Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Disrupting Infrastructure: Social Media And Accessing Digital Publics, Carolyn K. Grant

Open Access Theses

This thesis investigates infrastructural barriers to effecting change through social media participation. Though social media is said to hold "democratic potential" by enabling open access to the digital public sphere, in reality it is often still the most privileged voices that get heard. Even in success cases of the power of social media like the Arab Spring, situational contexts lead to particular infrastructural access points that are not universally transferable, and still tend to favor mainstream perspectives. Barriers to amplifying marginalized voices include inadequate systems for digital memory and sharing algorithms that promote the visibility of the already visible. These …

Effects Of Biomass Harvest On Eastern Red-Backed Salamanders, Patrick J. Ruhl

Open Access Theses

In a typical forest harvest, the volume of coarse woody debris (CWD) increases from nonmerchantable material (i.e., tree-tops, limbs, and small-diameter trees) left on the forest floor. Biomass harvesting removes much of this material for bioenergy production. When removed, ecosystem services associated with CWD, such as seedbed substrate, nutrient cycling, and essential wildlife habitat, is reduced. Woodland salamanders have strict microhabitat and soil moisture requirements that make them especially sensitive to timber harvest practices, particularly those that remove CWD, a primary habitat for the group.

I monitored the abundance of Eastern red-backed salamanders ( Plethodon cinereus ) in response to …

Growth Of Post-Weaned Grazing Dairy Heifers When Evaluating The Effects Of Providing Shade Or Parasite Control, Mohammad W. Sahar

Open Access Theses

Reduced heat stress and lower gastrointestinal parasite loads can increase growth rate in heifers, potentially reducing the age at first breeding and lowering the costs associated with raising replacement dairy heifers. Providing shade is a recommended practice for reducing heat stress of grazing animals and is considered important for their wellbeing and productivity. However, limited information is available on the growth performance of young grazing dairy heifers when they are provided shade. Likewise, numerous products exist to prevent gastrointestinal parasites in animals. The development of new anthelmintic products, such as LongRange® (eprinomectin), increase the need for research to help understand …

Integration Of Z-Depth In Compositing, Kayla Steckel

Open Access Theses

It is important for video compositors to be able to complete their jobs quickly and efficiently. One of the tasks they might encounter is to insert assets such as characters into a 3D rendered environment that has depth information embedded into the image sequence. Currently, a plug-in that facilitates this task (Depth Matte®) functions by looking at the depth information of the layer it's applied to and showing or hiding pixels of that layer. In this plug-in, the Z-Depth used is locked to the layer the plug-in is applied. This research focuses on comparing Depth Matte® to a custom-made plug-in …

Optimization Of Switch Virtual Keyboard By Using Computational Modelling, Xiao Zhang

Open Access Theses

In this thesis, I first reviewed some keyboard technologies used by people with motor difficulties, and described design elements that influence efficiency. I cast the design of a switch keyboard as an optimization problem, and arrangement of keys on such a keyboard as a Mixed Integer Programming problem. One significant variable in the MIP problem, the error rate, is related to several other variables. I treated modeling of the error rate as a parameter estimation problem, and used a data mining method. I designed HCI experiments to gather data for parameter estimation, using Bayesian logistic regression model. The empirical data …

White Racial Attitudes In The Age Of Obama, Ryan Jerome Lecount

Open Access Dissertations

What is the nature of White racial attitudes in the age of Obama? This dissertation project seeks to answer this question in three distinct ways. The first empirical chapter examines the role of economic insecurity and education on White racial attitudes. The second empirical chapter evaluates the relative importance of individual vs. contextual factors in shaping Whites' attitudes about race. The third empirical chapter seeks to evaluate the extent to which racial color-blindness (as opposed to other racial attitudes) motivates White opposition to race-targeted programs. Findings in empirical chapters one and two are conditional, while clear evidence is demonstrated that …

Compositional Variability In Nasca Ceramics From The Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru, Marcela Poirier

Open Access Theses

The Goal of this MS thesis is to contribute to the understanding of compositional variability in ceramics of the Southern Nasca Region. A total of 99 ceramic sherds from two las Trancas Valley sites (Santa Luisa and Higosñoc) underwent INAA. This study brings temporal depth to previous compositional studies and adds new information that helps with the understanding of the political economy of this region. The hypothesis proposed is that there will be compositional variability before and after Early Nasca, during the Early Intermediate period (1-750 CE). The theoretical approaches used to inform my hypothesis include political economy and behavioral …

The Effects Of Radar On Avian Behavior: Implications For Wildlife Management At Airports, Eleanor R. Sheridan

