Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Social Responsibility On Insurers’ Investments And On Suppliers, And The Role Of Internal Capital Markets On Market Entrance And Exit, Patrick Cho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay, we provide a new perspective on the socially responsible investment (SRI) puzzle by examining whether a motive behind investing in socially responsible stocks is to hedge against non-financial income exposure. We examine U.S. Property-Liability (P/L) insurers’ equity portfolios to investigate the probability and extent of investments in socially responsible firms. We focus on one aspect of social responsibility - litigation risk. The level of litigation risk is a direct measure of social responsibility and the observable impact of litigation on P/L insurers’ underwriting portfolios allows us to examine the hedging motive. We find that P/L insurers …

Full Bridge Modeling To Evaluate Effectiveness Of A Seismic Bearing On A Newly Constructed Bridge On I-55, Sandip Gupta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Infrastructure constructed should be safe and reliable. Bridges are essential infra structure used by large mass of people on a daily basis. Out of 617,000 bridges across the United States, 42% are at least 50 years old, and 7.5% are considered structurally deficient as per Infrastructure report card. 178 million trips are made on these structurally deficient bridges every day in the US. Thus, a bridge should be designed, not only for Strength and Service limit states, but also for Extreme limit states which includes earthquake. New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), located in southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, western …

Evaluating The Relationship Between Vegetation Types And Downscaled Surface Soil Moisture Data, Anupiya Vidarshana Ellepola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Remote sensing systems such as multispectral and radar imaging can provide detailed information about soil moisture levels, vegetation cover, and topography. These data can be used to identify areas of high soil moisture, monitor changes in soil moisture over time, and assess the impact of human activities on watersheds. A commonly used system in orbit for monitoring soil moisture is the Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission (SMAP). For SMAP and all spaceborne systems, one of the major limitations for users to implement satellite-based data is the coarse resolution of the pixels (~9 km). Downscaling approaches are introduced by many researchers …

Designing A Flexible Framework For Developing Acoustic Array Systems, Charles Fulton Gilliland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, research conducted by the Applied Acoustics group at the NationalCenter for Physical Acoustics has involved the use of microphone arrays to study the propagation of sound through outdoor environments. In such research, there is need for data acquisition systems which can be reconfigured in both hardware and software. This work is an effort to develop a modular acoustic data acquisition framework which can be configured to accommodate a wide variety of acoustic array applications. In hardware, the framework provides modularity with a generic mainboard which uses a common interface to collect data from application-specific microphone boards. In …

Affording The Value Of Technology: Normalcy And Moral Frameworks, Mitchell Roberts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is often held that technology is value neutral. That is, technology is merely a means to an end and has no intrinsic moral worth. However, as some theorists have demonstrated, this view of technology may be mistaken. One theorist, Michael Klenk, offers what he calls an “affordance theory of embodied values” as one principled way of understanding how technological artifacts embody moral values. Under this view, artifacts embody affordances, or possibilities for action. These affordances are then judged in order to assess the moral status of the artifact which embeds them. In this paper, I develop one problem with …

"Since I Laid My Burden Down": A Comparative Analysis Of An African American Spiritual, Damein Dameco Wash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis presents a comparative analysis of the African American spiritual "Since I Laid My Burden Down." Through the use of various sources, including scholarly articles, books, and recordings, the origins, themes, and musical structures of the spiritual are explored. The study examines the historical context of African American spirituals and the importance of the call-and-response style, as well as the influence of gospel and blues music. The thesis also analyzes the performances of the song by Triumph The Church & Kingdom of God in Christ (2022), Mrs. Ulanda Crivens (2023), Shardé Thomas (2017), Othar Tuner (1982), Mississippi John …

On The Tensor Product Of Archimedean Riesz Spaces, Page Thorn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We characterize when, for any infinite cardinal α, Fremlin’s Archimedean Riesz space tensor product of two Archimedean Riesz spaces is Dedekind α-complete. We provide an example of an ideal I in an Archimedean Riesz space E such that the Fremlin tensor product of I with itself is not an ideal in the Fremlin tensor product of E with itself. On the other hand, we present conditions for which the Fremlin tensor product of ideals is an ideal and that the Fremlin tensor product of projection bands is a projection band.

