Journal Article
21 July 2025
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Journal Article
21 July 2025
Building the Playground: The Direction of Children’s Theatre with Junie B. Jones
An insight and analysis into the process of directing an engaging and meaningful production of children’s theatre through Alison Gregory’s Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook, adapted from Barbara Park’s vibrant stories. This examination considers how a thoughtful directorial approach can elevate a play beyond entertainment, using the unique power of children’s theatre to inspire joy, curiosity, and learning, not only to entertain, but also to enrich the minds of all who experience it. Through a careful study of the directorial process, this work explores how a well executed piece of children’s theatre can create an impactful experience for audiences of all ages, fostering a shared space of growth, learning, and fun.Current Articles
Journal Article21 July 2025
The Use of Physical Therapy in Gymnastics: A Systematic Review
Gymnastics is a popular sport with hundreds of thousands of participants. Gymnastics also has a high injury rate among participants. Unfortunately, gymnastics requires specific rehabilitation and not much information exists on how to properly rehab gymnasts. The goal of this paper was to find existing literature about treating gymnasts’ injuries and analyze the results. Finally, recommendations were made in terms of future research.Journal Article21 July 2025
La lutte pour les droits des femmes africaines: Le womanisme dans Taafe Fanga
Dans cette thèse, j'analyserai le film Taafe Fanga (Pouvoir de Pagne en français), un film de 1997 du Mali, réalisé par Adama Drabo. Le film suit l'histoire du village de Yanda où des femmes, avec l'aide d'un masque qui invoque la peur dans des hommes, changent des rôles de genre, leur permettent de prendre le rôle masculin et dominant et mettent des hommes dans les rôles que les femmes tenaient avant. J'examinerai ce film d'un angle womaniste. J’affirme que, bien que les femmes dans le film d'Adama Drabo qui s'appelle Taafe Fanga luttent pour les droits des femmes, ce n'est pas une perspective féministe, mais womaniste. Je soutiens que ce film est womaniste, un terme a créé par des Africaines, plutôt que féministe, parce que le womanisme est conçu pour des expériences africaines comme qui créé par des Africaines, pendant que le féminisme a traditionnellement a organisé soi-même autour des expériences et des épreuves des femmes occidentales, plus spécifiquement des femmes blanches. Le womanisme a émergé quand des Africaines trouvaient que le féminisme de l'ouest n'alignait pas leurs expériences. Alors, des Africaines ont formulé un terme nouveau à décrire leur lutte pour les droits des femmes, dans leurs propres buts. Les womanismes de Clenora Hudson-Weems et Chikwenye Ogunyemi sont plus détaillés et érudites et alignent le plus avec des expériences africaines, plutôt que les womanismes des femmes comme Alice Walker qui focalise plus sur les expériences des femmes afro-américaines. Cette distinction est importante parce que le film que j’étudierai a lieu en Afrique, non aux États-Unis. Pendant l’analyse de ce film, la théorie et la recherche womaniste et non la recherche cinématographique, mènent ma méthodologie à cause du nombre limité de la recherche sur des films africains. L’analyse qui existe n’emploie pas souvent de nom ou de terme pour comment les films représentent les femmes et les droits des femmes. J’ajouterai une analyse womaniste à ces deux films.Journal Article21 July 2025
The Decline of Baseball in African American Communities and its Sociocultural and Historical Context
When you look at baseball at every level today, it’s clear that the sport has become predominantly a "white man's" game. The lack of African American representation at both the player and fan levels has become a significant issue, and many wonder how the sport can reclaim its connection with African American communities and revitalize its cultural relevance in the years to come. Not only has such a shortage prevailed within the MLB, but also at a collegiate level. According to the NCAA’s 2014-15 student-athlete ethnicity report, only four percent of baseball players at the Division I, II, and III levels combined were African American (NCAA, 2015). This disparity continues down through high school, youth, and recreational baseball, specifically within inner-city areas. The decline of baseball in inner-city areas has led to diminished participation, reduced diversity in the sport, and altered the trajectory of baseball’s popularity and development over time. The purpose of this paper is to examine the roots of the racial disparity within the game, specifically focusing on inner-city youth, and to investigate the factors contributing to this issue. Baseball, often referred to as America’s pastime and once one of the most popular sports in the country, now faces an alarming decline in African American participation. This research will explore the reasons behind this decline and discuss ongoing efforts to address the problem.Journal Article21 July 2025
Relightable Neural Radiance Fields for Novel View Synthesis
This paper describes relighting neural radiance fields for novel view synthesis. View synthesis is the problem of using input images with corresponding camera angles to produce a photorealistic 3D model of an environment and its objects. Neural radiance fields (NeRFs) were created as a solution to view synthesis. Neural radiance field models work well for generating realistic 3D models from 2D image inputs; how-ever, they do not support changing the lighting or placing the objects from the input images into different environments. The problem comes from the fact that NeRFs rely on a neural network that is essentially overfitted to the original environment used in the training. This means an object in a given scene cannot be placed into a different scene using the NeRF neural network model. A new model, relightable neural radiance fields (ReNeRFs), has been proposed to combat this issue. ReNeRFs have the ability to control the lighting of an object and place it into novel environments using an image-based relighting approach.Journal Article21 July 2025
Securing AI-Generated Code
The increasing use of AI for code generation presents significant security challenges, as these tools often lack inherent security awareness and can produce vulnerable code. This paper investigates these security risks, outlining common types of vulnerabilities (such as injection flaws and improper resource handling) found in AI-generated code. It further explores and evaluates mitigation techniques aimed at im-proving code security, including model fine-tuning and adversarial strategies like Security Verifier Enhanced Neural Steering (SVEN). Findings indicate that while current methods offer promising ways to reduce vulnerabilities, ongoing research and development are crucial for the secure and responsible deployment of AI in software development.Journal Article21 July 2025
Building the Playground: The Direction of Children’s Theatre with Junie B. Jones
