Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Dickkopf-1 Blocks 17Β-Estradiol-Enhanced Object Memory Consolidation In Ovariectomized Female Mice, Lisa Taxier

Theses and Dissertations

The memory-enhancing effects of 17β-estradiol (E2) are dependent upon rapid activation of several cell signaling cascades within the dorsal hippocampus (DH). Among many cell-signaling pathways that mediate memory processes, Wnt/β-catenin signaling has emerged as a potential key player. However, whether E2 interacts with Wnt/β-catenin signaling to promote memory consolidation is unknown. Therefore, the present study examined whether Wnt/β-catenin signaling within the DH is necessary for E2-induced memory consolidation in both object recognition and object placement tasks. Here, ovariectomized mice received immediate post-training infusions of E2 or vehicle into the dorsal third ventricle plus the endogenous Wnt/β-catenin antagonist Dickkopf-1 (Dkk-1) or …

Divided Agencies: Internal Strife In The Fight Against Castro, Stephanie R. Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. State Department differed in their approaches to dealing with the Castro regime from 1959 through the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Using declassified documents from the CIA and State Department, I argue that the approaches of the CIA in dealing with the Castro regime were more aggressive than the approaches of the U.S. State Department. Many of the primary sources used in this work were accessed in the CIA electronic reading room and on the office of the historian website. The office of the historian is an …

Enacting A Third Space Pedagogy In An Art Museum Setting: Strategies, Intersections, And Values, Claudia Patricia Orjuela Borda

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic case study investigates the theory and practice of third spaces in relation to a

professional development program for K-12 teachers in an art museum setting, with emphasis on

arts-based programming, lived curriculum, contemporary art, and critical teaching strategies. I

investigate how museums negotiate the transition from a pedagogy of place towards a pedagogy

of third spaces. The questions guiding my study were: how a third space is valued by educators

and museum staff? What are the components, strategies, and methodologies that allow for the

emergence of third spaces in professional development programs? What does a third space

pedagogy …

A Horizontal And Vertical Analysis Of Public Service Motivation, Michael Bednarczuk

Theses and Dissertations

The positive consequences of public service motivation (PSM) have been well-­demonstrated in the public administration literature. However, while it is often used as an independent variable, it is rarely used as a dependent variable. This dissertation expands the understanding of the antecedents of PSM, the dynamics of PSM over time, and the differences in PSM within bureaucrats. It was found that parental traits and religious practices had the largest effect on childhood PSM. Longitudinal models highlighted the constant impact of youth PSM over time, which no other study had had the data to do. It was also found that having …

Creating Inclusive Experiences In Children's Museums For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cassandra Coffey

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined daily programming and inclusion efforts for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at a singular study site, a children’s museum located in a suburban community of Illinois. The purpose of this study was to identify, through survey, observation, and peer interviews the current accessibility barriers at the study site and suggest ways to prevent them through inclusive design strategies. Interviews with children’s museums around the country focused on how children’s museums may be able to expand their inclusion efforts to overcome these barriers including designing programming to provide inclusive experiences for children with ASD. These interviews championed …

“Because He Is Different”: Shifts In Discourse And The Increasing Presence Of Autism In Fictional Television, Sierra Wolff

Theses and Dissertations

Characters with an autism spectrum disorder are not new to media, television in particular. What has recently changed is the willingness to put a label on a character who is on the spectrum. This thesis looks at 21 characters in television from 2007 to 2017 who are labeled or are generally perceived to be autistic. I categorize these character representations by genre and find that representations of autism vary according to the characteristics of each genre. I also focus in more depth two series, ABC’s The Good Doctor and Netflix’s Atypical, which both premiered in 2017 with lead characters who …

Segmental Contributions To Speech Intelligibility In Nonconcatenative Vs. Concatenative Languages, Yahya Aldholmi

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the contributions of segments (consonants vs. vowels) to speech intelligibility in Arabic and English. In these two languages, consonants and vowels play crucially different grammatical roles. Arabic is a nonconcatenative language that primarily assigns lexical information to consonants and morphosyntactic information to vowels, while English is a concatenative language that does not assign distinct roles to either class of segments. On this basis, we hypothesized that consonants and vowels would play very different roles in the intelligibility of the two languages. Five laboratory experiments were conducted, three on Arabic and two on English. Participants listened to words …

Digitization Guidelines For Static & Non-Static (Audiovisual) Media: Compliance & Challenges In Academic Libraries, Maali Alghnimi

