The UTSA Journal of Undergraduate Research & Scholarly Work
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The University of Texas at San Antonio Journal of Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Works (JURSW) is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Office of the Vice President for Research. The JURSW publishes scholarly inquiry from a wide variety of disciplines and from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary frameworks.
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Item Across Cultures: Pakistani All-Female Speaking Rituals(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2020-12) Virani, ZuwenaA common finding in Language and Gender studies is that women aim for a united conversational dynamic, while men tend towards the opposite. However, I argue that native culture plays a more significant role in Language and Gender studies than has previously been considered. To do so, I compared previous conclusions—from Jennifer Coates’s Gossip Revisited (2011)—to my own drawn from data collected during a gathering of Pakistani Muslim women and analyzed that data, considering culture as well as gender. The following hypotheses were made prior to collection of data: Culture, religion, and ethnicity will heavily influence the frequency and overall use of certain, typically female, linguistic rituals generally observed in Western contexts, and certain rituals will be used in an exaggerated or minimized capacity in comparison to Coates’ findings. Over five days, I observed three conversations among a group of five to eight Pakistani women, aged between 50 and 60. The following rituals were observed: interruptions, floor sharing, tag questions, code-switching, minimal responses, “butterfinger buts,” and razzing. Certain rituals were just as consistent among my participants as they were in Coates’. However, use of razzing, “butterfinger buts,” floor sharing, and tag questions differed greatly—all were used in a different context and capacity than expected. These rituals were significantly affected by culture, religion, and ethnicity; further analysis revealed that additional factors such as age and familiarity between speakers also play a role in motivating ritualistic behavior.Item Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A Theoretical Application of Mass Media Persuasion on Performance Art(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Swets, MeganAdrienne Truscott is a performance artist and comedienne whose performance Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her P*ssy And Little Else! satirizes rape culture and rape jokes. In this performance, Truscott does a standup routine while nude from the waist down, drinking alcohol, and surrounded by framed photos of politicians and celebrities who have condoned or committed sexual assault. Examining the communicative elements of this performance from within a framework of mass media persuasion reveals how Truscott’s techniques modify her audience’s attitudes about rape and rape culture. This framework is composed of Expectancy Violations Theory, the intersection of social activism and humor, and the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which are all related to how humor can persuade audiences. These applications demonstrate several elements of persuasion: Truscott improves audience perceptions of her message by disrupting their expectations; Truscott uses humor to reframe feminist issues of rape culture; and Truscott’s performance elicits peripheral processing to ease audience acceptance of her political messages. An understanding of how Truscott’s performance persuades her audience to change their attitudes about rape and rape culture informs how humor can and is used as a powerful technique for changing behaviors.Item Advantages of the Complex Taylor Series Expansion Method for determining Circuit Outputs(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2017-08-31) Roussel, ZacharyThe complex Taylor series expansion (CTSE) is a method to compute derivatives numerically with machine precision for real valued functions. This method converts a real-valued function to complex-valued and introduces a small imaginary step to the parameter of interest. In this work, CTSE had been used in an electrical circuit to find the current flowing through a capacitor with respect to the voltage across the capacitor, where the voltage across the capacitor is a complicated solution of a differential equation. The advantage of CTSE is that it can be used to find accurate derivatives of arbitrary functions. A limitation of CTSE is that it can only be used to compute the first order derivative of a function. A numerical example is presente to demonstrate the accuracy of the method.Item After-effects and Remainders of War— Identifying War as an “Evil Institution”(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2018) Trevino, Rheanna S.“After-effects and Remainders of War— Identifying War as an ‘Evil Institution’” is an application of Claudia Card's theory of evil in which evils are evaluated not by one’s actions, but in regard to the sufferings of the victims. Referencing Claudia Card's Atrocity Paradigm, this work examines war through harmful after-effects to argue war is an “evil institution” by Card's definition. It is often clear that acts during war can be considered unjust and perhaps evil, however, the focus of this work is not the actions of war, but rather the suffering which can occur following war. Archival records of Civil Rights activist Albert Peña (from UTSA's Special Collections) and Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera support the thesis that war and, as an example, conquest are evil and leave many people with emotional, psychological, and political struggles which can last for decades and even centuries. In this paper, the conquest of the Americas, namely the Spanish Conquest and the Mexican American War, are examined as examples to address the many possible forms