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Creating A Dancing Classroom: Understanding In What Ways Integrating Dance Into The Classroom Creates Opportunities For Differentiated Instruction, Impacts Classroom Culture, And Enhances Student Outcomes, Maria Ross Campsey

Master's Theses

Ross Campsey, Maria. Creating A Dancing Classroom: Understanding in What Ways Integrating Dance into the Classroom Creates Opportunities for Differentiated Instruction, Impacts Classroom Culture, and Enhances Student Outcomes. Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 2019. The aim of this thesis project was to explore the effects of and response to an integrated arts approach that utilized movement and dance to teach a non-dance curriculum. The focus of this descriptive study was to understand the educational benefits of an arts integrated approach to education using movement and dance. The researcher employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze …

The Examination Of The Function Of The Cofactor Schnurri In The Cyst Stem Cells Of The Drosophila Melanogaster Testis Niche, Jade Koretko

Master's Theses

The study of adult stem cells in modern day research provides pertinent information about the development of organisms, how they grow, and how tissue is maintained. Drosophila melanogaster provide an ideal model for in vivo stem cell research, with one of the best-characterized niches in the testis. The testis stem cell niche consists of a hub that provides signals to the local stem cells, germline stem cells (GSCs), and cyst stem cells (CySCs). The CySCs produce cyst cell lineage that will provide support for the GSC daughter cells, which differentiate into sperm. Previously, Matunis, et al. determined the function of …

Evaluation Of Resuscitation Cardiopulmonary Training For The New Nurse, Nguyen Thi Yen Nhan

Master's Theses

This study aimed to define effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation training for new nurses. Nurses who respond to emergency situations are required to have the sensitivity and professional skills to respond effectively. Thus, improving resuscitation knowledge and technique for nurses is critical in order to enhance the quality and safety of patient care. This study used a pretest and posttest research design with convenience sampling; the sample consisted of 30 nurses who worked at the study hospital. As a result, new nurses’ knowledge improved from 7% to 73% after training. The psychomotor development of skills after the cardiopulmonary resuscitation training improved to …

The Monkey Queen: Creating Cultural Connections Through Theatre For Young Audiences, Matt Loehrke

Master's Theses

Youth in America have access to numerous stories on stage, page, and screen, yet many of those tales originate from white, Euro-centric cultures. Current trends in American theatre often produce familiar scripts to present to their communities. Unfortunately, too often, stories from other cultures are not adapted and presented. This thesis seeks to provide a culture bridge by adapting one of China’s most beloved stories, The Monkey King, for a young American audience through the medium of Theatre for Young Audiences. Theatre is a great unifier; however, the most critical audience, the audience that will grow into the next generation …

The Power Of Dance: How Dance Effects Mental And Emotional Health And Self-Confidence In Young Adults, Amber Salo

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mental and emotional benefits of dance in young adults. The researcher directed and produced a free, one-day dance workshop that served as the format for the research event. The study involved sixty-three dance students, ranging in age from fourteen through twenty-five, including all years of high school, college, and post-graduation. The classes offered as part of this study were geared toward the joys of dance, setting and attaining goals, having an open, growth mindset, and being self-confident. The study incorporated both qualitative and quantitative research as a means to answer three …

Patient Knowledge About Disease Self-Management Of Cirrhosis, Trinh Xuan Thuy

Master's Theses

This study aimed to define the level of understanding of self-management for patients with liver cirrhosis. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. Thirty cirrhotic patients (14 females and 16 males) in the Gastroenterology Department of University Medical Center, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam participated in answering the questionnaire to evaluate their knowledge about liver disease self-management. The majority of cirrhotic patients had an unsatisfactory level of knowledge regarding self management of their disease, particularly in terms of recognizing and preventing complications from hepatic encephalopathy, monitoring for liver cancer, and awareness of medications they should not use. Implications of the …

Evaluation Of Nurses' Perceptions Before And After Applying "I Pass (The) Baton", Tran Thanh Long

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate nurses’ perceptions before and after applying “I Pass (The) Baton” at University Medical Center at Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Hand-off relates to transmission of patient information across clinical teams. This process required a standardized communication framework to avoid medical gaps related to the loss of vital information and emphasize patient safety. The quasi experimential method with an educational intervention to explore nurses’ awareness was evaluated by the TeamSTEPPS Perception Questionaire (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2012). This questionnaire included items on the Team Strucutre, the Leadership, the Situation Monitoring, …

An Analysis Of Registered Sex Offender Reentry Challenges In Mississippi, Kitsya Cordova

