Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Humans use emotions to communicate social cues to our peers on a daily basis. Are we able to identify context from facial expressions and match them to specific scenarios? This experiment found that people can effectively distinguish negative and positive emotions from each other from a short description. However, further research is needed to find out whether humans can learn to perceive emotions only from contextual explanations.

The Constitution is a document that was made over 200 years ago by a population that could have never imagined the type of technology or social advances made in the 21st century. This creates a natural rift between governing ideals between then and now, that needs to be addressed. Rather than holding the values of the nation to a time when people were not considered citizens because of the color of their skin, there need to be updates made to the Constitution itself. The need for change and the mechanisms were both established by the Framers while creating and advancing the Constitution. The ideal process to go about these changes is split between the formal Article V amendment process and judicial activism. The amendment process has infinite scope for changes that can be done, but due to the challenge involved in trying to pass any form of the amendment through both State and Federal Congresses, that process should be reserved for only fundamental or structural changes. Judicial activism, by way of Supreme Court decisions, is a method best applied to the protection of people’s rights.

The Arizona Civic Education Project is a cross-college collaboration supported by the Maricopa County Community College District to design, develop, and distribute publicly available, interactive, and engaging multimedia modules about Arizona State Government and the justice system. The modules aim to consist of high quality, professionally produced, value- neutral, fact-based, and bias-free videos, lesson plans, printable materials and activities that explain how Arizona state government is structured and how the justice system works in Arizona. The modules also identify and teach the audience how to deal with encounters within the justice system through lessons about the courts and dealing with the police. In addition to the resources we create, links are provided with attribution to other free resources that have been developed by other organizations. The targeted audience for this project is high school and college students attending public high schools and community colleges. In 2015, Arizona legislature passed the American Civics Act (House Bill 2064). This bill requires students to pass a civics test based on the United States Immigration and Naturalization civics questions. Students are required to score 60% or higher in order to graduate from high school or obtain a high school equivalency certificate. The Arizona Department of Education along with help from the Maricopa County Education Service Agency and Arizona educators have developed a mostly multiple-choice version of the required test. The modules provide helpful information that pertains to the civic test along with additional informational useful to students and educators alike.<br/>There were a few goals kept in mind when assembling the modules and collecting information to put them together. The most important thing is to fairly and effectively educate<br/>2<br/>students about their rights and the place they can hold in their own government. The youth in America, and specifically Arizona, with one of the lowest rated public education systems in the country1, needs to better understand the justice system and the way it works in order to really be able to better understand and decide the role they play in it as they grow into the adult population. We also aimed to teach students, mostly young adults, how to navigate being involved with the law and situations they may find themselves in like being arrested or having to go to court. The videos included in the related modules teach students what to do if they’re ever arrested and go over important legal actions that could affect their outcome. It was also important to provide instructors with a fair and trusted curriculum that can be taught across the state. With a shortage of qualified teacher in the state, it is impossible to provide students from all different districts and background with the same content. With the mandated civics test required to graduate from high school, it’s important that students get a fair chance at passing despite their living conditions or resources. With the modules we provide, passing the civics test along with managing other issues that pertain to young Americans, become attainable and don’t require as much additional time spent outside of school hours. The additional topics covered within our modules also provide information regarding resources that students will find useful for their families and loved ones. Students in compromised neighborhoods may have family and loved ones dealing with court cases and the justice system. Overall, we wanted to provide an unbiased, all-inclusive curriculum that can be used across the state to help students learn about all aspects of the government in Arizona.

Empathy includes multiple components, including empathic concern, perspective-taking, and motivation to empathize. Various perspective-taking interventions have been found to be useful in increasing empathy. Games can be utilized as such interventions, especially when they involve perspective-taking components. The similarities between tabletop roleplaying games and various empathy-building interventions suggests that tabletop roleplaying games may be an intervention option that is already played for enjoyment. This study examines the influence of tabletop roleplaying games on motivation to empathize. Participants played a short tabletop roleplaying game and then were asked to choose between describing and empathizing with refugee targets over a series of trials. There is a potential main effect of tabletop roleplaying games on motivation to empathize, but this main effect is absent when controlling for self-other-overlap. It appears that self-other-overlap influences motivation to empathize. However, this study was underpowered, and the main effect of roleplay may have been detected if more participants were involved. Thus, there is potential that tabletop roleplaying games may influence motivation to empathize, and future research should examine this while considering the limitations of this study.

This paper will cover a variety of stable isotope systems, both light and heavy, that are used to interpret isotopic analysis in two different disciplines: bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. To begin, I will give short histories of both bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, including what is considered to be the beginning of the disciplines as well as the founders of said disciplines. Following the histories of the disciplines, there will be a short background in isotopes and isotopic analysis, including an introduction to isoscapes and how isotopic data can be collected for further interpretation. There will then be an introduction to light isotopes, focusing on the ones used for this thesis, which will lead into the background of each light isotope. Following the light isotopes is an introduction to the heavy isotopes and the backgrounds of each of the heavy isotopes. Finally, this thesis will end in the conclusions section.

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the health system in the United States is now being further challenged. There is bipartisan debate on how it can be reconstructed: one party states that the government plays too big of a role, while the other believes it plays too little. Regardless, Americans want change. Reconstruction is not a new topic by any means, and other countries have been forced to do so due to political violence. This paper explores the history and current healthcare organizations of Japan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These countries have all encountered major political turmoil, which has led to the rebuilding of their respective healthcare systems. Though the United States is not facing political violence that will necessitate reorganization, the examination of nations that have been forced to do so offers lessons applicable to the healthcare system in the US.