Category: Abstract: Draft 1

Hospitals today are filled with machinery that has replaced human labor that was once the only available system of service. The rise of technology in the healthcare field continues to prevail as a way for not only alternative operating procedures but also managing entire patient records. How has technology changed modern medicine and what do these mean for new doctors entering the field?Humanoid robots and doctor apps have allowed people to bypass the geographical and time constraints of waiting to see an actual physician. The Internet has also revolutionized the way people seek out answers to their medical related questions. With such innovations that can handle entire databases of information, the roles of modern doctors must accordingly adjust. Doctors were once required to be knowledgeable sources of information so that they could treat patients, however technological competition has now eradicated the need for human databases. Patients today are now looking for humanistic approaches to treatment that treat them holistically and not just their illness. Medical schools have also recognized the need for change in modern medicine by integrating an entirely new MCAT that focuses on humanistic subjects of socially and psychology. My research project will analyze these changes and efforts to accommodate them in the healthcare field by examining the roles of doctors in the past and comparing them to the present with the addition of technological advances.

Harley Quinn (alternately known as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, the Clown Princess of Crime, the Joker’s girlfriend, and Poison Ivy’s best friend and occasional paramour) is a character in the DC comic book universe who has recently experienced a meteoric rise in exposure and popularity due to her prominent inclusion in Warner Brothers’ Suicide Squad. She has established herself as a fan favorite, cultivating such a devoted following since her inception in 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series that its creators felt compelled to incorporate her initial single-episode appearance into an integral series-long residency. She has since emerged as a perennial presence across almost all strata of the DC universe, garnering such audience and critical enthusiasm as to earn her own eponymous comic series. Despite this unprecedented transmutation across multiple media, there is a dearth of scholarship on this still-young character; most academic work exploring her multifaceted macrocosm is dedicated to psychological, philosophical, and sociological discourses on Batman, the Joker, and the larger universe they cohabit. In an attempt to rectify this disparity, I examine Harley Quinn as an unlikely proponent of a peculiar phenomenon: the acknowledgement and celebration of nonnormativity in many of its varied psychosocial configurations. Drawing upon queer theory, disability theory, and neofeminist scholarship, I probe the character’s enduring popularity and her unique translation across television shows, graphic novels, films, and fan-mediated creative spheres. I engage the character as a prism through which audiences can situate themselves within a uniquely dynamic manifestation of the third wave feminism movement and its emergent principles by arguing for her singular place in pop culture as a paradigm of a particularly palatable queerness. Using a critical lens informed by several fields of scholarship, I undertake an intensive character analysis of Harley Quinn while mapping her metamorphoses across myriad media.

From the mid 20th century and on, elementary school curriculums have been undergoing a process of standardization and expectations from students are increasing. Theories on the most optimum education models are continually developing. Psychological research is advancing. With this in mind, it is interesting to look at exactly how elementary school curriculums have evolved. In this project, a close comparison is made between elementary school curriculums between two time eras- the 1950’s and the present decade. A focus will be placed on early elementary, particularly first and second grades. Why the 1950’s? It was during this post-war time that psychology as a science was beginning to flourish. The way education looks today is different then the mid 20th century largely because of our understanding of developmental psychology. This will be a historical-document based project, drawing research largely from examining official documents from the 50’s and today. The goal is to extract differences between then and now and to suggest possible reasons for those differences from a psychological standpoint.

For the past 80 years, autism has been defined in many ways. It has been labeled as a disease, a disorder, and most recently as one of many “normals” in a neurodiverse community. How people think about autism is a major factor in how they act towards diagnosed individuals and how they choose to address the educational, developmental and social struggles that come along with an autism diagnosis.

Some have treated autism as a disease, choosing to search for a cure and looking for genetic causes for autism. Others have considered it as a disorder, and thus chose to treat it with different forms of therapy. Autism is finally beginning to be seen as a disability, and the response to this identification has been to adapt social, educational and community programs to best benefit individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The identification of autism as a disability has helped humanize autism by identifying that it is not a problem that needs to be “fixed.” Instead, the autism community has changed its focus to interventions that promote independence and help make the lives of diagnosed individuals easier.

This paper will analyze different identifications of autism through time and the development of forms of treatment that relate to those identifications, looking at the different editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, articles and papers from psychiatrists and scientific writers, and articles and webpages from within the autism community.

Virtual conversational agents, or Chatbots, are quickly becoming a ubiquitous element of human-computer interaction as well as customer-business communications. Modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Generation (NLG) techniques often utilize Machine Learning methodology in order to train a Chatbot on datasets of English language and dialogue, allowing what seems like natural English responses to emerge from the agent. This façade of understanding does not allow for reasoning to take place within the agent.