Open Access Theses

Airports are areas with a high availability of resources for wildlife to forage, breed, and roost. Airports also have different types of radars to assist with air traffic control as well as tracking of wildlife that could become a risk for aircraft. The effect of radar electromagnetic radiation on wildlife behavior is not well understood. The goal of this study was to determine if bird behavior is affected by radar in two contexts: static radar (e.g., surveillance radar) and approaching radar (e.g., aircraft weather radar). We used brown-headed cowbirds as a model species. In the static radar context, we performed …

The Parkinson's Experience Of Group Physical Activity: Understanding Social Support, Social Comparison, Physical Self-Perceptions, And Posttraumatic Growth, Tammy L. Sheehy

Open Access Theses

Group physical activity programs for clinical populations can provide opportunities for adaptive social interactions, improving perceptions of competence, and may facilitate posttraumatic growth (positive psychological changes resulting from traumatic life experiences). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how people with Parkinson's experience social interactions and physical challenges in a group physical activity program, and to investigate what role they think those experiences play in posttraumatic growth. The study employed interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009). N= 20 participants ( n = 12 women; age = 56-79 years) in a boxing-based group exercise program …

Dismantling The Great Wall Of Prejudice: A Look At Centrality And Issue Importance In The Perpetuation Of Influence And Prejudice Reduction, Zachary Robert Wittrock

Open Access Theses

This study sought to utilize social network analysis to better understand how prejudice reduction can be spread from one person to another via interpersonal influence. Different types of prejudice reducing interventions were combined into one intervention. The role of centrality in the spread and perpetuation of influence was examined by measuring prejudice reduction in socially connected individuals who did not undergo the direct intervention. To further understand the role of centrality in prejudice reduction, the concept of issue importance was included to understand the differential impact that centrality has on interpersonal influence. Study 1 examined the effectiveness of the intervention, …

Relationship Between Holistic Rating Of Chinese Esl Speakers' Monologue Responses To Question Prompts In Placement Testing And Their Lexical Frequency Profiles, Xiao Yang

Open Access Theses

The study examines the relation between the holistic scores of three groups of Chinese ESL speakers and their lexical frequency profiles, based on their monologue responses to testing prompts. The theoretical framework of vocabulary acquisition and word frequency in vocabulary testing are discussed, and several previous studies that use VocabProfile to assess second language vocabulary are analyzed. These serve as the theoretical and methodological basis for conducting the current study, which adopts two schema in VocabProfile to first profile the word frequency in the speakers' monologue responses, and then look into the offlist words that are not captured by the …

The Nature Of Parental Involvement In Middle School: Examining Nonlinear Associations, Elizabeth A. Wehrspann

Open Access Theses

Middle school is a time during which the importance of school performance and academic motivation increases, yet actual adolescent achievement and motivation tend to decline during this period. Extent research and theory highlight the importance of parental involvement in education for adolescents, as most work shows that parent involvement is positively related to academic achievement and motivation. However, there are also many mixed findings regarding the link between specific types of involvement (i.e., home-based involvement and academic socialization) and these outcomes. Further, little work has been done to examine the possible age-related differences in these associations. Guided by Self-Determination Theory …

More Than A Game: Examining Sensemaking And Self-Organisation In Alternate Reality Games, Yeo Yun Ting Alanna

Open Access Theses

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are an emerging brand of online role-playing games, immersive and highly interactive. This new genre of games pioneered an effective and efficient form of collective play and problem-solving in loosely-defined situations, showcasing powerful and efficient sensemaking and self-organization at work. I intend to study an ARG titled "We Are Earthborne" in order to understand the processes of communication, sensemaking, and selforganization that occurs in the course of an ARG. Using the structure of Weick's organizational sensemaking and Latour's Actor-Network Theory as a lens, this study intends to break down how distributed groups of people can come …

Is Maternal Touch Used Referentially?, Rana Abu-Zhaya

Open Access Theses

Early social interactions are highly multimodal and include a wealth of cues (e.g., speech, facial expressions, motion, gestures and touch). Infant-directed speech (IDS) by itself may aid in language development. Touch by itself has been also shown to play an important role in dyadic interactions affecting both the infant and the caregiver. However, little is known about the impact of the combination of these two modes of communication on infant language development. In this thesis, I hypothesize that caregiver touch is provided in synchrony with speech, providing the language-learning infant with cues that may not only help her to find …

Systems For Delivering Electric Vehicle Data Analytics, Vamshi Krishna Bolly

Open Access Theses

n the recent times, advances in scientific research related to electric vehicles led to generation of large amounts of data. This data is majorly logger data collected from various sensors in the vehicle. It is predominantly unstructured and non-relational in nature, also called Big Data. Analysis of such data needs a high performance information technology infrastructure that provides superior computational efficiency and storage capacity. It should be scalable to accommodate the growing data and ensure its security over a network. This research proposes an architecture built over Hadoop to effectively support distributed data management over a network for real-time data …

