Does Your Provider Care: A Mixed Methods Study of Empathy in Medical and Graduate Counseling Students

Undergraduate Applie

Downtown public relations

This case study has presented a comprehensive overview of the context and significance of relationship management/maintenance strategies in downtown Goshen. The study reported herein is an attempt to identify and verify efforts by Downtown Goshen, Inc. (DGI), a non-profit organization that led the revitalization efforts between 2006 and 2011. Online surveys with business owners and interviews with DGI stakeholders were conducted, along with secondary data analysis of DGI event surveys. The study’s research questions addressed how DGI’s relationship management/maintenance strategies, along with elements present in the downtown, have influenced the community. The results revealed coalition-building through collaboration, relationship maintenance strategies of openness, networking, and shared tasks, along with creative class leadership and investment in infrastructure to have positively influenced the community.Thesis (M.A.)Department of Journalis

Experimental investigation of the performance of various wick configurations in single and two fluid heat pipes operating in the gravitational field

Performance of various wick configurations in single and two-fluid heat pipes operating as thermoregulatory system for space suit

First-Generation Etc: Agency, Inequality, Practice, Habitus, and Reflection

This autoethnography explores the author’s first two years transitioning and acclimating to a selective college as a first-generation student from a working-class background who attended rural public schools. Grounding itself in post-structural theory, this thesis first explores how the author experienced upward social mobility in contrast with structuralist theories that suggest he would reproduce his social-class origins. Second this thesis concludes that the relative degree of legitimization the author’s agency received is itself informed by structural inequality and a world that advantages certain cultural embodiments, dispositions, actions, and ways of being over others. Agency is seldom explicitly acknowledged in literature about first-generation and working-class students’ experiences making it to, getting through, and moving on from college. Thus, the author’s choice of theoretical framework and methodology is intentional: an agency-, practice-, and structure- oriented framework paired with autoethnography as a methodology enables a close-up look at how one student, the author, participated in social mobility via the enculturated and structured institution of higher education. In presenting an individual story, this thesis seeks to provide a framework for understanding how individuals with differently intersecting positionalities navigate a world grounded in structures of domination and founded in inequalities of power

MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF INTERACTIONS BETWEEN A PULSATILE PNEUMATIC VENTRICULAR ASSIST DEVICE AND THE LEFT VENTRICLE

The use of a ventricular assist device (VAD) is a promising option for the treatment of end-stage heart failure. In many cases VADs provide not only temporary support, but contribute to the recovery of the native ventricle. Many studies have reported incidences where the native ventricle has recovered function, leading to device explantation and eliminating the need for heart transplantation. Despite strong interest in the subject for many years, the determinants of the recovery process are poorly understood and number of patients successfully weaned from chronic support remains low.A mathematical model was developed to gain an understanding of the complex mechanical interactions between a pneumatic, pulsatile VAD and the left ventricle. The VAD model was verified in-vitro using a mock circulatory loop. Over a wide range of experimental conditions, it correctly described observed dynamic behaviors and was accurate in predicting both VAD stroke volume and fill-to-empty rate within 6% error. This validated VAD model was coupled to a simple, lumped parameter cardiovascular model. The coupled model qualitatively reproduced the temporal patterns of various hemodynamic variables observed in clinical data. A concept of VAD characteristic frequency (fc) was developed to facilitate the analysis of VAD-ventricle synchrony. Characteristic frequency, defined as VAD rate in the absence of ventricular contraction, was essentially independent of cardiovascular parameters. For a given set of VAD parameters, synchrony was found to occur over a range of native heart rates. While the lower bound was determined by fc alone, the upper bound was a function of various cardiovascular parameters (e.g., left ventricular contractility, EMAX and systemic vascular resistance, SVR). In the case of synchronous behavior, the VAD and native heart have matched rates and counter-pulse, resulting in reduced ventricular loading. A decrease in EMAX or an increase in SVR increases asynchrony, resulting in frequent occurrences of co-pulsed beats (i.e., high ventricular loading). In conclusion, we found that VAD-ventricle synchrony is determined by a complex interaction between VAD and cardiovascular parameters. Our model-based analysis of VAD-ventricle interaction may be useful for optimizing the VAD operation, characterizing native ventricular contractility, and better understanding of the recovery process

A Combinatorial Auction for Collaborative Planning

When rational, utility-maximizing agents encounter an opportunity to collaborate on a group activity they must determine whether to commit to that activity. We refer to this problem as the initial-commitment decision problem (ICDP). The paper describes a mechanism that agents may use to solve the ICDP. The mechanism is based on a combinatorial auction in which agents bid on sets of roles in the group activity, each role comprising constituent subtasks that must be done by the same agent. Each bid may specify constraints on the execution times of the subtasks it covers. This mechanism permits agents to keep most details of their individual schedules of prior commitments private. The paper reports the results of several experiments testing the performance of the mechanism. These results demonstrate a significant improvement in performance when constituent subtasks are grouped into roles. They also show that as the number of time constraints in bids increases, the probability that there is a solution decreases, the cost of an optimal solution (if one exists) increases, and the time required to find an optimal solution (if one exists) decreases. The paper also describes several strategies that agents might employ when using this mechanism.Engineering and Applied Science