Happy Healthy Little Humans: an educational podcast on childhood obesity for parents

Description
This project is a 4 episode podcast on what the healthcare system and society can do to help reduce stigma and help prevent childhood obesity as well as be an educational tool for parents on what childhood obesity is. The

This project is a 4 episode podcast on what the healthcare system and society can do to help reduce stigma and help prevent childhood obesity as well as be an educational tool for parents on what childhood obesity is. The first episode, also known as my introduction episode, ended up being about 15 minutes in length. This is where I introduced the idea of childhood obesity and what the Inspire program is. This episode is where a lot of my literature review information came into play. Next, I interviewed Dr. Ron Tuckman who is a pediatric primary care physician and the Director of the Inspire Program at Northern Arizona Healthcare. This Episode is about 25 minutes in length and provides a lot of information on what obesity is, what causes it, how we can prevent it, and can we make kids feel safer in the healthcare so they will want to get treated. For the next episode, I interviewed nurse practitioner Sherry Walka and she is the primary nurse practitioner for the Inspire program. This episode was about 30 minutes in length and She really took us into a bigger look into what the inspire program is and how they go about diagnosing and treating childhood obesity. Then to tie it all off I have a summary episode which ended up being about 5 minutes in length. This episode discusses the similarities and differences between the two interviews and what the healthcare system and society can do to help childhood obesity.
Date Created
2024-05
Agent

Saving Superman: Defining the Importance of the Icon America Needs in the 21st Century

Description

Superman has been a cultural figure in America for 85 years- blasting out from the comic book page and into our collective consciousness. Yet, does the character still hold relevancy? Do people care about Superman, and know why he is

Superman has been a cultural figure in America for 85 years- blasting out from the comic book page and into our collective consciousness. Yet, does the character still hold relevancy? Do people care about Superman, and know why he is important to our country? To understand where he stands now as a cultural figure, Superman's reciprocal history with America is defined, and with that definition comes highs and lows for the character that ultimately solidify his place as an aspirational figure of hope today.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Publics and Politicians: How Politicians Shaped Political Discourse Around the COVID-19
Pandemic on Twitter

Description

On January 5, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on the outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China. Two weeks later, a 35-year-old Washington resident checked into a local urgent care clinic with a 4-day cough and

On January 5, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on the outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China. Two weeks later, a 35-year-old Washington resident checked into a local urgent care clinic with a 4-day cough and fever. Laboratory testing would confirm this individual as the first case of the novel coronavirus in the U.S., and on January 20, 2020, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported this case to the public. In the days and weeks to follow, Twitter, a social media platform with 450 million active monthly users as of 2020, provided many American residents the opportunity to share their thoughts on the developing pandemic online. Social media sites like Twitter are a prominent source of discourse surrounding contemporary political issues, allowing for direct communication between users in real-time. As more population centers around the world gain access to the internet, most democratic discussion, both nationally and internationally, will take place in online spaces. The activity of elected officials as private citizens in these online spaces is often overlooked. I find the ability of publics—which philosopher John Dewey defines as groups of people with shared needs—to communicate effectively and monitor the interests of political elites online to be lacking. To best align the interests of officials and citizens, and achieve transparency between publics and elected officials, we need an efficient way to measure and record these interests. Through this thesis, I found that natural language processing methods like sentiment analyses can provide an effective means of gauging the attitudes of politicians towards contemporary issues.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

BARRIER OR BRIDGE? Media’s Representation of Immigrants in AZ

Description

Various forms of media have contributed to and shaped negative perception of immigrants and refugees in the United States. These perceptions may contribute to dangerous stereotyping, which may impact policy and the daily life of immigrants in the United States.

Various forms of media have contributed to and shaped negative perception of immigrants and refugees in the United States. These perceptions may contribute to dangerous stereotyping, which may impact policy and the daily life of immigrants in the United States. Various factors must be considered when analyzing media, such as the type of media, language used, consumption, and the reaction of viewers. This thesis focuses on AZcentral, an Arizona news source, and how it portrays immigrants versus the commentary from an immigrant here in Arizona. First it is important to look at time periodization of the portrayal of immigrants and how it has changed through technology mediums. The information obtained by looking at these periods provide specific terms and content to look for when collecting sources for the podcast. In the podcast, AZcentral and the interviewee stories are compared to show how different or similar they may be. Through this, the audience should be making their own conclusions to show accurate AZcentral is portraying the immigrant experience.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

An Autoethnographic Study on the Practical Effects of Zen-Inspired Mindfulness

Description

The objective of my honors thesis was to implement the mindfulness habit of journaling over the course of six months, then use the journal entries as a means to reflect upon observations of pre-selected metrics (connecting Zen teachings to my

The objective of my honors thesis was to implement the mindfulness habit of journaling over the course of six months, then use the journal entries as a means to reflect upon observations of pre-selected metrics (connecting Zen teachings to my daily life, accessing my ability to rest, navigating relationships to others, and developing compassion for myself) in order to track how learning about Zen Buddhist philosophy impacts my life.