Lastly, we prove that the Carathéodory space of place functions …

Tidally-Induced Nonlinear Resonances In Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals With An Analogue Model, David Bronicki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The future space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA is expected to capture signals from extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), a new class of inspiral systems which current detectors are not sensitive to. Detection and characterization of EMRI systems requires long and accurate waveform models, which may require accounting for effects like those seen in the presence of an external tidal field. In particular, such a perturbation may break integrability of the system and cause significant dephasing. In this thesis, we use a Newtonian analogue of a Kerr black hole to study the effect of an external tidal field when the system …

Unsung Heroes: The Jones County Drug Court, Elise Joelle Denoulet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Ellisville, Mississippi, some heroes do not wear capes. The Jones County Drug Court, located in rural Mississippi, fights drug and alcohol addiction daily. This drug court program, led by the tough but compassionate Consuelo Walley, supervises about 70 to 90 participants in their recovery journey. In recent years, this program has grown to be known as one of the most efficient in its region, and I made it my mission to uncover why that is. It turns out staff members are themselves recovering addicts, who utilize their own experience as a way to connect and relate to their participants. …

"No Redemption In Nonfiction": Portfolio Reflection On The Queer, Anticapitalist Directions Of Creative Nonfiction, Bethany Fitts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I reflect on the current state of my artistic practice and discuss rapidly changing documentary methods in the 21st century as they relate to broader evolutions in the creative nonfiction genre. I then discuss these methods alongside my experimental short-doc Gameplay.

Dark Personality, Sexual Satisfaction And Sexual Perceptions: An Event-Contingent Study, Jasmine Whitney Rios

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has consistently linked Dark Personality (DP) to one’s mating tendencies (e.g., mating strategy, sexual behavior, sociosexual orientation) and sexual motivation. However, DP researchers have failed to expand the association between DP and sex beyond these common sexual dimensions. As such, there is little to no research linking DP to people’s sexual satisfaction and sexual perceptions. Additionally, personality research has predominantly investigated sexuality at the global-level (e.g., average/general report of sexual satisfaction) when studying aspects of sexual interaction at the interaction-level (i.e., soon after the interaction) can reduce various issues that accompany global measures. Thus, one purpose of this current …

Development Of A Novel Psychological Screening Tool For Young Children In Educational And Childcare Settings, Diana Tinsley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Young children experience psychological difficulties at comparable rates to school-aged children (Egger & Angold, 2006; Bufferd et al., 2011; Fuchs et al., 2013), yet few screening tools are available for this age range. Childcare and preschool settings present a unique opportunity to increase early screening efforts, particularly in terms of observing children among their peers. The current study presents initial steps toward the development of a new psychological screening tool for young children ages 1.5 – 5 years in childcare and educational settings. The aim of the study was to develop a brief and broad psychological screening tool that can …

A Demand-Side Theory Of Labor Informality: Workers' Trust And States' Credible Commitment, Julian Alfonso Acevedo Pardo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Labor informality is a vexing issue across Latin America, with negative implications for policy areas from economic growth to social safety nets. Despite decades of efforts by national governments and international organizations, informality levels remain stubbornly high across the region. Insights from the extant literature suggest informality arises because creating formal sector jobs is too costly or the costs of formality for workers are too high. In contrast to most previous works on informality, this project steps back from standard materialistic assumptions and aims to uncover how the overall relationship between states and citizens impacts workers' incentives to work formally. …

Beliefs And Factors That Influence Intentions To Initiate Antihypertensive Medications, Omokhodion Alfred Eriakha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Primary nonadherence (PMN) to antihypertensives constitutes a problem for all stakeholders regardless of whose perspective is taken. Understanding patient beliefs and utilizing a theory could help move the needle in favor of antihypertensive medications initiation.

Objectives: To determine the predictive ability of an integrated model of the theory of planned behavior and health belief model on intention to initiate an antihypertensive medication and to rank the identified factors of intentions to initiate antihypertensive medications in order of relative importance.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted to evaluate beliefs and factors that determine intention to initiate antihypertensive medications. The sample …

Successful Aging And Turnover Intention Among Older Hospitality Frontline Employees, Thamsanqa Jongile

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This two-part dissertation delves into the intertwined precursors of successful aging and turnover intent in the hospitality sector. The first part applies a structural equation model to examine the link between perceived narcissistic leadership, successful aging, and turnover intentions. The author posits that work engagement, employee cynicism, and emotional fatigue are the mechanisms through which perceived narcissistic leadership affects successful aging and turnover intent. The findings affirm these conjectures, revealing that narcissistic leadership serves as a predictor of successful aging and turnover intent.