of suffering as a result of war; and those who suffer from these specific wars are descendants of Maya, Aztec, and Native American Indians, to include Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Chicanos. However, these forms of suffering can affect anyone who has suffered from a division or loss of identity due to war. To encompass war, various forms are addressed, including ideological war, revolution, and intervention, aiming to show thats each of these can "foreseeably lead to or facilitate intolerably harmful injustice in normal operation”— Card's definition of an “evil institution.” In examining the evils of war and conquest, this work uses applied ethics to view Card's ethical theory in important ways, bordering the limits of Just War Theory and reexamining the permissibility of war by recognizing those who suffer.Item Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen : History Repeats History(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2017) Hobbs, Jeremiah E.Item An APOS Analysis of Student Learning of Congruence in Taxicab Geometry(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Barbosa, Jose SaulNon-Euclidean geometries are commonly used in the education of college geometry students to enhance their understanding of Euclidean geometry. Of these geometries, Taxicab geometry can be introduced to help students generalize their current understandings of specific concepts in Euclidean geometry. Of these concepts, Taxicab geometry perturbs students’ definition of congruence. This research project is part of a larger research project that aims to encourage students to define congruence with respect to isometries. Using the APOS framework, data collected from classroom participation was analyzed to investigate how students would develop this definition in Taxicab geometry.Item Application of Neuroevolution in Blackjack(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2020-12) Tejani, Iraz K.Blackjack is one of the few casino games with an extremely low house edge. In the past, many brute force simulations have been done to derive basic strategy. Classical brute force methods are tedious, time consuming, and often require hundreds of millions of games played to achieve results. In this project, I use reinforcement learning, specifically neuroevolution (NE), which is an attempt to simulate biological evolution, to see if an artificial neural net (ANN) can evolve to learn basic strategy and achieve the theoretical maxima provided by a basic strategy simulation. Two main simulations are run in this project, one using basic strategy charts and the other using the evolved ANN. These are then compared to see how effective the ANN was in learning strategy as well as how quickly it was able to learn.Item Application of the Cox Proportional Hazards Model for the Quantitative Analysis of LC-MS Proteomics Data(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Arreola, Ivan; Han, DavidAlong with quantitative, analytical genomics, proteomics continues to be a growing field for determining the gene and cellular functions at the protein level. As the liquid chromatography mass spectrometryphy (LC-MS) experiments produce protein peak intensities data, statistical and computational techniques are required to conduct quantitative analytical proteomics. The LC-MS proteomics data often have large quantities of missing peak intensities due to censoring of the low-abundance spectral features. Because of this, the observed peak intensities from the LC-MS method are all positive, skewed, and often left-censored. The classical survival analysis methods are ideal to detect differentially expressed proteins among different groups. These methods include the non-parametric rank sum (RS) tests such as the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney (WMW) tests, parametric surivival models such as the accelerated failure time (AFT) model with popular lifetime distributions; log-normal (LN), log-logistic (LL), and Weibull (W) for modeling the peak intensity data. As an alternative approach, here we propose the Cox proportional hazards (PH) method, a popular semi-parametric model for modeling survival data. The proposed regression-based method allows for leniency on the hazard function by alleviating the requirements of distribution-specific hazard functions. With the hopes of gaining more insightful biological information for cellular functions at the protein level, the statistical properties of each method are investigated through a simulation study and an application to the Type I diabetes dataset.Item Arachne According to Ovid and Dante: Challenging False Idols(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Harrell, Maxim PikeItem Automated 3D Mapping and Quantification of Haversian Architecture in Bone Tissue(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2018) Betancourt, Alejandro Morales; Montelongo, Sergio A.; Appleford, Mark R.; Guda, TejaBone tissue has a unique architecture necessitating laborious characterization at various scales. Since the extracellular matrix (ECM) exists in a solid phase, traditional histology reduces the mineral content of ECM to obtain high-resolution 3d micrographs and is operator dependent in terms of analysis. Other imaging techniques such as microCT (μCT), are limited by the spatial resolution of the μCT scanner and provide minimal cellular correlation. The vascularization inside the bone (Haversian system) appears to exist in continually remodeling patterns with bone turnover, making it difficult to numerically assess the Haversian canal architecture. Our novel technique proposes the 3D characterization of bone tissue, by using light microscopy and MATLAB®, to acquire microscopic 3D images of bone vasculature with enhanced spatial resolution. Briefly, the right femurs of eight rats were sectioned in cross sectional slices of 1 mm thickness. The slices were exposed to a Villanueva osteochrome stain protocol followed by sequential dehydration, poly