Digital Commons Network^™

Wailing For My Cultura: Disenfranchised Grief Among Mexican Americans Navigating A Bicultural Identity, Sandra Ramirez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a gap in grief research in the field of Communication that is related to the Mexican American experience. Mexican Americans navigating two often opposing cultures may experience additional complications as they attempt to maneuver the differences in grief rituals that align with either American or Mexican customs. This may result in the bereaved experiencing disenfranchised grief. This study aims to examine the significance of Mexican American bicultural grief rituals as a third option to determine how that relates to disenfranchised grief.

The first part of this study is a textual analysis of media coverage of Mexican American grief …

Rational Design Of Multifunctional Nanocatalysts For Environmental Remediation And Energy Conversion Technologies, Md Ariful Ahsan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The discovery of efficient and sustainable carbon-based nanotechnologies to solve both the scarcity of drinking water and global energy crisis has become a paramount task in the last decades. Owed to the fast population growth and industrialization of the modern society, access to potable water and clean energy technologies is becoming very hard around the globe. Water pollutants have become a serious threat to the environment and ecology because of their toxic nature. Parallelly, the current hydrocarbon-based fuel industries are generating high levels of contamination across the planet, making imperative the development of cleaner energy technologies. In this regard, the …

¡Sí Se Puede!: Understanding The Experiences Of Latina Students During Their Doctoral Journey At A Hispanic-Serving Institution, Flor Del Rocio Acevedo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The existing body of literature on Latinas has mostly been focused on the undergraduate student experience (Hernandez, 2002; Hurtado et al., 1996; Kena et al., 2016; Tinto & Goodsell, 1994; Torres, 2004). Additionally, despite the increasing participation of women in graduate education since the 1980s (Walker et al., 2008), Latinas have been and continue to be underrepresented in doctoral programs and the professorate (Myers, 2016). In spite of recent increases in enrollment, Latinas attained just 8.8 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded from 2018-2019 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). As Latinas are projected to account for a third of …

Addressing Security And Privacy Issues By Analyzing Vulnerabilities In Iot Applications, Francsico Javier Candelario Burgoa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Internet of Things (IoT) environment has been expanding rapidly for the past few years into several areas of our lives, from factories, to stores and even into our own homes. All these new devices in our homes make our day-to-day lives easier and more comfortable with less effort on our part, converting our simple houses into smart homes. This increase in inter-connectivity brings multiple benefits including the improvement in energy efficiency in our homes, however it also brings with it some potential dangers since more points of connection mean more potential vulnerabilities in our grid. These vulnerabilities bring security …

Effects Of Coated/Uncoated Copper-Based Nanoparticles And Compounds On Rice (Oryza Sativa) And Soybean (Glycine Max) Plants, Chaoyi Deng

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Engineering nanoparticles (ENPs) have been widely used in industry due to their promising chemical, physical, electrical, magnetic, optical, and electronic properties. Copper-based ENPs are used as gas sensors, catalysts, semiconductors and agricultural products, among others. Because of their antifungal and antibacterial properties, they are used in agriculture as insecticides, herbicides and antifungal agents. Due to their mass production and use, ENPs are likely to be ubiquitous in our in the environment in the near future. In addition, metal nanoparticles are usually coated with organic compounds to enhance the properties of the nanoparticles. Previous studies have shown that copper-based ENPs can …

"And Some, I Assume, Are Good People:" A Closer Look At Hispanic Immigration And The Code Of The Street, Nicole Cebak

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although research shows that increasing neighborhood levels of immigration tend to be associated with lower crime, little attention has been paid to why this is the case-- in essence what variables might help account for, or explain, these findings. Thus, the focus of this study is to explore a cultural explanation, specifically whether adherence to the code of the street helps to explain this relationship. Further, this study is looking to find the differences between immigrant generations as well as recent and established immigrants as it pertains to adherence to the code of the street. Using a random sample of …

