Silent Witness

The present study traces campus climate at Virginia Tech, site of the deadliest school massacre in modern U.S. history, from 2003 to 2017. Using the unobtrusive method of content analysis as a measure of campus climate, data in the form of desktop graffiti—student-authored graffiti on classroom desktops—is analyzed according to amount and content. A total of 1,443 desks are studied, resulting in 8,172 pieces of intelligible graffiti analyzed. Data collected prior to the massacre is compared to data collected one semester, one year, and one decade following the massacre. From this emerges an unobtrusively painted picture of campus climate at Virginia Tech over the course of 14 years, spanning before and after tragic events. The present study adds to the literature on classroom culture post-campus violence and speaks to the subtler, often obscured, impacts of school shootings.

Establishment of data centre at Mzuzu University: A survey of anticipations and aspirations of key project stakeholders

Mzuzu University lost its Library as a result of a fire that took place on December 18, 2015. In response, the university established two processes to ensure the library services were not interrupted. The first process was to restore information services within six months by creating an interim Library. The second was to design a new library in collaboration with Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture and Design in the United States. A total of three conceptual designs were developed, from which Mzuzu University selected a final design. One key aspect of each conceptual design was a dedicated space for a data centre. The initial concept was that the data centre would support research activities at the University, within Malawi, and with international partners outside Malawi, such as Virginia Tech. This paper captures the anticipations and aspirations of the key stakeholders involved with the library design project at Mzuzu University in Malawi and Virginia Tech in the USA. Data were captured by a survey that was shared via email with 29 stakeholders. A total of 10 responded at Mzuzu University, and 12 responded at Virginia Tech. A key finding from the survey was the need to create clear plans for each aspect of the project to ensure the effective implementation of the data centre. Critical aspects to the project include staffing, equipment procurement, the management of the data centre, data literacy programming, and the long-term sustainability of the data centre. Developing a policy/process to guide the operations of the data centre was also found to be critical. The library construction began in February 2021 and is expected to end in February 2023. Having a clear plan for how the data centre could be operationalized will be essential to ensuring the centre is successful. The data centre will be a new facility for the university and this paper is a first step towards shaping the requirements of, and potential for, this new facility.

"Perimeters of Grief": Elegy in and out of Bounds in Fred D'Aguiar's Memorial Poetry

While Fred D’Aguiar’s preoccupation with acknowledging the dead and honoring their memory gives his work an idiosyncratic elegiac quality, it is with the publication of the poetic sequence “Elegies”, from the collection Continental Shelf (2009), that the author overtly pitches himself in the traditional terrain of the elegy as a poetic genre. This sequence, a response to the Virginia Tech shootings (April 16, 2007), the deadliest gun rampage in US history to date, invites critical attention not only because it remains critically unexamined, but also because through its title it presents itself as an elegy when an anti-elegiac turn has been identified in modern poetry. This paper will explore D’Aguiar’s intervention in the debate surrounding elegy’s contemporary function as a genre which oscillates between the poles of melancholia and consolation, thus contributing to shaping the contours of an ancient but conflicted poetic form for the 21st century. I will be arguing that D’Aguiar’s poem suggests that for elegy to serve the troubled present it may benefit from the cultivation of an unembarrassed attachment to the deceased, from avoiding depoliticizing tragedy and from the exposure of its socio-historical underpinnings. In sum, it should be open to engaging with such critical issues as the struggles of collective memory, or the turning of grief into mass-mediated spectacle.

A Nationwide Study on How COVID-19 Changed APS Policies and Practices

The purpose of this inquiry by the Virginia Tech Center for Gerontology and WRMA, Inc., was to explore changes being implemented by APS programs across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With input from the Administration for Community Living, the research team used a three-step process (e.g., telephone interviews with state-level APS administrators, a national online survey, and in-depth interviews with local and APS) to capture information on changes caused by efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. This presentation concerns changes in APS policy and practice that the pandemic caused, including modifications in-person visits and adjustments to timeline requirements. Discussion of alterations in policy and practices during the first five months of the pandemic can eludicate APS and other services and planning for older adults in future emergency situations.

