Digital Commons Network^™

Meaningful Pattern Recognition And Leadership, Quinn Bissonette

Theses and Graduate Projects

Leadership is more impactful and inspiring when leaders authentically engage individuals. Insights from research support leadership authenticity, transformational leadership, and the importance of meaningful recognition. Nursing theory and caring science value the worth of recognition. A conceptual model combining nursing theory with leadership theory creates a stimulating practice model to generate successful transformational leadership and promote self actualization. The use of Newman's (2008) nursing theory of health as an expanding consciousness, in this conceptual model, validates the role of nursing in leadership and the unique contributions it can afford to leadership application.

Performance Characteristics Of Lithium Coin Cells For Use In Wireless Sensing Systems, Yin Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the pulsed discharge behavior of low-rate lithium coin cells in wireless sensing systems is critical to prolong the operating life and/or reduce the size of battery-powered WSs. This dissertation presents the battery transient analysis for a sensor duty cycle, experimental studies for sustained pulse discharge cycling, and investigation on recharge strategies for a battery/power harvesting hybrid system for WSs. The transient behavior of the lithium coin cells during pulse discharge and subsequent relaxation was investigated with single-pulse experiments and theoretical analysis. The voltage response for a pulsed discharge had two parts: a region of rapid voltage change and a …

Gothic Romance And Poe's Authorial Intent In "The Fall Of The House Of Usher", Robert F. Hiatt

English Theses

In my thesis I will discuss Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” in relation to the expectations that scholars have of the gothic genre. I will break this project into four chapters, along with an introduction: (Ch.1) a critical review of scholarship on Poe’s “Usher” that will demonstrate the difficulty in coming to a critical consensus on the tale, (Ch.2) a discussion of Brown’s outline of Gothic conventions, (Ch.3) a look at Poe’s “The Philosophy of Composition” juxtaposed with Aristotle’s Poetics to illumine aspects of Poe’s approach to writing and how it has been informed, and …

Resilience, Insight, And Causation As Moderators Of The Relationships Between Trauma, Perceived Stress, Distress, Depression, Salivary Cortisol, And Dhea Through A Writing Intervention In A Diverse Sample Of Hiv-Positive Individuals, Courtney Biondi Kelsch

Open Access Theses

Background: Adverse psychological factors such as depression and stressful life events have been found to accelerate HIV disease progression, while positive factors such as optimism and spirituality have been found to slow progression to AIDS. The potentially protective role of the positive psychological factor resilience in HIV/AIDS has not been studied extensively. The relationship of resilience to depression, trauma, stress, and stress-related biological markers in HIV remains to be elucidated. In addition, written emotional expression interventions have shown promise in positively influencing HIV disease course, although the mechanisms require further study. Purpose: The aims of this study were to explore …

Investigation Of Inclusion Complexation Between Ferrocene Derivatives And Cucurbiturils, Wei Li

Open Access Dissertations

Cucurbiturils are synthetic macrocyclic molecules prepared by condensation reactions between glycouril and formaldehyde under acidic conditions. They feature a pumpkin-like shape with two identical carbonyl-rimed portals and a hydrophobic cavity.The number of glycouril units ranging from 5 to 8 and 10 leads to varying size of the cavity, and results in their different binding properties to numerous guest molecules. Among all the members of the cucurbituril family, cucurbit[7]uril (CB7) has drawn much attention in host-guest systems due to its high level aqueous solubility (20-30 mM) in neutral H [sub]2 O. Also, it exhibits a good ability to complex a variety …

Caribbean Bodyscapes: The Politics Of Sacred Citizenship And The Transpersonal Body, Josune Urbistondo

Open Access Dissertations

In this project I explore the relationship of sacred citizenship as an alternative and at times overlapping form of politics to national citizenship. Sacred citizenship creates a possibility of belonging for marginalized identities in Caribbean and Caribbean diasporic women’s writing. All the novels examined in this project, Cristina García’s Monkey Hunting (2004), Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night (2001), Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda (1998), Mayra Montero’s The Red of His Shadow (2001), Ana-Maurine Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt (2006), and Daína Chaviano’s The Island of Eternal Love (2008), depict protagonists that practice restricted versions of national citizenship. Due to varying degrees of …