We propose a framework for construction Chatbot capable of human-like casual conversation which integrates rule-based reasoning and human conversational behaviors into both the NLP and NLG aspects of the agent. This framework operates using an information-state-based dialogue manager called Forward Looking, Reward Seeking (FLoReS). Chatbot characters written using this framework possess conversational goals and behaviors as defined by the author, allowing for these Chatbots to possess unique personalities and distinct utterances. Integrated into this framework is an explicit representation of memory and knowledge, also defined by the Chatbot author, which allows for the Chatbot to “remember” information from previous interactions with a user. Chatbots written with human conversational abilities will provide a more natural means of interaction with a user.

When discussing the influence of religion on politics in the United States, the “religious right” is often what is discussed. However, in giving attention to this group, it is easy to forget about other groups that are influential on a smaller scale. One such group is the Mormons, who make for an interesting case to study given the consistency of belief among orthodox members. The aim of this project is to demonstrate how Mormonism has shaped American policy in the 20th and 21st centuries in a more significant way than might otherwise be anticipated. The official position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) on U.S. public policy is emphatically politically neutral. However, as illustrated both by policies covertly supported by the institutional LDS Church and by U.S. Supreme court cases related to these policies, this is not the case in practice. The methodology for this project will be to take a case study approach. In doing so, I expect to find that in each of these cases the LDS Church was in fact involved in the political sphere in a way that it claims not to be. The cases I intend to inspect include the Equal Rights Amendment, Proposition 8, the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, and the MormonLeaks release of internal tapes that bring into question the separation of church and state among LDS politicians. As a whole, this evidence would indicate that there is a divide between word and deed in the institutional LDS Church. For this reason, we would be remiss to ignore its influence.

Joyce Ling

Growing up as an Asian American in a school system that expected you would achieve high grades almost seemed normal. These unsuspecting forces of the stereotype of the model minority identity shape the educational path of many students. Is this identity in fact something that compels and works for all Asian Americans? Are Asian Americans more successful than other students? According to educational scholars like Bob Suzki and Ki- Taek Chun, who both tackled the idea of the myth of Asian American student success and its ramifications, Asian American students do do relatively well compared to other students. However research suggest that this myth of Asian American success is actually unreliable and untrue. Why is this the case and what are the effects of this identity when it comes to higher education and the admission process?
Because the idea of the model minority identity is a myth, we must dive deeper into why this identity was establish and how it became so prevalent and dominates our education system. While a part of my research looks into empirical research of how Asian American students rank compared to their counterparts, numbers do not tell the whole story. Empirical data is a major force in why this myth is so deep engrained and why this myth is perpetrated so often. This thesis will look into the reasoning and implications behind the validity of the model minority identity and the myth behind Asian American success. By looking into the history of Asian American education, the culture and social aspects of Asian American students, we can better understand the implications of the model minority.

Humans have always sought to answer the question of what is our place in the universe. From the Earth centered universe of the Middle Ages to the Copernican heliocentric universe, Earth had a varying degrees of importance in this cosmic play. This shift from the literal center of the universe to somewhere to the side is taken to mean that there is nothing special about Earth in general, that we occupy completely mediocre place in the cosmos. If Earth is average, following that line reasoning would be that earthlike planets, and possibly complex life would also be a common. However, with the increasing number of exo-solar systems that are being discovered it becomes hard to believe that we find ourselves in a completely unremarkable place.  I believe that a new understanding of Earth’s place is needed given our access to new alien solar systems and planets. Using NASA’s own data as well as books written by leading scientists, I can mediate between Earth being average and being rare. In addition, the incorporation of mathematical concepts will be used to better understand what it means to be average. To understand life’s place in the universe, the origin of the universe and life on Earth will be discussed. Analyzing the bio-philic propensity of our universe and our planet, will ultimately inform a strategy for searching for life elsewhere.

Medicine and culture are two perspectives that are often at odds when it comes to disease and illness. Medicine takes the perspective of natural and purely scientific causes while culture has its own set of solid beliefs that may not always align with these same principles. This project aims to explore this discrepancy between culture and medicine through the focus of immigrant women from Bangladesh. Mental illness in Bangladeshi American women are caused by the economic and social stresses that they face, such as poverty, discrimination, and severe gender roles. In this culture, there is a strong stigma regarding mental illness that often causes the defamation and rejection of patients and their family members. These ailments affect women the most due to the nature of their dependence and inferiority towards men. As a result of this stigma and an inability to confide in doctors for fear of being seen as weak, Bangladeshi women subconsciously turn their mental illness into physical symptoms without a tangible ailment as a way of coping and seeking help. Four Bangladeshi American women were interviewed with questions inquiring about their view of mental illnesses such as depression and how they categorize very stressful situations. Behaviors that were considered somatization in the interviews were particularly highlighted and analyzed. In order to combat the issue of somatization when there are underlying mental health issues, reforms to educate the Bangladeshi community both in America and Bangladesh will aid in diminishing the stigma against mental illness as well as instill more trust in the medical system. Convincing Bangladeshi women to partake in psychotherapy or even family therapy can alleviate household problems and combat fixated gender roles. By becoming more knowledgeable about mental illnesses and the role of the doctor, Bangladeshi women can take a step toward countering somatization once and for all.