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Factors Controlling Longshore Variations Of Beach Changes Induced By Hurricane Hermine Along Pinellas County Beaches, West-Central Florida, Wenhan Zhai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hurricane Hermine, 2016, impacted the coast of west-central Florida and generated high waves superimposed on elevated wave levels which caused significant beach erosion. A total of 122 profiles, spaced about 300 m apart, were surveyed 2 weeks before and one week after the storm to examine the beach changes along three barrier islands along the coast of west-central Florida. including Sand Key, Treasure Island and Long Key. In order to investigates the longshore variations of beach/nearshore changes induced by storm, several parameters were defined and calculated including beach volume changes, berm height, beach width, foreshore slope, as well as sandbar …

Effects Of Exogenous Ketone Therapy On Performance, Cardiorespiration, And Seizure Genesis During Exposure To Hbo2 In The Sprague Dawley Rat, Nicole M. Stavitzski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) is used for clinical HBO2 therapy and in undersea and aerospace medicine. HBO2 is a humanmade extreme environment and protracted exposures can cause several adverse physiological effects on the body. For example, HBO2 increases the partial pressure of oxygen (PO2) in the body leading to redox stress. Redox stress is, in part, a cause of oxygen toxicity that manifests as seizures in its most severe form (central nervous system oxygen toxicity, CNS-OT). This dissertation focuses on strategies to be employed specifically for the warfighter breathing HBO2. Currently, the only way to prevent CNS-OT is to lower the …

Using Artificial Intelligence To Decipher Epigenetic Code Of Drug Resistance In The Deadliest Human Malaria Parasite, Samira Jahangiri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Malaria remains one of the immense global public health challenges, with an estimated ~200 million cases worldwide in 2019 despite the remarkable gains in reducing this deadly disease over the past decade. The recent emergence and spread of artemisinin resistance (ART-R) in Plasmodium falciparum will increasingly impede global efforts to control and eliminate malaria. Previous studies have observed broad transcriptional changes and identified several noncoding genetic variants strongly associated with ART-R. The broad transcriptional variations suggest that the malaria parasite uses sophisticated epigenetic regulation to survive under drug pressure. Therefore, evaluating the regulatory effects of noncoding-variants in malaria parasites is …

Listening To Queens: Ghana's Women Traditional Leaders As A Model For Gender Parity, Kristen M. Vogel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A movement begun in 2011 inspired multilateral organizations such as the United Nations to collaborate with Ghana’s women traditional leaders on an inherently postcolonial indigenous and transnational feminist project, promoting Queens’ national recognition. Despite the initial power of the movement, it faded over time. Yet it spurred the formation of various new Queens’ associations throughout Ghana. The associations have grown and continue to grow, and the National Council of Women Traditional Leaders that spurred the first movement has returned stronger and with new strategies. As Ghana’s Queens seek their traditional right, an equal voice at all levels of leadership, it …

Good Intentions Go Awry: Investigation Of Unhelpful Supportive Leadership, Cheryl E. Gray

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In studies of the dark side of leadership, leaders are often depicted as bad people who engage in abusive behaviors. While some leaders have self-serving motives and engage in cruel behaviors, negative leadership outcomes are not limited to abusive supervisors. This research casts light on an understudied form of negative leadership: unhelpful supportive leadership. Unhelpful supportive leadership characterizes leaders who perform supportive acts that the recipient believes were intended to benefit them but are perceived as unhelpful or harmful. Results of two quantitative survey studies (Study 1: N = 1,257 employees; Study 2: N = 161 employee-supervisor dyads) demonstrate that …

The Debate On Physician-Assisted Death In The United States: A Narrative Analysis Of Formula Stories, Rebecca Blackwell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public policy discussions can be viewed as empirical windows into broadly shared culturalvalues and emotions of the social contexts in which the policy discussions take place. This project is a narrative analysis of the public debate on physician-assisted death (PAD), drawing from three data sources: newspaper articles, the websites of social movement organizations, and testimonies from a state legislative hearing. This analysis explores ways in which social actors deploy personal stories that contribute to shape the policy-making process by appealing to cultural beliefs and broadly shared emotions. The findings of this project constitute a contribution to the study of emotions …

