Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cloud Control And Monitoring: Personal Food Computer Version 2.0, Deepika Angelene Jantz

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Trends in Agricultural development and growth rates in crop yields have slowed down due to harsh weather conditions. Also, use of pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified organisms in food(GM0) has caused attenuation of nutrition, thus giving rise to Food Crisis. To address this concern, Caleb Harper, Principal Research Scientist at MIT shares his vision of “Food Computer” through an initiative called OpenAg, that dwells upon the concept of Controlled Environment for the growth of the plant. The objective of this research is to bring awareness in the young minds – the kids at K12 level to get familiar with current …

Trying To Save The Game(R): Understanding The Meaning-Making Process Of Youtube Subscribers Surrounding Mental Health And Video Game Vlogging, Maria Mickles

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Through technological innovation and the rise of digital media platforms, many young adults are afforded the opportunity to spend their lives on the Internet. Not only is a large amount of time spent on the Internet by most people, but young adults are making media sharing-platforms, specifically YouTube, part of their daily lives (Westenberg, 2016, p. 8). YouTube allows content creators to produce videos that not only attract audiences of different ages and geographic location, but, too, create an intimate bond between creator and subscriber, allowing each party to communicate and engage in content related activities through the comments section …

Reducing The Influence Of Constraints On Volunteers' Word Of Mouth Communication, Sheridan Trent

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study utilized examined organizational constraints and burnout as a predictor of volunteers’ word of mouth communication valence, as well as a potential moderator. Satisfaction with volunteer contribution was found to moderate the indirect relationship between organizational constraints and word-of-mouth valence through burnout at the second stage.

Revenge Pornography: An Analysis Of Privacy, Obscenity, And The First Amendment, Kamrin Baker

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

An important issue in modern communication law and policy is the emergence of harassment via the Internet and social media. One form of such harassment is revenge pornography, the sharing of sexual images or videos without the consent of the individual depicted, usually at the hands of an ex-lover. In punishing the posters and purveyors of revenge pornography, perpetrators are often convicted of unrelated crimes such as identify theft or fraud, furthering the silence of revenge pornography. This new challenge in law raises some serious questions about the intersections of obscenity, privacy and the First Amendment in the effort to …

Applicant Reactions To Gendered Wording In Job Advertisements, Sahra Kaboli-Nejad, Eric Scheller, Carey Ryan

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Women account for only 28% of the STEM workforce (Neuhauser, 2014). One contributing factor may be gendered wording in advertisements (e.g., the use of more masculine wording in male-dominated fields). Masculine wording may discourage women from applying for male-dominated STEM careers. Research has shown, for example, that participants perceive there to be more men in occupations that use more masculine than feminine wording in their advertisements, resulting in women finding the jobs less appealing (Gaucher et al., 2011; Horvath & Sczesnya, 2016).

The present research examined whether gendered wording in an advertisement for a male-dominated STEM career affects perceptions of …

Investigating The Effect Of Induced Stress On Dual-Task Performance, Farahnaz Fallah Tafti

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Doing two tasks concurrently is an inevitable situation that occurs in daily life. Several factors such as pathological conditions, the aging process, and even stress may have a detrimental effect on both tasks’ performances. The aim of this study was to monitor perceived stress during dual-task to investigate how inducing stress affects dual-task performance. Eighteen healthy young participants, (24.76±3.56 years; 68.85 ±11.85 kg; 1.72±0.07 m) were recruited. Participants were asked to perform a single task (no secondary task) and DTs (wire maze with or without buzzer) randomly while standing on a firm surface. Perceived stress was obtained after each trial …

Food Insecurity : The Student Experience, B.J. Fletcher

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Food insecurity exists on college campuses among college students. Prior studies have considered the prevalence of food insecurity among college students; this study aims to expand on these past studies by considering how college students experience food insecurity. The study takes a phenomenological approach to understand how students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha experience food insecurity, including the experiences and challenges students face when it comes to being food insecure and the barriers students face in addressing food insecurity. In-depth interviews with six students, ranging from undergraduate to doctoral level students, were conducted. Horizontalization, clusters of meanings, textural …

Experienced Sexual Assault In The Military: An Exploration Of The Organizational Factors Influencing Under-Reporting And Consequences When Victims Report, Medicine Flower Blue Star

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Sexual assault of both male and female service members is a pervasive and serious problem. In 2017, based on data from the U.S. Department of Defense, 5,200 service members reported sexual assault, representing a 10% increase from 2016. Scholars, military and government leaders are concerned that the prevalence of sexual assault is underestimated due to under-reporting. O’Brien, Keith, and Shoemaker (2015), for example, point to a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Defense, which estimates that 67% of women and 81% of men do not report their military sexual assaults. One purpose of this study is to explore the …

Signaling Diversity And Inclusion For Open Source Project Health, Georg J.P. Link

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Open source projects often consist of mostly white, male, and English-speaking software developers. For the past decade, women and people from minority backgrounds have sought to bring more diversity to open source projects and make them more inclusive. This presentation summarizes research findings of how projects signal diversity and inclusion to attract these people. A key finding is that signals for diversity and inclusion are wanted, but projects struggle to put them into practice. The presentation discusses implications for signaling theory and open source projects.

