Digital Commons Network^™

Building Columbia, Lawrence Lane

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the research from a project on the builders who helped build Columbia, South Carolina from 1890 to 1940, a dynamic time of growth as the city moved from post-Civil War recovery through industrialization and into modernization.1 Previous research of Columbia’s architectural history often focuses on the few architects with national recognition, like Robert Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument. Frequently omitted from the city’s architectural story are the lesser-known developers, builders, contractors, brick masons, and other tradesmen from inside and outside of Columbia who contributed to the shaping of the city by helping build vernacular architecture …

The Effects Of Implementing An Online Professional Learning Community For Teachers Of Gifted And Talented Courses: An Action Research Study, Chelsey A. Mintz

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to examine the effects of implementing an online professional learning community (PLC) designed explicitly for teachers of gifted and talented (GT) English language arts (ELA) courses. The present action research (AR) is a limited mixed design study, including quantitative and qualitative elements, to discover the effects on collaboration and professional growth focused on best practices for GT instruction. The quantitative data were collected through surveys, which included Likert scales and nominal items and were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The qualitative data were collected through guided and semi-structured interview questions and transcribed before …

Mechanism Of Action Of American Ginseng And Its Components In The Treatment Of Ulcerative Colitis, Anusha Chaparala

Theses and Dissertations

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), mainly ulcerative colitis (UC), Crohn’s disease (CD), are chronic, idiopathic, inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract affecting millions of people worldwide. The incidence of IBD is steadily increasing in the modern world due to changes in dietary habits and other environmental influences that originated from industrialization. The etiology is poorly understood but is believed to be a combination of genetic predisposition, environmental factors, and overactive immune system. UC is characterized by inflammation and ulceration of colonic mucosa and rectum and has a higher incidence than CD. Aside from severely affecting the quality of life of the …

Utilization Of Lung Cancer Screening And Molecular Testing To Improve Lung Cancer Outcomes, Jennifer Lynne Ersek

Theses and Dissertations

Despite progress in detection and treatment, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends adults at high risk for lung cancer undergo annual low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening, however, lung cancer screening (LCS) uptake remains low. Qualitative research on family physician (FP) perceptions and experiences with LCS has been limited since USPSTF publication and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decision memo. We conducted a qualitative study to assess FP knowledge and perceptions of LCS and gain insight into their current experiences with LDCT. A …

The Role Of Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 8 In Vascular Disease, Desiree Leach

Theses and Dissertations

In response to injury, mature vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) undergo dedifferentiation, also known as phenotype modulation or switch. This process is characterized by a downregulation or loss of expression of contractile genes and concomitant with an increase in cell proliferation, migration, and extracellular matrix production, thereby leading to vascular lesion formation. However, the underlying molecular mechanism is not fully understood. The objective of my study was to determine whether cyclin-dependent kinase 8 (CDK8), a transcription-regulating kinase, plays a mediator role in vascular SMC dedifferentiation and lesion formation. Our results from immunochemical staining and Western blot revealed that CDK8 expression …

Study Of Ultra Wide Band Gap Alxga1-Xn Field Effect Transistors For Power Electronic Applications, Sakib Mohammed Muhtadi

Theses and Dissertations

High Aluminum content Al_xGa_1-xN (x > 30%) has attracted intense research interest nowadays as “Ultra Wide Band Gap (UWBG)” material due to large band gap (> 3.4 eV). The critical electric field (EC) of UWBG semiconductor AlGaN is significantly higher than GaN. Moreover, electron saturation velocity is also comparable to GaN. These attractive material properties are the needs for getting large breakdown voltage and high thermal stability which are the requirements for next generation power semiconductor devices. Theoretical possibilities show UWBG AlGaN based devices are an emerging class and can outperform conventional GaN based devices even at …

Graduate School Alumni Giving: An Identity Salience Model Of Nonprofit Relationship Marketing Success Approach, Joseph Patrick Neary

Theses and Dissertations

Development officers and those who research philanthropic giving frequently explore the factors that motivate donors to give or the demographic variables that enable donating behavior to occur, less often is the concept of identity used as a mediating variable in the study of philanthropic giving. Using the Identity Salience Model of Nonprofit Relationship Marketing Success proposed by Arnett, German, and Hunt (2003) as a theoretical framework, this dissertation explores the understudied giving behaviors of alumni of graduate degree programs at a large, southeastern, Carnegie classified highest research activity, doctoral institution. Using the survey responses from and institutional data for 707 …

A Study On Satisfaction Of Dental Implant Patients, Jung Su O

Theses and Dissertations

The implant has been around for half a century. It started in Sweden in the 1960s and is now being actively practiced all over the world. It is important to investigate what constitutes a standard for a consumer of medical services in selecting a dentist to receive implants. A great number of dentists and research organizations have published research papers on theory and techniques of implants as well as their strengths and weaknesses. However, researches on reality and satisfaction rate of patients are still very rare.

