American Studies Commons^™

Elections And Tensions And Constitutions! Oh, My! A Process-Oriented Analysis Of Bolivian Democratization From 1993 To 2009, Laurel Kristin Dwyer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many Latin American countries which underwent democratic regime transformations within the last thirst years have seemingly stalled. Unable to meet the demands of their citizens, which grow increasingly restless and confrontational, they have become subjected to a series of economic and political crises. Contemporary democratic theorists are at a loss to explain why this region has failed to deepen over time. The purpose of this paper is threefold: it questions the analytic utility of contemporary liberal and representative models, it argues for the inclusion of an alternative process-oriented model provided by Charles Tilly (2007), and tests this model through a …

The Politics And Culture Of Climate Change: Us Actors And Global Implications, Charles Waugh

English Faculty Publications

Despite the scientific consensus on global warming, many people in the USA,—both ordinary citizens and elected leaders alike—remain skeptical of the need to act, and in fact remain skeptical of the idea that humans are contributing to global warming at all. Thus, environmental justice arguments based on United States carbon emissions and the disproportionate impact of rising temperatures and rising sea levels on tropical developing nations such as Vietnam frequently fall on deaf ears. This chapter explores the political and cultural construction of this deafness, seeking a better understanding of how and why so many Americans refuse to act to …

Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. ISBN 90-420-0534-3 299 pages, bibliography, index. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents a framework of comparative literature based on a contextual (systemic and empirical) approach for the study of culture and literature and applies the framework in audience studies, film and literature, women's literature, translation studies, new media and scholarship in the humanities and in the analyses of English, French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, and English-Canadian modern, contemporary, and ethnic minority texts. Copyright release to the author in 2006.

With Malice Towards None: Six Stories And A Novella, Burke Nixon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A fiction collection consisting of six short stories folloby a novella. The pieces attempt to be comic, but also--with debatable success--to be more than just comic. As the title suggests, one of the collection's thematic concerns is mercy and its absence. Most of the pieces are set in Texas; characters in the collection include a female student in an absurdly incompetent public high school, a parking cop, the best friend of a stand-up comedian, an Abilene man whose life goal is to be struck by lightning, and an unselfconscious grandfather character, who bookends the beginning and end of the collection. …

William Faulkner's Hebrew Bible: Empire And The Myths Of Origins, Scott T. Chancellor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I propose that William Faulkner's literary imagination is charged by a Jewish sensibility rooted in reverence for the Bible as a text that is as vital and relevant in his time as in any since its composition. The Hebrew Bible's narrative method of compiling, redacting, doubling, and retelling, and its attention to curses, genealogies, covenants, and nation-building, reverberate in Faulkner's time as resoundingly as in any preceding it. There are myriad links in Faulkner's work between the Hebrew Bible, Southern Christianity, and American colonialism that merit our attention within ongoing discussions of Faulkner, empire, and nation-building, the Bible and colonialism, …

Identity, Reality, And Truth In Memoirs From The Iraq And Afghanistan Wars, Travis L. Martin

Online Theses and Dissertations

This research uses trauma theory, memoir theory, narratology, and recent scientific research into the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) to explore developments in the memoir coming from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, the author examines the works of Shoshana Johnson, Colby Buzzell, and Anthony Shaffer to uncover the ways in which identity, reality and truth present themselves in the destabilized narratives of traumatized subjects.

Travis Martin is himself a veteran of the Iraq War, using his first-hand knowledge as a compass to guide him through intricate memoirs written by his contemporaries. Beginning …

Postwar Media Manifestations And Don Delillo, Joshua Adam Boldt

Online Theses and Dissertations

Media's influence on postwar American culture is undeniable. Don DeLillo's fiction is often a commentary on that influence. Hyperreality, Simulacra, Consumerism, and News Addiction are all regular themes in DeLillo's novels; this paper explores all of these concepts through the lens of media theory. Special attention is given to the novels White Noise, Americana, and Mao II, as well as to the media theorists Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, and Antonio Gramsci. The paper is both a history and a critique of postwar consumer culture and the role that media plays in the construction of that culture.

Documenting The Oral Narratives Of Transient Punks, Thomas Ross Heffernan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The uninitiated do not realize the complexity of the punk rock sub-culture. Outsiders may find it hard to distinguish the subtle lines by which differentiation occurs within the so-called subculture. The "punk rock subculture" is a misnomer; it is not a salient community. The experience of being "punk" is fractal; what it means to be punk and what classifies one as punk is in constant redefinition and there are various different communities with varying ideologies and identities. The punk subculture has absorbed various epistemologies in its 40+ years of existence, modified them, and made them their own. Within this milieu …

First-Year Library Mentorship Opportunities, Crystal Goldman

Faculty and Staff Publications

The first-year experience at any university library sets the foundation for the future relationship between the new faculty member and the library as a whole. Not only is the librarian being acculturated to the organization, but he or she must decide if the library and university will provide a supportive environment for his or her career goals. In this probationary process, the tenured librarians evaluate their tenure-track colleagues’ professional progression and merit.