Geophysical Studies Of The Characteristics Of Fluvial And Desert Soils In Rio Grande Valley Of West Texas And Southern New Mexico, Aimee V. Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Agriculture in arid lands, such as in the Rio Grande Valley in west Texas, relies on flood irrigation. However, flood irrigation can cause salt buildup and greenhouse gas emissions associated with pedogenic carbonate precipitation. The ability of irrigation to promote crop growth is influenced by geochemical and hydrological processes controlled, in part, by soil grain size, larger-scale soil structure, and mineralogy. This study investigated soils from 3 regions 1) A pecan orchard in the river valley of Tornillo, TX, with soil derived from fluvial deposits, undergoing flood irrigation every 2 to 3 weeks in spring through fall, 2) The El …

Tectonomagmatic Evolution Of Northwestern Mexico, And Applications Of Machine Learning In Economic Geology, Jose Antonio Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The work presented here was conducted in two study areas: La Preciosa mining project (Chapters 1 and 2) and Ray Mine (Chapter 3). Chapter 1 of this dissertation contributes to the tectonomagmatic evolution of northwestern Mexico by focusing on the temporal changes in magma source(s) regions, magma generation processes, and tectonic implications. In this chapter, I provide thin section analyses, whole rock geochemistry, in-situ zircon U-Pb ages and Hf isotope compositions of subsurface lithologies from La Preciosa mining project; located in the northwestern corner of Mesa Central, Durango, Mexico. The newly acquired data identified five magmatic events. The first consists …

The Impact Of Verb Type On The Variability Of The Comp-Trace Effect, Haydee Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The C-t effect has been extensively researched with regards to its variability, however, matrix verbs have not generally been taken into account. The present study investigates whether verbs believe, doubt, know, realize, say and think differ in the strength of the C-t effect they induce— exploring syntactic analyses, epistemicity and grammaticalization to possibly identify what characteristics of verbs dictate the strength of the C-t effect. Subjects (n=44) were asked to complete 1 of 2 Grammaticality Judgement Tasks (GJT), which asked them to rate the grammaticality of items which included matched items with that involving both subject extractions, constructions without extractions, …

Reconstructing The Transition From Laramide Contraction To Rio Grande Rift Extension, Aaron Conley

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Exposure of tilted Eocene-Oligocene volcanic and sedimentary units unconformably overlying folded and thrusted Mesozoic rocks in the southern Indio Mountains provide an important geologic record of the transition from Laramide contraction to Rio Grande rift extension. Detailed geologic mapping and cross-section reconstruction combined with sedimentary analysis and geo/thermochronologic methods are used to test the hypothesis that Laramide contractional structures and post-Laramide topography focused ignimbrite and sedimentary deposition within two paleovalleys located in the northwest and northeast portions of the study area. Laramide deformation in the study area is confined to Mesozoic units and includes a series of low-angle thrust faults …

The Network Link Outlier Factor (Nlof) For Localizing Network Faults, Christopher Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This work presents the Network Link Outlier Factor (NLOF), a data analytics pipeline for network fault detection and localization solution that consists of four stages. In the first stage, flow record throughput values are clustered in two sub-stages: using Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) and then a novel domain-specific ThroughPut Cluster (TPCluster) technique. In the second stage, Flow Outlier Factor (FOF) scores are computed for each flow. In the third stage, flows are traced onto the network. Finally, in the fourth stage, each link is given a Network Link Outlier Factor (NLOF) score which is the ratio …

Goes-16 Level 2 Land Surface Temperature Product-Filling For Cloud Masked Data, Guadalupe Ortega

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The GOES-16 satellite ground segment team develops different levels of environmental products and makes them readily available to the public. The level 2 Land Surface Temperature (LST) product aims to provide a remote measurement of the Earth’s surface temperature every hour. LST is of fundamental importance to many aspects of the geosciences, for example, to study the Urban Heat Islands (UHI) effect. The product however, does not provide values for pixels where the satellite imager’s view is obstructed by clouds, as determined by a cloud mask intermediate product. The objective of this thesis is to estimate LST in the cloud …