An insight and analysis into the process of directing an engaging and meaningful production of children’s theatre through Alison Gregory’s Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook, adapted from Barbara Park’s vibrant stories. This examination considers how a thoughtful directorial approach can elevate a play beyond entertainment, using the unique power of children’s theatre to inspire joy, curiosity, and learning, not only to entertain, but also to enrich the minds of all who experience it. Through a careful study of the directorial process, this work explores how a well executed piece of children’s theatre can create an impactful experience for audiences of all ages, fostering a shared space of growth, learning, and fun.Journal Article21 July 2025
Using Moment Maps to Observe Hydrogen Gas in Markarian 54
Hydrogen gas is useful when trying to understand galaxies because it helps make stars. In space, hydrogen gas is in many cases in a form called neutral hydrogen (HI). This gas emits a faint type of light called the 21 cm line, which is a type of radio wave. This light is useful because it can go through dust in space, unlike optical light. This means we can use it to look inside galaxies and study the gas even if there is dust that is in front of stars in the galaxy. In my research I was given data from a telescope called the Very Large Array (VLA), which produces data cubes containing information about the intensity of emission as a function of position and velocity. The Very Large Array (VLA) uses advanced interferometry and a large collecting area to gather high-sensitivity data more quickly, making observations faster and with better resolution, and it can observe 21cm emission. These clear radio images show where the hydrogen gas is, how it moves, and how much of it there is in a galaxy. This gives us information about how stars are forming and how galaxies change. In this project, I studied a galaxy called Markarian 54 (MRK54). MRK54 is interesting to study because it is a galaxy merger. When this happens, the gas gets pulled into elongated structures, like tidal tails, and stars can start forming in new places. By looking at where the gas is and how it is moving, we can learn how galaxy collisions change the shape of a galaxy and what happens to the gas during and after the galaxies have merged. I looked at the 21 cm radio waves from the hydrogen gas in MRK54 and I created moment maps to show where the gas is, how it moves, and how turbulent it is. These maps are tools that help us learn more about the hydrogen makeup in the galaxy. To make these maps, some challenges I faced in analyzing this data included cleaning up the data by removing noisy parts and adjusting errors in the measurements. I also used the galaxy’s redshift (z =0.0449), which is a number that tells us how far away the galaxy is. This redshift was found in a study by Leitet and others in 2013. I used the equations for the moment maps from another study by Walter and others in 2008.Most Popular Articles
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20 February 2014
A Rhetorical Examination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was the 32nd president of the United States of America. He served an unprecedented four terms in office and delivered four inaugural speeches. He set himself up for success in his first inaugural address, claiming, “there is nothing to fear but fear itself.” This famous passage, among others in FDR’s first inaugural address, worked as rhetorical maneuvers meant to both introduce FDR to the presidency as well as leave a lasting impression on the citizens of the United States facing hardship due to the Great Depression. Through the application of Lloyd Bitzer’s “rhetorical situation,” Edward Corbett and Robert Connors’ definitions of stylistic devices and Karlyn Campbell, Kathleen Jamieson and Elizabeth Dudash’s genre requirements, this paper works to rhetorically examine FDR’s first inaugural address.Journal Article
13 August 2014
Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent Waters
Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent Waters.Journal Article
2 September 2015
Monte Carlo Tree Search and Its Applications
Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) is a probabilistic algorithm that uses lightweight random simulations to selectively grow a game tree. MCTS has experienced a lot of success in domains with vast search spaces which historically have challenged deterministic algorithms [3]. This paper discusses the steps of the MCTS algorithm, its application to the board.Journal Article
20 February 2014
Cost-Benefit Analysis of Food-Waste Composting Program at UMM
As costs of landfilling and incinerating waste rise, many campuses are beginning to consider alternatives for dealing with food waste generation. In August of 2012, the University of Minnesota, Morris began composting its food waste and food-soiled paper using the turned windrow method. While hailed as a sustainable alternative, with benefits including reduced need for chemical fertilizers, water, and pesticides, higher crop yields, revitalization of poor soils, avoidance of methane and leachate generation in landfills, pollution prevention, and extension of landfill life, many costs are also incurred with the composting alternative ranging from the need to purchase organics collection bins to the time needed each day to manage the actual composting site. The question, therefore, is whether it is worth continuing an on-site composting program at Morris. The cost-benefit analysis includes the steps outlined in Boardman, Greenberg, Vining, and Weimer’s textbook Cost Benefit Analysis Concepts and Practice: specify the set of alternative projects, determine standing, identify the impact categories, estimate the impacts, monetize all impacts, calculate net present values, perform sensitivity analysis, and make a recommendation. Despite significant costs, I found that the data clearly stands to support the project’s continuance. While the project is still in its fledgling state, this analysis can be used as a justification to continue the composting project and serve as a model for other campuses to follow.Journal Article
20 February 2014
Body Dissatisfaction and Males: A Conceptual Model
Within society it appears that dissatisfaction with one’s body is seen as a female-exclusive problem. However, limited research on men and body dissatisfaction suggests that men do experience body dissatisfaction, and these rates are increasing over time. The present literature review seeks to tie together consistent themes seen within these studies, and proposes a model based on these connections that may explain the growth in prevalence rates over time. Two theories, threatened masculinity theory and self-discrepancy theory, are also applied within the model. The model presented within this review can help give new direction to future research on men and body dissatisfaction. By improving research, we can help eliminate the stereotype that body dissatisfaction is a “female-exclusive” issue and men who experience clinical levels of body dissatisfaction can receive the treatment they require.Journal Article
16 March 2015