An Investigation Of Stimulants: Reviewing Their Effects On The Brain, Including Memory And Microglia, Michael Douchey

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Stimulants are a class of drugs that have a variety of effects on the brain, including changes in receptor activity in the brain areas responsible for- memory, attention, emotion, motor control, and the reward pathway. Stimulants may be generally classified by their availability. For example, prescription stimulants, which include drugs such as methylphenidate (Concerta™, Ritalin™) and mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall™), must be prescribed by medical professionals. Another regulated stimulant, albeit one available without a prescription, is nicotine; a highly addictive chemical that is age-restricted by the U.S. federal government. Nicotine is found in tobacco products, and in tobacco-free alternatives including …

A Picture's Worth A Reputation: Visual And Environmental Arguments In Abandoned Disney Park Photographs, Allegra Hardin

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This rhetorical criticism analyzes photographs of the Walt Disney Company's abandoned parks, River Country and Discovery Island, taken by Seph Lawless and Shane Perez respectively. Using Foss's (2004) rhetorical focus area of nature, a sample of photographs from Lawless (2016) and Perez's (2009) blogs is analyzed to identify the visual and environmental arguments within the photographs. Noting how these images and the parks themselves are shrouded in obscurity, this essay maintains that the visual and environmental arguments present within the photographs directly challenge the Walt Disney Company's image and calls into question the company's environmental stewardship. This essay contributes to …

Stress Experiences And Appraisals Influence Global Perspectives On Meeting Satisfaction, Emily Adams, Joseph Allen

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Meetings are inherently group activities, yet perceptions of meeting outcomes may vary by individual stress appraisal. This study explored the relationship between global meetings-related stressor experiences and meeting satisfaction as moderated by stress appraisals. Results are interpreted in light of occupational health theories and meetings science.

Empathetic Nurses And Their Reactions Towards Hostile Patients, Rebecca Marselle

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Nurses and other medical personnel are frequently victims of what the Department of Labor defines as Type II Violence, or customer-to-employee violence, with 80% of health care workers have reported that they have experienced some type of physical aggression at some point in their career (Clements, DeRanieri, Clark, Manno, Kuhn, 2005). Patient aggression consists of direct physical assaults (with or without weapons), written or verbal threats, physical or verbal harassment, and homicide (Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA, 2015). The purpose of this study is to review both organizational factors and personal qualities of medical personnel that influence their responses …

Public Perceptions Of The Police: The Role Of Social Media, Ebonie Epinger

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Policing in the US has come under fire over the past few years due to highly publicized shootings of unarmed black citizens. These events have monopolized the media, which can potentially undermine their legitimacy in the public eye. Extant research has explored the traditional media- such as television news, crime dramas, and crime reality shows- on citizens’ attitudes toward the police, with decidedly mixed results. Given the rise of social media and concern of the potentially biased portrayal of police by such media sources, research is needed which can assess what, if any, effect social media has on individuals’ attitudes …

Recovery Experiences Bridge The Gap Between Volunteering And Work Outcomes, Kaitlin Fosler

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study examined the relationship between volunteer work demands, recovery experiences, and work outcomes. The mental and physical demands of the volunteer work influenced the recovery experiences of psychological detachment and mastery. Further, mastery experiences positively impacted organizational commitment while both mastery and control positively impacted work engagement.

