UTSA Student Works
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Item 2020(2020-09-06) Palissery, JeslinThis journal entry is about how my 2020 was affected by the pandemic and how everything changed.Item 2020 Was A S*** Show(2020-11-27) Wall, Derrick2020 has been a rough year, for everyone that has hopefully lived through this year. To many truly despairing moments, and that takes a toll on the mental. I decided to put my feelings of what I went through, and many others has gone through this year. And made it a grimey, stressful, animation to sum up this year and the effect on mental health. It was stressful, downright heart breaking, but at the end I'll still keep my hope. Because we got to keep up the fight!Item 2020, America Revealed(2020-12-10) Dehoyos, ToniThe 2020 pandemic hit and a lot of things changed and thousands of people were against guidelines and mandates, turning a blind eye to something very serious. I was inspired to create a print for depicting America and Americans as whole as careless and selfish. We preach unity and safety from others yet still find ways to build a wall and politics plays a big part in it. In my piece I chose Uncle Sam as my subject matter as he is the symbol for America. Uncle Sam is shown as a bust being carried by a person who is divided into two representing division in our country as well as Uncle Sam wearing his mask improperly as a way to signify America’s poor execution in handling the virus only to be met halfway.Item 2020: The Year We Stood Still(2020-08-28) Garcia, KaitlynA personal narrative depicting the struggles that came with this year of 2020 but also the victories that flourished from it.Item A computational framework to examine public response of moral language on polarization following vigilantism incident(UTSA Graduate School, 2024-04-02) Kurumathur, Shalini Kapali; Najafirad, Peyman; Valecha, Rohit; Rao, H. RaghavIntroduction: ➢In August 2022, Kyle Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and wounded the third in Kenosha, Wisconsin. ➢Incidents of vigilantism provoke discourses related to moral values and may induce polarizing judgements in social media. ➢Moral foundations entail automatic gut-reactions of like and dislike when certain patterns are perceived in the social world, which in turn guide judgments expressed on social media. ➢The social media users could use moral languages of different vice and virtue. e.g., care (virtue) for the victim, harm (vice) the perpetrator ➢Such extreme judgements or attitude of right or wrong challenge the social cohesion in modern civil societies. ➢ We argue that understanding of polarization is incomplete without accounting for morality because moral foundations can predict attitudes on several social issues such as immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion. Purpose (or Objective, Goal): • How do public communicate moral language (virtue/vice) on social media following vigilantism incidents? • How does public’s vigilantism-related moral language (virtue/vice) on social media affect polarization?Item A Programmable and Participatory Sensing Testbed using Micromobility Vehicles(UTSA Graduate School, 2024-04-02) Jadliwala, Murtuza; Prasad, Sushil K.; Griffin, Greg P.; Maiti, Anindya; Molina, Nico; Wijewickrama, Raveen; Ashan M.K., Buddhi; Trinh, Khoi V.; Najafian, Nima; Khan, Ubaidullah; Sakib, Nazmus; Duthie, Christina; Patel, Ahmer; Kumar, PriyankaWhat is ScooterLab? An NSF funded community research infrastructure initiative, currently under development at UTSA. This publicly-available micromobility testbed and crowd-sensing/crowd-sourcing infrastructure will provide researchers access to a community of riders and a fully operational fleet of customizable dockless e-scooters. Issues & challenges in micromobility: [Figure] Why ScooterLab? • Provides space for researchers to address multidisciplinary challenges • Bypasses commercial service providers who may be unwilling to share data for research • Offers more customizable sensors • Creates infrastructure necessary to collect diverse rider, mobility, and contextual data in realistic settings Broader impact: • Rider/pedestrian safety • Urban routing & infrastructure planning • Public policy • Transportation engineering • Data privacyItem 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 Adapting to College: Coronavirus Style(2020-10-08) Garcia, KatalenaTalks about how COVID-19 has effected my college experience.Item Additive Manufacturing & G Code(2022-07-28) Ewuzie, Emmanuel; Perkins, Briley; Aristizabal, Mauricio; Balcer, Matthew; Millwater, HarryAdditive Manufacturing (AM) is the process of building physical objects by layering materials. It is controlled by G code and a myriad of other codes. CAD models are sliced and converted into a layer by layer code (G Code). This is then read by the 3D printer and executed. G code tells the motors where to move, how fast to move, and what path to follow.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 Advancing and Securing Human-Machine Chatbot Interactive Systems(2021-04-08) Nadim, MohammadItem 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 African Identity and the African Diaspora: The Genetic Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade(University of Texas at San Antonio, College of Liberal and Fine Arts, 2021) Beckelheimer, TeresaAfricans enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade not only lost their families, their friends, their homes, they also lost their identity. Forced onto ships in tight quarters, these men and women of Africa were stripped of their clothes, their belongings, and their existence as Africans and taken to a foreign land and sold as slaves. They were forced to create a new identity in a new world, shaping their new lives through a collective memory of all that they lost. This article looks at the way DNA is helping the descendants of enslaved Africans reconnect to a lost past and contribute to the African Diaspora.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 AI for Disease Management: A Study on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus(2021-04-08) Ramirez-Tamayo, CarolinaItem Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen : History Repeats History(Office of the Vice President for Research, 2017) Hobbs, Jeremiah E.Item Alzheimer's Disease and Mini Brain Models (1st place winner)(2021-04-08) Acosta, Karina MeyerItem Americans Always on the Run(2021-03-23) Valerio, MirandaThis Spark page describes what it is like to be constantly on the run in America.Item An Enhanced Avermectin Extraction Method for Characterization of Bovine Pharmacokinetics Utilizing Tandem Mass Spectrometry(UTSA Graduate School, 2024-04-02) Jellick, Greg; Lohmeyer, Kimberly; Ellis, Dee; Bach, StephanBabesia bigemina and B. bovis are protozoans spread amongst livestock by certain species of ticks, known collectively as cattle fever ticks (CFTs), and cause the chronic disease bovine babesiosis. Although eradicated from the US in 1940s, CFT and Babesia are endemic to Mexico, Central and South America. CFT continue to infiltrate the US by crossing the border on wildlife or stray livestock and infest cattle herds. Avermectins are a class of anti-tick drugs administered to cattle to prevent and control tick infestation. Texas A&M University in collaboration with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) conducted a doramectin (DOR) dosing study to evaluate how a double dose of DOR might extend the window of protection versus a single dose. We developed and validated a sensitive liquid chromatography/ tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for analysis of the study’s samples. Presented here are an enhanced analytical method for this lipophilic class of drugs, the DOR plasma concentrations from the study, and the relevant pharmacokinetic parameters.