Reacting to The Future: An Immersive Experience with The Hunger Games

Description of an immersive, role-play based assignment centered on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Designed for a ENG 1120 Speculative Fiction course focused on dystopian literature. The assignments adapts elements of Reacting to the Past pedagogy and was developed as part of a Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community focused on large lecture literature courses

Welcome to the world of tomorrow today: Matt Groening\u27s Futurama as posthuman mediator

In this thesis an explanation of posthuman theory along with a close analysis of both Fry and the robot Bender. These analyses respectively show how we are already posthuman as well as the material limitations of posthuman subjectivity

Transatlantic Triangulations: Genre and Traumatic Memory in the Novels of Esmeralda Santiago and Alejandro Zambra

When a traumatic event collectively happens to a group or body of people, be that geographically, emotionally or physically, an imprint is left behind which impacts a part of a culture or society. The larger the scale of the incident, the wider the scope in terms of lives affected and memory established, which creates a new history for many. In Alejandro Zambra’s (2011) Ways of Going Home, Zambra remembers his traumatic childhood growing up under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in war torn Chile in the 1980s. While this postmodern novel uses memory and historical perceptions from a child’s viewpoint, Esmeralda Santiago’s (2011) historical romance Conquistadora focuses on the characters within her historical romance and centralizes the effects of colonialism in Puerto Rico. Interestingly, these novels are published within a few years of each other and focus on collective traumatic memory, inviting analysis of conventional genre through transatlantic or transnational triangulation. These texts offer a global picture of the aftermath of colonialism and violence, the trauma it leaves behind, and the ways history can be told through varying cultural perspectives. While transatlantic approaches have focused on political and wartime discourse, there is a gap in this scholarship within the personal and collective memory realm within trauma. Through the postmodern memoir, collective traumatic memory and cultural identity, this thesis connects this gap by demonstrating how these elements are triangulated culturally and geographically with examples from each of these texts. This transatlantic approach stems from Chile and Puerto Rico, as set within these stories and the very bloodline of these authors. Through these stories, I will identify how each represents collective identity in culture through the impact of memory in trauma and demonstrate the effects of the postmodern memoir using collective identity and intergenerational trauma

Using Artificial Neural Networks to Predict Disease Associations for Chemicals Present in Burn Pit Emissions

In June of 2015, 27,378 of the 28,000 returning Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF/OEF) veterans report being exposed to burn pits. According to Barth et al. (2014), 9,660 returning OIF/OEF veterans were diagnosed with respiratory diseases, to include asthma, bronchitis, and sinusitis, thus strengthening the need to develop decision support tools that can be used to understand the relationships between chemical exposure and disease. In this study an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used to predict the chemical-disease associations for burn pit constituents. Ten burn pit constituents were tested using varying hidden layers, similar chemical structure relationships, and three Training, Validation, and Testing (TVT) ratios. The ANN predicted misidentification rates of 73% or greater when the hidden layer size varied between 1 and 5. Misidentification rates of 75% or greater were observed for ANN simulations when the TVT ratios ranged from 60/20/20 to 80/10/10. ANN-based screening of chemical groups containing chemicals with benzene rings and chemicals containing hydrocarbon chains produced misidentification rates of 73% or greater, and R2 values of 0.0762 and lower. Hidden Layer size, TVT ratios, and chemical structure had little effect on the model’s performance; additional training data is needed to improve the predictive capability of the ANN. The ANN-based screening of individual burn pit constituents produced several chemicals with R2 values greater than 0.8. These chemicals have been prioritized to further develop predictive ANN models for human health force support, resulting in the first research screening burn pit constituents with an ANN, and the first to prioritize burn pit emissions for future testing

Under the Bridge: A Qualitative Investigation of Homeless Persons\u27 Perspectives on Substance Abuse and Its Treatment

Although homelessness is generally thought of as an urban problem, it is also a growing problem in rural areas, such as Missoula, Montana (Jacobson 2010). Studies of urban homelessness indicate that substance abuse is a part of life for many homeless individuals, and the barriers to substance abuse treatment are exacerbated by being homeless (Snow and Anderson 1993; Morrell 2007). “Prevalence studies estimate that the percentage of homeless people with alcohol use disorders to be at 30%-40% and drug abuse at 10%-15%” (Fisk, Raakfeldt, and McCormack 2006: 480). Substance abuse is also common among homeless individuals in rural areas, including Missoula, where this research takes place (Jacobson 2010). This research takes place in the only ‘wet’ day center for homeless persons in Missoula. Unlike traditional homeless shelters, harm reduction facilities or ‘wet’ facilities provide services to those under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. Clients of ‘wet’ facilities offer an important perspective on substance abuse and treatment, as they are most likely to have experiences with both. To better understand this population, this project uses participant observation and in-depth interviews with clients and staff of a ‘wet’ facility to explain their perceived and experienced barriers to substance abuse treatment

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PEER TRAINING TO INCREASE COMMUNICATIVE RESPONSES BY PEERS WITH DISABILITIES

Individuals with disabilities often have social and communication deficits which impact their development of social relationships. Therefore, individuals with disabilities need additional supports and interventions to gain appropriate social and communication skills. Research demonstrates that peer-mediated interventions are an effective way to help increase social interactions between students with disabilities and students without disabilities. There has been research to support that peers can successfully be taught how to use AAC devices and how to initiate and respond to peers with disabilities. Some of the positive effects of peer-mediated intervention include an increase in social communication skills, inclusion, and increased use of communication devices. The S’MoRRES© strategy was developed as a tool to help teach and supports peers as they learn to communicate with individuals with disabilities. The investigator trained typical peers how to create opportunities for communicative interactions with their peers with disabilities, using S’MoRRES© as a guide. The dependent variables of the study were peer fidelity implementing the communication strategies and the target student responses. There were two students with disabilities and six peers from general education population. All six peers were able to implement the communication strategies with fidelity and the number of target student responses increased. The results suggest that peers can successfully be taught and implement strategies to communicate with individuals with disabilities

Book Groups in Social Work Education: A Method for Modelling Groupwork Practice

The use of book groups as a learning medium in social work education has evolved rapidly over the last few years, with universities and practice settings across the UK and beyond adopting the approach to supplement traditional teaching methods (Taylor, 2014). Where employed, student social workers and practitioners have found book groups to be effective for consolidating understandings that support professional development. Thus far, however their use within modules of learning as a means to demonstrating groupwork practice has not been fully realised. The following account proposes a teaching approach which is twofold in nature. On the one hand it engages students, within their initial social work training, in a group experience and on the other, through the group, makes explicit the knowledge and skills essential to effective groupwork for practice. This paper offers book groups as medium through which students can develop groupwork knowledge and skills; and makes the point that groupwork remains a viable method of intervention in social work practice