Theses Collection

Past research suggests that touch and pressure can have antidepressant and anxiolytic properties. The present investigation hypothesized that brief interventions of hugging, wearing a weighted pressure vest, and being in the presence of a friend during a stressful situation would reduce anxiety, stress, and depression while increasing social support. Undergraduate participants (N = 155) completed the Trier Social Stress Test while either receiving hugs from a friend (Hug), having a friend nearby (Friend), wearing a weighted pressure vest (Vest), or having nothing added (Control). None of the measures differed significantly between conditions. However, participants in the Hug condition had marginally higher state social support than Control participants. These findings suggest that brief interventions with hugs, weighted pressure vests, or the presence of a friend are not effective at reducing anxiety, stress, or depression, while hugs may be effective at increasing social support.

This thesis accomplishes three main objectives. The first objective is locating, consolidating, and analysing current scholarship on transsexual, transracial, and transabled identities, with the goal of understanding the similarities and contrarities among them. As is detailed in the Literature Review, simultaneous discussion of these three subjectivities is absent from current scholarship. The second objective is to use this paper as an archive for the process that occurred in drafting new theoretical hypotheses regarding the varying levels of social permissibility each of these identities experience: brainstroming, researching, crafting The Trajectory of Permissibility, disproving that theory, and beginning to develop a new hypothesis based on the research completed. Because the paper is a product of two semesters of independent research, the bulk of the scholarship collected suppports - and then disproves - a theory that has proven to be unfeasible in understanding the relationships among identities and social permissibility. The third objective of this paper is to introduce a new theory-in-progress, The Hypothesis on Permissibility, which is a reactionary framework to the failure of the Trajectory of Permissibility. The Hypothesis of Permissibility seeks to understand the structural and indiviudal components of varied social permissibility for transsexual, transracial, and transabled identities independent of a trajectory. The final portion of this paper introduces early thoughts on The Hypothesis on Permissibility, which may become - via future investments in research, application, and trial-and-error - a theoretical lens through which we might better understand the co-existence of these embodied, marginalized identities.

One of the main strategies humans use to improve captive animal welfare is by providing enrichment. Many enrichment practices revolve around making animals more comfortable with humans by increasing positive human-animal interactions. Consistently positive human interactions should increase comfort levels around humans. Conversely, if animals have consistently neutral or negative human interactions, they are likely uncomfortable around humans. For most animals in captivity, having positive human interactions that can outweigh negative ones. This maintains balance in human-animal interactions, promoting good welfare. For rehabilitating wildlife, though, improving perception of humans poses a problem. Wildlife in rehabilitation centers will be released back into the wild after their stay and so, if they gain a positive perception of humans, could become nuisance animals. Therefore, it is important to maintain neutral human-animal interactions with rehabilitating wildlife while still providing them with enrichment. In this study, denning behaviors in rehabilitating Virginia Opossums (Didelphis virginiana) were looked at as a possible form of hands-off enrichment. Four kinds of dens were provided to the opossums: hard open, hard closed, soft open and soft closed. Opossums were given one of two treatments night one: either the soft/hard open den treatment or the soft/hard closed den treatment. On night two, opossums were given their preferred den (either soft or hard) with the open and closed dens of that material. Before the first night of testing, and after the last day of testing, a perception of human test was done to assess change in comfort levels around humans. We found no significant difference in den preference between opossums, and no significant difference between the first and second perception of human test. We did see a possible trend of opossums preferring the open hard den, as opossums chose it in seven out of the eleven total data collection nights. Overall, denning is likely a good method of enrichment for opossums in a rehabilitation setting. Future studies should continue to look for den preference in captive opossums across a larger number of individuals.

As a valuable aspect of a bilingual’s speech ability, codeswitching reveals information regarding an individual’s knowledge of language and motivation for speaking languages. Because codeswitching is widely recognized in the United States due to an increasing Hispanic and Latino population, it is important to understand the different types of codeswitching, as well as what these types could tell us about the speech abilities of a bilingual. Throughout this semester, I have been researching Spanish-English bilinguals’ intrasentential multi-word codeswitching tendencies. Using data collected from Jessica Cox’s study in Central Pennsylvania “Individual differences in language experience: Bilingual effects in cognition,” I coded and categorized switches included in bilingual participants’ autobiographical memory recalls and compared those codeswitching tendencies with the background information provided by each participant. I sought to find the answers to a series of questions: are there certain societal/background factors that affect a bilingual’s type and frequency of codeswitching? Does an individual’s proficiency in both languages play a part in their codeswitching tendencies? Is codeswitching just a completely individualistic act with virtually no universality among its participants? Based on the results of my research, I found that there were not large, distinguishing differences in background, nor in self-reported Spanish/English language proficiency. This implicates that codeswitching is a random act and cannot be neatly defined or categorized. Moreover, individual differences account for a bilingual’s codeswitching tendency and frequency.