The second manuscript probes further into the antecedents of successful aging, evaluating a theoretical model in which …

Relations Between Parent Coping With The Stress Of Parenting And Symptoms Of Anxiety And Depression, Maxwell Jared Luber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is important to refine understanding of the impact of adolescent behaviors on parents. In particular there is a need to improve understanding of the potential increase in parental distress caused by challenging youth behaviors. Parenting stress may play a critical role in these processes. Various coping strategies have been associated with different psychosocial outcomes, including anxiety and depression. In contrast, less effective coping strategies are linked to a higher likelihood of meeting criteria for mood or anxiety disorders. Gender differences in stress coping between women and men may contribute to women reporting higher levels of psychological distress, depression, and …

Rocs: Robust Circular Seriation By Perturbation Entropy Minimization, Carla Rego

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifying and creating patterns enables humans to fulfill their fundamental desire to make sense of things. At the center of this endeavor, seriation is a process of arranging objects to reveal regularities in their characteristics. We present a method to arrange objects cyclically to achieve orderliness based on a novel concept of perturbation entropy, which models the randomness of a sequence under local perturbations on the ordering. We derive a sharp upper bound on the perturbation entropy and develop an algorithm to search for an ordering that minimizes the upper bound. Connections with the traveling salesman problem and the quadratic …

Leadership Matters: An Assessment Of The Mpower Leadership Program At The University Of Mississippi, Ryan Upshaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this manuscript is to examine the importance of student leadership development programs on undergraduate students using the framework of the Social Change Leadership Model. This document will specifically examine the MPower Leadership program held at the University of Mississippi. Student engagement and leadership is extremely important to college campuses as universities seek to prepare their students for the world of work and to become engaged citizens. Student leadership and engagement also has ties to academic success and persistence. A concrete plan that is focused on leadership development also benefits student affairs administrators who are responsible for coordinating, …

Increasing Primary Care Physicians Through Rural Medicine Curriculum, Margaret Pickering Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The citizens of rural areas encounter many challenges with accessing primary healthcare. Mississippi meets 52.1% of the needs of the state for primary care physicians, causing citizens to travel farther distances to access health care. Many rural hospitals within the state are struggling financially and are at high risk of closing, causing further barriers for rural citizens to access healthcare. Increasing primary care physicians help provide adequate healthcare access and provides rural citizens access to preventative care and early treatment for health problems.

This study, conducted at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, seeks to determine if rural medicine courses …

A Discrete Conley-Zehnder Index For Symplectic Polytopes, Yutian Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Hamiltonian system is a dynamical system governed by Hamilton’s equations. Hamiltonian systems provide a framework for studying classical mechanics. One fundamental principle in Hamiltonian mechanics is the conservation of energy along the flow of the Hamiltonian vector field. The smooth hypersurface of a Hamiltonian function on a symplectic manifold has a contact structure, and the associated Reeb vector field is, up to a scale, the Hamiltonian vector field. We are interested in the non-smooth case and a symplectic polytope makes a good model to study.

In this dissertation, we study the Reeb dynamics on the boundary of a symplectic …

Habitat Characteristics That Drive Habitat Selection In Hyla Chrysoscelis (Southern Gray Treefrog) And Aquatic Insects, Ruric Bowman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organisms must navigate complex landscapes selecting suitable habitats that will minimize costs to themselves or their offspring and maximize fitness. Habitat characteristics influence a patch’s quality and organisms may prioritize certain characteristics when selecting among patches. Canopy cover and patch size are two important habitat characteristics that organisms use to evaluate a patch’s quality. To understand whether canopy cover or patch size are a better determinant of patch quality for southern gray treefrogs, Hyla chrysoscelis and aquatic insects I implemented a compromise design that provided two suboptimal patch types (large, closed canopy and small, open canopy patches) for colonization. A …

Academic Medical Center Governance: A Study Focused On The University Of Mississippi Medical Center, Jacob Daniels

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) face many challenges, which can lead to financial constraints. For AMCs to remain sustainable in today’s healthcare system, the literature presents a compelling case for expansion to mitigate their financial burdens. Expansion often requires quick decision-making, and as a result, scholars repeatedly discuss the importance of AMC governance being both nimble and efficient. The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) substantially impacts Mississippians, and the institution must remain a thriving center for education, research, and healthcare for the state. Given the importance of efficient and nimble governance in the institution’s sustainability, this Dissertation in Practice (DiP) …

Supernatural Law? A Refutation Of Three Recent Natural-Law Arguments Against Catholic Integralism, Jackson Dellinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, there is a longstanding debate over the proper relationship between religious and civil institutions, or “church and state.” One radical voice in the debate is that of Catholic integralism, a school within Catholic social teaching which argues that Catholic governments should submit to the religious authority of the Church, and that Catholics should aspire towards a Catholic society with this relationship between Church and State for all nations. Recently, interlocutors have attempted to show that integralism is inconsistent with a core element of the Catholic teaching to which they appeal—that is, natural law. In this paper, …

Fine Gauze, Silk, Raw Silk, Satin, Brocade, Siyun Fang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A collection of poetry.

