Research Poster Presentations
PO S TER
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PO S TER
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An Affirmative Interpretation of Case Studies on Gender Variant Youth Jeannemarie Leone
Computation of Lagrangian Coherent Structures in Loop Current Pinch-Off Jonathan Maltz
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Darryl Hill
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Andrew Poje
Department of Psychology
Department of Mathematics
This study takes an affirmative phenomenological approach to study of the lives of children and adolescents diagnosed with gender identity disorder.The primary goal was to understand the psychological experience of a child who has unconventional gender beliefs.To do this, I analyzed the entire published case literature on gender variant youth (60 studies) in academic psychology and psychiatry from December, 1963 to May, 2003. While my analysis of case literature discourse found uncovered many themes relevant to the subjectivity of gender variant youth, I found the following observations most compelling. First, these youth lived in highly heterosexist, genderist, and transphobic family, society, or peer group contexts. The gender variant youth’s families dichotomized gender and pathologized anything except stereotypical, traditional expressions of gender and sexuality, and the youth often internalized these views.They often described their gender as “being born in the wrong body” and locate the origin of these desires in either their cross-gender interests or their sexual desires. While the case literature constructs these youth as extremely pathological, an affirmative interpretation of the youth’s experiences shows that they may be using gender variances as a strategy to empower them against psychological threats like fear of abandonment, loss of love, and lack of power.
We utilize a high resolution ocean model of the Gulf of Mexico (HYCOM) to observe Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) associated with the pinch-off of Loop Current Rings. We identify LCS and advection pathways according to dynamical systems theory by studying synthetic drifter trajectories. Many drifter trajectories are computed using a numerical integration application (GENCURVE). In order to maximize the quality of the results, GENCURVE was modified to run large numbers of trajectories in parallel on CUNY’s supercomputer in two ways. It was first adapted to separate trajectory calculations across the processors. A second alteration enabled GENCURVE to run the same initial drifter conditions across varying start days.To assess the accuracy of these calculations we look at the convergence of the computations based on both integration and interpolation parameters. Running GENCURVE’s results through a Finite Scale Lyapunov Exponent (FSLE) analysis provides an estimate of hyperbolic trajectories in this region.These estimates offer initial trajectory locations to calculate approximate stable and unstable manifolds. We then study the mixing of water parcels between the structures formed by the manifolds.
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