Digital Commons Network^™

Youth Character Strengths, Peer Victimization, And Well-Being: Understanding Associations Between Positive Traits, Social Experiences, And Positive Psychological Outcomes, Michael James Frank

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advent of positive psychology has increased awareness of factors that lead individuals to thrive in life, allowing for a more comprehensive model of mental health service delivery. However, while measurement and understanding of character strengths and well-being have improved over the last decade, the interaction of these factors with social risk factors is not entirely understood. The current study analyzed an archival dataset consisting of self-report data from 425 high school students, to examine the extent to which high school students' specific character strengths (i.e., social competence, self-regulation, responsibility, and empathy) are associated with positive psychological outcomes (i.e., gratitude, …

Residency Education In Preparing Adolescent And Young Adults For Transition To Adult Care: A Mixed Methods Pilot Study, Janet S. Hess

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: There is considerable evidence that physicians lack sufficient training in facilitating transition from pediatric to adult care systems for adolescents and young adults (A/YA). While several primary care residency programs have introduced health care transition (HCT) curricula in recent years, there are few studies that assess the effectiveness of HCT teaching models.

Purpose: To assess the impact of a residency education program that uses electronic health records (EHR) and other methods to teach residents how to prepare A/YA for transition to adult care.

Methods: In a mixed methods, quasi-experimental research design, quantitative methods were used to measure change in …

Informing Systems, Interventions, And Innovations, William Francis Murphy Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to not only explain the informing system discipline, but to explore cases from the perspective of the basic tenants of informing systems. The first essay explains what informing science is, the need for a transdiscipline, the channels of the Informing Science Institute informing system, and describes the clients of the ISI. The first essay ends with an analysis of the authors, institutions, and countries of origin for every ISI paper published between 1998 and 2009, as well as reporting interviews with the Editor-In-Chiefs of each ISI journal. The second essay investigates a case study …

A Study Of Fe3O4 Magnetic Nanoparticle Rf Heating In Gellan Gum Polymer Under Various Experimental Conditions For Potential Application In Drug Delivery, Gabriel Marcus

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have found use in a wide variety of biomedical applications including hyperthermia, imaging and drug delivery. Certain physical properties, such as the ability to generate heat in response to an alternating magnetic field, make these structures ideal for such purposes. This study's objective was to elucidate the mechanisms primarily responsible for RF MNP heating and determine how such processes affect polymer solutions that might be useful in drug delivery. 15-20 nm magnetite (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles at 0.2% and 0.5% concentrations were heated with RF fields of different strengths (200 Oe, 400 Oe and 600 …

Longitudinal Quantitative Analysis Of Gait And Balance In Friedreich's Ataxia, Jeannie B. Stephenson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Friedreich's Ataxia (FA) is an autosomal-recessive, neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive lower extremity muscle weakness and sensory loss, balance deficits, limb and gait ataxia, and dysarthria. FA is considered a sensory ataxia because the dorsal root ganglia and spinal cord dorsal columns are involved early in the disease, whereas the cerebellum is affected later. Balance deficits and gait ataxia are often evaluated clinically and in research using clinical rating scales. Recently, quantitative tools such as the Biodex Balance System SD and the GAITRite Walkway System have become available to objectively assess balance and gait, respectively. However, there are limited studies …

Constructing An "Appropriate" Education In Florida Special Education Due Process Final Orders, Michelle Henry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how Florida administrative law judges (ALJs) constructed an appropriate education for students with disabilities in their final orders. This study utilized the Johnstone Method as a heuristic in analyzing the data. It examined the construction of an appropriate education from the implementation of PL 94-142 up to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Board of Education v. Rowley (1975-1978), after the Rowley decision (1983-1986), and after the reauthorization of the Individual with Disabilities Education Act in 2004 (2004-2007). Each time period was examined individually and then the results were compared. The data sources included six purposively sampled …

Chemistry Graduate Teaching Assistants' Experiences In Academic Laboratories And Development Of A Teaching Self-Image, Todd Adam Gatlin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play a prominent role in chemistry laboratory instruction at research based universities. They teach almost all undergraduate chemistry laboratory courses. However, their role in laboratory instruction has often been overlooked in educational research. Interest in chemistry GTAs has been placed on training and their perceived expectations, but less attention has been paid to their experiences or their potential benefits from teaching.