The purpose of this study was to identify how to improve satisfaction of patients …

Situational Intuition: Hierarchical Modes Of User Experience In Human-Computer Interaction, Simon Tarr

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which novice users teach themselves highly complex software with no prior experience, and how the user experience (UX) of such software affects the information-seeking processes of those who are actively trying to use it.

This qualitative study examined novice undergraduate students beginning to use complex digital non-linear video editing software as they sought to attain proficiency. Data collected in the form of interviews before and after the assigned task of the study, observation of the participants in process, and concurrent think-aloud narration by the participants, provide evidence for a newer extended definition of intuition. …

Auc Buile, Benjamin Davis

Theses and Dissertations

The contents of this work include a script of the play Auc Buile, a description of the writing process, an analysis of the piece both as written text and as a performance, and a projection of what might be the next stages in its development. The play itself is a representation of the struggle to create. It allowed me the opportunity to put into practice much of what I learned during my time in the Masters of Fine Arts program.

Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Beliefs And Practices: Understanding The Influence Of Teaching In A Steam Setting, Melissa Negreiros

Theses and Dissertations

Many elementary mathematics teachers hold beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics and enact practices that are not aligned with the recommendations of reform efforts in the field of mathematics education (Stigler & Hiebert, 2009). For standards-based reform to gain any significant success, many teachers will have to alter the deeply held beliefs that they have about mathematics teaching and learning (Ellis & Berry, 2005). Given the role that teachers’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning play in their selection and enactment of instructional practices, it is essential to understand the influence that different …

The Community Rating System: Assessing Indicators Of Community Participation, A Dasymetric And Sovi Approach, Zachary P. Landis

Theses and Dissertations

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was established to provide affordable insurance to property owners and encourage communities to adopt and enforce floodplain management, primarily through the Community Rating System (CRS). The CRS awards points to communities for adopting a variety of activities in support of floodplain management. One area of interest in the CRS program is understanding differences in the types of communities participating and the degree of their participation. Research on the NFIP’s CRS tends to focus on community program participation in reducing flood losses and indicators of participation. Much of this research was performed prior to 2013 …

Reproductive Healthcare Information-Seeking Behavior In Undeserved Women: An Exploratory Study, Margaret S. Zimmerman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the reproductive health-related information-seeking of low-income women which has been found to be affected by digital divide disparities. Included in this is an assessment of what reproductive health-related information needs they have, which sources they consult most frequently, if they trust the sources that they use, and how their information-seeking interacts with the variables of perceived risk and perceived barriers. While there have been many studies on the end effects of a lack of accurate and accessible reproductive health information little research has been conducted to examine the reproductive healthcare information-seeking patterns of women who live in …

The Use Of E-Readers For Secondary Literacy And Reading Motivation, Graham Parker

Theses and Dissertations

The Use of E-Readers for Secondary Literacy and Reading Motivation is an Action Research study that describes one predominantly white, southern, rural working-class English Language Arts class of 11th grade student-participants (n=44) of below average reading ability who experienced reading The Great Gatsby on e-readers (i.e., electronic books with dictionaries and visual texts in the form of illustrations to supplement written text). The students’ motivation to read was compared and contrasted with an 11th grade class of student-participants who read The Great Gatsby via a traditional print book (i.e., written text with no visual text). Quantitative data included a pre …

Topics In Group Testing With Multiple Infections, Peijie Hou

Theses and Dissertations

Group testing, dating back to the early 1940s, was first proposed to screen for syphilis among US inductees during World War II (Dorfman, 1943). Since then, the benefits of reducing testing costs by employing group testing have been demonstrated in many areas, such as drug discovery, genetics, and infectious disease testing. Traditionally, statistical research in group testing has largely been motivated by applications involving a single infection. With the recent development of multiplex assays that can diagnose multiple infections simultaneously, generalizing the existing group testing literature to incorporate multiple infections is a natural and necessary next step. This dissertation consists …

Impacts Of An Online Learning Community On The Way Students Communicate, David Dennis

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to describe one advanced placement (AP) high school literature unit and student-participants' perceptions of technological communication in that English Language Arts (ELA) unit. The site of the research was West-Oak High School in Westminster, South Carolina. Student-participants are accustomed to electronic communication. The participant-researcher designed and implemented a blended AP ELA curriculum unit for Shakespearean Drama to combine an online learning discussion with face-to-face discussions aimed at observing whether these students are able to improve their ability to construct defensible verbal and written arguments. Data collections included a series of observations and …