Theses and Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation aims to explore digitization practices at academic libraries in the United States. It examines adopted digitization guidelines, levels of compliance with these guidelines, challenges, and solutions. It seeks answers to five research questions in relation to academic libraries’ compliance with static and non-static (audiovisual) media digitization guidelines, encountered challenges, and applied solutions. A mixed methods explanatory research design was adopted for this comparative study. Purposive sampling was applied. The study sample consisted of 68 subjects from doctoral universities with highest and higher research activity based on the 2015 classification issued by The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of …

The Impact Of Research Data Sharing And Reuse On Data Citation In Stem Fields, Hyoungjoo Park

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the open science movement and mandates for the sharing of research data by major funding agencies and influential journals, the citation of data sharing and reuse has not become standard practice in the various science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Advances in technology have lowered some barriers to data sharing, but it is a socio-technical phenomenon and the impact of the ongoing evolution in scholarly communication practices has yet to be quantified. Furthermore, there is need for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of author self-citation and recitation, the most often cited types of data, disciplinary differences regarding …

User Experience As Organizational Ethos Focused On Quality: A Case Study Of Ux-Receptive And Ux-Reluctant Workplace Cultures, Kimberly Schnaderbeck Baker

Theses and Dissertations

User experience (UX) research is a workplace approach to improving the quality of texts and technologies an organization produces to advance its business goals. Across the industry, UX roles, job titles, and responsibilities are widely varied, and the inconsistency is also reflected in the quality of outcomes; successful, effective research depends on complex, interrelated factors, and the influence of workplace culture and context are largely unacknowledged and unexamined across the technical communication (TC) field. Such examination is warranted because UX professionals face unique workplace challenges that impede their ability to conduct effective research that will improve the quality of outcomes …

Ancient Andean Tattooing Practices, Madison Auten

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the practice of tattooing in the ancient Andean world focusing on Peru. I ask the question: What can we learn about how people in the ancient Andean world used tattoos? For example, who were the people receiving tattoos, where on the body were tattoos located and what did they depict? To address this, I collected data on tattoos preserved on human remains. Mummies originating from Peru were examined and their tattoos were photographed. The mummies I examined come from collections in three museums in the United States, including: the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), the Field Museum (FM) …

The Great War And Motherhood: Possibilities For Agency Within Motherhood Rhetoric 1915-1920, Terra Rasmussen Lenox

Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to understand possibilities for agency in American motherhood by looking at public motherhood discourses from 1915-1920. To accomplish this task, I use a lens of intersectionality with a mixed-methods approach of critical discourse analysis of newspaper articles and The Ladies’ Home Journal, and a textual analysis of birth control pamphlets authored by Margaret Sanger. Through these analyses, this project elucidates ways in which ideal motherhood was portrayed and prescriptively enacted through representations of nationalistic motherhood which connects principles of intensive mothering with extreme patriotism and consumerism. Ultimately, these analyses build an argument that due to the complex …

Ordering Spaces, Making Places: Women’S Uses Of Non-Domestic Spaces In Tokyo, Japan, 1868–1937, Yuko Nakamura

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores Japanese women’s uses of non-domestic spaces in the modern period (1868–1945), focusing on the transformations that were occurring in the new capital city of Tokyo. After the 1868 Meiji Restoration, a modern government took over in place of the Tokugawa shogunate, the feudal military government that had ruled Japan for nearly three centuries, based on a hereditary status-based system. The fall of Tokugawa social order liberated Japanese people from the principle that John W. Hall famously called “rule by status.” Yet, it also complicated the ways in which the society was organized. Because the status system had …

Developmental State Economic Model Versus Neo-Classical Principles: The Case Of Rwanda And Burundi, Maxime Sarah Mianzokouna

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the significance of the developmental state model using the economic performances of two African countries, Burundi and Rwanda. The two neighboring African countries share similar economic characteristics and face virtually same social and political challenges. In the last two decades, Burundi and Rwanda have taken two different approaches to develop their economies. Burundi is using a standard neoclassical economic model in contrast to Rwanda that is applying the developmental state model. I use the standard method of difference-in-difference and the annual data over the period 1974-2014 from the two countries to compare …

Contextualizing The News: Newspaper Front Pages In The Age Of Fact-Checking Journalism., Srijan Sen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates influences on the selection of stories on the front pages of newspapers. It investigates whether a daily newspaper that has an in-house, fact-checking unit (The Milwaukee (WI) Journal Sentinel) selects front-page stories differently from a newspaper that does not have an in-house, fact-checking unit (The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, MN). While the study found no direct influence of fact-checking journalism, it did find that newspaper front pages in 2014 were increasingly prioritizing contextual stories over conventional stories. It also found a decline in political/governmental stories on front pages. It is suggested that these changes might signal a …

Understanding The Discourses Of Traumatic Birth And The Transition To Motherhood Using Relational Dialectics Theory, Valerie Fisher

