2020 Notes on Contributors

2020 Notes on Contributors

Editors' Note

2020 Editor's Note

'Clothes' The Loop: Raising Awareness of Sustainable Fashion Among Millennial Consumers Through Digital Platforms

The average consumer is not aware of the implications regarding the externalized cost of cheap clothing and overconsumption, which attributes to the growing need for sustainable fashion. The adverse effects within the fashion supply chain and substantial increase in consumption levels have led to the sustainability movement. Sustainability leaders in the fashion industry provide a wealth of information, but easily accessible forms of this information about fashion are not available to consumers. To elicit change, buy-in from consumers is paramount. Millennials are the chosen target market for this study due to their large purchasing power. This study will educate Millennial consumers about the power of sustainability through the development of an ecommerce mobile application prototype. The mobile application Loop will become the user’s guide, via an accessible mobile interface, for sustainable apparel purchases. It will also provide the necessary brand research that will bridge the consumer gap in a simple, easily consumable output.

A Life Well-Lived: Discovering Motivation and Deeper Relationships by Contemplating Our Own Mortality

For centuries, religious authorities and social pressures have discouraged individualsfrom contemplating mortality. A key component to the human sense of self is the ability to acknowledge the finite nature of life. All people experience some sort of death anxiety, whether conscious or not. Some experience thanatophobia, the fear of dying, more strongly than others. If managed in a healthy manner, death anxiety can serve as a motivating force to live a fuller life and deepen relationships with family and friends. In recognizing hidden components of death anxiety and finding consolation for the inevitability of dying, we can acknowledge our own mortality and explore both secular and spiritual approaches to death. For this thesis, I use painting as a visual medium to deliver my ideas and research in an immersive experience to the viewer. I conducted research by reading books and poetry, taking photographs, and viewing other artists’ work, online and in-person, from New York City museums and galleries. I have produced ten paintings of various size and technique that communicate how science and medicine, faith, meditation, and relationships alleviate death anxiety. Ultimately, I have found that painting has helped me to develop coping mechanisms that lessen my own death anxiety. I hope that by viewing my art, people will feel encouraged to consider aspects of their own mortality as well as ways to lead a fulfilling life.

Supporting English Language Learners' Experiences in the Classroom

I was interested in studying English Language Learners (ELL) and how they are supported.Thus, I looked into how each level (US, Texas, Fort Worth, and McLean 6th Grade Center) supports these students. The support given to English Language Learners at McLean 6th Grade Center is extended time, dictionaries, audio options, differentiated texts, reading aloud, before school help, during lunch help, and after school help. The teachers track English Language Learners’ progress separately and adjust accommodations each six weeks to make sure each student's needs are being met. Based on these supports, I developed a survey that was sent to my students at McLean 6th grade, asking for their opinions on the support they were receiving. This survey would have originally been given in class, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the survey took place online. This limited my number of responses. I sent the survey to all 170 students and 51 responded. I then drew conclusions from my research and the survey on the effectiveness of supports offered.

An Analysis of Central Drivers of REIT Returns

Many researchers have questioned whether real estate investment trusts (REITs) can act as a hedge for inflation or whether REITs can act as a safe haven for investors in the event of economic downturn. However, many studies lack basic data analysis or timely data to determine the dependence of REIT returns on various economic factors. The goal of this study is to act as a meta-analysis to synthesize the relationship between REITs and several potential risk factors. This study will extend beyond the timeline of previous studies, and will examine the relationship of several hypothesized risk factors. The results of this study can help brokers in their future decisions to hedge REIT risk in a portfolio. This study will use the historical returns from the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) as well as six indices. This study will also use both univariate regressions and multivariate regressions to analyze the relationship between REITs and mortgage REITs and each representative index

On Integral Metrics and Trajectory Classification

In this project, we explore distance in the context of metrics. More specifically, we take a look at an integral metric that is used to determine the distance between sets. The motivation behind this project is to determine that the integral metric we use is meaningful in the context of our data set. The data set we useconsists of trajectories of cars along a portion of the I5 highway. Through training, testing, and evaluating this model on the data set, we can reach conclusions on the structure of the data and the success of this integral metric in terms of a classifier. In the end, we can both determine whether or not this integral metric fits with the data set chosen and explore other areas where the metric could possibly succeed or where it might fail.

Breaking Barriers: Trailblazing Women in Sports Media

Women in sports media are continuing to make strides, years after the first women entered the industry. Two trailblazers in the female sports media world are Lesley Visser and Melissa Ludtke. In everyday life, women have achieved equality in many ways, in part due to acts like Title IX. However, there are still reflections of inequality and discrimination of females in sports media today—discrimination is often directed at female athletes and female reporters. In this research, the moments discussed in each sports journalist’s section touch upon breaking barriers and the obstacles these women faced while being a trailblazing female in this industry. These women have faced bias, underrepresentation, and, at times, a hostile culture. Based on research and personal one-on-one interviews, I approach Visser and Ludtke in an exploration of their histories, where women in sports media stand today, and where women could be headed. Women have persevered in this male-dominated industry, but there are some who still feel that they don’t belong in this men’s club.

The Emancipation and Liberation of One Karen Smith

Set in the late 1910s, a white woman named Karen Smith lives an ordinary life married to her husband in Brooklyn, New York in a lovely home. Brad, the husband of Karen, has a job on Wall Street, where he commutes to work. He is very controlling, misogynist, and racist. They have been married for five years and have a normal and happy life, the complete American Dream. During this time, the women of the United States are embroiled in the fight for suffrage, with many in opposition. Karen and Brad are a part of the anti-suffrage movement that believes in a limited role for women, such as “working in the home.” Realizing that the suffrage movement was gaining momentum, Karen decides to infiltrate the National Women’s Party. Karen is determined to find out insider information to harm the suffrage movement. While engaging in espionage, Karen discovers herself, makes friends, and decides how she wants to be remembered by history. Listen to the playlist on Spotify

Image-based Vehicle Re-identification Model with Adaptive Attention Modules and Metadata Re-ranking

Vehicle re-identification is a challenging task due to intra-class variability and inter-class similarity across non-overlapping cameras. To tackle these problems, recently proposed methods require additional annotation to extract more features for false positive image exclusion. In this paper, we propose a model powered by adaptive attention modules that requires fewer label annotations but still out-performs the previous models. We also include a re-ranking method that takes account of the importance of metadata feature embeddings in our paper. The proposed method is evaluated on CVPR AI City Challenge 2020 dataset and achieves mAP of 37.25% in Track 2.