Digital Commons Network^™

The Representation Of English Language Learners In Special Education: A Campus-Level Study, Ruby Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the representation of English language learners in special education programs in elementary, middle, and high school campuses in two school districts in Texas. Data was collected from the Texas Education Agency’s Public Education Information Management System for the 2016-2017 school year. Relative risk ratios were calculated and reported for each elementary and secondary campuses for both school districts. The relative risk ratios were calculated utilizing total student enrollment, total English language learner enrollment, total special education enrollment, and total English language learner in special education. Results indicated that English language learners were both underrepresented and overrepresented in …

Effect Of Triclosan-Tolerant Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria On Triclosan Degradation In Soils, Ashley Marie Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Triclosan (TCS), an antimicrobial found in commercial products, can also be found in freshwater systems used for crop irrigation. Thus, TCS may accumulate over time in soils, potentially affecting plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs). Bacterial isolates from a previous study which demonstrated PGPR activity and TCS tolerance (TPGPRs) were chosen to evaluate the use of triclosan as a sole carbon source on a minimal salts medium (MSMT). TPGPRs, which demonstrated TCS utilization, were chosen for inoculation into soil microcosm for triclosan degradation (TD-PGPRs). Soil microcosms were arranged in a 2 x 5 factorial randomized block design and irrigated with triclosan treatments …

Faulknerian Echoes And The Grotesque In Mccarthy’S The Orchard Keeper, William Haynes

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Faulknerian Echoes and the Grotesque in McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper (August 2020)

William Leland Haynes, B. A., Texas A&M International University

Chair of Committee: Dr. Manuel Broncano

This thesis is an exploration of Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner’s craft through a focus on their works The Orchard Keeper and “Barn Burning.” This analysis charts the two dialoguing or conversing with each other across times through the art of their writings.

The basis of this project examines a key phrase from “Barn Burning,” where the problem of doing the right thing creates a conflict of identity within the story’s young …

The Relationship Between Work-Life Balance Programs And Employee Success, Efrain Medina

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the importance of work-life balance (WLB) programs to employees. Despite several attempts to understand the relationship between WLB programs and employee outcomes, it has been suggested that there should be a more complex understanding of how WLB programs enhance employee outcomes. This study aims to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between the availability of WLB programs and six workplace outcomes: job performance, turnover intention, deviant workplace behavior, affective commitment, fatigue level, and perceived organizational support. Secondly, the study examines whether perceived organizational support mediates the relationship between WLB programs availability and …

Digital Native Tongue: Bringing Multilingual, Multimodal Curriculum To College Composition For Beginning Latinx Writers, Francisco Enrique Zamora

Theses and Dissertations

Young Latinx students are struggling with composition when they enter college, and the performance and completion gaps are widening (Ybarra 89). Multilingual education offers insights into language pedagogy and practice, while new, multimodal education offers solutions that make use of digital techniques. This thesis proposes combining activities, frameworks, and theories from both of these education camps in order to update college composition curriculum that may to be more effective for American Latinx students in the 21st century. Multimodal education is the process of composing in multiple media (written, aural, visual) simultaneously. In the modern world, it is often intertwined with …

“His Soul In The Land Of The Greaser Band:” John L. Haynes And The Tejano Antebellum Era, 1846-1861, Hugo David Meza

Theses and Dissertations

This first scholarly study of mid-nineteenth-century U.S. military and political leader, John L. Haynes, takes us beyond a land in conflict, three bloody wars, one man’s steady evolution from slaveholder to abolitionist, and reveals a public service record that challenged Texas’s systematic exclusion of Spanish-surnamed persons. A Freemason, Cotton-Whig editor, Mexican War veteran, merchant-filibuster-insurgent, land agent, state legislator, brigadier-general, Southern dissenter, Civil War commander of the First Texas Volunteer Cavalry (Union) who led a 600-man Latino guerilla regiment across the Texas-Mexico borderlands and thru the Louisiana swamps, a key founder and the first state chairman of the Texas Republican Party, …

Numerical Simulation To The Fitzhugh-Nagumo Model With Strong Reaction, Hongsong Feng

Theses and Dissertations

The Fitzhugh-Nagumo model is a mathematical model derived from the simulation of propagating pulses in multicellular organisms. Since its creation, this model has drawn great attentions from academics and industry. To better understand the properties underlying this system, suitable numerical methods are needed to study it. In this thesis, numerical methods including the finite difference method, the finite element method, and the least-squares finite element method are applied to approximate its traveling wave solutions. In particular, since the FitzHugh-Nagumo model with strong reaction has a significant role in application, appropriate numerical scheme is designed to study it. Consistency and stability …

Mycoplasma Pneumoniae: Analysis Of Metabolic Pathways In A Minimal Genome, Maria Guadalupe Hinojosa

Theses and Dissertations

Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium lacking a cell wall, is one of the main causative agents of atypical pneumonia and contributes to the development of chronic respiratory disease. This organism has undergone reductive evolution and relies on the human host for the acquisition of most nutrients. Around 33% of M. pneumoniae proteins are of unknown function. The aim of my research was to grow this organism in various carbon sources and media to understand which metabolic pathways could be present in this minimal organism. Twenty-seven carbon sources and seven different media were tested. The results show that glucose, maltose, and dextrin …