This account will attempt a preliminary evaluation of two discourses that have significantly altered the landscape of their respective disciplines: the science of positive psychology, which rose to prominence at the end of the twentieth century as a reaction to the overemphasis on pathology in psychology at the expense of understanding the nature of productive and fulfilling lives; and virtue ethics, which re-emerged in the late 1950’s as an alternative to the dominant practical ethical theories of deontology, which has its roots in the work of the philosopher Immanuel Kant and utilitarianism, a tradition that descends from the works of the British philosophers Jeremy Bentham, and more famously, John Stewart Mill.

This thesis reviews the strengths and weaknesses of supply chain transparency within global food chains, examining the socioeconomic byproducts of food fraud and using a case study of honey laundering to illustrate the competencies and responsibilities of consumers, producers, and regulators to create a more ethical economy. The United States National Agricultural Services Statistics reported a decline in honey bees from 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million hives in 2008 (a 60% reduction). However, grocery store aisles still remain flooded with various types of honey, while honey-infused products (e.g. Cheerios, Burt’s Bees Cosmetics) continue to dominate the global markets. The seemingly sustained supply of lowpriced honey is largely attributable to a phenomenon known as “honey laundering,” the mislabeling and selling of inauthentic honey products and an example of economically motivated adulteration. United States (US) conglomerates outsource “honey” production to countries like China, where artificial sweeteners substitute real honey, decreasing costs and retail prices. With local US beekeepers unable to rival foreign competitors’ prices, the US placed an anti-dumping tariff on Chinese honey imports in 2002. Illegitimate honey producers then illegally transshipped honey via third-party nations to mask their country of origin and composition. An absence of regulatory measures throughout the supply chain process permits the unlawful mislabeling and selling of false honey. Supply chain transparency, the availability of information regarding production processes, offers the most formidable solution to mitigate food fraud. Data has been collected from peer-reviewed journals, published reports, news articles, and interviews with professionals within the honey industry. This paper argues that consumer, producer, and legislative bodies each hold a civic duty to utilize their unique sources of power to regulate the global markets, where transparency presents the most feasible solution in involving all parties in the ethical economy formation process.

Estrogen plays an important role in anxiety-like and sexual behavior in male rats. Previous studies suggest that ERβ plays a role in regulating anxiety-like behavior, while ERα has been shown to be important for sexual behavior. However, the role of GPR30 in anxiety-like behavior and sexual behavior in male rats remains to be determined. To test the role of GPR30 on anxiety-like and sexual behavior, half of the male rats were administered a vehicle solution and the other half were administered a GPR30 antagonist, G-15, 24 hours and 30 minutes prior to the start of anxiety testing. Anxiety-like behavior, characterized by time spent in the periphery of the arena compared to the center of the arena, was examined in an open field arena for 5 minutes. Immediately following anxiety testing, male rats were exposed to a sexually receptive female rat for 45 minutes, and sexual behaviors including latencies and frequencies of mounts, intromissions, and ejaculations, as well as social exploration and anogenital investigation were assessed. Results indicate that GPR30 does not play a significant role in anxiety-like behavior, but does seem to impact sexual motivation and plays a significant role in sexual efficiency in male rats.

A collection of short stories.

The U.S. media is one of the nation’s most powerful agents. The media largely determines what information is conveyed to the public and is also responsible for the way in which that information is framed. For this reason, the media exercises a considerable amount of control over American public opinion. For the purpose of this paper, I study primarily the mainstream American broadcast media, its relationship with the U.S. government, and its influence over the American people. I argue that the mainstream news media influences American perception of new military technology, specifically forms of aerial bombardment. I use the atomic bomb, napalm, and the Predator drone as case studies because the invention of these weapons marks key innovation in U.S. aerial bombardment technology. The U.S. media shaped public opinion regarding each of these technologies. I also explore how dominant imagery of the atomic bomb, napalm, and the Predator drone shapes public opinion.

Proponents of austerity have argued that the ‘fiscal profligacy’ of periphery Eurozone economies is responsible for the current crisis. This paper explores the underlying economic and political forces behind the process of European integration to provide an alternative analysis of the crisis. Using a Post-Keynesian and Political Economy framework, this paper argues that the crisis is a manifestation of the underlying conflict between labor and capital, exacerbated by the structural flaws in the design of the Eurozone. It provides evidence that German export-driven policies played a fundamental role in creating trade imbalances between the core and periphery countries, further exacerbated by fiscal and monetary policy constraints imposed on member nations. This paper concludes that the current austerity reforms do not address the fundamental problems of the Eurozone, but rather attempt to shift the burden of the crisis onto the workers. Ultimately, the outcome of this class struggle will determine how the Eurozone will emerge out of this crisis