This work was designed to investigate GTAs' experiences in and benefits from laboratory instructional environments. This dissertation includes three related studies on GTAs' experiences teaching in general chemistry laboratories. Qualitative methods were used for each …

A Study Of Pragmatic Competence: International Medical Graduates' And Patients' Negotiation Of The Treatment Phase Of Medical Encounters, Amy Fioramonte

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite advances in medical technologies, interpersonal communication remains the primary tool physicians use to exchange information, make diagnoses, and treat patients (Cameron & Williams, 1997; Groopman, 2007; Ong, de Haes, Hoos, & Lammes, 1995). In the medical encounter effective communication between physician and patient is essential so that beneficial health and wellbeing outcomes are achieved for patients. Taking a discourse analytic approach, this study examined interactions occurring between international medical graduate (IMG) residents, attending physicians, and patients during the treatment advice phase of the supervised medical encounter. The aim of the study was to examine the co-constructed nature of the …

Exploring Variability In Population Dynamics And The Influence Of Environmental Factors On Recruitment Of An Estuarine Fish, Elizabeth Herdter Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation was to explore variability in population dynamics and environmental factors influential to recruitment of spotted seatrout in Florida with the end goal of testing the incorporation of select environmental variables into the current regional stock assessment models for spotted seatrout. In Chapter 2, I compared the age and size structure of six estuary populations of this species and determined whether there was significant spatial covariation in recruitment. The results of this chapter indicated that the dynamics of each local estuary population are governed more likely by environmental factors than genetic similarities. Further, they suggest that …

Not On My Street: Exploration Of Culture, Meaning And Perceptions Of Hiv Risk Among Middle Class African American Women, Corliss D. Heath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Black women remain at a higher risk for HIV infection than women of any other ethnic group. Of all new infections reported among U.S. women in 2010, 64% occurred in African Americans compared to 18% Whites and 15% Hispanic/Latina women (CDC 2013a; CDC 2014b). While the literature on HIV risk among African American women is extensive, it mostly focuses on low income, low education subgroups of women or those involved in high risk behaviors such as drug use. Very little has been done to understand the risk for HIV among college educated, middle class women who do not fit into …

High Dimensional Non-Linear Optimization Of Molecular Models, Joseph C. Fogarty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Molecular models allow computer simulations to predict the microscopic properties of macroscopic systems. Molecular modeling can also provide a fully understood test system for the application of theoretical methods. The power of a model lies in the accuracy of the parameter values which govern its mathematical behavior. In this work, a new software, called ParOpt, for general high dimensional non-linear optimization will be presented. The software provides a very general framework for the optimization of a wide variety of parameter sets. The software is especially powerful when applied to the difficult task of molecular model parameter optimization. Three applications of …

Variability In The Spatial And Temporal Patterns Of Larval Scombrid Abundance In The Gulf Of Mexico, Sennai Y. Habtes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accurate fishery-independent methods for assessing the abundance of marine fish stocks are important tools for proper pelagic fisheries management. The review and improvement of standardized sampling methods used in fisheries-independent sampling, and the establishment of improved models of abundance and population dynamics utilizing novel statistical techniques for fisheries management will further improve our understanding of the way in which marine fish stocks vary spatially and temporally. One of the most important and longest running surveys of fisheries-independent data in the Southeastern United States is the spring ichthyoplankton survey conducted through the Southeast Area Mapping and Assessment Program (SEAMAP).