Del Texto Al Lienzo: El Quijote Ilustrado En El Arte De Carnicero, Doré Y Dalí, Paulina Aragon

Theses and Dissertations

Literature and art are intrinsically linked. This thesis studies the connection between fiction and visual arts by looking at the written text and accompanying illustrations in Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha. These two ways of artistic expressions are interconnected and inform and influence each other over time. By applying the theory of intertextuality, the relationship between the two is analyzed and described. The link between text and illustration is also examined via the literary device of ekphrasis, however, in an inverted form. Both, literature and art, share the power of expression to tell stories that will continue to exist …

Three Essays On Syndicated Loan Partnerships, Bolortuya Enkhtaivan

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the syndicated loan literature. More specifically, this dissertation is composed of three chapters and each chapter explores different aspects. First, we examine syndicated loan’s structure in the presence of regulatory bail-outs. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was implemented during the 2009 economic downturn to stimulate the credit flow. However, the low cost of capital could have imprudently increased lenders’ credit risk-appetite. In three different measures, we find that TARP effectively prevented moral hazard by its participants as evidenced by the syndicated loans’ more diversified structures. Further study at lender level …

Anti-Bacterial Activity Of Rifamycin Derivatives Against Clinical Strains Of Mycobacterium Abscessus, Andrea Ramirez Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

Mycobacterium abscessus is non-tuberculosis, rapid-growing mycobacterium (RGM), initially described in 1953. It is considered to be an important human pathogen that is found in hospital settings. This organism is responsible for soft tissue infections, disseminated infections in immunocompromised patients, after lung transplants, as well as common in bronchopulmonary infections in patients with cystic fibrosis. It accounts for up to 80% of lung diseases caused by RGM. Mycobacterium abscessus possesses resistance to a wide variety of antibiotics, thus, no standardized treatment for this pathogen has been established. While currently available antimicrobials are useful against most infections caused by this pathogen, lung …

Numerical Simulation Of The Nagumo Equation By Finite Difference Method, Gabriel Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

The Nagumo equation is an important nonlinear reaction-diffusion equation used to model the transmission of nerve impulses. In this thesis, traveling wave solutions to the Nagumo equation are studied. A pseudo-Crank-Nicolson finite difference scheme is developed to find numerical solutions. The exact solution of Kawahara and Tanaka is used to demonstrate the efficiency of the scheme. It is confirmed that the numerical errors, evaluated in the discrete maximum norm, converge in $O(\Delta x^2 + \Delta t)$, where $\Delta x$ and $\Delta t$ are spatial and temporal step sizes, respectively. More simulations with different initial conditions are conducted. In particular, it …

The Characterization Of The Novel Gene Cia7 Using Pb Exposed Wild-Type And Mutant Strains Of Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii, Jose Angel Gutierrez

Theses and Dissertations

Industrialization has increased the risk of heavy metal contamination. This leads to contamination of the ecosystem surrounding microalga and other primary producers. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular alga that is of interest in toxicity studies due its detoxification pathways. This study aims to compare three common markers of cellular health and heavy metal homeostasis namely, levels of Pb bioaccumulation, chlorophyll fluorescence, and cell size between two strains of C. reinhardtii: a wild type (CC4425) and a mutant (CC5013). The mutant strain has a gene designated as Cia7 that has been disrupted by Ble insert. Cia7’s cysteine rich protein product (CIA7) …

El Partido De La Garra: Opposition To The Independent Club In Laredo, Texas, During The Great Depression, Lilia R. Mora

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the opposition to the Independent Club in Laredo, Texas, during the Great Depression. The Independent Club, one of the most influential political machines in South Texas, originated in the 1890s as a result of a rivalry between two political groups in Laredo, Texas—the Botas (Boots) and the Guaraches (Sandals). After the two parties consolidated their efforts and formed the Independent Club in 1894, the party came to dominate Laredo politics for eight decades, until its collapse in 1978. The Independent Club ran unopposed for several decades until the citizens of Laredo and Webb County, displeased with …

Representaciones EróTicas Bataillianas En Farabeuf (1965) De Salvador Elizondo Y SalóN De Belleza De Mario Bellatin (1994), Omar Steven Ramirez

Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis focuses on the study of Georges Bataille’s theories on eroticism through two Mexican novels. The analysis of Mexican author Salvador Elizondo’s Farabeuf (1965) will center in the relationship between the rite/sacrifice of the female protagonist to satisfy the male protagonist’s sexual desires. In addition, it will focus on the development of a mise-en-scène through the male protagonist manipulation of the female character. In the second one, Mexican-Peruvian Mario Bellatin’s Salón de belleza (1994), the analysis will try to explore how the protagonist, a male barber, will convert his beauty salon into a type of sanatorium where young …

Approximate Solutions To The Allen-Cahn Equation Using The Finite Difference Method, Jamil Malik Villarreal

Theses and Dissertations

Seeking a deeper understanding of the world has been a driving factor in Applied Mathematics. From counting and measuring physical objects to developing equations and ratios that resemble patterns in nature, mathematics is used to interpret and explain the intricate structures that we observe everyday. The field of Applied Mathematics almost always involves setting up and then solving, or approximating solutions to, at least one partial differential equation that takes the physical and mathematical properties into consideration. This is the process of creating mathematical models. For this thesis, we will investigate approximate solutions to the Allen-Cahn equation whose analytic solution …