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A Rational Design Approach To Developing Second Generation Fabry Disease Treatments, Matthew Metcalf

Doctoral Dissertations

Fabry disease is an X-linked lysosomal storage disorder that affects approximately 1 in 40,000 males in its classical form and as many as 1:4,600 in its late-onset form [1]. The disease is caused by mutations in the gene encoding α- galactosidase (α-GAL), which results in deficient levels of α-GAL activity in the lysosomes of patients [2, 3]. This lack of enzymatic activity causes macromolecular substrates to accumulate in tissues, and can result in a wide range of symptoms such as impaired renal and cardiac function [4]. The severity of disease is linked to the amount of residual …

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A Genealogy Of Victimhood: Empathy And Memory In Recent German Fiction, Catherine E. Mcnally

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses literary representations of empathy and altruism in Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2015 novel Gehen, Ging, Gegangen and Bodo Kirchhoff’s 2016 novel Widerfahrnis. These novels demonstrate continuities and discontinuities between German literature of the postwar, reunification and contemporary contexts.Analyzing expressions of empathy by Erpenbeck and Kirchhoff’s protagonists, I locate them in historical and literary contexts, the roots of which can be traced to the first generation of postwar German literature (1945-1968), particularly Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. In both Grass and Böll’s early postwar fiction, German experiences of the war and its aftermath are foregrounded, and focus is placed …

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Essays On Women And Work In India And On Other-Regarding Preferences, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of three essays. In Essay I, I explore declining female workforce participation in India and propose the following explanation: Traditionally, Brahmin (upper caste) women were more secluded and did not work outside the house, while non-Brahmin, often poorer, women did. With increased income, non-Brahmin families withdraw women from the workforce in order to signal their enhanced social status. This is a part of a larger process of cultural emulation referred to as the Sanskritization of non-Brahmin families. Using a nationally representative panel dataset, I show, in favor of this hypothesis, that while Brahmin women’s participation …

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Covering All Their Bases: An Investigation Into Identity Covering In The Sport Workplace, Jeffrey Maccharles

Doctoral Dissertations

The sport industry has historically struggled to diversify its workforce. However, shifting racial and ethnic demographics in the United States in the coming decades, and greater numbers of individuals identifying as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT), will soon force its hand. Recruiting and retaining a talented workforce from a diverse labor pool will require that sport organizations ensure their workplaces are inclusive spaces where employees can present their authentic selves without fear. Unfortunately, employees from marginalized groups often face implicit and explicit pressures to downplay aspects of their stigmatized identity through identity covering, which can have negative effects for …

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Up In Smoke? Towards A Theory Of Community Identity Work, Matthew Lyle

Doctoral Dissertations

Scholars have developed rich theories explaining how entrepreneurship spurs changes to the central and distinctive features, or identities, of geographic communities. However, less attention has been paid to the means by which entrepreneurship variably affects these identities, or why members of some communities perceive widespread changes following entrepreneurial action while others remain relatively unchanged. Through a multiple case study, which included two communities in Massachusetts that played host to entrepreneurs seeking to found legal cannabis dispensaries, I develop a theory of community identity work, defined as the process through which a community’s central and distinctive features are maintained or altered …

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Lisa Ben And Queer Rhetorical Reeducation In Post-War Los Angeles, Katelyn S. Litterer

Doctoral Dissertations

“Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles” combines historiography and queer rhetorical analysis to examine the ways that discourse circulated and rhetorically educated audiences and readers about homosexuality in post-war Los Angeles, California (and the wider United States), a time and place that was influenced by dominant discourses around censorship, morality, and nationalism. I examine historical documents, such as newspaper articles, song lyrics, films and plays, and magazine articles, and I put these in conversation with multiple texts by one woman: Lisa Ben. Ben is a figurehead in this dissertation because she endeavored to rhetorically reeducate readers …

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Perceptions And Experiences Of Adopting A Technology Based Intervention For Alcohol Screening And Referral To Treatment In Primary Care, Sonya L. Lachance

Doctoral Dissertations

Alcohol abuse is a significant concern in the United States. Today in the U.S., 15.1 million adults ages 18 and older, have been identified as having an alcohol use disorder. Alcohol abuse and binge drinking are highest amongst college students. More than 58.0 percent of college students admit to regular binge drinking or heavy alcohol use every month. Left unaddressed, this leads to negative health consequences later in life. The United States Preventive Services Task Force states that there is strong evidence that screening patients in primary care can reduce alcohol use disorder. Though screening, brief intervention, and referral to …