The Effect Of Ostracism By Strangers On Romantic Relationship Evaluations, Maayan Dvir

Open Access Theses

One behavioral consequence of ostracism is to seek and strengthen connections with others. The current research tests whether a brief episode of ostracism by strangers strengthens targeted individuals' perceptions of their romantic relationship and increases their desire to be closer to their partner. In Study 1a and Study 1b, participants were either included or ostracized by strangers in a Cyberball game, and then completed relationship evaluation measures. Interactions of ostracism and gender emerged, suggesting that as hypothesized, ostracized women tended to evaluate their relationships more positively than included women. However, men who were ostracized tended to evaluate their relationships less …

Online Naturalization: Evolving Roles In Online Knowledge Production Communities, Jeremy David Foote

Open Access Theses

Web-based peer production communities, like Wikipedia and open source software, have created digital artifacts of growing cultural, financial, and technological importance. Understanding how and why people choose to join these communities, and why they eventually leave them, is therefore an important topic.

We take all of the edit data from six years of activity on the online genealogy wiki WeRelate, and create monthly snapshots of behavior and interaction networks for all 9,570 users who edited the site. We use machine learning to cluster these behavioral snapshots into four "behavioral roles". We identify one of these roles as being indicative of …

Preschoolers’ Physical, Social, And Engineering Play Behaviors: Differences In Gender And Play Environment, Zachary S. Gold

Open Access Theses

This study explored gender differences in the occurrence of 66 preschoolers' (ages 3-to-5; 29 girls, 37 boys) physical, social, and "engineering thinking play" behaviors across three play environments: the traditional playground, the dramatic play area, and an environment in which children played with large, manipulable, loose parts. Previous research has indicated that young children are not engaging in enough physical play to maintain healthy lifestyles. Play may also have benefits for social competency and cognitive development. Observations of children's engagement with a new and engaging play material, Imagination Playground TM blocks, which are designed to foster imaginative and creative constructive …

Dental Fluctuating Asymmetry As A Measure Of Environmental Stress In Nasca, Shawna L. Follis

Open Access Theses

This thesis evaluates how environmental stressors affected three groups (Nasca, Loro, and Chakipampa) that lived in Nasca during the Early Intermediate Period (ca. A.D. 1-750) and the Middle Horizon (ca. A.D. 750-1000). Using fluctuating asymmetry analysis as a proxy for developmental instability, biological evidence is assessed for differential stress levels incurred by groups occupying the Peruvian south coast. This study found high levels of stress in the Middle Horizon, supporting the hypothesis that populations living in Nasca were unfavorably affected by Wari colonizers. However, stress was found to be highest among the Chakipampa. This is attributed to Wari imperialistic occupation …

The Use Of Business Intelligence Techniques In Supply Chain Performance, Jue Gu

Open Access Theses

Who likes data? Businesses are always loyal data followers. Companies analyze various forms of data to maintain businesses and identify their current performance in different areas so they can find business opportunities to improve and obtain more market share in advance (Qrunfleh & Tarafdar, 2012). When Big Data comes to businesses, companies who can take advantage of data the best tend to regularly get more business and customers (Waller & Fawcett, 2013). Collecting, analyzing, and demonstrating data could be essential to a single business, a company's supply chain performance and its sustainability. As an intelligent data processing product in terms …

Parental Acceptance Of The Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Among South Asian Immigrants Living In The Midwest Usa, Samina Shams Khan

Open Access Theses

The objective of this investigation was to initiate the first study of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination acceptance among South Asian parents living in the USA. The primary focus of this study was to identify the knowledge, awareness, acceptance, and those factors that influenced South Asian parents' decision regarding the vaccination of their children against HPV.

This research utilized a cross-sectional study design conducted among South Asian parents in Indianapolis and the Greater Lafayette area of Indiana. The data were collected online using Qualtrics survey software. The survey included six segments containing questions on: socio-demographic information, knowledge and source of information …

Perceptual Compensation In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Elizabeth Anne Langston

Open Access Theses

Compensation for coarticulation is the extent in which an individual perceives the contextual variations of speech. When presented with an ambiguous consonant-vowel segment (e.g., a consonant halfway between /sa/ and /∫a/) research illustrates that a listener is likely to compensate for coarticulation with the following vowel. Therefore, a listener will be more likely to report an ambiguous speech sound as /s/ when it occurs before [u] than before [a]. Previous results have suggested that, within neurotypical individuals, the degree to which individuals compensate for coarticulation may be related to their Autism Quotient (AQ; Yu, 2010). However, this research did not …

Playing On The Periphery: Metagaming And Transgressive Play, Patrick S. Love

Open Access Theses

Gaming and play exist in connection to forces outside of the game systems themselves. Together, all these intersecting forces make up a meta game that informs and enables variance in play as well as creates barriers to entering play. This thesis fleshes out the framework of a metagame and shows how players can take a metagame perspective to transform, transcend, or even transgress barriers. This thesis discusses sources of metagaming and encompasses examples from video and traditional games.