A Biocultural Analysis Of The Impacts Of Interactions Between West Africans And Europeans During The Trans-Atlantic Trade At Elmina, Ghana, Heidi Ellen Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project utilizes a biocultural approach to assess the demographics and health of the West African population from Elmina, Ghana. Elmina, selected by the Portuguese in 1482 as the site of the first European trade fort in sub-Saharan Africa, grew from a small coastal fishing village to a large settlement over the course of more than 400 years of trade and cultural entanglement. Taken over by the Dutch and then ceded to the British, the people of Elmina navigated significant cultural changes, changes and experiences that can be detected in their skeletal remains. Bioarchaeological research concerned with the effects of …

Sense Of Belonging Among Dual Enrolled First-Year Students In Grand Cayman: Perceptions, Experiences, And Culturally Engaging Campus Environments, Patricia E. Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Understanding how the experiences, perceptions, and culturally engaging campus environments build a sense of belonging and persistence among first-year dual-enrolled college students in a unique and diverse nation in the Western Caribbean (Greater Antilles) is an area of inquiry that had yet to be researched prior to this study. Using a case study qualitative research approach that included 10 individual semi-structured interviews, document elicitation of three university advertised campus events posts, and one focus group session, participants shared their experiences and perceptions of being a first-year dual-enrolled student and to what extent their campus’ environments influenced their sense of belonging. …

Uncertainty Quantification In Deep And Statistical Learning With Applications In Bio-Medical Image Analysis, K. Ruwani M. Fernando

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Deep Learning (DL) has achieved the state-of-the-art performance across a broad spectrum oftasks. From a statistical standpoint, deep neural networks can be construed as universal function approximators. Although statistical modeling and deep learning methods are well-established as independent areas of research, hybridization of the two paradigms via probabilistic deep networks is an emerging trend. Through development of novel analytical methods under the statistical and deep-learning framework, we address some of the major challenges encountered in the design of intelligent systems which include class imbalance learning, probability calibration, uncertainty quantification and high dimensionality. When modeling rare events, existing methodologies require re-sampling …

Remote Sensing And Gis Integration For Amazon Rainforest Wildfires Applications, Cong Ma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Known as the “Lung of the world”, the Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the oxygen of the world, which was originally a carbon pool for mitigating climate change, but in recent years it has become a significant carbon emitter due to wildfires. In 2019, a large-scale fire occurred in the Amazon rainforest, causing serious damage to the ecosystem and to humans as well. Therefore, managing wildfires effectively has become an urgent task for fire authorities. This thesis tried to incorporate spatial analysis and spatial statistics approaches to study wildfire from two aspects, namely the temporal and spatial distribution …

Racial And Ethnic Difference In Music Performance Self-Efficacy Among Undergraduate Students, George W. Shannon Ii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Musical self-efficacy is an area that has been studied in areas such as music performance (McCormick & McPherson, 2000; Zelenak, 2011) and music achievement (Zelenak, 2019). McPherson and McCormick (2006) conclude that the relationship between music self-efficacy and music performance is significant. With this understanding, the present study will determine if there is a significant difference by race or ethnicity in music performance self-efficacy among undergraduate students. Researchers have long reported the need for additional racially diverse studies in educational research with newer studies needed in music. Using the Music Performance Self-Efficacy Scale (MPSES), African-American, Caucasian, and Mixed responded to …

Perceptions Of Preservice Teachers Of Students With Intellectual Disabilities About Their Preparation For Inclusive Education, Abdullah Aljudaya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Inclusive education improves social skills, cognitive abilities, and quality of life for students with special needs and has significant implications for governments, economies, and the workforce. Implementing inclusive education is a challenging process, however, that requires support from all sectors to provide the necessary skills and training to pre-service teachers. Empirical evaluations of teachers’ first-hand perceptions of the content and quality of these training programs are necessary to advance inclusive education practices and pre-service training to ensure special education teachers are prepared for their roles. To address this issue, this dissertation presents an in-depth review of the literature, followed by …