Master's Theses

Sex offenders are often considered the most dangerous type of criminal by the public, which is a common misconception (Levenson & D’Amora, 2007; Tewksbury & Copes, 2012). Registered sex offenders usually have the lowest recidivism rates when compared to other offenders (Robbers, 2009). The issue is that registered sex offenders are targeted by multiple set of laws such as the Wetterling Act, Megan’s Law, Adam Walsh Act, among others, Such sex offender legislation creates multiple reentry challenges that other type of offenders may not face (Grossi, 2017; Tewksbury & Copes, 2012). By using secondary data from Griffin and Evans (2019), …

The Effect Of Interpersonal And Institutional Trust On Organizational Commitment In Voluntary Settings, Kayla Nicole Brewster

Master's Theses

The goal of this research was to explore how institutional and interpersonal trust affect organizational commitment within voluntary organizations. This research focused on civic engagement and religious organizations as forms of voluntary organizations and utilized previously validated instruments as the means to collect data. The participants were obtained by a random sample of students, staff, and faculty from a mid-sized university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States and the data collection method was an email with a description of the project and a link to the survey. The survey responses resulted in a sample size of 189 …

Processing Speed For Action And Semantic Memory, Tyler A. Surber

Master's Theses

Previous research suggests that the processing of affordances may require more perceptually relevant information than words can provide (Surber et al., 2018; Chainay & Humphreys, 2002). The present study investigates this hypothesis with the shoebox task used in Bowers and Turner (2003). A list of 81 object nouns (targets) and associated features (primes: affordance, semantic, and non-associates) was compiled from the McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, and McNorgan (2005) norms. Affordances denote possibilities for action in relation to the object (e.g. chair – sit), whereas semantic features indicate definitional characteristics (e.g. chair – has legs). Affordances and semantic features served as primes …

Distribution, Abundance, And Trophic Ecology Of Anguilliform Leptocephali In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Lillian Collins

Master's Theses

All species of anguilliform eels have pelagic leptocephalus larval stages, which provides a means of monitoring the population dynamics of these otherwise cryptic and hard to study species. The goals of this study were to: 1) describe the distribution and abundance of anguilliform eel leptocephali across the northern Gulf of Mexico, and 2) examine the trophic ecology of leptocephali using stable isotope values of carbon and nitrogen (δ13C and δ15N). A 25-year (1990-2014) ichthyoplankton dataset provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) was used to examine interannual variations in leptocephalus distribution, …

Supporting Parents In Title I Schools: A Qualitative Study Of Parent Engagement, Vanessa Sanchez

Master's Theses

This qualitative study focuses on how to improve parent engagement in Title I schools from parents’ point of view. The purpose of this project is to understand parent involvement in a Northern California school and how to improve it. This paper offers insights from parents’ perspectives how parents view the education process. The focus is on their experiences and how to support all parents. The lenses of the study is viewed through a critical pedagogy and social cognitive theory. All five of the parents being interviewed had suggestions on how to improve parent engagement in Title I Schools. The three …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The National Collegiate Athletic Association Response To The Federal Investigation Into Men’S College Basketball, Max Klein

Master's Theses

On September 27, 2017, the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) arrested ten individuals connected to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men’s basketball for charges, including bribery, wire fraud, and money laundering. In response to the public release of this investigation, the NCAA formed the Commission on College Basketball (CCB) to address “fairness and opportunity for college athletes, coupled with the enforcement capability to hold accountable those who undermine the standards of our community” (Emmert, 2017). Ultimately, the purpose of this study is to analyze the NCAA’s response to the FBI investigation into men’s college basketball. The creation of the …

Social Activism: Teaching Activism Through Socially Conscious Plays, Alanna Kiewe

Master's Theses

Students derived numerous benefits while participating in theater by gaining confidence and social skills. To help navigate these skills, this thesis showed that using a socially conscious play helped participants gain empathy, an understanding of their community, and an interest in social activism. This protocol outlined the process of producing And a Child Shall Lead, by Michael Slade. The entire process of working on Slade’s play allowed students in middle school to gain an understanding of the Holocaust and helped them appreciate how social activism can shape communities.