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The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the temporal interpretation of fronting constructions in English and the phenomenon of the Sequence of Tense. It provides and analyzes previously unobserved data from verb phrase fronting constructions in which the simultaneous interpretation of a present tense embedded under a matrix past tense is available. These data are theoretically unexpected and challenging because most theories of English tense disallow this interpretation for Present-under-Past configurations. An account that captures the new data is proposed. It establishes a connection between the simultaneous interpretation of Present-under-Past and the mode of semantic composition between a verb and its complement. …

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Circadian Regulation Of The Timing Of Pre-Ovulatory Luteinizing Hormone Surge In Mice And Hamsters, Ajay Kumar

Doctoral Dissertations

Endogenous daily (circadian) oscillators ensure the proper timing of physiological and behavioral processes that are essential to health. A set of core clock genes and their protein products function in transcriptional/translational feedback loops (TTFLs) that time and coordinate vital homeostatic, cognitive, and hormonal processes. A master pacemaker in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) coordinates circadian function throughout the organism. Investigating the causal role of genetically defined cell types in the suprachiasmatic nucleus for circadian rhythms is essential to understand how an animal’s physiology is temporally organized. This thesis explores the role of molecular clocks within particular cell types in regulating physiology. …

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Photothermal And Photochemical Strategies For Lightinduced Shape-Morphing Of Soft Materials, Alexa Simone Kuenstler

Doctoral Dissertations

Engineering materials with the capability to transform energy from photons into mechanical work is an outstanding technical challenge with implications across myriad disciplines. Despite decades of work in this area, comprehensive understanding of how to prescribe shape change and work output in photoactive systems remains limited. To this end, this dissertation explores strategies to assemble photothermal and photochemical moieties in soft material systems to fabricate photoaddressable devices capable of specific shape changes upon illumination. Chapters 2 and 3 describe a methodology for spatially patterning plasmonic nanoparticles in liquid crystal elastomer fibers and sheets to specify local photothermally-induced strain profiles. Using …

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Passing Literacies: Soviet Immigrant Elders And Intergenerational Language Practice, Jenny Krichevsky

Doctoral Dissertations

Using a qualitative approach through interview data and a grounded theory methodology, this dissertation focuses on the literacy practices of immigrant families from various former Soviet Republics, primarily Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants in the Boston area. The immigrant literacy users in my study developed reading and writing strategies within spaces of contingency, flux, and danger in order to survive. By interviewing these immigrants who are now in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, the study asks first, how these elders pass on literacy and language practices to their family members, and second, what the members of that family gain through the passing …

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Reasoning About User Feedback Under Identity Uncertainty In Knowledge Base Construction, Ariel Kobren

Doctoral Dissertations

Intelligent, automated systems that are intertwined with everyday life---such as Google Search and virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri---are often powered in part by knowledge bases (KBs), i.e., structured data repositories of entities, their attributes, and the relationships among them. Despite a wealth of research focused on automated KB construction methods, KBs are inevitably imperfect, with errors stemming from various points in the construction pipeline. Making matters more challenging, new data is created daily and must be integrated with existing KBs so that they remain up-to-date. As the primary consumers of KBs, human users have tremendous potential to …

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Three Essays On Political Economy Of Uneven Development: Space, Class And State In Pakistan, Danish Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation delineates the underlying dynamics of the political economy of uneven development by focusing on the dynamic interaction between socially produced space, class and the state in the context of postcolonial capitalism in Pakistan. The first essay (chapter two) focuses on the political economy of urban slums in the context of a postcolonial city of Islamabad, Pakistan. It presents a new conceptual framework of ‘expulsionary development’ to illustrate that the growth of slums and high-end gated housing enclaves are two sides of the same coin at the urban scale. Dispossession and urban sprawl are the underlying factors which mediate …

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An Investigation Of Fit Criteria Within Mg-Cfa For Examining Non-Negligible Measurement Invariance, Abdolvahab Khademi

Doctoral Dissertations

One desirable property of a measurement process or instrument is the maximum invariance of the results across subpopulations with similar distribution of the traits. Determining measurement invariance (MI) is a statistical procedure in which different methods are used given different factors, such as the nature of the data (e.g. continuous, or discrete, completeness), sample size, measurement framework (e.g. observed scores, latent variable modeling), and other context-specific factors. To evaluate the statistical results, numerical criteria are often used, derived from theory, simulation, or practice. One statistical method to evaluate MI is multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) in which the amount of …