Examining Evidence Of Reliability And Validity In Florida’S Human Trafficking Screening Tool, Monica Landers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) involving children is understood to be a pervasive public health problem that negatively impacts individuals, families, and communities (Greenbaum, 2020). Combined efforts of the United States government, federal agencies, organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, researchers, and practitioners work toward understanding risk factors associated with CSE in an effort to prevent victimization (Fong & Cardoso, 2010). Given the amount of public and political attention to trafficking over the past two decades, it is concerning that prevalence estimates widely vary and may be unreliable. Further, there is not currently a validated screening …

Computationally Driven Design Of Shape-Controlled Polymeric Nanostructures, Davindra Tulsi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the realm of shape control involving synthetic soft materials, block copolymers are ubiquitously exploited due to their ability to spontaneously self-assemble into a plethora of morphologies. The growing need in areas such as drug delivery, lithography, and microelectronics to generate new nanostructures demands ever finer control of copolymer self-assembly. It is desirable to better control the shape and size of soft nanostructures, with minimal post processing techniques to assert stability.

While there is an abundance of literature on diblock copolymer assembly, few relationships exist for sequence-controlled copolymers. It is well known that biological macromolecules are highly sequence specific and …

Instrumental Music Instruction And Executive Functions: A Cross-Sectional Study Of Romanian Children (10-12 Years), Adrian Sorin Iordache

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess the differences in verbal fluency, verbal memory, and processing speed of children (age 10-12) enrolled in a Romanian vocational music school as compared to a group enrolled in vocational visual arts school, and a group enrolled in a regular public school. This is the first study to assess children enrolled in a music school in Romania. A total of 105 participants (43 males and 62 females) 10 to 12 years old (M = 11.13, SD = .34) competed the testing. There were 36 participants (15 males and 21 females) in the music …

A Multimodal Literacy Exploration: Lived Experiences Of Haitian Immigrant Adolescent Girls In The Bahamas, Natasha Swann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the geographic landscape of our world increasingly changes, a constant migration is occurring, with people seeking refuge and asylum. Many of those seeking a better way of life are children and adolescents. It is important not only to consider and accommodate how children and adolescents develop and grow, but how they do so in a country that is not their home and with language and literacy practices that are often new to them. Adjusting and acculturating into host countries might compound issues youth experience during child and adolescence development. This study provided a space and a platform for immigrant …

Novel Approach To Integrate Can Based Vehicle Sensors With Gps Using Adaptive Filters To Improve Localization Precision In Connected Vehicles From A Systems Engineering Perspective, Abhijit Vasili

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research and development in Connected Vehicles (CV) Technologies has increased exponentially, with the allocation of 75 MHz radio spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) dedicated to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in 1999 and 30 MHz in the 5.9 GHz by the European Telecommunication Standards Institution (ETSI). Many applications have been tested and deployed in pilot programs across many cities all over the world.

CV pilot programs have played a vital role in evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the technology and understanding the effects of the applications over the safety of road users. The …

The Ecological Role Of Cassiopea In Shallow Mangrove Habitats, David Marcel Durieux

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Upside-down jellyfish, Cassiopea sp., can be locally abundant in shallow mangrove habitats throughout the tropics and subtropics. Unlike other jellyfish, Cassiopea sp. are epibenthic. Due to this unique lifestyle and their ability to achieve high population densities, an understanding is needed of their ecological impacts both individually and in aggregations, particularly given that Cassiopea sp. ranges are expanding poleward due to global climate change. We quantified the fluid flow produced by Cassiopea sp. feeding currents and found that an average-sized Cassiopea sp. can transport over 200 l/h of water in the vertical excurrent jet of their feeding current. Populations of …

Walking The Line: Understanding The History And Development Of The Nhtsa Standardized Field Sobriety Tests, Jon D. Gurney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the early 1980’s within the United States, state legislatures criminalized the practice of driving under the influence of alcohol due to the efforts of moral entrepreneurs such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving that served to vilify the drunk-driver. During the political culture of the early 1980’s, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sought to develop field sobriety tests that would assist law enforcement in the detection and arrest of drunk drivers.