Habitat Effects On Chick-A-Dee Call Complexity, Jacqueline Renee Lynch

Open Access Theses

Past studies on the communication systems of species in urban environments (such as Common Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos Brehm), brown-headed cowbirds ( Molothrus ater), Southern brown tree frogs (Litoria ewingii )) have shown multiple ways that species change vocal signaling behavior to adjust to urban habitats (e.g. alarm calls and singing). This study further investigates the changes in signaling in relation to the chick-a-dee call of the Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis). A secondary goal of this study was to compare both the amount of information and rate of calling across …

The Rhetorical Constitution Of Online Community: Identification And Constitutive Rhetoric In The Community Of Reddit, Bradley Stephen Ludwig

Open Access Theses

The concepts of online identity and online community within the context of social media have been major research interests in the field of communication in recent years. Questions of interest include how the Internet and social media contribute to the construction of identity both online and offline, and what factors encourage participation in and contribution to online communities. This thesis will address these questions related to online identity and community from a rhetorical perspective to examine the role rhetoric plays in these processes and build on the application of rhetorical approaches to online contexts. Specifically, this project proposes a rhetorical …

Sustainable Development Of Biogas Resources In East Africa Using Transdisciplinary Design Models, Christopher M. Limiac

Open Access Theses

Installation of anaerobic digestion systems in urban developing communities has the potential to address multiple problems related to energy and sanitation in a combined systems approach. Anaerobic digesters are used to generate a relatively clean and rich source of energy in the form of biogas to address energy poverty issues. The design resources available for anaerobic digestion projects must be improved to provide greater technical support and project transparency. In order to develop holistic solutions to grand challenges like energy poverty, engineers must be prepared to operate with the complexities of diverse environments. Globalization and the improvement of transdisciplinary project …

Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Impediments And Challenges In The Process Of Sustainable Reconstruction And Development In Post-2014 Afghanistan, Mohammad Ilyas Payab

Open Access Theses

Armed conflicts have left numerous marks on the history of mankind and still continue to do so. They have resulted in considerable damage to the social and physical fabric of the society. Millions of people both in the past and present have been suffering from the consequences of this unfortunate man-made disaster. Yet we see a continuing trend that seems to be resistant to any change despite efforts on a global level. This study sets out to understand the nature of reconstruction and development after armed conflicts with a focus on Afghanistan. After more than a decade of expended …

Human And Canine Personality Assessment Instruments To Predict Successful Adoptions With Shelter Dogs, Sheryl Lynn Walker

Open Access Dissertations

Animal shelters are often over-crowded with animals, and efforts to match potential adopters with shelter dogs, to improve the quality of adoptions, are increasing. However, a lack of evidence-based practices makes matching difficult. This research was conducted to investigate the role of dog and human personality, using questionnaire-based measurements, on adoption success in two Indiana shelters, Clinton County Humane Society and the Humane Society of Indianapolis. Ultimately, the aim of this project was to assess dog personality, human personality, and satisfaction, to evaluate adoption success in shelter dogs.^ The present thesis contains three studies exploring dog and human personality traits, …

Field To Flight: A Techno-Economic Analysis Of Stover To Aviation Biofuels Supply Chain, Amanda C. Bittner

Open Access Theses

Greenhouse gas emissions have been a growing concern. The transportation sector contributes to one-third of GHG emissions in the United States from fossil fuel burning. The Renewable Fuel Standard set a requirement for 16 billion gallons (ethanol equivalent) of cellulosic biofuels to be used in the market. Aviation biofuels can help to meet both of these problems as well as improve U.S. energy security.

Investment in the biofuel industry carries a lot of risk. The biofuel industry is run by the private sector, but can be incentivized by government. Cellulosic biofuels carry even more risk than first generation biofuels, because …

Assessing Inland Hazards Associated With Hurricanes In The U.S. Atlantic Basin, Dereka Latrese Carroll

Open Access Theses

The skill of tropical-cyclone (TC) track forecasts has steadily improved over the past decades, as has the understanding of TC risk in coastal regions. However, there is still much to be learned about the TC risk in inland regions, which is complicated by the presence of coastal evacuees, and includes hazards such as inland flash flooding and tornadoes. This was exemplified by Hurricane Ivan (2004), which spawned 118 tornadoes and produced significant rainfall amounts contributing to flooding inland. Ivan was responsible for 25 deaths in the U.S. and $18.8 billion (2004 USD) in damages. As part of a larger effort …