Using Self-Compassionate Focused Writing Prompts By Middle School Students In The Dance Classroom: Shaping How Students Respond To Their Art And View Themselves As Artists, Kathleen Stein

Master's Theses

Stein, Kathleen Noel. Using Self-compassionate Focused Writing Prompts by Middle School Students in the Dance Classroom: Shaping How Students Respond to Their Art and View Themselves as Artists. Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 2019. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using self-compassionate focused journal writing as a way to induce a more self-compassionate and less self-critical view in students of themselves and their art. This study examinedthe connection between the use of self-compassionate focused journal writing prompts and an increase in the levels of self-compassion that a student feltfor him or …

The Influence Of Job Motivation On Nurse Retention: A Study Of Vietnamese Private Hospital., Hoa Nguyen

Master's Theses

For years, the concept of motivation has been a popular topic of discussion among various researchers and practitioners. Nowadays, managers are continuously challenged to perceive the motivated factors in their employees in order to promoting the retention of the motivated workforce. Healthcare worker retention is critical for health system functionality; however, the key issue is how to best motivate and retain health care professionals. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of literature on measuring motivation of health workers in Vietnam especially among nurses. For this reason, the study was conducted to survey the influence of job motivation on nurse retention in …

Tectonic Setting And Timing Of Deformation In The Big Thompson Canyon, Northern Colorado Front Range, Simone Muller

Master's Theses

The 1.8-1.6 Ga rocks of the western United States were formed through accretionary tectonics either by collision of juvenile island-arcs or by cycles of extension-accretion. For the juvenile island-arc model, basins between the arcs are expected to be older than the arcs and long periods of time (>10-20 Myr) may exist between basin formation, arc formation, and the deformation caused by their accretion. In contrast, the extension-accretion model predicts sedimentation within extensional basins must be younger than the earliest arcs and may be deformed by accretion shortly (~10-20 Myr) after formation. The Big Thompson Canyon area, between Loveland and …

Evaluation Of Drought-Resistant Plants For Beneficial Insect Attraction, Benjamin Gluck

Master's Theses

Beneficial insects, such as natural enemies and pollinators, provide billions of dollars of ecological services to agricultural operations. However, as the climate changes, Connecticut is projected to have longer periods of drought. This could negatively impact the availability of flowering plants, and the beneficial insects who rely on their floral resources.

This research focuses on the diversity of insect visitors to five species of drought-resistant plants at the Plant Science Research and Educational facility. Over the two-year study the visitation frequency of pollinators and beneficial insects on the plants was observed, insect samples were collected for further identification. Agastache foeniculum …

Line As Descriptor, Adel A. Alanmi

Master's Theses

I develop art that speak both to me and to others about the beauty of art. I have always been interested in art since I was young, and the interest has grown tremendously since then. As an artist , I always feel the urge to come up with new ways of interacting with the world and holding on to it for as long a s possible , although their comes a time you have to let go and create room for new memories. Art serves as a haven as I can distant myself from all the stress and craziness life …

Changes In The Cognitive Dynamics Of Problem-Solving, Shireena Mcgee

Master's Theses

How do humans develop the ability to approach and solve diverse, attentionally-demanding problems? Current work on problem-solving focuses on well-defined problems in which explicit task constraints directly inform the planning and execution of behaviors. However, in situations that might be more informative for naturalistic learning and problem-solving, what is necessary to solve problems when task constraints, and thus planning abilities, are not as easily accessible? Executive functions such as selective attention and working memory seem fundamental to these types of activities, yet there is not a clear account of how exactly the coordination of these cognitive processes contribute dynamically to …

Comparison Of Modern Controls And Reinforcement Learning For Robust Control Of Autonomously Backing Up Tractor-Trailers To Loading Docks, Journey Mcdowell

Master's Theses

Two controller performances are assessed for generalization in the path following task of autonomously backing up a tractor-trailer. Starting from random locations and orientations, paths are generated to loading docks with arbitrary pose using Dubins Curves. The combination vehicles can be varied in wheelbase, hitch length, weight distributions, and tire cornering stiffness. The closed form calculation of the gains for the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) rely heavily on having an accurate model of the plant. However, real-world applications cannot expect to have an updated model for each new trailer. Finding alternative robust controllers when the trailer model is changed was …

A Rotating Aperture Mask For Small Telescopes, Edward L. Foley

Master's Theses

Observing the dynamic interaction between stars and their close stellar neighbors is key to establishing the stars’ orbits, masses, and other properties. Our ability to visually discriminate nearby stars is limited by the power of our telescopes, posing a challenge to astronomers at small observatories that contribute to binary star surveys. Masks placed at the telescope aperture promise to augment the resolving power of telescopes of all sizes, but many of these masks must be manually and repetitively reoriented about the optical axis to achieve their full benefits. This paper introduces a design concept for a mask rotation mechanism that …

Electrocardiographic Findings During Standard Hands Only Cpr And Hands Only Cpr Plus Pedal Cpr In Senior Rescuers, Laura Melany Yassa

Master's Theses

The standard first aid for a heart attack resulting in cardiopulmonary arrest is effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Chest compressions are most commonly performed on a flat surface with the rescuer kneeling next to the victim with one hand on top of the other on the sternum and elbows straight. This technique of being on the ground may be challenging for those without the mobility and strength to get up and down from the ground. In 2005, the American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines listed “pedal”, or heel, compression as an acceptable alternative to standard chest compressions (Trenkamp & Perez, 2015). That …