Linking Plot And Landscape Level Phenology, Alejandra Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Plant phenology has become popularize since the 1990s to help understand the effects of climate change on vegetation, it is a way to study the patterns of leaf-out, flowering, and senescing of the life-cycle of the plant. The timing from start of season (SOS) to end-of-season (EOS) of plant leaf-out development has important implication on ecosystem productivity and carbon cycling across ecological scales from individual trees to whole regions. The need for plant phenology studies in dryland are highly anticipated, since they make up 40% of the terrestrial landscape and recently have shown the play an important role in the …

Long-Term Effects Of Adolescent Fluoxetine Exposure On Hippocampal Gene Expression In Male C57bl/6 Mice, Anapaula Themann

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mood-related disorders, including depression and anxiety, are prevalent among children and adolescents. This poses a public health challenge, given their adverse impact on these young populations. Treatment with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine (FLX) is the first line of pharmacological intervention in pediatric patients suffering from affect-related illnesses. Although the use of this antidepressant has been deemed efficacious in the juvenile population, the enduring neurobiological consequences of adolescent FLX exposure are not well understood. For this reason, we explored for persistent molecular adaptations, in the adult hippocampus, as a function of adolescent FLX pretreatment. To do this, we administered …

Identification Of Prostate Cancer-Associated Genomic Alterations By Analyzing Variant Frequencies, Functional Effects, And Protein Interactions, Bofei Wang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the ever-increasing varieties of sequencing techniques, the volume and scope of genomic data are explosively expanded, offering unparalleled opportunities for researchers to study gene-disease associations, identify biomarkers, and thus develop more effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. In this project, I have developed a computational workflow and a new scoring scheme, which combine statistical frequency-based analyses with two well-established functional effect prediction tools FATHMM and PROVEAN, to evaluate nonsynonymous GSVs and identify potential cancer-related protein-coding genes for downstream enrichment and protein-protein interaction (PPI) studies.

This method has been applied to process a collection of 503 whole exome sequencing datasets for …

Rewriting The Graduate Experience: A Study Of The Writing Experiences Of University Of Texas At El Paso Graduate Students Across Disciplines, Jennifer L. Wilhite

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Graduate writing can manifest as a barrier to successful and timely degree completion as writing is the primary modality in which graduate programs use to evaluate depth of learning and quality of knowledge created. Native language status, inexperience with advanced academic genres, time away from the academy, and socialization struggles are factors that can aggravate writing challenges. The purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand the graduate writing experiences of twelve women returning to the academy. The study asks if writing manifests as a barrier to completing their graduate programs, ascertains what kinds of graduate-level writing supports they …

Predicting Zero Bin In The Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry: Machine Learning Algorithms, Yazmin Montoya

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The semiconductor industry has faced supply chain manufacturing shortages that ultimately led to a worldwide chip shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic. These chip manufacturers use sophisticated and advanced manufacturing machinery in their fabs to manufacture chips. As experienced during the pandemic, manufacturing unavailability is often due to the lack of critical manufacturing-related spare parts. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms to identify significant factors contributing to manufacturing part outages (i.e., zero-bin) to keep manufacturing equipment running at total capacity within the organization. We propose clustering methods to segment the data and use logistic regression, logistic lasso regression, …

Computational Study Of Grain Structure Evolution In Cdte/Cds Via Molecular Dynamics, Sharmin Abdullah

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Grain structure analysis plays an important role in the identification of grain boundary characteristics, which can affect the efficiency of Cadmium Telluride/Cadmium Sulfide (CdTe/CdS) solar cells since they can act as recombination centers for carriers. Computer simulations such as molecular dynamics (MD) can be a very convenient and cost- effective method of investigating the growth evolution and grain structure of materials. The recently reported and experimentally validated MD simulated growth of polycrystalline CdTe/CdS films shows that these materials mostly consist of zinc blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) structures, along with highly disordered atoms. However, little information about the semiconductor compound …