This study provided a brief historical account of the development of the NHTSA Standardized Field Sobriety Test battery, which consisted of the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test, the Walk …

Mechanistic Insight Into Β-Lactamase Catalysis, Inhibitor Design And Resistance, Michael Trent Kemp

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of antibiotic resistance and spread of Gram negative bacteria poses a very real health threat to the public. The main mode of resistance within Gram negative bacteria is the production of β-lactamase enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of β-lactam antibiotics through a hydrolysis mechanism. Once the β-lactam ring is hydrolyzed and opened, the drug loses its efficacy, which allows for the bacteria to grow and proliferate uninhibited. These β-lactamase enzymes are organized into four categories based on the Ambler classification, with classes A, C and D being denoted as serine-based β-lactamase enzymes. Class B is composed of metalloenzymes …

Moving In Fluid: Exploring How Fishes Manipulate Water To Swim Efficiently, Nils B. Tack

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Moving through a dense fluid such as water presents some unique challenges to minimizing energy use and maximizing performance (i.e., speed). Due to animal-fluid interactions during swimming (drag and thrust production) fish have evolved a variety of morphological structures and locomotor mechanisms. For instance, fish rely on body bending and/or fins to interact with the surrounding water such that energy can be transferred to generate thrust. Typically, this synergy promotes morphologies and behaviors aimed at enhancing propulsive efficiency and/or minimizing metabolic activity to lessen the cost of transport (COT). This work focuses on quantifying the energetic and hydromechanical benefits of …

Multifaceted Approach To Understanding Acinetobacter Baumannii Biofilm Formation And Drug Resistance, Jessie L. Allen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Acinetobacter baumannii is a multi-drug resistant nosocomial pathogen known for causing wound related- and respiratory-infections. It is currently on the WHO’s list of critical pathogens due to its broadly drug resistant nature and the constant appearance of pan-resistant isolates. A majority of the infections caused by this organism are biofilm associated, however there is limited existing knowledge regarding the mechanisms used to engage in this multicellular lifestyle. As such, we set out to explore the factors influencing this behavior using an 10,000+ isolate transposon mutant library of A. baumannii strain AB5075. Of the strains tested, 6.45% demonstrated some level of …

Contribution Of Retinal Ganglion Cells To Brown-Norway Rat Spatiotemporal Visual Perception And The Electroretinogram, Nicholas P. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Retinal Ganglion Cells (RGCs) are the sole cells through which visual information is transmitted from the eye to the brain. As such, RGC dysfunction has a dramatic effect on vision and perception. Retinal neurodegenerative diseases, such as glaucoma, are one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. The study of these diseases requires well-characterized models in order to swiftly and effectively develop diagnostic tools and therapeutics. This dissertation aims to characterize specific properties of the visual system of the Brown-Norway rat. First, visual processing was evaluated in awake, freely moving rats. Contrast sensitivities of Brown-Norway rats were characterized by discrimination-driven …

Hello Traitor: An Examination Of Individual Differences In Perceptions Of Technology-Related Incivility, David J. Howard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Workplace incivility is unfortunately common among employees in today’s workplace. The increase in usage of email, texting, smartphones, and social media for interpersonal workplace communication has led to an increase of these mediums being used in an uncivil manner. While there has been a growth of general workplace incivility research conducted in the past two decades, the extant literature lacks sufficient primary studies that examine technology-related workplace incivility. This research project aims to add to the burgeoning literature in the technology-related incivility content domain. First, it examined the prevalence of email incivility reported by workers and found a much lower …