Effects Of Intertidal Position On Metabolism And Behavior In The Acorn Barnacle, Balanus Glandula, Kali Horn

Master's Theses

The intertidal zone is characterized by persistent, tidally-driven fluctuations in both abiotic (e.g., temperature, [O₂], salinity) and biotic (e.g., food availability, predation) conditions, which makes this a very physiologically challenging habitat for resident organisms. The magnitude and degree of variability of these environmental stressors differs between intertidal zones, with the most extreme physiological stress often being experienced by organisms in the high intertidal. Given that many of the fluctuating conditions in this environment are primary drivers of metabolic rate (e.g., temperature, [O₂], food availability), we hypothesized that sessile conspecifics residing in different tidal zones would exhibit …

The Democratization And Development Of Cell-Free Protein Synthesis, Max Z. Levine

Master's Theses

Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) using crude lysates has developed into a robust platform technology over the last 60 years to express numerous types of recombinant proteins. The open-nature, elimination of reliance on cell viability, and focus of all energy towards production of the protein of interest represent substantial advantages of CFPS over in vivo protein expression methods. CFPS has provided new opportunities across a series of research fields that include metabolic engineering, therapeutic and vaccine development, education, biosensors, and many more. In recent years, optimizations of CFPS have even allowed the platform to reach the industrial level of protein production. …

Advancements In Novel Material Rfid-Based Crack Sensing And Bridge Weigh In Motion, Benjamin Bruciati

Master's Theses

The current infrastructure in the United States is continually deteriorating. Smart structures in civil engineering are becoming increasingly popular due to the performance enhancing systems they contain. Many of these systems are related to sensing and monitoring the structure. Structural health monitoring (SHM) has state of the art technological advances in both these fields. This thesis contributes to the advancements in the SHM field, particularly crack detection and Bridge Weigh-In-Motion (BWIM). The crack detection research uses existing radio frequency identification (RFID) crack detection technology and applies it to a novel material, Ultra High-Performance Concrete (UHPC). This system uses backscatter power …

Dance Competitions: The Culture, The Training, And The Effects On Young Dancers, Teresa Schmitt

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to assist educators, students, and families, in understanding the advantages and disadvantages of participating in competition dance training as it exists in private studios. The researcher evaluated perceptions of competitive dance training through the lens of nine high school aged dancers who participate or did participate in such activities, with a goal of uncovering how this training experience affected them and what they thought about it. The research instrument used in this study was an electronic survey that included questions that produced responses that were analyzed either quantitively or qualitatively, depending on the nature …

Signal Integrity Optimization Of Rf/Microwave Transmission Lines In Multilayer Pcbs, Justin Thien Le

Master's Theses

While allowing for flexible trace routing and device miniaturization, multilayer printed circuit boards (PCB) suffer from performance issues at high frequency due to the impedance mismatch caused by vertical transitions. In this paper, a process for optimizing the high-speed performance of microstrip to stripline transitions in multilayer PCBs is demonstrated. This includes strategic tuning of via dimensions using time-domain reflectometry and an analysis of the use of shielding vias to prevent parasitic cavity resonance. Simulations of optimized 2-layer, 4-layer, and 6-layer microstrip to stripline transitions show a return loss of 20 dB up to 7 GHz. To demonstrate a useful …

The Effects Of Culture And Gender Roles On The Efficacy Of Social Support As A Coping Mechanism For Stress, Quy Minh Vu

Master's Theses

Though social support has been thought to be an effective coping mechanism for handling distress, this generalization comes with limitations in that social support is highly intertwined with specific characteristics that could alter both help-seeking behavior and its outcomes. The present study examined the effects of cultural differences on the effectiveness of differing social support sources (i.e., parents versus peers) between European American and Asian/Asian American samples, as well as the influence of gender role orientation on social support outcomes. Ninety-Five European American and Asian/Asian American participants were assigned to either a parent or peer social support letter task prior …

Development Of A Computational Elbow Joint Model To Analyze The Effects Of Synovial Fluid On Articular Cartilage During Joint Motion, Abhishek Yellapragada

Master's Theses

While significant advances have been made in the development of computational elbow joint models, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in the elbow joint has not yet been explored. The objective of this study is to develop a computational elbow joint model to simulate the effects of synovial fluid on articular cartilage during flexion, extension, pronation, and supination. The model was developed with anatomically accurate 3D bone geometries; articular cartilage geometries that were derived from the 3D bone geometries; ligaments defined as linear springs; muscles embedded as joint non-linear stiffness; and a fluid domain that encompassed the joint articulations with a homogenous, incompressible, …