The Physiological Factors Of Diabetes And Their Effect On The Cognitive And Emotional Functioning In Older Populations: A Secondary Data Analysis, Celeste Anahi Alvidrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: The rates of Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) have increased over the past 20 years in all age groups. The physiological factors that underlie T2D could have impact on specific brain pathways that support cognitive and emotional functioning. Aims and Objective: The goal of this study was to examine whether older Mexican American individuals with a history of T2D were more likely to develop later cognitive impairment and/or depression. Hypotheses: It was predicted that elderly participants (mean age at time of interview = 87.87 years) with a history of T2D onset prior to age 65, are more likely to have …

Level Of Service For Parking Facilities Based On Search Time, Fernie Briones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Level of Service (LOS) is a term used by transportation engineers to identify the quality of service of transportation facilities to the public. The Highway Capacity Manual has yet to provide guidance on LOS analysis for parking facilities. Parking search time has been proposed by several researchers as the indicator for the LOS criteria for parking facilities. This thesis investigated the use of search time for LOS analysis for on street and off-street parking facilities. The analysis of LOS for off-street parking focused on the measurement of parking search time. Three search time measurement methods have been proposed: the license …

Drying Of Digested Biosolids For Weight Reduction Prior To Disposal, Juan Manuel Canales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Disposal of belt filter pressed digested sludge (known as biosolids) to landfills cost El Paso Water about $1.1 million in the past year. With an increasing population, the amount of influent wastewater to El Paso treatment plants will also increase, resulting in increased biosolids generation and biosolids disposal costs. A method for reducing biosolids transportation cost is biosolids drying.The cost that El Paso Water pays for transporting biosolids to a dedicated landfill facility is based on the weight of the biosolids that are carried. Biosolids collected from the belt filter presses is about fifteen percent solids by weight, with water …

Utilizing Computational Approaches To Study Tubulin- Tubulin Electrostatic Interactions, Tolulope Ayodeji Ale

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Microtubules play significant roles in transporting cargos within the cell, as well as the cell cycle. They are essentially the highway for the transportation of cell organelles. Understanding the interactions among microtubule components is crucial for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. In this study, we utilize a series of computational approaches to study the electrostatic interactions at the binding interfaces of interacting tubulin monomers. Our study revealed that the electrostatic attractive interactions in the αβ tubulin dimer is the strongest while the interaction between two αβ tubulin dimers in the longitude direction is the weakest. The result identified …

Thermodynamic Modeling Of Aqueous Fe-Cu-As-Sb-Bi-H2so4 Solutions And Its Application For Redox Potential Determination In Copper Electrorefining From 25°C To 70°C, Yongteng Dong

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Impurity elements in copper electrorefining (ER) electrolyte have been becoming a crucial issue on purity of copper cathode. The objective of this doctoral research is to develop a speciation model to understand impurity behavior in aqueous ER solutions.

A thermodynamic model of Fe(II)-Fe(III)-Cu(II)-H2SO4-H2O system is developed and shown to reliably simulate the species distribution in industrial copper electrorefining electrolyte from 25°C to 70°C. The previously developed model of Fe(II)-Fe(III)-H2SO4-H2O system under leaching conditions was first evaluated. It has proved that its applicability can be extended to much higher acid concentration (185 g/L) and high amount of copper (40-50 g/L). Cu(II) …

The Latinx Community, Anti-Black Racism And Forward- Looking Collective Moral Responsibility, Julisa Jazsmine Fernandez-Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the literature on collective responsibility, theorists have utilized different methods in order to argue collective responsibility can be attributed to collectives. Some theorists have referred to Strawsonâ??s account of participant reactive attitudes in order to support their claims that certain collectives can be the appropriate targets of reactive attitudes (2008). According to Strawson (2008), attributing reactive attitudes, such as guilt, praise, hurt feelings, obligation, etc. towards others and ourselves is what constitutes moral responsibility. Though Strawsonâ??s account only focuses on individual responsibility, theorists, such as Deborah Tollefsen and Kay Mathiesen, have extended his account to support their claims about …

