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Soundtrack De Los 90: Argentine Popular Music And Memory, Delia Pamela Fuentes Korban

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on how popular music not only captures and records historical events, but also creates what Pierre Nora termed lieux de mémoire, or sites of memory. Music is a privileged art form because it reaches a wider audience and its lyrics manifest the changes occurring within its genres. My dissertation focuses on and analyzes song texts produced during the 90s from three musical genres: tango, rock chabón (from the hood) and cumbia villera (a derivative of cumbia, but from the shantytowns or villas). Framed against the historical context of the Menem years (1989-1999), the selection of songs that …

A Brief Period Of Exercise Improves Cognitive Function After Cardiac Arrest, Holly Stradecki Cohan

Open Access Dissertations

Cardiac arrest effects over half a million people in the United States annually. A lack of brain perfusion results in a global brain ischemia resulting in cell death in several regions including the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. Nearly half the survivors of cardiac arrest suffer from cognitive deficits. While there remains no well accepted therapy for these patients, it has been shown that exercise after focal brain ischemia (i.e. stroke) enhances both motor and cognitive function. But this has never been explored in the setting of cardiac arrest. In this study, we determined that a brief …

Memorization: Survey And Application With Special Emphasis On The Left Hand, Deyana Ilieva Valchinova

Open Access Dissertations

Memorization plays an important role among music performers, especially pianists, since pianists are expected and encouraged to give performances, exams, and juries from memory. Memorization is not often addressed by pedagogues, and students seldom approach memorization with specific techniques and strategies. More importantly, the chief reason for memory slips as well as poor understanding of the music material is not discussed in depth: the left hand. The need for this study stems from the importance of focusing on the left-hand memory, and how to develop practical and sound memorization habits for it. Furthermore, the purpose of the essay is to …

The Role Of Phosphodiesterase 4b In Inflammation After Traumatic Brain Injury, Nicole Marie Wilson

Open Access Dissertations

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) initiates a deleterious inflammatory response that exacerbates pathology and worsens outcome. This inflammatory response is partially mediated by a reduction in cAMP and a concomitant upregulation of cAMP-hydrolyzing phosphodiesterases (PDEs) acutely after TBI. The PDE4B subfamily, specifically PDE4B2, has been found to regulate cAMP in inflammatory cells, such as neutrophils, macrophages and microglia. Given the detrimental effects of the acute inflammatory response after TBI and the role of PDE4B in other models of inflammation, we hypothesized that acute PDE4B inhibition would reduce inflammation and improve cognitive and histopathological outcome after TBI. To test this hypothesis, adult …

Exploring Spin-Transfer-Torque Devices And Memristors For Logic And Memory Applications, Zoha Pajouhi

Open Access Dissertations

As scaling CMOS devices is approaching its physical limits, researchers have begun exploring newer devices and architectures to replace CMOS.

Due to their non-volatility and high density, Spin Transfer Torque (STT) devices are among the most prominent candidates for logic and memory applications. In this research, we first considered a new logic style called All Spin Logic (ASL). Despite its advantages, ASL consumes a large amount of static power; thus, several optimizations can be performed to address this issue. We developed a systematic methodology to perform the optimizations to ensure stable operation of ASL.

Second, we investigated reliable design of …

Loyalty On The Line: Civil War Maryland In American Memory, David Graham

Open Access Dissertations

During the American Civil War, Maryland did not join the Confederacy but nonetheless possessed divided loyalties and sentiments. Although Maryland's government remained loyal to the Union during war, many regions and cities in the state harbored strong Confederate sympathies. In particular, Baltimore was a stronghold for Confederate sympathizers and became a central setting for contention between those supporting the Union and those in favor of secession and the secessionist cause. More than 46,000 Maryland soldiers fought for the Union while perhaps 25,000 soldiers from the state joined the Confederate Army. As a slaveholding state that did not secede, Maryland, along …

Effects Of High-Protein And High-Fiber Breakfasts On Preschoolers' Feelings Of Fullness, Diet Quality And Memory, Mary Catherine Brauchla

Open Access Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Adaptive Memory: Animacy And The Method Of Loci, Janell R. Blunt

Open Access Dissertations

A functionalist approach to cognition assumes that people’s minds are tuned to process and remember information that benefits our survival or reproduction (Nairne, 2005). One source of information with potentially high fitness value is things that are alive and animate (Nairne, VanArsdall, Pandeirada, Cogdill, & LeBreton, 2013). The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the effects of using an ancient mnemonic – the method of loci – to examine memory for animate objects. Across four experiments, subjects used the method of loci to remember a list of animate or inanimate objects. I manipulated animacy by using animate or inanimate …