Date Created
2022-12
Agent

The Zombie as the Undefinable Monster: A Reflection on the Impermanent Self

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Description
A zombie wanders around towards an unknown destination and interacts with the world around her. All the while, the voice of the late Dr. Lauren Maldonado's essays plays overhead, completely unaware to the corpse's behavior. The essays, explorations of zombies'

A zombie wanders around towards an unknown destination and interacts with the world around her. All the while, the voice of the late Dr. Lauren Maldonado's essays plays overhead, completely unaware to the corpse's behavior. The essays, explorations of zombies' roles in media, are revealed to have been written by that zombie before she was turned. Dr. Maldonado's body eventually stumbles into her old self’s office. Here, she begins to eat the papers she finds on the desk. The Zombie as the Undefinable Monster is a non-fiction analysis on the zombie metaphor in media paired with a fictional narrative. For each scene, there is a short analytical essay to match. In conjunction, the five scenes with the five essays explore the relationship between zombies and identity. Within the narrative, those five essays are written by the deceased character Dr. Lauren Maldonado. Her zombified body serves as the main character of the story. Preceding the storyboards and the essays, there is an appendix written outside of the narrative containing two additional essays. The first is an artist statement detailing my creative and thinking process. The second is a written explanation of the zombie mechanics within the narrative.
Date Created
2022-05
Agent

The Cyborg Soldier in Speculative Fiction and in Our Techno-Masculinized Military

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Description

Robocop, Logan, and War Girls all present dystopian futures where technology, and more specifically cyborg augmentation, unleashes the worst of humanity. Within these texts, the cyborg, when produced for military use, allows humans to indulge their most harmful impulses in

Robocop, Logan, and War Girls all present dystopian futures where technology, and more specifically cyborg augmentation, unleashes the worst of humanity. Within these texts, the cyborg, when produced for military use, allows humans to indulge their most harmful impulses in armed conflict. The government-produced cyborg facilitates the domination of outgroups by forcing characters to shed empathy and to “other” perceived enemies. The cyborg in this situation works within the militarized masculine framework described by Cristina Masters in Cyborg Soldiers And Militarized Masculinities. This is the cyborg individual’s transformation into a weapon with a singular use. This transformation is facilitated and encouraged by dominant military power structures, and allows these structures with the help of the cyborg to execute brutal violence against any group unlucky enough to find themselves on the wrong side of a conflict. The solution to such exploitation, then, is for the cyborg to assert its humanity and reject this transformation into a weapon. This thesis argues that doing this will involve abandoning the military structure, rejecting the subjectivity of militarized masculinity characterized by empathy loss and “othering”, and refusing to remain a soldier of the dominant corporate or governmental power structures. Even though this cannot bring down the entire system that perpetuates injustice and bloodletting, it does free the cyborg and hinder the military structure’s ability to execute this injustice. In the uncomfortably plausible dystopias my primary texts reasonably predict, the solution to the cyborg’s exploitation and transformation is to firmly oppose the military-industrial war machine characterized by hyper capitalist and imperialist ambitions.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

The Silver Age of American Comics, Then and Now

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Description

"The Silver Age of American Comics, Then and Now" is an exploration of a certain period in the history of American comics. It began with the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, which censored comics to stamp out

"The Silver Age of American Comics, Then and Now" is an exploration of a certain period in the history of American comics. It began with the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, which censored comics to stamp out any content that might incite children to delinquency. Even today, though the era has passed and the Code is defunct, its effects continue to influence how the general public understands comics. Why was censorship deemed necessary? What stories were created in response to the new paradigm? Why did it go away? What does it even matter now? All these questions and more are explored herein.

Date Created
2021-12
Agent

Section 230 Reform: A Mirror into the Divisive Socio-Political Landscape in America

Description

Over the past couple of years, the focus on the prevalence of hate-speech and misinformation on the internet has increased. Lawmakers feel that repealing or reforming Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act is the way to go, considering that

Over the past couple of years, the focus on the prevalence of hate-speech and misinformation on the internet has increased. Lawmakers feel that repealing or reforming Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act is the way to go, considering that the law has been used to protect companies from any liability in the past. In this podcast series, I will be explaining what Section 230 is, how it affects us, and what changes are being proposed. In doing so, I wish to shed a light on how the problems of the internet are not solely in the hands of social media giants and a 26-word long law, but all its users that make up our global community.

Date Created
2021-05
Agent

Formally Conformed: Examining Nonconformity and Success

Description

This podcast discusses three nonconformists from throughout history and analyzes what made them successful, as well as how we can apply lessons learned from them to our own lives.

Date Created
2021-05
Agent