Marmosets Respond Consistently To Threats Across Contexts, Sarah Carp

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Behavioral traits, such as how adventurous an individual is, can vary both across individuals and within an individual across contexts. However, there is evidence that individuals are stable across time in how they respond to certain stimuli. This consistency in behavioral responses to similar environments is termed a behavioral syndrome, or set of correlated behavior. We assessed the degree to which individual marmoset monkeys were consistent across four behavioral tests that measured different aspects of novelty seeking. The four tasks included exposure to a novel object in a familiar environment, exposure to a novel environment, behavioral flexibility in response to …

Pilot Study Of Empathy In Adults, Libby Moberg

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Empathy is of critical public health importance due to its association with relationship satisfaction and well-being (Davis & Oathout, 1987; Davis, 1983). There is growing evidence that bilingual individuals may have higher levels of empathy (Javor, 2016). One potential mechanism for this relationship is that bilingual individuals tend to have higher levels of executive functioning (Costa et al, 2008), which is linked to higher empathy because individuals are able to more easily adopt others’ perspectives. Previous studies examining this question have largely relied on self-report questionnaires assessing empathy as a general tendency (i.e., trait). No studies have examined differences in …

Early Communicative Characteristics Across Samples From Two Infant Populations At-Risk For Autism, Hannah Lopez, Shari Deveney, Anastasia Kyvelidou

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Although no single etiology has been identified for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), two infant populations have emerged as particularly high risk: younger siblings of children diagnosed with ASD and infants born prematurely with low birth weight. A key characteristic differentiating high-risk infants from low-risk peers is early eye gaze fixation behaviors. Early gaze fixation behavior is thought to be predictive of communication and language skills. Consequently, identifying differences in early eye gaze behaviors could lead to early intervention services tailored specifically on counteracting early social withdrawal behaviors. Though few studies have compared eye-gaze patterns of these two high-risk infant groups, …

A New Paradigm Of Discrimination And Measures Of Latino Linked Fate, Michael Herndon

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Linked fate has long been used as a measure of group consciousness and is an important component of group political behavior. Though applying linked fate to Latinos can be complicated because of a widely diverse set of nationalities and historical contexts, Latinos have shown signs of group cohesion under certain circumstances. Despite this, there is still a sizable gap exploring the theory of linked fate as it pertains to Latinos. Furthermore, there is a near-absence of literature that critically dissects the roles of different kinds of discrimination as they pertain to perceptions of linked fate amongst Latinos. There are distinct …

Community Partnership Initiative (Cpi), Deepika Angelene Jantz, Joseph Nabiry, Doris Uwaezuoke

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

UNO is committed to community involvement. The Community Partnership Initiative (CPI) was created with the goal of combining community partners with campus groups in order to work together to serve communities nationwide. The CPI application was designed to give partners and users a way to create and manage their projects online. Additionally, the tool was designed as a way for the CPI office to highlight the ways they are working to benefit the community and create a more dynamic way to analyze, track, and display the projects, partners, and communities they are working in. The CPI application is currently being …

Male Marmosets Display Increased Sociosexual Behavior Toward Their Mate After Separation, Mariah Wulf

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The quality of bonds between mates is variable and can be operationally defined using affiliative measures (e.g., sexual solicitations, amount of time spent near another individual). The development of an attachment between mates is regulated by biological and neurobiological factors. Specifically, the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) is associated with increases in social bonding and positive social interactions. We investigated how chronic treatment with OT, an OT antagonist (OTA), or a control during the initial 3 weeks of pairing in marmoset monkeys altered patterns of social interactions. We assessed how marmosets behaved in a testing paradigm in which they could see, but …

Electronically Monitored Youth: Perceptions Of Stigma, Marijana Kotlaja

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study examines the stigmatizing effects of electronic monitors (EM) among youth currently enrolled in an EM program. EM is viewed as a sanction that is less punitive than incarceration, more cost-effective and provides advantages over other alternatives. A total of 140 participants were randomly assigned to conditions (stigma salient vs. stigma non-salient) for an experiment in which they will be told the purpose of the study is to learn more about their thoughts and behaviors related to wearing an EM. This study can be deemed one of the first assessments to assess stigma consciousness and self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP) as …

The Border Effects Of Domestic Trade In Transitional China: Local Governments’ Preference And Protectionism, Yongliang Zhao, Jinlan Ni

Economics Faculty Publications

Following a two-region border effect model with consumption preference of local governments, this article examines the segmentation of the Chinese domestic market as well as its determinants. Through empirical tests, we find that the average border effect of domestic trade among provinces in China showed an upward trend from 1997–2002 and 2002–2010. The significant difference of border effects between western and eastern areas of China indicate more regional trade barriers in the western areas than in the eastern areas. In addition, compared to agricultural products, there are less trade barriers on industrial products. This partially verifies that there is more …

Vocational And Life Skills Quarter Report: Grant Cycle 3, Quarter 3 January-March 2019, Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research, Katelynn Towne, Michael Campagna