Robots with Tails

Until recently, most four-legged robots have lacked a feature that is found again and again in nature—a tail. Studies of animal locomotion and robots in the laboratory indicate that leaving out tails has been a design drawback. In fact, research conducted by our lab at Virginia Tech has shown that an articulated robotic tail can effectively maneuver and stabilize a quadruped both for static and dynamic locomotion.

Slamming Events of a Planing Hull and Wedge Water Entry Experiment: Comparisons and Insights on Fluid-Structure Interaction

Both towing tank experiments and wedge drop experiments are used to experimentally study slamming events on planning craft. The work presented in this paper shows a unique comparison between these two experiments. The first experiment was a towing tank test of a rigid hull in waves conducted at the U.S. Naval Academy. The second experiment was a series of free-falling water entry tests on a wedge conducted at Virginia Tech. In this paper, comparisons are drawn between the two experiments by using non-dimensional analysis and isolating similar slamming events. The non-dimensional impact velocities are chosen to be identical.

Virginia Tech Science Festival on Mozilla Hubs

This paper discusses the development of a virtual environment for pre-college students to have more interactive, and educational out of classroom experiences. This can be achieved by initial development of a virtual environment, testing with local educators, revising, and implementing changes.

Community-Wide Prevention of COVID-19: A Systematic Analysis of Hot vs. Cold Spots

Universities in five different states are collaborating on an original large-scale COVID-prevention effort by asking many of their students to complete an innovative survey that strategically asks them to identify areas on and around campus that are “hot spots” for spreading the coronavirus. These universities—Virginia Tech, Appalachian State, Western Michigan, University of Kansas, and University of Florida—are also observing mask wearing, social distancing, and other COVID prevention measures in their communities to analyze the risk management and wellness precautions taken by students, faculty, and the surrounding communities. Mapping hot-spot areas provides invaluable information for prevention and intervention creation.

Concealed Carrying on Campus in the Post–Virginia Tech Era: Dimensions of State Regulation and Differences in Contexts of Influence Within Them

Debates over concealed carrying of guns on campus (CCOC) usually classify states as either “allowing” or “prohibiting” CCOC, thus ignoring research revealing state firearm regulatory frameworks are more nuanced. This study examined whether such subtleties existed in state CCOC regulatory frameworks by analyzing states’ 2018 CCOC regulatory provisions. Results showed that states used a multi-categorical restrictiveness-by-institutional discretion framework to regulate CCOC. In addition, indicators of intrastate contexts of influence (firearms, political, and religious) on regulatory policy differed across categories of restrictiveness and institutional discretion. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed significant differences in indicators of states’ political contexts, and post hoc comparisons of paired marginal means revealed significant differences in political indicators between states prohibiting CCOC and those allowing or those with mixed restrictiveness, and between states according schools full discretion and those according schools no discretion. Implications of the results are discussed for state-level research on firearms regulation and the ongoing CCOC debate.

Numerical Simulation on the Vortex Shedding From Airfoils of a Swirl Distortion Generator

The StreamVane™ swirl distortion generator, developed by Virginia Tech, can efficiently reproduce the boundary layer of an airframe or duct found in boundary layer ingesting (BLI) aircraft. Due to manufacturing limitations, the vanes within StreamVanes induce unsteady, vortical wakes, commonly known as a von Karman vortex street. This paper investigates the use of a commercial URANS code and SST turbulence model to predict the vortex shedding frequency from the vanes. The objective was accomplished in two main tasks. First, the CFD methodology was validated by modeling the fluid dynamics of a linear cascade experiment done by the von Karman Institute. Second, the same methodology was applied to airfoils used in StreamVane design to calculate the shedding frequency as a function of turning angle and TE thickness. It was predicted that an increase in turning angle exponentially increased the shedding frequency while an increase in TE thickness exponentially decreased the shedding frequency. The results provided a correlation between the shedding frequency and airfoil characteristics in StreamVanes as well as various turbomachinery components.