Die Reprasentation Und Kritik Des Materialismus In Einer Auswahl Von Volks-Und Kunstmarchen, Kim Nadine Kahmann

Theses and Dissertations

Many of Grimms' Fairy Tales, which were published in 1812, have one striking feature in common. Almost all of them deal with material ownership. Fairy tales, like Frau Holle, Rumpelstilzchen, Vom Fischer und seiner Frau or Hans im Glück negotiate and critique wealth and its impact on humanity. Materialism also figures as a significant element in literary fairy tales, like Ludwig Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert and Der Runenberg as well as Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant and The Devoted Friend. This project pursues the question of how these fairy tales and literary fairy tales represent the thriving materialism of the …

Characterization Of Sufs And Sufe Of Suf Pathway For Fe-S Cluster Assembly In Escherichia Coli, Guangchao Dong

Theses and Dissertations

Fe-S clusters are one major type of the sulfur-containing cofactors, which conduct essential functions in organisms. The Suf pathway is one of the three main pathways for the biosynthesis of Fe-S clusters. In E. coli, the Suf pathway is utilized under iron limitation and oxidative stress. This ability is important for pathogens to survive. Also, the Suf pathway is found to be exclusive in bacteria, so it is a good target for novel antibiotic design. SufS is a cysteine desulfurase in the Suf pathway to extract sulfur from L-cysteine. It needs the enhancement of SufE. To better understand the catalytic …

Two Studies Of Partnership Approaches To Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programming: A Process Evaluation And A Case Study, Catherine A. Egan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two studies that examine partnership approaches to comprehensive school physical activity programs (CSPAP). Both studies function in tandem to advance the knowledge base about school – university partnership approaches to CSPAP programming. Study 1 examined the first-year classroom component of the Partnerships for Active Children in Elementary Schools (PACES) intervention, and Study 2 examined the implementation of a Health Optimizing Physical Education (HOPE)- based CSPAP. Both studies utilized school-university partnerships in their design and implementation.

The purpose of Study 1 was to examine the effects of different PACES treatment levels on classroom movement integration promotion during …

Worth Fighting For: Factors Influencing Selection Decisions In School Libraries, April M. Dawkins

Theses and Dissertations

Intellectual freedom is one of the basic tenets of the library profession. However, most librarians will face attempts to censor or control access to information at some point in their careers. School librarians might choose to self-censor because they fear facing a challenge that calls into question not only their professionalism but also their personal values and ethics. While there have been numerous studies on censorship in other types of libraries, there is little research in the area of censorship and intellectual freedom as it pertains to the school library field. The purpose of this study is to understand the …

One Woman's College And Medical School Experience In The 1920s: Hilla Sheriff's Story, Jennifer L. Daniel

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this historical biography is to describe the educational experiences of Hilla Sheriff, an extraordinary woman who challenged attitudes about women’s education and employment in the medical field in the United States in the 1920s. Although the majority of women who attended a college or university at that time went to co-educational institutions, they were often limited to traditional gender role coursework such as home economics, nursing, or teaching. This study of Sheriff’s educational experiences particularizes attitudes about women’s education and employment in the 1920s. Many people did not see value in higher education for women. The thread …

Modeling Early Archaic Mobility And Subsistence: Evaluating Resource Risk Across The South Carolina Landscape, Joseph E. Wilkinson

Theses and Dissertations

Previous models predicting Early Archaic mobility and subsistence strategies in South Carolina have evaluated behavioral negotiations of specific resource distributions. A new model is presented using empirical datasets that quantify and evaluate the quality and geographic distributions of lithic raw materials and drainage systems in the state. By utilizing datasets from private collections and landscape elevation data, this model is generated using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software in order to produce a "Risk Landscape" from which predictions of site density, artifact density, lithic raw material diversity, and the condition of lithic toolkit assemblages can be generated based on landscape location. …

Posttraumatic Growth Development: Core Belief Disruption, Event Centrality, And Time Since Trauma, Christopher A. Cook

Theses and Dissertations

Posttraumatic growth describes positive changes that individuals may experience in the aftermath of traumatic events that have significantly disrupted their core beliefs about themselves and their understanding of the world. Alternate models of posttraumatic growth have challenged the conceptualization of posttraumatic growth as personality change, in part due to lack of research that supports a relationship between the development of posttraumatic growth and the amount of time since the traumatic experience, and factors related to the development of posttraumatic growth. Recent research on the role that event centrality plays in the development of posttraumatic growth is promising (e.g., Johnson & …