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How Does Burnout And Self-Efficacy Effect Teacher's Perspectives And Implementation Status Of Evidence Based Behavior Management Practices?, Autumn Jillson

Doctoral Dissertations

Globally, school systems are struggling with the consequences of teacher burnout (Aloe, Amo et al., 2014). Student behavior has been consistently identified as one of the greatest stressor’s teachers deal with and is a significant predictor of burnout development (Chang, 2013). For the prevention and management of behavioral challenges, it is essential that teachers use evidence-based practices. However, research indicates that classroom management practices are frequently not implemented with sufficient implementation fidelity to be effective, even with didactic training by consultants (Briere et al., 2015). Burnout and self-efficacy are constructs that are rarely incorporated into the understanding of implementation efforts …

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Understanding The Dynamic Visual World: From Motion To Semantics, Huaizu Jiang

Doctoral Dissertations

We live in a dynamic world, which is continuously in motion. Perceiving and interpreting the dynamic surroundings is an essential capability for an intelligent agent. Human beings have the remarkable capability to learn from limited data, with partial or little annotation, in sharp contrast to computational perception models that rely on large-scale, manually labeled data. Reliance on strongly supervised models with manually labeled data inherently prohibits us from modeling the dynamic visual world, as manual annotations are tedious, expensive, and not scalable, especially if we would like to solve multiple scene understanding tasks at the same time. Even worse, in …

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Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation answers a deceivingly simple question: why can her in Hermione talked about her refer to the sentence subject in Romanian, but not in English? The Romanian facts, which are surprising for both classic and competition-based accounts of the Binding Theory over the last 40 odd years, bring us to the following overarching question: what are the constraints on pronominal reference? To address these main questions, I carry out a psycholinguistic investigation of Romanian pronouns and argue that the distribution and interpretation of pronominal forms is jointly determined by pragmatic and morphosyntactic constraints. I discuss evidence from four experiments, …

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Older Women’S Experiences Of Intimate Partner Violence: A Phenomenological Study, Lourdes Irene

Doctoral Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health problem, linked to long-term health, social, and economic consequences. Despite the growing number of women over age 60 in Puerto Rico, knowledge is lacking about culturally specific IPV in women of this age group. This lack of knowledge is problematic because women experiencing abuse often do not report it, health professionals are not educated to identify cases of abuse in older women, and researchers often includes IPV with other types of abuse, such as negligence by families. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences and …

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Emergent Typological Effects Of Agent-Based Learning Models In Maximum Entropy Grammar, Coral Hughto

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation shows how a theory of grammatical representations and a theory of learning can be combined to generate gradient typological predictions in phonology, predicting not only which patterns are expected to exist, but also their relative frequencies: patterns which are learned more easily are predicted to be more typologically frequent than those which are more difficult. In Chapter 1 I motivate and describe the specific implementation of this methodology in this dissertation. Maximum Entropy grammar (Goldwater & Johnson 2003) is combined with two agent-based learning models, the iterated and the interactive learning model, each of which mimics a type …

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Three Essays On The Economics Of Corporate Governance, Kuochih Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

The Great Recession and the revival attention on inequality have cast doubts on various aspects of the governance of Corporate America. Not only the specific design of corporate governance institutions, but also the very purpose of the firm have became hotly debated issues. The first essay investigates the effect of the CEO's equity-based pay on workers' wages and whether the effect is amplified by product market competition. Since the 1980s, Chief Executive Officers' (CEO) pay has exploded, largely in the form of equity-based incentive compensation such as stock awards and options. Using a two-tiered principal-agent model, we show that aligning …

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Sailing Illicit Voyages: Colonial Smuggling Operations Between North America And The West Indies, 1714-1776, Carl A. Herzog

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines colonial smuggling in the mid-eighteenth century between British North America and the Caribbean from the operational perspective of the captains and crews of the coastwise merchant vessels engaged in that trade. In doing so, this work seeks to recast these particular smuggling mariners as agents of a unique professional maritime skillset, whose expertise created paths for upward mobility in their communities and careers. Returning the mariners’ skills and core occupation to their historical identity refines and corrects arguments about mariners’ perceived attitudes toward the Navigation Acts, smuggling, and the American Revolution. Focusing on operational skills differentiates the …

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A Co-Parent Intervention To Reduce Prenatal Depression In Low-Income Couples: A Pilot Study, Rachel J. Herman

