Digital Commons Network^™

Innovative Purification Protocol For Heparin Binding Proteins: Relevance In Biopharmaceutical And Biomedical Applications, Sumit Batra

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Heparin binding (HB) proteins mediates a wide range of important cellular processes, which makes this class of proteins biopharmaceutically important. Engineering HB proteins could bring many advantages, but it necessitates cost effective and efficient purification methodologies compared to the currently available methods. One of the most important classes of heparin binding protein is the fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) and its receptors (FGFRs). In this study, we report an efficient off-column purification of FGF-1 from soluble fractions and purification of the D2 domain of FGFR from insoluble inclusion bodies, using a weak amberlite cation (IRC) exchanger. This approach is an alternative …

Economic Impacts Of Drought On Kentucky Corn, Hay, And Soybeans, Kortney E. Craft

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Understanding climatic impacts is important if we are to comprehend the relationship between climate and society. Weather phenomena can have environmental, economical, and social impacts. Drought is the natural hazard that affects people the most. It is also the most complex and least understood. There is no one universally accepted definition for drought which makes its examination difficult. Droughts’ duration is also difficult to determine because it has no clearly defined onset and end. Also, drought varies both geographically and temporally making uniform drought monitoring difficult. Since drought is difficult to monitor and access, drought impacts are often poorly documented. …

Growth Rates Of Curriculum-Based Measurement-Written Expression At The Elementary School Level, Amanda Tadatada

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This project appears to be the first to determine growth rates for writing using Curriculum-Based Measurement-Written Expression (CBM-WE). Growth rates, or the amount of change over time, help educators track how much progress can be expected given typical instruction. CBM-WE probes were administered to a sample of 1,004 students in first through fifth grades within a school district. The writing probes were scored using production-dependent variables: Total Words Written (TWW), Words Spelled Correctly (WSC), and Correct Word Sequence (CWS). Data were analyzed by grade level and gender. Results are presented as weekly growth rates. Growth rates were calculated from fall …

Development Of The Negative Attentional Bias During Exercise Measure And The Rumination And Escape Thoughts Measure, Katie M. Brown

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The primary purpose of this study was to develop a measure to assess negative attentional bias toward changes in bodily sensations during exercise and to examine the reliability and validity of that measure. A secondary purpose was to develop a measure to assess tendencies toward rumination about the changes in bodily sensations and tendencies to have escape thoughts with regard to the exercise bout. While global measures of anxiety, rumination, and escape thoughts already exist, the advantage of these newly developed measures is that they are context specific to exercise. Participants in this study consisted of 329 undergraduate students. The …

Minor Incidents With Major Impacts: The Effects Of Bottom-Up Incivility On Supervisor Targets, Abby Meador

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Incivility within organizations is a rampant problem with dire consequences,including adverse effects on both job satisfaction and psychological states. This study was conducted to address the gap in the current literature that looks at incivility within organizations. To date, no studies have assessed the impact of bottom-up incivility (i.e., incivility that is directed from subordinates to supervisors) on supervisor targets. Thus, this study investigated the impact of bottom-up forms of incivility of supervisors’ mental and physical states, as well as their levels of job satisfaction. However, due to small sample sizes, the current research was expanded to address the effects …

Development Of Fractional Trigonometry And An Application Of Fractional Calculus To Pharmacokinetic Model, Amera Almusharrf

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

No abstract provided.

Approach To Arsenic And Selenium Removal From Fly Ash By Oxalate And Estimation Of Calcium Effects On Both Elements, Ying Wen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

An approach to arsenic and selenium removal from fly ash is studied. This research includes a comparison of the leaching ability of ammonium oxalate, ammonium citrate, ammonium nitrate and EDTA to extract arsenic and selenium; use of common agricultural waste as a source of oxalate anion to remove arsenic and selenium from fly ash and estimation of additional calcium effects on arsenic and selenium leaching behaviors.
This research shows that extraction strength order is EDTA > ammonium oxalate > ammonium citrate > ammonium nitrate > water, achieving arsenic extraction efficiencies of 94.18%, 84.17%, 4.50%, 2.89% and 0.18%, respectively; achieving selenium extraction efficiencies of 96.14%, …