Decisions And How Doctors Make Them: Modeling Multilevel Decision-Making Within Diagnostic Medicine, Michelle S. Kaplan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Effective decision-making is critical and necessary for organizational success across a wide range of occupations, situations, and industries. However, decision making, by its nature, is not always a direct process of a single decision leading to a direct outcome. Rather, it can often become a multilevel process whereby one decision’s outcome leads to information that is used in subsequent larger or other types of decisions. The decision-making process then becomes progressively more complex and more difficult to navigate as these decisions compound within one another. Thus, decision-makers must find an appropriate way to approach such decisions. Understanding the multilevel nature …

Labor-Based Grading Contracts In The Multilingual Fyc Classroom: Unpacking The Variables, Kara Kristina Larson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This descriptive, exploratory study’s purpose is to determine the effects of labor-based grading contracts on students whose historical exclusion results in their current day underrepresentation in higher education. A key component of this study is the emphasis on the student’s own perceptions and feelings about the use of labor-based grading contracts. Using a purposive sample of multilingual First-Year Composition (FYC) sections at an R1 university, I investigated the variables of labor-based grading contracts: demographics and written language characteristics, student motivation, ecological variables (i.e., perceptions of grading contracts), and academic performance measures. Research questions include: 1) How do labor-based grading contracts …

Light Harvesting In Photoactive Guest-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks, Christopher R. Mckeithan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Harvesting sunlight as a clean and renewable energy source has long been a goal of the scientific community. One potential route for developing artificial light harvesters is using a bioinspired approach which utilizes the critical features found in these natural systems. Such features include a way in which to capture a broad range of the solar spectrum, fixed distance and orientation of redox pairs to facilitate efficient directional transfer of electrons, transfer of electrons to a terminal acceptor, and recovery of the systems for repeated use. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are attractive candidates for developing light harvesting systems due their …

Managing Incomplete Data In The Patient Discharge Summary To Support Correct Hospital Reimbursements, Fadi Naser Eddin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The patient discharge summary is a document that conveys the patient's story to other healthcare practitioners, external users, and, most importantly from a financial perspective, health insurers. A defect or incompleteness in the patient's discharge summary will result in delays in the collection process through denial of the entire or partial reimbursement claim or, in the best-case scenario, delay until the discharge summary issue is resolved. The purpose of this project is to address the issue of the incompleteness of discharge summary from the perspective of healthcare providers, with the goal of understanding, diagnosing, and intervening in the research problem. …

Ubiquitous Yet Inconspicuous: Quantifying Trophic Impact Of A Widespread Oceanic Comb Jelly (Ctenophore), Elizabeth Potter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The oceanic lobate ctenophore Ocyropsis spp. has a widespread distribution throughout the world’s tropical and sub-tropical oceans. While patchy, Ocyropsis spp. population densities are known to exceed one individual per m3. Studies of coastal ctenophores have shown that some species are capable of exerting strong predatory impacts on their ecosystems, but little is known about the potential trophic impacts of their oceanic relatives. Many oceanic genera such as Ocyropsis, Bolinopsis, and Eurhamphaea exhibit morphologies and prey capture mechanisms that are different from the more well-studied coastal species. Thus, existing data on coastal taxa may not apply to oceanic species due …

Investigation Of The Effectiveness Of Global Competency-Based Program Modules In Higher Education, Parandoosh Sadeghinia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Global competency-based modules are relatively new in higher education. As a way to measure global competency the USF Global Competency Test (GCT) modules objectively measure global competencies for individuals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the value of three global competency-based program modules and undergraduate student perceptions of the Unite Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the basis for the modules.

This study addressed the questions:

1. What are the change scores based on the Global Competency Test module pre/postassessment scores for students who participated in Operation: Global Action/Academic and Cultural Engagement program during Summer 2021?
2. Are there differences in the …