Structural Violence And Its Effect On Women's Empowerment In The Case Of Bangladesh Garment Workers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Fowzia Binte Faruque

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis delves into the complex relationship between women's participation in Bangladesh's garment industry, their empowerment, and structural violence against them. Although Bangladesh's patriarchal society perpetuates structural violence against women, the garment sector has also facilitated social and economic empowerment for many. By adopting a gender-focused lens and examining the interplay between structural violence and empowerment, this research aims to explore the socio-economic status of female garment workers in Bangladesh during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-2022. The study employs a qualitative content analysis, analyzing two national newspapers—The Daily Star and The Financial Express (Bangladesh)—as primary sources.

The findings …

Ceremony On The Frontier: An Analysis Of A Thirteenth And Fourteenth Century Multi-Phase Mississippian Structure At The Carter Robinson Site, Lee County, Virginia, Taylor Greene

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carter Robinson (44LE10, occupied from ca. A.D. 1200-1400) is a Mississippian mound site located on the frontier between the edge of the Mississippian world and the beginning of the Radford culture area in southwestern Virginia. Although several structures have been identified and studied in the past, only one structure has been featured intentional burning and reconstruction throughout the occupation of the site, and is designated as Structure 2. This structure is also unique due to its location at the site, on a small rise about 80-meters east of the mound, a construction area typically reserved for the homes of minor …

"Dug Way To Liberty": Newspapers, Prison, And Jim Crow In Georgia In The Early 1900s, Avery Elise Gross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On April 15, 1907, twelve Black and white convicts escaped from the Durham Mines prison camp located on Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Over the next month, newspapers throughout Georgia and in neighboring states reported the escape and discussed the recapture events. Within five days of the prison break, the local white community recaptured all nine Black convicts. None of the white convicts were caught. As this thesis investigates the lives, crimes, and recapture of all twelve prisoners, it connects the convict lease prison system with the newspaper media to understand the impact of white supremacy ideology and the repressive systems that …

Nursing Faculty Turnover: Recruitment And Retention At Jones College, Alan Luke Hammonds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The nursing profession has been facing a deficit of nurses for many years (Denehy, 2000; Haddad et al., 2023, Mayo, 1944; Schorr, 1980; Theisen & Pelfrey, 1990). Nurses are an essential part of the medical care system. They are responsible for most of the functions associated with healthcare. The schools that train nurses are as much affected by the shortage as the industry itself. With fewer nurses in the medical field from which to draw, nursing schools have had a difficult time maintaining nursing faculty levels to meet the needs of the medical community. With nursing faculty shortages already straining …

Characterization Of Vibrational Response Of A Helical Coil Subject To Environmental Exposure And Structural Modifications, Nathan Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to fully characterize the response of a cylindrical helix, the heat and vibrational stresses are modeled using both simulations and experimental testing. The intent of this work is to identify the frequencies, shapes, and Q factors of the vibrational modes of the helix subject to different stimuli and evaluate changes due to environmental exposures and structural modifications. COMSOL Multiphysics is used to simulate the response of the helix under different boundary conditions. Experimental measurements of the response to impulsive and continuous wave stimuli are taken. The eigenfrequency data from the simulations and experiments are then compared for …

Project Grit: An Applied Research Study Conducted In An Alternative School Program To Promote Alternative Behaviors To Violence, James Ray Howington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students in the Anniston School District are placed in the alternative setting (i.e., the Avery Alternative Center) for fighting and violence more than any other disciplinary infraction. The disproportionality of students of color and minority groups enrolled in the alternative setting for fighting is also alarming. Why is this happening? Why does student conflict often end in physical aggression and violence, especially disputes involving minorities? What can stop the violence? Stakeholders in the Avery Alternative Center created Project GRIT to help answer these questions by incorporating research-based practices and interventions designed to strengthen conflict resolution skills in participants and support …