Whispers from Above is a creative project that aims to normalize the conversation and validate the emotional experience of grief, through the use of art therapies. Art therapy can be expressive in which someone creates their own work, such as visual art, poetry, performance, music, movement, etc. Art therapy can also be receptive in which someone analyzes and understands someone else's artwork. This project was released on SoundCloud in order to make grief resources more accessible to all and to build an online community.<br/><br/>Whispers from Above worked with twelve poets, fifteen artists, six different interviewees, and multiple musicians to create a month of grief support. The finale piece of Whispers from Above was devised from the twenty-nine poems used within this month-long healing journey. All the individual poems were woven into a single devised poem to be presented as the final piece symbolizing that no one is alone in grief.<br/><br/>Whispers from Above is creative community exploration of grief, loss, and death in which we hope contributors, and listeners find solace and support. This series will exist on SoundCloud after March 27th, 2021 with a monthly release of a poem or interview accompanied by art, and music.

One of the most pressing questions in economics is “why are some countries richer than others?” One methodology designed to help answer the question is known as “Development Accounting,” a framework that organizes the determinants of income into two categories: differences in inputs and differences in efficiency. The objective of our work is to study to what extent differences in the levels of pollution can help explain income differences across countries. To do this, we adjusted a factor-only model to allow us to enter PM2.5, a measure of pollution that tracks the concentration of fine particulate matter in the air and looked to see if the model’s predictive power improved. We ultimately find that we can improve the model’s success in predicting GDP by .5 - 6%. Thus, pollution is unlikely to be a major force in understanding cross-country income differences, but it can be used with other economic factors to potentially magnify its impact with other additions in the future.

Cornhole, traditionally seen as tailgate entertainment, has rapidly risen in popularity since the launching of the American Cornhole League in 2016. However, it lacks robust quality control over large tournaments, since many of the matches are scored and refereed by the players themselves. In the past, there have been issues where entire competition brackets have had to be scrapped and replayed because scores were not handled correctly. The sport is in need of a supplementary scoring solution that can provide quality control and accuracy over large matches where there aren’t enough referees present to score games. Drawing from the ACL regulations as well as personal experience and testimony from ACL Pro players, a list of requirements was generated for a potential automatic scoring system. Then, a market analysis of existing scoring solutions was done, and it found that there are no solutions on the market that can automatically score a cornhole game. Using the problem requirements and previous attempts to solve the scoring problem, a list of concepts was generated and evaluated against each other to determine which scoring system design should be developed. After determining that the chosen concept was the best way to approach the problem, the problem requirements and cornhole rules were further refined into a set of physical assumptions and constraints about the game itself. This informed the choice, structure, and implementation of the algorithms that score the bags. The prototype concept was tested on their own, and areas of improvement were found. Lastly, based on the results of the tests and what was learned from the engineering process, a roadmap was set out for the future development of the automatic scoring system into a full, market-ready product.

Our project is to create a simplified, portable, modular electrocardiogram known as ECG/EKG. Most medical facilities, including hospitals, clinics, and skilled nursing facilities, still rely on traditional 12-lead EKG equipment consisting of a large cart with long 10 wires. These wires can be a pain to constantly detangle and rearrange to determine a person’s heart conditions. This creates issues in fast paced scenarios such as when a patient is experiencing a heart attack and needs an EKG stat. Additionally, the current technology can be somewhat unreliable at determining heart conditions, causing providers to request multiple EKG’s for patients. With our improved versatile EKG, we can help solve these issues and implement additional outpatient use with its portable features. This can be done by remotely monitoring heart conditions during activities such as exercise, sleep, or stressful events, without worrying about wire disturbance.

This creative project is assembled in screenplay format, providing the blueprint for a feature film. The research consisted of reading numerous screenplays, breaking down movies scene by scene, and undergoing a rigorous revision process with Thesis Director Professor Greg Bernstein. The logline of Changing Tides is: After discovering a gold-filled shipwreck, five Floridian middle schoolers head out to claim their treasure when they learn that the largest hurricane ever recorded is heading their way.