Doctoral Dissertations

Significant health disparities in the U.S. place low-income and racial and ethnic minority families at greater risk for parental depression, stress and poorer outcomes for children. The goal of this quasi-experimental pilot study was to assess the initial feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of an intervention aimed at reducing stress and depression in a sample of low-income expectant parents early in pregnancy. Twenty-four couples (48 participants) were assigned to the 6-week PREParing for Parenthood (PREP) intervention and 22 couples (46 participants) were assigned to a treatment-as-usual comparison group. The group intervention consisted of six sessions during pregnancy and was taught by …

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Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation develops a formal and psycholinguistic theory of person-based prominence effects, the finding that certain categories of person such as "first" and "second" (the "local" persons) are privileged by the grammar. The thesis takes on three questions: (i) What are the possible categories related to person? (ii) What are the possible prominence relationships between these categories? And (iii) how is prominence information used to parse and interpret linguistic input in real time? The empirical through-line is understanding obviation — a “spotlighting” system, found most prominently in the Algonquian family of languages, that splits the (ani- mate) third persons into …

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It’S All The Rage: An Animated Approach To Screening For Postpartum Depression, Amanda Gorham

Doctoral Dissertations

Postpartum depression presents a complication for mothers which can, in some cases, be severe and even life-threatening. Instruments commonly used to screen for this psychological condition have been challenged by an extensive body of literature, with many mothers being unidentified and even untreated for their symptoms. The presented research introduces a newly developed screening instrument for detecting probable postpartum depression using text-free scenario-based animations, based on the lived experience of the condition as qualified by empirical research and the existing body of literature. Developed items were controlled for quality via Think Aloud Protocol and alignment studies with subject matter experts …

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Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of Focus-sensitivity for a typology of presupposition triggers. The central hypothesis is that Focus-sensitive triggers require a linguistic antecedent in the discourse model, whereas presuppositions of triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are satisfied as entailments of the Common Ground. This hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence from two borne out predictions. First, Focus-sensitive triggers are sensitive to the salience of the antecedent satisfying their presupposition, as operationalized via the Question Under Discussion, and lead to interference-type effects, while triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are indifferent to the QUD-structure. Second, Focus-sensitive triggers are harder to globally accommodate than triggers lacking …

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Considerations For The Design Optimization Of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Blades, Evan M. Gaertner

Doctoral Dissertations

Floating offshore wind turbines are an immature technology with relatively high costs and risk associated with deployment. Of the few floating wind turbine prototypes and demonstration projects deployed in real metocean conditions, all have used standard turbines design for onshore or offshore fixed bottom conditions. This neglects the unique unsteady aerodynamics brought on by floating support structure motion. While the floating platform has been designed and optimized for a given rotor, the global system is suboptimal due to the rotor operating in conditions outside of which it was design for. If the potential offered by floating wind turbines is to …

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Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks beyond narratives of the chaotic urban south to examine the politics of city planning and everyday service access in Pakistan. I draw on a case study of Karachi, what is perceived to be one of the world’s most unruly cities, to demonstrate how planning enables the representation of political order. Drawing on field research, I also explore the materialities, subjectivities, and histories of service access that shape urban politics in Karachi. I begin by tracing how planners in postcolonial Karachi have, for decades, described the rapidly expanding city as an object of correction. While early master plans …

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Coffee Bioactives Regulate Lipid Metabolism In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Renalison Farias Pereira

Doctoral Dissertations

Coffee consumption is associated with reduced risk of metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes. Although the mechanisms of action are not yet elucidated, the effects of coffee and its bioactive components on lipid metabolism may account for the overall coffee effects on human health. Therefore, this study investigated the molecular mechanisms of coffee and its bioactive components on lipid metabolism using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system. Green coffee bean extract (GCBE), the chlorogenic acid 5-O-caffeyolquinic acid (5-CQA), and the coffee diterpenes cafestol and kahweol reduced fat accumulation via distinct lipid metabolism pathways and/or behavior changes in C. elegans …

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Composite Network Of Actin And Microtubule Filaments, Self-Organization And Steady-State Dynamics, Leila Farhadi

Doctoral Dissertations

Actin and microtubule filaments, with their auxiliary proteins, enable the cytoskeleton to perform vital processes in the cell by tuning the organizational, mechanical properties and dynamics of the network. Despite their critical importance and interactions in cells, we are only beginning to uncover information about the composite network. Here, I use florescence microscopy to explore the role of filaments characteristics, interactions and activities in the self-organization and steady-state dynamics of the composite network of filaments. First, I discuss active self-organization of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubule filaments in the 2D composite network while myosin II and kinesin-1 motor proteins propel …