Reports

This report presents quarterly data and evaluation updates for the Vocational and Life Skills Program (VLS) through Quarter 3 of Grant Cycle 3. VLS was created by the Nebraska Legislative Bill 907 in 2014 to reduce recidivism and increase meaningful employment for Nebraskans convicted of a crime. The report contains 1) descriptions of the eight funded programs across the state, 2) a snapshot of program participation across the programs, 3) demographics of the participants served by the VLS initiative, and 4) participation breakdowns and descriptions of the skills participants are gaining through VLS programming. VLS continues to update service providers …

Vocational And Life Skills Monthly Data Update: March 2019, Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research, Katelynn Towne, Michael Campagna

Reports

Grantees use an online data management system to submit data on participants served under their Vocational and Life Skills programming. This data is due monthly and reflects all services provided during the previous month to participants. Evaluators at the Nebraska Center for Justice Research work with grantees directly to manage data entry errors on an ongoing basis during monthly update calls and regular site visits.

The current data derives from an active database, with live data being entered and updated daily. Data values, including previously submitted information, may fluctuate depending on changes made from data entry oversight. One common example …

Regenerative Failure Following Rat Neonatal Chorda Tympani Transection Is Associated With Geniculate Ganglion Cell Loss And Terminal Field Plasticity In The Nucleus Of The Solitary Tract, Louis J. Martin, Amy H. Lane, Kaeli K. Samson, Suzanne I. Sollars

Psychology Faculty Publications

Neural insult during development results in recovery outcomes that vary dependent upon the system under investigation. Nerve regeneration does not occur if the rat gustatory chorda tympani nerve is sectioned (CTX) during neonatal (≤P10) development. It is unclear how chorda tympani soma and terminal fields are affected after neonatal CTX. The current study determined the impact of neonatal CTX on chorda tympani neurons and brainstem gustatory terminal fields. To assess terminal field volume in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS), rats received CTX at P5 or P10 followed by chorda tympani label, or glossopharyngeal (GL) and greater superficial petrosal …

Crafting Relevant Community Partnerships Using Archives, Amy C. Schindler, Laurinda Weisse

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Historically, archives have told the stories of the dominant society. Increasingly, archives are exploring and filling some of the silences left by the exclusion of many voices. Oral history is a way of actively collecting stories which may not exist in written form. Both the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s LGBTQ+ Voices: The Queer Omaha Archives Oral History Project and the University of Nebraska at Kearney Archives and Special Collections’ Coming to the Plains: Latin@ Stories in Central Nebraska project engage members of diverse communities in telling their own stories. This session will talk about the origins of each project, …

To Excuse Or Not To Excuse: Effect Of Explanation Type And Provision On Reactions To A Workplace Behavioral Transgression, Joseph Mroz

Psychology Faculty Publications

People often offer an excuse or an apology after they do something wrong. In this paper, we examine how giving an excuse, an apology, or no explanation after arriving late to a meeting influences the attitudes and behavioral intentions others form toward the late arrival. Additionally, we examined how a group-related factor (complaining) and the late arrival’s history with coming late affected participant judgments. Across two studies using complementary experimental and survey methods, we found that an excuse is better than no explanation, but that the difference between apology and no explanation and apology and excuse is not always clear. …

When Victims Refuse And Prosecutors Decline: Examining Exceptional Clearance In Sexual Assault Cases, Tara N. Richards, Marie Skubak Tillyer, Emily M. Wright

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study examines the predictors of sexual assault case clearance, with a focus on arrest and two types of exceptional clearance: victim refusal to cooperate and prosecutorial declination to prosecute. Using National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data on crime incidents that contain a sexual offense (N = 21,977), we estimated a multinomial regression model to examine the predictors of different clearance types for cases of sexual assault. Results indicated that the likelihood of victim refusal decreases in cases perpetrated by strangers, involving victim injury, occurring in public, and involving multiple offenses. A similar pattern of findings was observed …

Contribution Of Snowfall From Diverse Synoptic Conditions In The Catskill/Delaware Watershed Of New York State, Zachary J. Suriano, Daniel J. Leathers, Dorothy K. Hall, Allan Frei

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Snowfall in the six basins of the Catskill/Delaware Watershed in south‐central New York State historically contributes roughly 20–30% of the water resources derived from the watershed for use in the New York City water supply. The watershed regularly experiences snowfall from three distinctive weather patterns: coastal mid‐latitude cyclones, overrunning systems, and lake‐effect or Great Lakes enhanced storms. Using synoptic weather classification techniques, these distinct regional atmospheric patterns impacting the watershed are isolated and analysed in conjunction with daily snowfall observations from 1960 to 2009 to allow the influence of each synoptic weather pattern on snowfall to be evaluated independently.

Results …