Ampk And Akt Differentially Regulate The Upr In Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Therapeutic Implications., Jeffim N. Kuznetsov

Open Access Dissertations

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is the most common hematological malignancy and the main cause of cancer-related death in children. Current chemotherapy treatments based mainly on antifolate regimens have lead to high cure rates (≈80%), however event-free survival (EFS) for children and adults diagnosed with chemotherapy resistant phenotypes of ALL or after the relapse, continues to be dismal (EFS ∼10-20%). High-risk chemotherapy treatment based on intensification strategies and/or the use of stem cell transplantation have led to marginal improvements with limited impact on cure rates of resistant/refractory or relapsed ALL phenotypes. Our studies attempted to discover highly effective treatment strategies for …

The Effects Of Harvesting On Ecological Communities, Douglas Robert Scheib

Open Access Dissertations

In this paper, we derive and study a model for three species interacting via intraguild predation. We assume logistic growth for both the resource and consumer species, and functional responses with saturation, interspecific interference, and intraspecific interference for the predator-prey interactions. This leads to Beddington-DeAngelis-type functional responses. We consider local and global properties of the resource-consumer subsystem, and give conditions for permanence. We then consider permanence in the full system, along with the effects varying some of the parameters has on the invasibility and exclusion of each species. We also look at the effects that harvesting each species in the …

Social Skill Generalization With "Book In A Bag": Integrating Social Skills Into The Literacy Curriculum At A School-Wide Level, Buddy Dennis Alger

Theses and Dissertations

Social skill instruction is needed in both targeted and universal contexts. This research utilized a universal social skill intervention, Book in a Bag (BIB), to increase the use of a specific social skill by all students within an elementary school, including students identified as at-risk for behavior problems. BIB was designed to integrate social skills into the curriculum by way of children's literature, specifically a read-aloud book using a direct instruction strategy. The results indicate that BIB had a positive effect on students' behavior in the classroom both for students identified and those not identified as being at-risk for behavior …

香港現代主義文學與思潮 : 以「香港現代文學美術協會」為視點, Lei Zheng

Theses & Dissertations

在為冷戰陰雲籠罩的上世紀五、六十年代，香港因特殊的殖民政策而游離於中國大陸與台灣的威權政治之外，其文學藝術紮根的土壤可謂貧瘠卻又豐富。放逐於政治意識形態邊緣的香港文學，不但兀自生長出不同於中國現代文學敘事傳統的城市文學，更在此一失落與追尋中逐漸完成一套極富特色的文學/ 藝術敘述模式。而這套敘述模式的起點，正始於五、六十年代風行一時的現代主義思潮與文學實踐。

以香港現代文學美術協會為視點，不只是以該社團為一文學場域探索其運作與香港現代主義文學、思潮發生、發展之關係，更旨在以這一社團整體訴求為經，以每個個體於社團活動前後之不同境遇、經歷及創作為緯，編織第一代本土作家以來，「現代主義」與香港文學建構的譜系。在釐清協會成員的早期活動、人事往來和知識結構之後，本文先以六十年代現代主義運動最為矚目的成就——理論批評入手，試從香港的報刊生態闡釋這一批評論在文學理論貢獻之外更為重要的社會、文化及文體意義，並以存在主義思潮為例深入探討此類評論的傳播效果。後半部分則由具體文本入手，包括各種文體的文學及繪畫作品。 首先探討「香港現代主義文學」與都市文化的密切關係，在逐漸本土化的敘述中「東方」的意義及其表現，以及詩與畫之間的跨媒介創作的特點。而後進一 步以崑南及蔡炎培的創作為對象縷析這一代作家的浪漫精神及其時代意義。

Mcflow: Middleware For Mixed-Criticality Distributed Real-Time Systems, Huang-Ming Huang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Traditional fixed-priority scheduling analysis for periodic/sporadic task sets is based on the assumption that all tasks are equally critical to the correct operation of the system. Therefore, every task has to be schedulable under the scheduling policy, and estimates of tasks' worst case execution times must be conservative in case a task runs longer than is usual. To address the significant under-utilization of a system's resources under normal operating conditions that can arise from these assumptions, several \emph{mixed-criticality scheduling} approaches have been proposed. However, to date there has been no quantitative comparison of system schedulability or run-time overhead for the …