Molecular Mechanisms Underlying The Acquisition, Extinction And Reinstatement Of Cocaine-Associated Memory: Relevance To Addiction Processes, Shervin Albert Liddie

Open Access Dissertations

An important target for combating drug addiction is to understand the neurobiological mechanisms that sub-serve relapse to drug use. Drug addiction is thought to usurp the neural mechanisms of learning and memory. The conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm which employs the principles of Pavlovian learning is often used to investigate the incentive value of drugs of abuse and the formation of drug-associated memory. One caveat to conditioned reward studies is the use of a fixed daily dose of the addictive drug during training. However, the transition from drug use to addiction in human addicts involves an escalation in drug intake. …

The Making Of Ras Beirut: A Landscape Of Memory For Narratives Of Exceptionalism, Maria B. Abunnasr

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the memory of Ras Beirut and the various claims to its exceptionalism. I frame its history as a landscape of memory born of the convergence of narratives of exceptionalism. On the one hand, Ras Beirut's landscape inspired Anglo-American missionary future providence such that they chose it as the site of their college on a hill, the Syrian Protestant College (SPC, later renamed the American University of Beirut [AUB]). On the other hand, the memory of Ras Beirut's "golden age" before the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 inspired longings for a vanished past to Ras …

Oc Washing And Checking: Examining The Selective Impairments In Evolved Disease Avoidance And Safety Management Mechanisms, Alison G. Aylward

Open Access Dissertations

Three studies were conducted to examine the possibility that the expression of obsessive-compulsive (OC) washing and checking symptoms reflect impairments in cognitive mechanisms underlying adaptations for disease avoidance and physical harm avoidance, respectively. Studies provided initial evidence that specialized attention, memory and reasoning processes exist depending on whether adaptations for disease avoidance or physical harm avoidance are activated. The data provided no support for the hypothesis that individuals expressing OC contamination and physical harm concerns evince concern-related attention, memory, and reasoning biases.

Sac Attack: Assessing The Role Of Recollection In The Mirror Effect, Angela M. Pazzaglia

Open Access Dissertations

Low-frequency (LF) words have higher hit rates (HRs) and lower false alarm rates (FARs) than high-frequency (HF) words in recognition memory, a phenomenon termed the mirror effect by Glanzer and Adams (1985). The primary mechanism for producing the mirror effect varies substantially across models of recognition memory, with some models localizing the effects during encoding and others during retrieval. The current experiments contrast two retrieval-stage models, the Source of Activation Confusion (SAC; Reder, Nhouyvanisvong, Schunn, Ayers, Angstadt, & Hiraki, 2000) model and the unequal variance signal detection theory (UVSDT) criterion shift model (e.g., DeCarlo, 2002). The SAC model proposes that …

Haunting Witnesses: Diasporic Consciousness In African American And Caribbean Writing, Brandi Bingham Kellett

Open Access Dissertations

This project examines the ways in which several texts written in the late twentieth century by African American and Caribbean writers appropriate history and witness trauma. I read the representational practices of Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Paule Marshall, and Fred D'Aguiar as they offer distinct approaches to history and the resulting effects such reconstituted, discovered, or, in some cases, imagined histories can have on the affirmation of the self as a subject. I draw my theoretical framework from the spaces of intersection between diaspora and postcolonial theories, enabling me to explore the values of the African diaspora cross-culturally as manifested …

Metacognition: Developing Self-Knowledge Through Guided Reflection, Kathryn Wiezbicki-Stevens

Open Access Dissertations

Metacognitive self-knowledge has been identified as a crucial component of effective learning. It entails students recognizing their learning strengths and weaknesses, styles and preferences, and motivational beliefs. The present study explored a method for the development of metacognitive self-knowledge and in doing so, was also a means for discovering what academic experiences students perceive as influential in their development as learners. Twenty-seven college students, all senior psychology majors, produced written narratives in response to a guided reflection activity. A qualitative research approach employing analytic induction was used. Themes of academic experiences as described by participants provided support for neuroscientific findings …

"They Will Invent What They Need To Survive": Narrating Trauma In Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction, Kara E. Jacobi

Open Access Dissertations

"'They Will Invent What They Need to Survive': Narrating Trauma in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction" analyzes novels by Octavia Butler, Phyllis Alesia Perry, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, and Julia Alvarez through the lens of contemporary theories of trauma, tracing the ways in which survivors struggle to construct narratives that contain and make sense of their experiences. Many of the major theorists of trauma studies emphasize the impossibility of re-capturing traumatic events through creating narratives even while recognizing that the survivor's need to tell her story persists. In my project, however, I explore the ways in which the …