These surveys …

Structural Processes And Local Meaning: Explanatory Models, Political Economy, And Chagas Disease In Tropical Bolivia, Colin James Forsyth

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project describes and analyzes explanatory models of Chagas disease among people in a highly endemic area of eastern Bolivia, and examines the role that cultural and structural factors play in shaping explanatory models of this disease. Dressler (2001) characterizes medical anthropology as divided between two poles; the constructivist, which focuses on the "meaning and significance that events have for people," and the structuralist, which emphasizes the relationships between the components of a given society. This project endeavors to synthesize structuralist and constructivist perspectives by understanding the interaction between structural processes and explanatory models of Chagas disease.

The research took …

The Interaction Of Feedback And Reward Contingency On Cardiovascular Reactivity During A Stressful Cognitive Task, Alvin B. Jin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Excessive sympathetic cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Many populations with a greater risk for CVD instead demonstrate blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks. The motivational intensity theory identifies how motivation and effort influence sympathetic reactivity. Blunted reactivity may be a potential index of motivational dysregulation, which leads to poor behavioral decisions such as excess smoking or alcohol use, in turn increasing the risk for CVD. The current study sought to demonstrate how inhibited effort due to poor ability feedback with a low-contingency reward could directly increase the risk for …

Evaluation And Application Of Instruments Measuring Spatial Ability And Attitude For College Chemistry Students, Xiaoying Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Student performance in college chemistry courses remains a concern for educators seeking to help improve the future STEM workforce. Besides math ability and prior chemistry knowledge, spatial ability and attitude toward chemistry have been considered as important factors influencing college chemistry performance. This work includes five studies and uses data collected from instruments to examine the relationships of these two factors - spatial ability and attitude - with student chemistry performance, and provides psychometric evidence for using the Purdue Visualization of Rotations test (ROT) and Attitude toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory (ASCIv2) to measure these two factors, respectively, in …

Co(Ii) Based Metalloradical Catalysis: Carbene And Nitrene Transfer Reactions, Joseph B. Gill

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Radical chemistry has attracted a large amount of research interest over the last few decades and radical reactions have recently been recognized as powerful tools for organic synthesis. The synthetic applications of radicals have been demonstrated in many fields, including in the synthesis of complex natural products. Radical reactions have a number of inherent synthetic advantages over their ionic counterparts. For example, they typically proceed at fast reaction rates under mild and neutral conditions in a broad spectrum of solvents and show significantly greater functional group tolerance. Furthermore, radical processes have the capability of performing in a cascade fashion, allowing …

Metallopeptides From Design To Catalysis: Structure, Oxidative Activities, And Inhibition Studies Of Designed And Naturally Occurring Metallopeptides, Alaa Hassan Hashim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Structural and mechanistic complexities of copper-dioxygen systems have attracted much attention in the field of bioinorganic chemistry, both in model systems and trapped protein intermediates. The research presented herein is focused on model and naturally occurring metallopeptide systems, from its design to catalysis. Copper is used as the coordinating metal ion, with cobalt and zinc as probes for metal binding. The bioinorganic chemistry of copper proteins and its coordination and spectroscopic properties are briefly discussed in chapter 1. The next two chapters are centered on the de novo design of a minimalistic metallopeptide system with an amino acid sequence of …

Mantle-Crust Interaction In Granite Petrogenesis In Post-Collisional Settings: Insights From The Danubian Variscan Plutons Of The Romanian Southern Carpathians, Ciprian Cosmin Stremtan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The issue of granite petrogenesis plays a key role in our overall understanding of the growth and differentiation of continents, as well as in our ability to unravel the tectonic histories of orogenic belts. Granites are ubiquitous magmatic products found in almost all tectonic settings: oceanic and continental rifts (i.e., plagiogranites - extreme basalt differentiates), active continental margins (e.g,. the granitic batholiths of central and southern Andes), continent-continent collision zones (e.g., the orogenic batholiths of the Himalayas, Western Anatolia), post-collisional settings (e.g., the Variscan provinces of Europe), complex within-plates settings (e.g., Limmo massif, Afar, Ethiopia). Furthermore, granitoids are characterized by …