From Choc En Retour To Nomadisme En Fleche, Paul T. Mcelhinny

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to analyze and expound upon Aimé Césaire’s theory of history, choc en retour from Discours sur le colonialisme and situate William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! and André Schwarz-Bart’s La Mulatresse Solitude (and to a lesser extent Le Dernier des Justes and Go Down, Moses) within this theoretical framework; which presents the Holocaust as the culmination (“retrun shock”) of four centuries of colonial violence – from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries – perpetrated by Western powers such as France and the United States. While Césaire’s application to Schwarz- Bart’s texts is more standard – with his two novels explicitly …

Judging A Book By Its Cover: The Context Book Covers Provide, Virginia Emily Cranwell

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to prove how the context of books, specifically the book jackets and bindings, are a crucial part to understanding the history and the text of the story. The paper begins with printing history in order to illustrate how the context of books has changed, and how the Twentieth Century saw a use of book jackets to promote the book. The paper then looks at the books of a particular author, Alasdair Gray, as an example of how the context of the book can be used to enhance and reveal aspects of the text. Finally, this paper discusses …

Assessing Women's Attitudes Towards Genetic Testing For Hereditary Breast Cancer, Taylor Jane Apostolico

Theses and Dissertations

OBJECTIVES: Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) is an autosomal dominant cancer predisposition syndrome with a 46-87% lifetime risk of breast cancer. Unaffected women who have HBOC are eligible for more screening procedures and prophylactic surgeries that may reduce the risk of developing cancer by up to 95%. The objectives of this study were to assess women’s awareness of and interest in breast cancer genetic testing services, as well as women’s attitudes and beliefs regarding the clinical utilization of HBOC genetic testing across demographic categories. METHODS: Two-hundred and sixty-eight women completed a 35-item survey designed to capture perceptions of HBOC …

Caressing Radical Alterity: For A Queer Ethic Of Embodiment In Contemporary Films And Literature, Marc Demont

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an analysis of the caress through the dual lens of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. I argue that the caress reveals the queerness and ambiguities of perception and that this gesture must be understood as an ethical gesture of opening toward otherness. I discuss different accounts of the caress (Levinas, Irigaray) and expose the misogynistic and/or homophobic bias at work in these theories of the caress. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of touch and other notions that he develops (Flesh, intertwinement, intercorporeality, encroachment, etc.) allow a redefinition of the caress that avoids Levinas and Irigaray’s pitfalls. In a reading …

The Quixotic Picaresque: Tricksters, Modernity, And Otherness In The Transatlantic Novel, Or The Intertextual Rhizome Of Lazarillo, Don Quijote, Huck Finn, And The Reivers, David Elijah Sinsabaugh Beek

Theses and Dissertations

The Quixotic Picaresque is a conflation of the narrative modes exhibited in Lazarillo de Tormes and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha. This study examines these early modern Spanish novels and their American reincarnations, namely Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and William Faulkner’s The Reivers. Accordingly, this essay explores the correlation between Spain’s transition from feudalism to a modern mercantile society and the United States’ transition from an agrarian society based in slavery to a modern industrial nation within the cultural contexts of the four aforementioned novels. These novels make up part of the intertextual rhizome …

On The Existence Of Non-Free Totally Reflexive Modules, J. Cameron Atkins

Theses and Dissertations

For a standard graded Cohen-Macaulay ring R, if the quotient R/(x) admits nonfree totally reflexive modules, where x is a system of parameters consisting of elements of degree one, then so does the ring R. A non-constructive proof of this statement was given in [16]. We give an explicit construction of the totally reflexive modules over R obtained from those over R/(x).

We consider the question of which Stanley-Reisner rings of graphs admit nonfree totally reflexive modules and discuss some examples. For an Artinian local ring (R,m) with m3 = 0 and containing the complex numbers, we describe an explicit …

The Energetic Consequences Of Temperature Variation And Sequential Autotomization For The Stone Crab, Menippe Spp., Eric R. Hancock

Theses and Dissertations

The stone crab, Menippe spp., is harvested in a claw only fishery along the Gulf and southeastern Atlantic coasts of the United States. As climate change continues to warm these areas, crabs are forced to cope with higher water temperatures and lower dissolved O2 concentrations. These altered environmental conditions may influence crab energetics by altering both energy intake and expenditure. To inform fishery sustainability as well as prepare for a potential range expansion of the crab, this study investigates the energetic intake and expenditure of individual stone crabs. Crabs were found to respire 80 and 69% more following the loss …