Effectiveness of the Be Brave Mentoring Program for Black Greek Letter Organization Members: A Mixed-Methods Study

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Ernst and Sara Lane Volgenau College of Education at Morehead State University by Timothy D. Queen on April 7, 2022

Variational Trajectory Optimization Tool Set: Technical description and user's manual

The algorithms that comprise the Variational Trajectory Optimization Tool Set (VTOTS) package are briefly described. The VTOTS is a software package for solving nonlinear constrained optimal control problems from a wide range of engineering and scientific disciplines. The VTOTS package was specifically designed to minimize the amount of user programming; in fact, for problems that may be expressed in terms of analytical functions, the user needs only to define the problem in terms of symbolic variables. This version of the VTOTS does not support tabular data; thus, problems must be expressed in terms of analytical functions. The VTOTS package consists of two methods for solving nonlinear optimal control problems: a time-domain finite-element algorithm and a multiple shooting algorithm. These two algorithms, under the VTOTS package, may be run independently or jointly. The finite-element algorithm generates approximate solutions, whereas the shooting algorithm provides a more accurate solution to the optimization problem. A user's manual, some examples with results, and a brief description of the individual subroutines are included

Two-Level Systems in Evaporated Amorphous Silicon

In $e$-beam evaporated amorphous silicon ($a$-Si), the densities of two-level systems (TLS), $n_{0}$ and $\overline{P}$, determined from specific heat $C$ and internal friction $Q^{-1}$ measurements, respectively, have been shown to vary by over three orders of magnitude. Here we show that $n_{0}$ and $\overline{P}$ are proportional to each other with a constant of proportionality that is consistent with the measurement time dependence proposed by Black and Halperin and does not require the introduction of additional anomalous TLS. However, $n_{0}$ and $\overline{P}$ depend strongly on the atomic density of the film ($n_{\rm Si}$) which depends on both film thickness and growth temperature suggesting that the $a$-Si structure is heterogeneous with nanovoids or other lower density regions forming in a dense amorphous network. A review of literature data shows that this atomic density dependence is not unique to $a$-Si. These findings suggest that TLS are not intrinsic to an amorphous network but require a heterogeneous structure to form

Adolescents care but don't feel responsible for farm animal welfare

Adolescents are the next generation of consumers with the potential to raise standards of farm animal welfare—to theirsatisfaction—if their preferences and concerns are translated into accurate market drivers and signals. There are no published data about adolescent views of farm animal welfare to allow meaningful design, implementation, and evaluation of educational strategies to improve consideration of—and behavior toward—farm animals. Knowledge of farm animal welfare, as well as beliefs and attitudes about farm animal welfare and behavioral intention relevant to it were determined in a sample of ukadolescents, using a survey incorporating an extended version of the theory of planned behavior and novel assessment tools. Our results indicate that adolescents have only a limited knowledge of welfare problems for farm animals and welfare-relevant product labels. Intentions to identify welfare standards for the animals from whom their food was derived were weak. Although they cared about farm animal welfare and agreed with fundamental principles—for example, the provision of space and the absence of pain and suffering—like adults they held limited belief in the power and responsibility that they possess through their choices as consumers; responsibility was often shifted to others, such as the government and farmers

E-Cigarette Availability, Price Promotions and Marketing at the Point-of Sale in the Contiguous United States (2014-2015): National Estimates and Multilevel Correlates

Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) sales and use have increased rapidly, yet point-of-sale e-cigarette availability and marketing is understudied. We estimated changes in e-cigarette availability and marketing among tobacco retailers in the U.S., and associations with neighborhood characteristics. A national sample of tobacco retailers in the Contiguous U.S. was audited in 2014 and 2015 (n = 1,905 and n = 2,126, respectively) to observe e-cigarette availability and marketing (signs, ads, displays and promotions) and generate national prevalence estimates. Store, neighborhood and state level correlates of 2015 e-cigarette availability, price promotions and exterior advertising were analyzed using multilevel mixed-effects generalized linear models. E-cigarettes were sold at 72.0% of retailers in 2014 and at 79.2% in 2015. Price promotions increased from 11.9% to 20.2% of retailers. Among retailers that did not previously sell e-cigarettes in 2012, availability in 2015 was greater for retailers in neighborhoods with the highest proportion of Black residents (vs. lowest). E-cigarette price promotions were more prevalent in neighborhoods with more Hispanic residents, while exterior e-cigarette marketing was more prevalent in neighborhoods with more Black residents. State smoking prevalence was positively associated with e-cigarette availability, promotions and advertising. E-cigarette point-of-sale availability and marketing increased between 2014 and 2015 and expanded to neighborhoods with a higher proportion of Black residents between 2012 and 2015. Retailers located within states with high smoking prevalence appear to be targeted by e-cigarette marketing. As e-cigarettes become the target of more regulations, understanding changes in the e-cigarette retail environment is critical to inform potential policies regulating their sale and marketing

Energy recovery in individuals with knee osteoarthritis.

OBJECTIVE: Pathological gaits have been shown to limit transfer between potential (PE) and kinetic (KE) energy during walking, which can increase locomotor costs. The purpose of this study was to examine whether energy exchange would be limited in people with knee osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: Ground reaction forces during walking were collected from 93 subjects with symptomatic knee OA (self-selected and fast speeds) and 13 healthy controls (self-selected speed) and used to calculate their center of mass (COM) movements, PE and KE relationships, and energy recovery during a stride. Correlations and linear regressions examined the impact of energy fluctuation phase and amplitude, walking velocity, body mass, self-reported pain, and radiographic severity on recovery. Paired t-tests were run to compare energy recovery between cohorts. RESULTS: Symptomatic knee OA subjects displayed lower energetic recovery during self-selected walking speeds than healthy controls (P = 0.0018). PE and KE phase relationships explained the majority (66%) of variance in recovery. Recovery had a complex relationship with velocity and its change across speeds was significantly influenced by the self-selected walking speed of each subject. Neither radiographic OA scores nor subject self-reported measures demonstrated any relationship with energy recovery. CONCLUSIONS: Knee OA reduces effective exchange of PE and KE, potentially increasing the muscular work required to control movements of the COM. Gait retraining may return subjects to more normal patterns of energy exchange and allow them to reduce fatigue

Toward a unified description of hadro- and photoproduction: S-wave pi- and eta-photoproduction amplitudes

The Chew-Mandelstam parameterization, which has been used extensively in the two-body hadronic sector, is generalized in this exploratory study to the electromagnetic sector by simultaneous fits to the pion- and eta-photoproduction S-wave multipole amplitudes for center-of-mass energies from the pion threshold through 1.61 GeV. We review the Chew-Mandelstam parameterization in detail to clarify the theoretical content of the SAID hadronic amplitude analysis and to place the proposed, generalized SAID electromagnetic amplitudes in the context of earlier employed parameterized forms. The parameterization is unitary at the two-body level, employing four hadronic channels and the gamma-N electromagnetic channel. We compare the resulting fit to the MAID parameterization and find qualitative agreement though, numerically, the solution is somewhat different. Applications of the extended parameterization to global fits of the photoproduction data and to global fits of the combined hadronic and photoproduction data are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures; added figures and tex