The scientific research conducted by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) institutions is groundbreaking. Everyday, scientists create a deeper understanding of the world around us, and then communicate that understanding through journal papers, articles, and conferences. To strengthen these traditional forms of communication, science communicators can use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to promote themselves and earn digital audience engagement that will grow the impact and success of their research. This thesis synthesizes research on human communication theories, digital user behavior, and science communication practices in order to create the “Science Communicator’s Guide to Social Media Engagement”. This guide empowers science communicators to utilize social media in a way that can increase their digital audience engagement, expand the reach of their research, and ultimately amplify their professional presence in the scientific community.

This paper will consider ethics within vegan eating habits and establish primary parts to a vegan diet in order to determine environmental impact of each ingredient through method of production. Through defining each food’s environmental output, level of planetary impact will be established. Foods found harmful will be excluded by considering alternatives and curating suggestions inclusive of only products considered environmentally sustainable.

This study is a qualitative analysis that makes use of Rick Williams’ Personal Impact Assessment (PIA) to gauge the feelings, narratives, and intuitions that people receive when they view photographs of criminal defendants being made to do a “perp walk.” Participants gave their impressions, which were then categorized and analyzed, along with other statements that they made during an interview outside of the PIA. This study attempted to understand better the received messages of the common media practice of spreading images of perp walks.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between acoustic indicators in speech and the presence of orofacial myofunctional disorder (OMD). This study analyzed the first and second formant frequencies (F1 and F2) of the four corner vowels [/i/, /u/, /æ/ and /ɑ/] found in the spontaneous speech of thirty participants. It was predicted that speakers with orofacial myofunctional disorder would have a raised F1 and F2 because of habitual low and anterior tongue positioning. This study concluded no significant statistical differences in the formant frequencies. Further inspection of the total vowel space area of the OMD speakers suggested that OMD speakers had a smaller, more centralized vowel space. We concluded that more study of the total vowel space area for OMD speakers is warranted.

Trends in the beauty industry begin when large portions of the market shift to focus on a specific idea. These trends can be fleeting, or they can be permanent, but they have the ability to alter the course of the industry for decades. Every trend that comes and goes must be analyzed by brands to determine if it is worth following or if it would be more advantageous to take a different path. Some of the biggest trends in the beauty industry right now are inclusivity, sustainability, and clean beauty. I conducted a survey to determine the importance of these trends through consumers’ level of awareness and how the trends effect their purchasing decisions. I found that consumers are very aware of all three trends and that their willingness to purchase from brands that are more inclusive, sustainable, and clean is correlated with how much they are willing to spend on products from brands that follow the trends. The results from the survey suggest that there is a high demand for brands that are inclusive, sustainable, and clean. Therefore, it could be a good idea for brands to follow one or multiple of these trends and incorporate them into their marketing strategies.

In its totality, “Love and Everything After” consists of five tracks. In musical circles, this is considered an EP (extended play), a collection of music longer than one song but generally more brief than a full album. Each track combines varying degrees of my own acoustic and piano instrumentation with modern production elements, all tied together with a corrected vocal and a quick mix and master by my producer who doubles as my sound engineer for this project. I will outline my experience with the creative process here as well as break down the development of each song. A fair bit of the lyrical composition is dedicated to background information that may seem to verge on oversharing, but alas, I am a writer. I consider verging on oversharing an inevitable cog in any successful songwriting operation. I’ve decided to tackle the songs in chronological order, prioritizing the time during which the bulk of the piece was first assembled.

Horror as a genre is often dismissed on the basis of its reliance on jump scares and adrenaline highs, but history would suggest that society is just as well reflected in horror films as in any other genre. We only truly know our own experiences in real life, but film grants us the opportunity to see the world through another’s eyes, and what a more powerful way than through the experience of fear. In order to contextualize materials for the creation of a short horror film, the first part of this paper explores horror as a genre and the roles women tend to play in horror, both in the past and the present. It also considers how society perceives threats to women and how women perceive threats to themselves. It is important to define the foundation of women in horror and understand their current role in the genre to achieve the overarching goal of making a short horror film depicting a real issue that women face. A script, a storyboard, a timeline, and other materials for such a production are included as well.

This project uses Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism and the pentad to analyze popular narrative films about human sex trafficking. It seeks to understand the relationship between a film’s dominant philosophy (as highlighted by utilizing Burke’s pentad), its inherently suggested solutions to trafficking, and the effect that the film has on viewers’ perception of trafficking. 20 narrative feature films about sex trafficking such as the 2008 film Taken were analyzed for this study. Three out of five of Burke’s philosophies were uncovered after analysis: idealism, mysticism, and materialism. Films that aligned with idealism were found to implicitly blame women for their own trafficking. Films that aligned with mysticism were found to rally audiences around violence and racism as opposed to women’s freedom. Films that aligned with materialism were found to be the most empathetic towards trafficked women. The conclusion of this paper is that films about sex trafficking have a high potential to be harmful to women who have exited trafficking. This paper asserts that the most valuable films about trafficking are those that are not simply based on a true story but are created by trafficking survivors themselves, such as the 2016 film Apartment 407.

This project uses Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism and the pentad to analyze popular narrative films about human sex trafficking. It seeks to understand the relationship between a film’s dominant philosophy (as highlighted by utilizing Burke’s pentad), its inherently suggested solutions to trafficking, and the effect that the film has on viewers’ perception of trafficking. 20 narrative feature films about sex trafficking such as the 2008 film Taken were analyzed for this study. Three out of five of Burke’s philosophies were uncovered after analysis: idealism, mysticism, and materialism. Films that aligned with idealism were found to implicitly blame women for their own trafficking. Films that aligned with mysticism were found to rally audiences around violence and racism as opposed to women’s freedom. Films that aligned with materialism were found to be the most empathetic towards trafficked women. The conclusion of this paper is that films about sex trafficking have a high potential to be harmful to women who have exited trafficking. This paper asserts that the most valuable films about trafficking are those that are not simply based on a true story but are created by trafficking survivors themselves, such as the 2016 film Apartment 407.

Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma is a type of lung cancer usually discovered at an advanced stage at which point there is no cure. Six primary MPM cell lines were used to conduct in vitro research to make conclusions about specific gene mutations associated with Mesothelioma. DNA exome sequencing, a time efficient and inexpensive technique, was used for identifying specific DNA mutations. Computational analysis of exome sequencing data was used to make conclusions about copy number variation among common MPM genes. Results show a CDKN2A gene heterozygous deletion in Meso24 cell line. This data is validated by a previous CRISPR-Cas9 outgrowth screen for Meso24 where the knocked-out gene caused increased Meso24 growth.