School Readiness: Parent Perceptions, Behaviors, And Child Ability Related To Ethnicity And Socioeconomic Status, Courtney N. Baldwin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This project used data from the School Readiness Survey (SR) of the 2007 National Household Education Surveys Program collected by the National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Science. A subsample of 1,712 to 2,622 subjects who participated in the survey was used for this project. The purpose of the study was to examine parent perceptions, behaviors, and reported child ability related to school readiness and the effect ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) had on each comparison. Variables from the existing data were matched to one of the five domains of School Readiness: Health and Physical Development, Social and …

Development Of A Math Interest Inventory To Identify Gifted Students From Underrepresented And Diverse Populations, Gabrielle M. Snow

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current investigation supports the objectives of Project GEMS (Roberts, 2008), a grant funded program whose objectives include the development and validation of a protocol to identify students from underrepresented and diverse populations as gifted in the content areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Identification of students from low-income and diverse populations as gifted has been a struggle with current assessment techniques (Baldwin, 2005). Project GEMS aims to address this problem through development of interest measures specific to the STEM areas for use within an identification protocol. The current project developed a measure to assess interest in mathematics. The …

National Park Service Cave And Karst Resources Management Case Study: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Daniel C. Nolfi

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

As discussed in the National Parks Service’s (NPS) Directors Orders/Natural Resources Management Reference Manual #77 and the 2006 NPS Management Policy Handbook, implementing a management plan specifically for cave and karst resources within a national park is paramount to afford these resources appropriate protection. With support from the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act and the National Park Service Organic Act of 1906, management actions protecting caves has begun to place significant importance outside the traditional cave environment onto a broader karst landscape. The need to understand and protect the karst environment and caves as a karst resource has taken a …

The Relationship Between Superstitious Behaviors Of Sports Fans, Team Identification, Team Location, And Game Outcome, Shana M. Wilson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The present study examined how a fan's desire to participate in superstitious behaviors depends on team identification, team location, and game outcome. The study is a 2 (team identification: high vs. low) x 2 (game outcome: close game vs. blowout) x 2 (location of team: local vs. distant) between subjects factorial design. Participants for the current study included 234 students, recruited from undergraduate psychology classes at Western Kentucky University. Participants completed the Sport Spectator Identification Scale, read a randomly assigned vignette differing in team location and game outcome, and filled out the Superstition Questionnaire to measure their desire to complete …

The Western Kentucky University Teaching Gardens: Landscape Design And Establishment Plan, Claudia Stetter

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to design a landscape plan for Teaching Gardens at the Western Kentucky University Agriculture Research and Education Center. The landscape plans were selected based upon the available 5.3 acres surrounding the greenhouse, vineyard, and Exposition Center. Planning included goals and objectives, analysis of the available site, landscape design plans, and connecting the Teaching Gardens to the current curriculum. This thesis also includes related areas to the development of Teaching Gardens such as: summary of courses with related topics to Teaching Gardens, programs that will be used throughout the community, and a listing of current …

An Evaluation Of Alternate Forms Of Reliability Of The Situational Assessment Of Leadership: Student Assessment (Salsa©), Ashley N. Wade

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The primary goal of the current study was to re-evaluate, revise, and abbreviate alternate forms of the Situational Assessment of Leadership: Student Assessment (SALSA©) developed by Grant (2009). Archival response sets collected from individuals with extensive experience in leadership who were administered either the full-length SALSA© or Form A or B in previous studies. A total of 80 individual response sets comprised the final sample. Items were categorized by p-value and Subject Matter Expert ratings gathered from the previous study. Items were then selected based on a combination of difficulty and item-total correlation (ITC) values. Selected items were paired based …

Generalized Bathtub Hazard Models For Binary-Transformed Climate Data, James Polcer

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this study, we use a hazard-based modeling as an alternative statistical framework to time series methods as applied to climate data. Data collected from the Kentucky Mesonet will be used to study the distributional properties of the duration of high and low-energy wind events relative to an arbitrary threshold. Our objectiveswere to fit bathtub models proposed in literature, propose a generalized bathtub model, apply these models to Kentucky Mesonet data, and make recommendations as to feasibility of wind power generation. Using two different thresholds (1.8 and 10 mph respectively), results show that the Hjorth bathtub model consistently performed better …