Theses and Dissertations

The majority of existing research regarding birth and the transition to motherhood focuses on the physical health outcomes of mother and baby, often ignoring the social and emotional impact of the birth process (Leggett, 2014). The lack of focus on social and emotional outcomes for new mothers may be especially harmful for those who experience traumatic birth, as it is subjective in nature and is often overlooked as a routine birth by health professionals (Alder, Stadlmayr, Tschudin, & Bitzer, 2006; Beck, 2004a). Traumatic childbirth is defined as an event occurring during the labor and delivery process that involves actual or …

What Should Be Said Or Silenced: Opinions Of Necessary And Inappropriate End-Of-Life Communication Between The Living And The Dying, Mary Chris Dantzler

Theses and Dissertations

End-of-life (EOL) communication experiences between the Dying and the Living in various roles (e.g., family, clergy, healthcare providers, and hospice workers) have often been studied; however, no research has examined what people believe are necessary as well as inappropriate EOL conversation topics with the Dying. Extant studies in family communication have identified common EOL topics in retrospective accounts of previous conversations with the Dying, but no research has asked individuals with and without such experiences what they think should and should not be talked about during EOL interactions. The current study addressed this gap. Participants (N = 145) ages 18 …

Acculturation And Dietary Pattern Among Iranian American Immigrants In The United States Of America, Elham Sadeghi

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Acculturation of the Iranian American immigrants and its influence on dietary patterns of Iranian was investigated. Effect of exposure to the U.S. culture and Western diets and prevalence of chronic diseases were examined. Acculturation was measured using the Iranian Acculturation Scale, and total acculturation score is calculated. Dietary patterns were measured using the Block Brief Food Questionnaire (BFQ), total foods and beverages consumed over the past year, as specified in BBFQ, were studied.

Two hundred seven (N=207) Iranian American immigrants completed the acculturation, food frequency and socio-demographic questionnaires. All participants were born in Iran, were 18 years of age …

Italian As A Heritage Language Spoken In The Us, Maria Teresa Bonfatti Sabbioni

Theses and Dissertations

The present study focuses on Italian as a heritage language spoken in the US by individuals bilingual in Italian and English, exposed to both language since birth. The subjects of the study are the members of six family nuclei, for a total of seven children as heritage speakers of Italian and as input receivers, and 6 parents as native speakers of Standard Italian and as input providers, living in different cities in Wisconsin and Illinois. The study specifically investigates the following structures: a) Gender assignment and gender agreement between determiner, noun and adjective; b) Auxiliary selection in the Italian compound …

Hpa Axis Genetic Variation And Life Stress Influences On Functional Connectivity In Resting State Networks, Tara Ann Miskovich

Theses and Dissertations

Stressful or traumatic experiences are a key risk factor for developing psychopathology, primarily through the impact that chronic stress has on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning. The HPA axis regulates the stress response but can become dysregulated with chronic activation and impact brain functioning. In addition to environmental stressors, genetic variation in genes in the HPA axis appear to influence HPA axis functioning and is also related to disruption in brain functioning, particularly in the context of high life stress. The current study focused on examining potential mechanisms through which trauma and stress interacts with HPA axis genes to impact key …

Analysis Of Family-Health-Related Topics On Wikipedia, Yanyan Wang

Theses and Dissertations

New concepts, terms, and topics always emerge; and meanings of existing terms and topics keep changing all the time. These phenomena occur more frequently on social media than on conventional media because social media allows a huge number of users to generate information online. Retrieving relevant results in different time periods of a fast-changing topic becomes one of the most difficult challenges in the information retrieval field. Among numerous topics discussed on social media, health-related topics are a major category which attracts increasing attention from the general public.

This study investigated and explored the evolution patterns of family-health-related topics on …

Baked And Buzzed: Investigating The Influence Of Co-Use Of Cannabis And Alcohol On White Matter Integrity In Emerging Adults, Natasha E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Growing evidence suggests alcohol and cannabis use independently alter neural structure and functioning, particularly during sensitive developmental time periods such as adolescence and emerging adulthood. However, there has been minimal investigation into the effects co-occurring use of these two substances, despite preliminary evidence of unique acute and psychopharmacological changes due to using alcohol and cannabis together.