The Effects Of Collaborative Critical Thinking Training On Trust Development And Effectiveness In Virtual Teams, Mark Grichanik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Workers in modern teams that perform tasks over computer-mediated communication channels encounter challenges in building trust and performing effectively. Finding interventions to mitigate such losses could improve team performance. Collaborative critical thinking (CCT) training has the potential to improve trust, monitoring, and effectiveness in virtual teams. Using a simulated search-and-rescue task, the effects of CCT training, as compared with a control training, were evaluated in 105 three-member teams. No effects of CCT training were found on team positive or negative monitoring, team cognitive or affective trust, team efficacy, or team viability. However, teams trained in CCT reported consistently higher levels …

A Novel Role For Nf-Κb In Proximal T Cell Signaling, Crystina Bronk Watson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The interrogation of T cell signaling over the past fifty years has led to the discovery of amazingly intricate cascade networks and elaborate descriptions of individual proteins' domains and functions. A complex landscape has been rendered in which proteins relay messages from the extracellular ligation of the TCR by a cognate peptide loaded MHC via changes in sub-cellular location, phosphorylation, and binding affinities and partners to enact nuclear localization of three key transcription factors required for cellular effector function and proliferation: AP-1, NF-AT, and NF-κB. Dogma has favored activation of each of these transcription regulating elements to be a linear …

Magneto-Optical Kerr Eect Study Of Magnetic Anisotropy In Soft Ferromagnets, Tatiana Marie Eggers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The continued progress of modern information technology relies on understanding the influence of magnetic anisotropy on magnetic thin films. In this work, two sources of magnetic anisotropy are examined in two different soft ferromagnets: a uniaxial anisotropy induced during the fabrication of Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ and exchange anisotropy, or exchange bias, which occurs at the interface of Ni₇₇Fe₁₄Cu₅Mo₄/Fe₅₀Mn₅₀ bilayer. A home-built Magneto-optical Kerr effect magnetometer is used to measure the magnetic response of the soft ferromagnetic films and details of its construction are also discussed. A simple model …

I Demand. . . Sorry, I Apologize: Power, Collaboration, And Technology In The Social Construction Of Leadership Across Diversity, Heather Sadler Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This transformative case study used qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the social construction of collaborative and technology leadership among students in a graduate-level course on curriculum leadership. Analysis of interactions among students during an asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) project using critical discourse analysis was completed. Student dialogue was analyzed for how students across different social groups interacted discursively to promote and inhibit the development of leadership in the domains of collaboration and technology, while socially constructing the knowledge context for learning about the societal curriculum for diverse social groups. Findings were that women more than men were verbose …

Word Recognition In Noise Among Young And Older Listeners: A Combined Behavioral And Electrophysiological Study, Victoria Ann Williams-Sanchez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Word recognition is based on the complex interplay of bottom up processing of acoustic input and corresponding top-down processing based on linguistic redundancies (i.e., contextual cues). Friedrich and Kotz (2007) investigated the timeline of integrating top-down and bottom-up processes among young adults with normal hearing using sentences presented in quiet. As a follow-up study, also with young adults with normal hearing (Experiment 1 of this dissertation), we used sentences embedded in multi-talker background noise and found similar results to Friedrich and Kotz (2007); but, with the use of principal component analysis (PCA) unveiled additional effects of phonological and semantic integration …

Performance Evaluation And Integrated Management Of Airport Surface Operations, Qing Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The demand for aviation has been steadily growing over the past few decades and will keep increasing in the future. The anticipated growth of traffic demand will cause the current airspace system, one that is already burdened by heavy operations and inefficient usage, to become even more congested than its current state. Because busy airports in the United States (U.S.) are becoming "bottlenecks" of the National Airspace System (NAS), it is of great importance to discover the most efficient means of using existing facilities to improve airport operations.