methyl-methacrylate infiltration, and polymerization. Using a combination of a novel, automated focus-adjusting system in conjunction with light microscopy, we obtained 100 sequential discrete images at 1μm steps along the z-stack at 100x in-plane magnification. The images were processed using MATLAB® software, obtaining a 3D representation of the Haversian system. From these 3D images we quantified Haversian number, and vessel parameters, including surface, volume, channel thickness and porosity ratio to tissue volume. Data analysis shows differences in the Haversian thickness in the three regions studied, showing that the overall vessel volume remains relatively conserved, but the Haversian architecture changes further away from the proximal region. Due to optical microscope limitations, this technique only can measure samples up to 100 microns in depth. This protocol can potentially be used to obtain 3D architectural quantification of other tissues by modifying staining protocols.Item Bad Bunny: A Contemporary Latinx Activist(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2020-12) Sulaica, AnalisaOppressive and hostile values of sexism, racism, and homophobia remain active within the Latinx community: values resulting from a continued history of U.S. imperialistic practices. This research explores the resistance against these values within the Latinx community through Reggaetón. I focus this work on Bad Bunny (also known as Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio), an increasingly influential and popular Reggaetonero from Puerto Rico. Using a feminist approach to textual and media analysis, I demonstrate how Bad Bunny is engaging in politicization, gender-play, and cultural resistance to challenge and dismantle the oppressive themes of citizenship, white privilege, and gender/sexuality hostility that maintain the prejudiced perceptions of race, gender, and sexuality within the immediate Latinx community as well as society as a whole. With the increasing academic attention to Reggaetón and its unique potential to serve as a global means of resistance, this investigation is an important contribution to the growing body of scholarly work seeking to outline the significance of Reggaetón to Latinx activism, praxis, and community.Item Best Practices to Foster Pre-service Teachers’ Science Content Knowledge(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2022-12) Salinas, PaulinaUnderstanding the science instruction approaches to pre-service teacher preparation is important to identify the effective features of these experiences and apply them to the design of new learning experiences. The main idea is that teachers often feel not prepared to teach science, and there are several research reports that teachers need opportunities to continue learning science as they prepare to teach it. Thus, it is important to identify the best practices and science learning experiences that can inform the preparation of teachers. Additionally, it is possible to understand the factors that include usefulness and perceived ease of technology as a special case in teacher preparation. Moreover, the focus of the literature review and revision of research work is to understand the affordances and limitations of different learning environments to support and provide a positive science learning experience to teachers with the intersection of science and technology as a particular case.Item Book Review: Is it possible to predict accurately the future of higher education? In Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education, Bryan Alexander sure tries.(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2020-12) Siebenthaler, AmandaItem Book Review: T. Jackie Cuevas Shatters the Hegemony(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2020-12) MacManus, AziaItem Borderland Language Conflicts: A Study of Cross-National Interactions and Cultural Resolutions(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Rodriguez, Joshua; Gonzalez, Liliana; Myers, Kate; Horowitz, RosalindItem Borderlands, Cultural Citizenship, and Mestizaje in Feminist Testimonio Narratives(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Perez, Arlette C.Item Can We Predict Big 5 Personality Traits from Demographic Characteristics?(UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research, 2022-12) Woods, Ethan; Han, DavidHere we aim to predict the Big Five personality traits based on the demographic information using a generalized linear model. Data was obtained from openpsychometrics.org, pre-processed in MS Excel, and imported to R for statistical analysis. First, it was attempted to predict each individual response item using an ordinal regression model. It was however found to be not viable, even after various weightings were applied to the demographic data. The response variables were then aggregated to form five categories, one for each personality trait: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. We then applied a dimension reduction technique to the country variable as well as the race variable in order to achieve an adequate model fit. It was determined that although the demographic information could be useful, precise prediction of the Big Five traits require other information that was not captured in the dataset.Item A Case Study on Rattlesnake Gassing for the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, TX(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Villegas, Angela M.This case study is about a controversial issue pertaining to a hunting technique called “gassing,” which is used to capture rattlesnakes that are presented and used for the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup.Item Chicano Identity and Alcoholism/Addiction Recovery in the Alamo City(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2019) Hinojosa, MattItem The Children Left Behind: Education and Race Reconstructing San Antonio, 1865-1877(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2018) Vegerano, Sarah