Method: Data drawn from the IDEAA Consortium was utilized to assess white matter integrity as measured by FreeSurfer’s TRACULA in emerging adults (n=192; 16-27 years old). Timeline Follow-Back was used to calculate past month cannabis use, alcohol use, co-use days, binge alcohol episode, …

The Value Of Internships In Radio Broadcasting, Anthony Mandella

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis was to investigate a generally understudied area in media professions – radio broadcasting internships. A survey, which included both close-ended and open-ended questions, was used to measure how internships were valued in radio broadcasting. The survey was distributed to radio station employees and select interns at a six-station conglomerate in the midwestern United States. Results showed that participants generally believed their internship experiences were more valuable than their classroom education. Additionally, participants developed unique skills at their internships which they claimed were not provided by their education. Participants also believed interns should receive financial compensation …

How Do Self-Checkout Kiosks Impact Public Libraries?, Michael Green

Theses and Dissertations

The public library always utilizes new technology for the benefit of the patron. Nowadays, instead of sifting through a card catalogue shelf, one simply has to peruse the online database attached to the library website, using the KOHA system to keep track of materials and patron accounts. Patrons are also able to checkout their materials without the interaction with a staff member at the front desk. What benefits do these self-checkout kiosks bring to the library and the patron? This independent research study is going to look the quantitative data found through the Middleton, Wisconsin Public Library. This study will …

The Role Of The Syllable Contact Law-Semisyllable (Scl-Semi) In The Coda Clusters Of Najdi Arabic And Other Languages, Reham Alhammad

Theses and Dissertations

Final consonants in Arabic are semisyllables; that is, moraic unsyllabified segments that are attached to the prosodic word (Kiparsky, 2003). If this is the case, optional vowel epenthesis in Najdi Arabic final clusters cannot be attributed to violations of the Sonority Sequencing Principle, because sonority restrictions apply within syllables only. In a new perspective, this dissertation argues that the existence of vowel epenthesis in Najdi coda clusters that have rising sonority, and its absence in clusters that have a falling sonority, are instead due to violations of the Syllable Contact Law (SCL), where sonority must drop between syllable codas and …

Advanced Quantitative Methods For Imminent Detection Of Crash Prone Conditions And Safety Evaluation, Zhi Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Crashes can be accurately predicted through reliable data sources and rigorous statistical models; and prevented through data-driven, evidence-based traffic control strategies. Both predictive analysis and analysis to estimate the causal effect of traffic variables of real-time crashes are instrumental to crash prediction and a better understanding of the mechanism of crash occurrence. However, the research on the second analysis type is very limited for real-time crash prediction; and the conventional predictive analysis using inductive loop detector data has accuracy issues related to inconsistently and distantly spaced loop detectors. The effectiveness of traffic control strategies for improving safety performance cannot be …

Measured Expectations: An Examination Of Urban Agriculture Development And Operations In Milwaukee, Wi, Jamison Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Urban agriculture has begun to shape urban spaces throughout the United States. Building from research on urban agriculture projects in Milwaukee I argue that in order for researchers to better understand urban agriculture, they must more thoroughly examine the various developmental and operational strategies that urban agriculture nonprofit organizations implement. The research questions that guides my thesis are the following: first, how do the developmental and operational strategies of urban agriculture projects differ? Second, how do different stakeholders perceive the implications of these approaches for creating positive and negative effects? To do this, I collected data through interviews and participant …

Effects Of Life History And Brain Size On Cognition And Behavior: Studies On Prey-Searching In The Spider Pholcus Phalangioides, Joseph Kilmer

Theses and Dissertations

There is tremendous diversity in body size across animals, including many examples of derived miniaturization. A reduction in body size is accompanied by a reduction in brain size, which is predicted to lead to limitations in cognition, but we have yet to find empirical evidence indicating what these limitations might be. I used a behavioral assay common in web spiders to explore this topic. I observed spiders as they searched for prey that they recently captured and lost. This assay has the advantage of being easily quantifiable while reflecting a spider’s evaluation and memory of lost prey. I conducted a …

The Invisible Crisis: Framing The Remediation Of Milwaukee's Lead Laterals, Isabella Rieke

Theses and Dissertations

When Milwaukee’s municipal water system was developed in 1874, one-half-inch lead pipes were used to convey water from the mains in the street to a customer’s home; the City has since acknowledged that nearly 100,000 such lead pipes are still in use today, a revelation which has opened for debate whether or not these pipes pose a galvanizing public health risk with far-reaching policy and infrastructure implications. This study explores the community response to Milwaukee’s lead laterals through the efforts of the Freshwater for Life Action Coalition (FLAC). How do Milwaukeeans understand the risks posed by the lead laterals? In …

An Investigation Of Autism Support Groups On Facebook, Yuehua Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

Autism-affected users, such as autism patients, caregivers, parents, family members, and researchers, currently seek informational support and social support from communities on social media. To reveal the information needs of autism- affected users, this study centers on the research of users’ interactions and information sharing within autism communities on social media. It aims to understand how autism-affected users utilize support groups on Facebook.

A systematic method was proposed to aid in the data analysis including social network analysis, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and inferential analysis. Social network analysis method was adopted to reveal the interaction patterns appearing in the groups, …