This dissertation aims at designing an efficient airport surface operations management system …

Responsibility And Responsiveness In The Novels Of Ann Radcliffe And Mary Shelley, Katherine Marie Mcgee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation looks at the ways in which humans interact with and respond to other humans and nonhumans in Ann Radcliffe's and Mary Shelley's novels. I argue that in light of the social and political turmoil surrounding the French Revolution, Radcliffe and Shelley call not so much for Revolution or drastic reform but for a change in the ways in which individuals respond to the needs of others, both human and nonhuman, and take responsibility for each other. The ways in which humans interact with the nonhuman inform the positive and negative practices that they should use to interact with …

Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, And Colonialism In Three Adaptations Of Three Plays By William Shakespeare, Angela Eward-Mangione

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What role did identification play in the motives, processes, and products of select post-colonial authors who "wrote back" to William Shakespeare and colonialism? How did post-colonial counter-discursive metatheatre function to make select post-colonial adaptations creative and critical texts? In answer to these questions, this dissertation proposes that counter-discursive metatheatre resituates post-colonial plays as criticism of Shakespeare's plays. As particular post-colonial authors identify with marginalized Shakespearean characters and aim to amplify their conflicts from the perspective of a dominated culture, they interpret themes of race, gender, and colonialism in Othello (1604), Antony and Cleopatra (1608), and The Tempest (1611) as explicit …

Generation And Characterization Of Nanoaerosols Using A Portable Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer And Electron Microscopy, Adam J. Marty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the ability to generate and characterize a nanometer sized aerosol using solutions, suspensions, and a bulk nanopowder, and to research the viability of using an acoustic dry aerosol generator/elutriator (ADAGE) to aerosolize a bulk nanopowder into a nanometer sized aerosol. The research compares the results from a portable scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) to the more traditional method of counting and sizing particles on a filter sample using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Sodium chloride aerosol was used for the comparisons. The sputter coating thickness, a conductive coating necessary for SEM, was measured …

Examination Of Possible Protective Effect Of Rhesus D Positive Blood Factor On Toxoplasma-Related Depressive Symptoms In Pregnancy, Lisa Lynn Parnell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Toxoplasma gondii infects approximately one third of the population worldwide. There is strong evidence that a relationship between T. gondii titer and depressive symptoms exists. There is also evidence suggesting a protective effect of RhD positive blood factor on toxoplasma-induced behavioral and personality changes. This protective effect may influence the relationship between T. gondii and prenatal depressive symptoms. The purpose of this secondary data analysis was to examine the possible protective effect of RhD positive blood factor on prenatal depressive symptoms in 56 pregnant women with T. gondii infection. The cross-sectional design was utilized to answer the question “Does positive …

Task-Based Robotic Grasp Planning, Yun Lin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Grasp should be selected intelligently to fulfill different stability properties and manipulative requirements. Currently, most grasping approaches consider only pick-and-place tasks without any physical interaction with other objects or the environment, which are common in an industry setting with limited uncertainty. When robots move to our daily-living environment and perform a broad range of tasks in an unstructured environment, all sorts of physical interactions will occur, which will result in random physical interactive wrenches: forces and torques on the tool.

In addition, for a tool to perform a required task, certain motions need to occur. We call it "functional tool …

Generalized Conditional Matching Algorithm For Ordered And Unordered Sets, Ravikiran Krishnan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Designing generalized data-driven distance measures for both ordered and unordered set data is the core focus of the proposed work. An ordered set is a set where time-linear property is maintained when distance between pair of temporal segments. One application in the ordered set is the human gesture analysis from RGBD data. Human gestures are fast becoming the natural form of human computer interaction. This serves as a motivation to modeling, analyzing, and recognition of gestures. The large number of gesture categories such as sign language, traffic signals, everyday actions and also subtle cultural variations in gesture classes makes gesture …