Do Extracurricular Activities Help Adolescents Develop Academic Self-Efficacy? Evidence For How And Why, Brianne Louisa Burr

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has linked extracurricular activities to academic performance for adolescents, but it remains unclear through what mechanisms they are linked. I posit that extracurricular activities lead to the development of academic self-efficacy, which in turn improves academic performance. This study examines the nature of the relationship between participation in extracurricular activities and academic self-efficacy for adolescents. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, I find that academic self-efficacy is positively related to participation in extracurricular activities. Results indicate that participation in a diversity of types of extracurricular activities such as in both sports and student government is …

Determination Of Phase Equilibria And The Critical Point Using Two-Phase Molecular Dynamics Simulations With Monte Carlo Sampling, Sonal Patel

Theses and Dissertations

The two-phase MD technique employed in this work determines the liquid and vapor phase densities from a histogram of molecular densities within phase clusters in the simulation cell using a new Monte Carlo (MC) sampling method. These equilibrium densities are then fitted in conjunction with known critical-point scaling laws to obtain the critical temperature, and the critical density. This MC post-processing method was found to be more easily implemented in code, and it is efficient and easily applied to complex, structured molecules. This method has been successfully applied and benchmarked for a simple Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluid and a structured molecule, …

A Location-Aware Architecture Supporting Intelligent Real-Time Mobile Applications, Sean J. Barbeau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents LAISYC, a modular location-aware architecture for intelligent real-time mobile applications that is fully-implementable by third party mobile app developers and supports high-precision and high-accuracy positioning systems such as GPS. LAISYC significantly improves device battery life, provides location data authenticity, ensures security of location data, and significantly reduces the amount of data transferred between the phone and server. The design, implementation, and evaluation of LAISYC using real mobile phones include the following modules: the GPS Auto-Sleep module saves battery energy when using GPS, maintaining acceptable movement tracking (approximately 89% accuracy) with an approximate average doubling of battery life. …

On The Automatic Recognition Of Human Activities Using Heterogeneous Wearable Sensors, Oscar David Lara Yejas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Delivering accurate and opportune information on people's activities and behaviors has become one of the most important tasks within pervasive computing. Its wide spectrum of potential applications in medical, entertainment, and tactical scenarios, motivates further

research and development of new strategies to improve accuracy, pervasiveness, and eciency.

This dissertation addresses the recognition of human activities (HAR) with wearable sensors in three main regards: In the rst place, physiological signals have been incorporated as a new source of information to improve the recognition accuracy achieved by conventional approaches, which rely on accelerometer signals solely. A new HAR system, Centinela, was born …

Factors In The Client-Clinician Interaction That Are Perceived To Influence Hearing Aid Adoption In First Time Hearing Aid Candidates And Their Rated Importance By Clients And Clinicians, Laya Poost-Foroosh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this dissertation was to gain a better understanding of the impact of the client-clinician interaction in the hearing aid adoption process. The specific goals of this dissertation were: 1) to identify factors in client-clinician interactions that were perceived by clients and clinicians to influence hearing aid adoption in first time adult hearing aid candidates, 2) to investigate the importance of the identified factors from clients and clinicians perspectives, and 3) to compare the importance of the identified factors between clients and clinicians. These goals were achieved using a mixed-methods approach.

Three studies were undertaken. In the first …

Deep Crustal Evolution Of The Western Churchill Province, Nunavut, Canada: Isotopic (U-Pb, O), Trace Element And Micro-Structural Analysis Of Zircon From Lower Crustal Xenoliths, Duane C. Petts

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Zircon from lower crustal xenoliths can preserve unique crustal formation records of unexplored levels of the lithosphere. The first such records for the western Churchill province (Nunavut, Canada) are presented here. Zircon SIMS U-Pb geochronology and oxygen isotope analysis were conducted on kimberlite-hosted granulite-facies xenoliths: four metabasites (#9864; #9865; #9866; #9870) from the Rankin Inlet region, and five metabasites (#10162; #10163; #10167; #10169; #10179) and three metatonalite/anorthosites (#10158; #10164; #10168) from the Repulse Bay region. For the Rankin Inlet suite, oscillatory planar zoned, igneous cores from metabolite xenolith #9865 record dates between ca. 2.9–2.6 Ga, whereas complex to radial-sector zoned …