Anglofile, Kaci Carpenter

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Anny Sterling is stuck. After a freak accident that left her father disabled and without a steady income, she returned home after one semester of college to help pay the bills while her older sister Emily fled to Europe to spend her time chasing dark-haired men named Franco and Pablo. At twenty-five, Anny now spends her days at the local insurance agency running errands for other people and reciting the alphabet song in the file room. There’s little to no hope for advancement as she is short the required college hours to qualify for even an associate degree, but she …

Determining The Lon-Exchange Mechanism Of Strontium Into A Niobium Doped Titanosilicate, Samantha Jane Kramer

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A 25% niobium substituted sitinakite was exchanged with strontium as time resolved X-ray diffraction data was collected. The structural modeling of this data by Rietveld method1 has lead to the determination of the atomic positions of the ions and unit cell parameters as strontium occupancy increases.

The starting material of the exchange experiment is the protonated phase, H2Nb0.67Ti1.33SiO7·1.9 H2O, with space group P42/mcm2,3. Once strontium (Sr2+) enters the unit cell, extra-framework H2O molecules shift to provide the necessary hydration coordination. These new positions of H2O result in a lowering of symmetry to the P-42m space group, and it is thought …

A Prevalence Study Of Southeast Origin Sale Barn Beef Cattle, Comingled In Warren County, Kentucky, Persistently Infected With Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus, Including The Effects Of Season And Body Weight, Sarah Elizabeth Thomas

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) is an economically important disease of cattle. Calves persistently infected (PI) with the bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) are a powerful agent for spread of the virus. A total of 24,423 southeast origin beef cattle comingled at three Warren County, Kentucky locations were tested from November 2007 to June 2010 for PI BVDV. A total of 97 head tested positive for PI BVDV, giving an average overall prevalence of 0.397%.
Calves tested were subdivided into categories for additional calculations of dependence. A total of 8,910 were categorized by weight range upon testing (300-399 lbs, 400-499 lbs, …

Post-Exercise Hypotension In Brief Exercise, Jeremiah G. Bush

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this investigation was to examine whether a single 10 minute bout of exercise, performed at multiple intervals throughout the day to equal 30 minutes, can effectively elicit post-exercise hypotension (PEH). Secondly, it is important to explore whether a light (40% VO2R) or moderate (70% VO2R) intensity is required to elicit PEH within 10 minutes. Subjects (N=11) completed a VO2max test utilizing the Bruce Treadmill protocol. Each subject returned within 3 – 5 days to complete two separate exercising trials. A counter balanced system was employed so that each subject did not perform the same intensity rotation (Counter …

The Transformation Of A Shire: Local Negotiation In The Society For Creative Anachronism, Suzanne Barber

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this thesis, I am examining how a small branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Loch an Fhraoich, whose values and identity center around camaraderie and narrative and aesthetic coherence, attempts to balance these two often contradictory principles. To better illustrate the negotiations taking place, I have used ethnographic fieldwork to focus on the areas of material culture, ethno-kinetics, persona, knowledge, and events. These areas are tightly interwoven, and almost never operate independently, but the exercise of isolating them is useful in seeing the complexities of choices that members must make to navigate the social world of the Society …

Discourse And Conflict: The President Barack H. Obama Birth Certificate Controversy And The New Media, Timothy Lee Adams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A creative exploration of the consequences of public speech in the era of freely accessible, social media, as the author, a former elections official, records and explores the consequences of public dissent in the case of President Barack Obama’s eligibility controversy. This non-fiction narrative culminates with the author’s analysis and observations on both his personal experiences and the state of public speech and political power in contemporary America.

Pedagogy Of Graphic Novels, Valarie L. Phelps

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Graphic texts, or graphic novels, have spent many years on shelves with comic books about superheroes and adventurers. They officially gained notoriety in 1992 with Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and at this time, critics and scholars began to take notice. However, graphic novels have not been fully adapted by academia. Graphic novels have the ability to offer new levels of instruction and learning in upper-level classrooms.
The following is a study in the multitude of uses of graphic text in academia. Chapter 1 looks at the history of graphic text to understand the present and future of graphic novels. Chapter 2 …