In Vitro Investigation Of Tumor Selective Piperidones As Therapeutic Agents Against Leukemia Cancer Cells, Lisett Contreras

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cancer is a continuous global health issue. It is the second leading cause of death behind heart disease. Disparities across the emergence of cancer and resulting fatalities raise the importance of researching the disease. Treatments are available for certain types of cancers. However, these are typically accompanied by residual problems including side effects and the possibility for relapse. Some treatments attack all cells, leading to unwarranted side effects that make the possibility of living a comfortable life nearly impossible. Other treatments are specific to certain genetic alterations, making them only useful for a small percentage of patients. Not one treatment …

Determination Of Faculty And Staff Parking Permit Prices On University Campuses, Rodrigo Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

University campuses are the origins and destinations of a variety of trips generated by faculty, staff, students, and visitors. The vast number of trips that are attracted to university campuses result in parking congestion issues. In order to manage campus parking demand, universities establish Transportation and Parking Offices (TPO). This research has developed a two-stage procedure that can be used by TPOs as a tool for determining faculty and staff parking permit prices on university campuses. The first stage of the procedure is the determination of a single campus-wide base price (which may be regarded as the reference price or …

Supercritical Co2 Recompression Closed Brayton Cycle Analysis, Andres Eduardo Gutierrez Hernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On this research, the results of an analysis made of a Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (sCO2) Recuperated Closed Brayton Cycle (RCBC) done by performing theorical calculations and comparing it to the results obtained with the use of the software ASPEN Plus will be presented. To demonstrate and determine that this software is a useful tool for modeling the proposed type of cycle, a preliminary comparison was made to verify with previous studies found in literature. A comparison and analysis between the possible working fluids and thermal energy sources was also performed to emphasize the decision of using CO2 as the cycle …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Tin (Sn) Incorporated Ga2o3, Guillermo Nicolas Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this work, we report on the synthesis, characterization of tin (Sn) incorporated gallium oxide Ga2O3 compounds, also included in this work is the effect of tin concentration related to the optical and electrochemical properties. The Sn incorporation into Ga2O3 creates a significant reduction in the bandgap and causes a nonlinear optical activity as the concentration varies. Substantial investigation performed to the structure, phase, and morphology of the mixed compounds governed by the stoichiometry equation Ga2−2xSnxO3-ɗ indicates that the Sn incorporation from 0.00 ≤ x ≤ 0.30 has a significant effect on these properties. To synthesize the Ga-Sn-O compounds a …

Rarified Water Vapor Deposition From Icy Lunar Regolith On An Engineered Cold Plate, Nathaniel Ian Jurado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This work presents the fundamental ice collection experiments conducted under rarefied flow regime to develop a high-capacity cryogenic heat pipe for ice recollection on the Moon’s surface. Preliminary ice collection experiments are conducted under cryogenic vacuum environment of 1.5 × 10-2 Torr and -60 °C. The characterization of water vapor sublimation rates from icy lunar regolith (JSC-1A) at various heating powers is established by utilizing a cryogenic thermal vacuum chamber (T-VAC). A custom-built engineered cold plate is designed, manufactured and tested at various degrees of subcooling and vapor sublimation rates. A thin film heater is embedded within the cold plate …

Developing And Validating The Student Assessment-Based Feedback Literacy (Safl) Instrument: A Mixed-Methods Approach, Yiyu Liao

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Feedback has great influences on student retention and completion, especially on the minority students in higher education. However, the debates on the paradoxical difference between feedback’s theoretical potential and its effect in actual practice remain unsettled. This study seeks to address some primary issues in feedback research by conceptualizing student assessment-based feedback literacy (SAFL) and developing the SAFL instrument. The systematic literature reviews in the study identify two trends of assessment-based feedback in higher education: no universal definition of assessment feedback and the lack of explicit understanding of how assessment and feedback literacies interacted. By building on the exiting student …