Communicating Crimes: Covering Gangs In Contemporary Canadian Journalism, Chris Richardson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this integrated-article dissertation, I examine representations of gangs in Canadian journalism, focusing primarily on contemporary newspaper reporting. While the term “gang” often refers to violent groups of young urban males, it can also signify outlaw bikers, organized crime, terrorist cells, non-criminal social groups, and a wide array of other collectives. I build on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to probe this ambiguity, seeking to provide context and critical assessments that will improve crime reporting and its reception. In the course of my work, I examine how popular films like West Side Story inform journalists’ descriptions of gangs. Though reporters have …

Narrative Brought To Life: The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Stefani Klaric

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the motivations for creating fictive, immersive environments. These can be defined as spaces that generate new physical environments or worlds that engage our senses. The theme park is the experiential space where entertainment, fantasy, and commodity consumption come together. By including recognizable objects, narratives, characters, and the like, taken directly from the Harry Potter books and films, audiences and participants are brought into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in a way that immerses them in the space and allows them to experience the narrative by participating in a journey …

Classification Of Phase Transition Behavior In A Model Of Evolutionary Dynamics, Dawn Michelle King

Theses

Amongst the scientific community, there is consensus that evolution has occurred; however, there is much disagreement about how evolution happens. In particular, how do we explain biodiversity and the speciation process? Computational models aid in this study, for they allow us to observe a speciation process within time scales we would not otherwise be able to observe in our lifetime. Previous work has shown phase transition behavior in an assortative mating model as the control parameter of maximum mutation size (µ) is varied. This behavior has been shown to exist on landscapes with variable fitness (Dees and Bahar, 2010), and …

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of A Character Education Program To Prevent Bullying In Fourth And Seventh Grade, Deborah J. Shapiro

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to assess whether bullying behaviors were impacted by the character education curriculum Character Counts! in fourth and seventh grade students. More specifically, over time are the perceptions that the students had of bullying behaviors impacted and is there a difference between the perceptions that boys and girls had of these behaviors. A survey was given to fourth and seventh grade students in a school district in a northern suburb of Chicago for three consecutive years, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The goal of the survey was to see if Character Counts! was having an impact. …

Worldwide Reach Of Short Selling Regulations, Archana Jain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation characterizes the legality and incidence of short selling in a worldwide, multimarket framework. Home country short selling restrictions curtail home market stock borrowing by 45% and reduce short selling of the country's ADRs by 68% due to regulatory reach. Also, the 2008 U.S. ban on short selling of financial firms reduced borrowing in foreign locations. These findings are robust to controls for option availability, enforcement, returns, firm-size, trading volume, dividends, ADR level, volatillity, days-to-cover, and industry sector. Further, investor conduct resulting from adherence to professional standards is a more powerful mechanism of regulatory reach than inter-goverment cooperation.

Persistence And Foliation Theory And Their Application To Geometric Singular Perturbation, Ji Li

Theses and Dissertations

Persistence problem of compact invariant manifold under random perturbation is considered in this dissertation. Under uniformly small random perturbation and the condition of normal hyperbolicity, the original invariant manifold persists and becomes a random invariant manifold. The random counterpart has random local stable and unstable manifolds. They could be invariantly foliated thanks to the normal hyperbolicity. Those underlie an extension of the geometric singular perturbation theory to the random case which means the slow manifold persists and becomes a random manifold so that the local global structure near the slow manifold persists under singular perturbation. A normal form for a …

The Putative Cannabinoid Receptor Gpr55 Modulates Synaptic Plasticity In The Hippocampus, Corinne Marie Badgley

Theses and Dissertations

Endocannabinoids (eCBs) are small molecules that are capable of modulating synaptic plasticity of both excitatory and inhibitory synapses in the brain. While eCBs bind to transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) and cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1) in the central nervous system, we recently identified a form of non-CB1, non-TRPV1 mediated long term depression activated by the eCB anandamide at CA1 hippocampal stratum radiatum interneurons. GPR55, an orphan G-protein receptor, has been identified in the hippocampus and is capable of activation by eCBs, making it a good candidate for mediating this non-CB1, non-TRPV1 form of synaptic plasticity. Here we performed whole-cell …

