Biracial Multiracial Lesbian Gay Bisexual Queer Student Leaders Making Meaning of Their Experiences

Five biracial multiracial lesbian gay bisexual queer student leaders shared stories about their undergraduate experiences at a prestigious southern university. Critical cultural and constructivist paradigm provided the framework for supporting this narrative inquiry. Through multiple interviews, participants shared stories of their background, educational journey, and the impact they hope to have in the future. Through those interviews, participants also shared stories of their journey to understanding their racial identity, sexual identity, leadership experiences, and experiences centered on the intersections of race, sexuality, and leadership. Stories explored participants’ sense of belonging, code switching, functioning in racial and sexual identity specific spaces, experiences of isolation and exclusion, and challenges faced. Additional factors explored considered family upbringing as an underlying factor for participants exploring spaces on campus that aligned with their identities, navigating how to name individual identities, reasons why some participants were not as public about their sexual identity as others, and authentic leadership. This study explored implications and recommendations for academic and student affairs administrators, for student programming, and student organizations. Future considerations for research and implications are also provided

ABVD.

A nineteen year old cancer survivor looks back on her experience and how it pertains to today’s societal beauty norms. By utilizing the name of her chemotherapy regimen, she breaks down the ways she felt that her femininity and identity were defined by outsiders. “ABVD.” aims to analyze the way in which a young woman recalls feeling when questions surrounding her femininity came into play. This piece serves as an emotional reflective prose through the lens of a cancer patient

Borderline Personality Disorder Stigmatization: Bias, Discrimination, and Prejudice in the Healthcare Field

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a personality disorder characterized by patterns of unstable moods, impulsive behaviors, and insecure relationships. Often misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder, BPD is difficult to diagnose due to its symptoms overlapping with many other conditions. There has been a reluctance to work with individuals who have BPD due to the surrounding stigma. In fact, healthcare workers tend to misunderstand BPD, and assume that those who have it are manipulative, aggressive, violent, and unable to be helped. This stigmatization has a profound impact on how BPD clients are seen in the healthcare field and furthermore how they receive treatment. It is clear that bias, discrimination, and prejudice impacts the social, cognitive, and emotional outcomes for individuals with BPD due to the stigma in the healthcare field

At the Dinner Table

A young woman and feminist analyzes privilege and prejudice through the experience of being at a family dinner. She questions the way that people view “controversial conversations” and why they are labeled that way. As she opens discussions that are “politically charged” and “inappropriate” at the dinner table, she is met with criticism and questions. By looking at the #Metoo movement, 97% movement, Black Lives Matter movement, and Health at Every Size movement, alongside a variety of other significant points, the woman reflects on silenced voices, minority identities and basic human rights in America

Nondestructive detection method for the calcium and nitrogen content of living plants based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) using multispectral images

Herein, we present the novel method targeted for determination of plant nutritional state with the use of computer vision and Neural Networks. The method is based on multispectral imaging performed by an exclusively designed Agroscanner and a dedicated analytical system for further data analysis with Neural Networks. An Agroscanner is a low-cost mobile construction intended for multispectral measurements at macro-scale, operating at four wavelengths: 470, 550, 640 and 850 nm. Together with developed software and implementation of a Neural Network it was possible to design a unique approach to process acquired plant images and assess information about plant physiological state. The novelty of the developed technology is focused on the multispectral, macro-scale analysis of individual plant leaves, rather than entire fields. Such an approach makes the method highly sensitive and precise. The method presented herein determines the basic physiological deficiencies of crops with around 80% efficiency

Suspicion of Motives Predicts Minorities' Responses to Positive Feedback in Interracial Interactions.

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites' positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites' positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat. Three studies examined how suspicion of motives relates to ethnic minorities' responses to receiving positive feedback from a White peer or same-ethnicity peer (Experiment 1), to receiving feedback from a White peer that was positive or negative (Experiment 2), and to receiving positive feedback from a White peer who did or did not know their ethnicity (Experiment 3). As predicted, the more suspicious Latinas were of Whites' motives for behaving positively toward minorities in general, the more they regarded positive feedback from a White peer who knew their ethnicity as disingenuous and the more they reacted with cardiovascular reactivity characteristic of threat/avoidance, increased feelings of stress, heightened uncertainty, and decreased self-esteem. We discuss the implications for intergroup interactions of perceptions of Whites' motives for nonprejudiced behavior

Modeling Biofuel Expansion Effects on Land Use Change Dynamics

Increasing demand for crop-based biofuels, in addition to other human drivers of land use, induces direct and indirect land use changes (LUC). Our system dynamics tool is intended to complement existing LUC modeling approaches and to improve the understanding of global LUC drivers and dynamics by allowing examination of global LUC under diverse scenarios and varying model assumptions. We report on a small subset of such analyses. This model provides insights into the drivers and dynamic interactions of LUC (e.g., dietary choices and biofuel policy) and is not intended to assert improvement in numerical results relative to other works. Demand for food commodities are mostly met in high food and high crop-based biofuel demand scenarios, but cropland must expand substantially. Meeting roughly 25% of global transportation fuel demand by 2050 with biofuels requires \u3e2 times the land used to meet food demands under a presumed 40% increase in per capita food demand. In comparison, the high food demand scenario requires greater pastureland for meat production, leading to larger overall expansion into forest and grassland. Our results indicate that, in all scenarios, there is a potential for supply shortfalls, and associated upward pressure on prices, of food commodities requiring higher land use intensity (e.g., beef) which biofuels could exacerbate

Doubling Energy Efficiency at the University of Michigan by 2030

Approximately 84 million Americans spend their days in colleges, universities, and public or private primary and secondary schools.ii The commercial building sector, which includes educational institutions, accounts for 18.44 percent of overall energy consumption in the United States.iii Education buildings are ranked third highest of all commercial buildings, consuming over 600 trillion Btus of energy each year.iv Given these consumption levels, educational institutions have an opportunity to make a significant impact to increase energy efficiency in this country. The University of Michigan (herein, also “the University” or “UM”) has been working diligently to be leaders in this charge. In 2012, the Alliance to Save Energy proposed a goal of doubling energy productivity in the United States by 2030, thereby getting twice as much economic output for every unit of energy input.v This goal inspired Johnson Controls, Inc. (herein, “Johnson Controls” or “JCI”) to approach the University with a Master’s Project, enabling a group of students to learn from the expertise of Johnson Controls, and to be active participants in sustainability efforts at the University of Michigan. Additionally, the findings and recommendations developed to increase energy productivity on campus should likely contribute towards the University’s existing sustainability goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This project seeks to harness the knowledge, technology and best practices honed by Johnson Controls from decades of experience in energy conservation projects, as well as the expertise from the University of Michigan, including various professionals and organizations that actively work towards energy efficiency measures on campus. Leveraging these and other resources, our six graduate student member team (Appendix A) analyzed the University of Michigan’s current energy demand and management. We learned about the extensive work the energy management team has already been doing for several decades in some areas on campus, and about what opportunities there are for improvement. Our master's project team identified several recommendations for furthering the collective energy efficiency performance of the University, as well as recommendations on measures that can be taken in the Samuel T. Dana building (herein, the “Dana building”), which serves as a case study for the project. The key findings and recommendations, both campus-wide and for the Dana building, are detailed here.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117588/3/Doubling Energy Efficiency at the University of Michigan by 2030.pd