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Teacher Interactions, Teacher Bias And Child Behavioral Health, Ellen E. Edge

Doctoral Dissertations

TEACHER INTERACTIONS, TEACHER BIAS AND CHILD BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SEPTEMBER 2020 ELLEN ELLSBERG EDGE, BFA, THE COOPER UNION SCHOOL OF ART Post BA, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST M.ED, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph. D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Claire Hamilton This study utilized a mixed methods study design to gain a clearer understanding of the thoughts and feelings of Lead teachers in Head Start programs who work with children with perceived behavioral health challenges. Utilizing a semi-structured interview, 11 teachers employed in a New England Head Start program were asked about their views associated with child behavioral health, …

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Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

A Rational Design Approach To Developing Second Generation Fabry Disease Treatments, Matthew Metcalf

Doctoral Dissertations

A Genealogy Of Victimhood: Empathy And Memory In Recent German Fiction, Catherine E. Mcnally

Doctoral Dissertations

Essays On Women And Work In India And On Other-Regarding Preferences, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru

Doctoral Dissertations

Covering All Their Bases: An Investigation Into Identity Covering In The Sport Workplace, Jeffrey Maccharles

Doctoral Dissertations

Up In Smoke? Towards A Theory Of Community Identity Work, Matthew Lyle

Doctoral Dissertations

Lisa Ben And Queer Rhetorical Reeducation In Post-War Los Angeles, Katelyn S. Litterer

Doctoral Dissertations

Perceptions And Experiences Of Adopting A Technology Based Intervention For Alcohol Screening And Referral To Treatment In Primary Care, Sonya L. Lachance

Doctoral Dissertations

The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy

Doctoral Dissertations

Circadian Regulation Of The Timing Of Pre-Ovulatory Luteinizing Hormone Surge In Mice And Hamsters, Ajay Kumar

Doctoral Dissertations

Photothermal And Photochemical Strategies For Lightinduced Shape-Morphing Of Soft Materials, Alexa Simone Kuenstler

Doctoral Dissertations

Passing Literacies: Soviet Immigrant Elders And Intergenerational Language Practice, Jenny Krichevsky

Doctoral Dissertations

Reasoning About User Feedback Under Identity Uncertainty In Knowledge Base Construction, Ariel Kobren

Doctoral Dissertations

Three Essays On Political Economy Of Uneven Development: Space, Class And State In Pakistan, Danish Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

An Investigation Of Fit Criteria Within Mg-Cfa For Examining Non-Negligible Measurement Invariance, Abdolvahab Khademi

Doctoral Dissertations

How Does Burnout And Self-Efficacy Effect Teacher's Perspectives And Implementation Status Of Evidence Based Behavior Management Practices?, Autumn Jillson

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding The Dynamic Visual World: From Motion To Semantics, Huaizu Jiang

Doctoral Dissertations

Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan

Doctoral Dissertations

Older Women’S Experiences Of Intimate Partner Violence: A Phenomenological Study, Lourdes Irene

Doctoral Dissertations

Emergent Typological Effects Of Agent-Based Learning Models In Maximum Entropy Grammar, Coral Hughto

Doctoral Dissertations

Three Essays On The Economics Of Corporate Governance, Kuochih Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

Sailing Illicit Voyages: Colonial Smuggling Operations Between North America And The West Indies, 1714-1776, Carl A. Herzog

Doctoral Dissertations

A Co-Parent Intervention To Reduce Prenatal Depression In Low-Income Couples: A Pilot Study, Rachel J. Herman

Doctoral Dissertations

Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly

Doctoral Dissertations

It’S All The Rage: An Animated Approach To Screening For Postpartum Depression, Amanda Gorham

Doctoral Dissertations

Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel

Doctoral Dissertations

Considerations For The Design Optimization Of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Blades, Evan M. Gaertner

Doctoral Dissertations

Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui

Doctoral Dissertations

Coffee Bioactives Regulate Lipid Metabolism In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Renalison Farias Pereira

Doctoral Dissertations

Composite Network Of Actin And Microtubule Filaments, Self-Organization And Steady-State Dynamics, Leila Farhadi

Doctoral Dissertations

Teacher Interactions, Teacher Bias And Child Behavioral Health, Ellen E. Edge

Doctoral Dissertations