Improving Student Engagement: An Evaluation Of The Latinos In Action Program, Jose Elder Enriquez

Theses and Dissertations

Hispanic students make up 12% of the enrollment in Utah elementary and secondary schools but only 3.4% of the enrollment at Utah's colleges and universities, according to Alemán and Rorrer (2006). The intervention Latinos in Action (LIA) seeks to increase high school completion and college graduation rates among emergent bilingual Latinos by involving them as paraprofessional literacy tutors for younger Spanish-speaking students. This dissertation, written in article-ready style, reports on two studies of the program. Study 1, a survey of 128 high school students, found that those involved in the service and literacy program scored higher than their bilingual Latino …

Portraits, Nicholas J. Bontorno

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a documentation of and supplement to my thesis project, which is on display in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium Gallery from April 2 - May 25, 2012. The seven paintings on display are included in this report are found on the following pages:

Leann (18”x 24”) …………………………………………………………..9

Claire (28”x 36”) …………………………………………………………..10

Janell on a Couch (48”x 60”) ……………………………………………..11

My Dad in Winter (84”x 96”) ……………………………………………..13

Mel in Springtime (84”x 96”) ……………………………………………..14

Man on a Horse (48”x 60”) ………………………………………………..15

Danny Holding a Cat by the Ocean (28”x 36”) ……………………….…..15

New Computational Techniques In Fjrw Theory With Applications To Landau Ginzburg Mirror Symmetry, Amanda Francis

Theses and Dissertations

Mirror symmetry is a phenomenon from physics that has inspired a lot of interesting mathematics. In the Landau-Ginzburg setting, we have two constructions, the A and B models, which are created based on a choice of an affine singularity with a group of symmetries. Both models are vector spaces equipped with multiplication and a pairing (making them Frobenius algebras), and they are also Frobenius manifolds. We give a result relating stabilization of singularities in classical singularity to its counterpart in the Landau-Ginzburg setting. The A model comes from so-called FJRW theory and can be de fined up to a full …

Resource Management In Survivable Multi-Granular Optical Networks, Yang Wang

Computer Science Dissertations

The last decade witnessed a wild growth of the Internet traffic, promoted by bandwidth-hungry applications such as Youtube, P2P, and VoIP. This explosive increase is expected to proceed with an annual rate of 34% in the near future, which leads to a huge challenge to the Internet infrastructure. One foremost solution to this problem is advancing the optical networking and switching, by which abundant bandwidth can be provided in an energy-efficient manner. For instance, with Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology, each fiber can carry a mass of wavelengths with bandwidth up to 100 Gbits/s or higher. To keep up with …

Knowledge, Skills, And Dispositions Influencing Middle School Teachers' Decision Making In Planning Social Studies Instruction In A Hispanic Serving School, Angela Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The issue of highly qualified teachers as the key to improving the educational system in the United States has become a primary focus in education. The federal educational policy No Child Left Behind Act 2001, describes what it means to be a highly qualified teacher in core subject areas, and all states are required to use this criterion for defining what teachers should know, and be able to do. Accordingly, certified teachers in today’s public school classrooms must possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions so that all students, including those students who have been historically disadvantaged and those who are …

Weighing In On Teacher Attitudes Of Obese Students: A Descriptive Correlational Design, Angelina Pecoraro

Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate teacher attitudes towards obese students. The investigation focused on the correlation between (a) attitudes and beliefs about obese students; and (b) predictive abilities of participant's self-esteem with attitudes and beliefs. The three surveys utilized in this study were: (a) Attitudes Toward Obese Persons Scale (Allison, Basile, & Yuker, 1991) (b) Beliefs About Obese Persons (Allison et al., 1991); and (c) Rosenberg Self-Esteem Survey (Rosenberg, 1965). The sample size was 893 certified educators representing all grade levels in Central, Northern, and Southern New Jersey school districts. Respondents were emailed a survey link, …