and open source plug-in for WordPress that currently translates any RSS text into PDF, ePub, HTML, or TEI--to include the conversion of text to braille. As a result, we will not only make it easy for content creators to convert a text into braille, thereby extending humanities content to hundreds of thousands of visually disabled readers, but we will also experiment with making braille available visually through the WordPress interface. In partnership with the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park, we will continue to model the ways in which digital humanities projects should be designed and implemented with the needs of disabled users in mind

The Rising Engineering Education Faculty Experience (REEFE): Preparing Junior Colleagues

Despite the importance of professional development, for most graduate students as up-and coming faculty members professional development is informal at best. Graduate programs often emphasize gaining technical knowledge, skills, and abilities through courses and research projects, but provide less opportunity for future faculty members to gain experience with teaching, service, communication, assessment, proposal writing, etc. To provide this experience, we developed the Rising Engineering Education Faculty Experience (REEFE). Founded on theoretical and practical models of graduate student development, REEFE is an innovative faculty apprenticeship program for engineering education graduate students that places students in visiting faculty member positions at host schools. This paper describes the foundations of REEFE and the program itself. We also offer lessons learned from the host school, sending school, and participants based on prior REEFE implementations. We hope our learnings prompt discussions regarding how to effectively prepare future engineering education facult

Banner News

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Autumn Voices 2017

The USU Women\u27s Choir, Chorale, and Chamber Singers perform a variety of pieces for their 2017 Autumn Voices event.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/music_programs/1127/thumbnail.jp

Biologging Physiological and Ecological Responses to Climatic Variation: New Tools for the Climate Change Era

In this mini-review, we discuss how biologging technology can be used to detect, understand, and forecast species' responses to climate change. We review studies of phenology, thermal biology, and microhabitat selection as examples to illustrate the utility of a biologging approach in terrestrial and aquatic species. These examples show that biologgers can be used to identify and predict behavioral and physiological responses to climatic variation and directional climate change, as well as to extreme weather events. While there is still considerable debate as to whether phenotypic plasticity is sufficient to facilitate species' responses to climate change or whether responses to short-term climate variability are predictive of climate change response, understanding the scope and nature of plasticity is an important step toward answering these questions. One advantage of the biologging approach is that it can facilitate the measurement of traits at the level of the individual, permitting research that investigates the degree to which physiology and behavior are plastic. As such, combining biologging with metrics of fitness can provide insight into how plasticity might confer population and species resilience to climate change. Increased use of biologgers in experimental manipulations will also yield important insight into how phenotypic flexibility allows some animals to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change. Although biologging studies to date have mostly functioned in measuring phenotypic responses to short-term climate variability, we argue that integrating biologging technology into long-term monitoring programs will be instrumental in documenting and understanding ecological responses to climate change