Many libraries institute a formal first-year mentoring program in order to facilitate the immersion of new faculty members into the organizational culture of the library and university. There …

Evaluating The Use Of Task Clarification, Self-Monitoring And Performance Feedback, Jennifer Marie Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effects of self-monitoring, task clarification, and performance feedback on the performance of critical tasks by assembly group supervisors in a manufacturing company were examined. This intervention involved the training of a supervisor to use task clarification, self-monitoring, and performance feedback to improve the work performance of the participating group leaders. A multiple baseline across participants and tasks design was used to examine the effects of the intervention. Measures included: generalization of group leader performance to another work period, procedural fidelity for training the supervisor, intervention integrity of the supervisor's training of the group leaders, treatment acceptability, and social validity. …

Modularizing Crosscutting Concerns In Software, Nalin Saigal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Code modularization provides benefits throughout the software life cycle; however, the presence of crosscutting concerns (CCCs) in software hinders its complete modularization. Traditional modularization techniques work well under the assumption that code being modularized is functionally orthogonal to the rest of the code; as a result, software engineers try to separate code segments that are orthogonal in their functionality into distinct modules. However, in practice, software does not decompose neatly into modules with distinct, orthogonal functionality. In this thesis, we investigate the modularization of CCCs in software using two different techniques.

Firstly, we discuss IVCon, a GUI-based tool that provides …

Identification Of Patient Recovery Patterns After Cardiovascular Surgery Based On Laboratory Tests Results, Alcides Ricardo Santander Mercado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation is proposed a methodology to identify patient's recovery patterns after cardiovascular surgery based on laboratory tests results. The main purpose is to enhance the understanding of the manifestations of postsurgical complications in patients who underwent cardiovascular surgery. The analysis of patients' recovery process is based on the relationship between plasma calcium, ionized calcium and platelet count over time.

Laboratory results from the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital databases, related to patients admitted to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) after cardiac surgery (coronary artery bypass, aortic value replacement and mitral valve replacement), are used. These databases contain …

The Effects Of Manipulating Conditioned Establishing Operations On The Acquisition Of Mands In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Claudia Troconis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) suggested that each verbal operant has independent response functions, in which acquiring one does not automatically result in the other, unless transfer between the verbal operants is directly trained. Although several researchers have shown that mands and tacts are functionally independent, more recent research has demonstrated that mands may emerge following tact training. However, this research has not clarified the influence of establishing operations on the emergence of pure mands following tact training. Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of tact training on the acquisition of impure and pure mands in children with autism …

Atrial Fibrillation Signal Analysis, Raja Sarath Chandra Prasad Vaizurs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common type of cardiac arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice and is associated with an increased mortality and morbidity. Identification of the sources of AF has been a goal of researchers for over 20 years. Current treatment procedures such as Cardio version, Radio Frequency Ablation, and multiple drugs have reduced the incidence of AF. Nevertheless, the success rate of these treatments is only 35-40% of the AF patients as they have limited effect in maintaining the patient in normal sinus rhythm. The problem stems from the fact that there are no methods developed to analyze …

Modeling And Control Of Wind Generation And Its Hvdc Delivery System, Haiping Yin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the most developed renewable energy source, wind energy attracts the most research attentions. Wind energy is easily captured far away from the places where wind energy is used. Because of this unique characteristic of the wind, the generation and delivery systems of the wind energy need to be well controlled. The objective of this dissertation work is modeling and control of wind generation and its High Voltage Direct-Current (HVDC) delivery system.

First of all, modeling of the Doubly-fed Induction Generator (DFIG)-based wind farm is presented including dynamic models of the wind turbine, shaft system and DFIG. Detailed models of …

A Multilevel Model Of Police Corruption: Anomie, Decoupling, And Moral Disengagement, Ruth Zschoche

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Police corruption is a primary concern for law enforcement agencies. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that could predict the likelihood of police officer susceptibility to corruption. Data was collected through surveys of 1083 officers within eight U.S. police agencies that were participating in the National Police Research Platform funded by the National Institute of Justice. The data were analyzed using multilevel structural equation and base multilevel models.

The theoretical model for this study addressed susceptibility to corruption on both the departmental (clusters) and individual officer levels. Four main constructs were utilized in this study. Acceptance of …

The Impact Of Hospice And Dementia Special Care Units On End-Of-Life Care For Individuals With Dementia, Catherine Elizabeth Mccarty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Hospice and Dementia Special Care Units (DSCUs) have been shown to be gold standards of care for individuals who are dying and for those with dementia in nursing homes. Using a retrospective administrator and family survey, this study investigated whether the processes of care used in hospice and DSCUs are associated with increased quality of end of life (EOL) care for individuals with dementia. A convenience sample of 17 facilities in four states (FL, PA, MD and MA) was included in the study. Nursing home administrators were surveyed between September 2008 and October 2009. The administrators identified 116 family …

Robotic Hand Evaluation Based On Task Specific Kinematic Requirements, Carlos Rafael Neninger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the rise autonomous and robotic systems in field applications, the need for dexterous, highly adaptable end effectors has become a major research topic. Control mechanisms of robotics hands with a high number independent actuators is recognized as a complex, high dimensional problem, with exponentially complex algorithms. However, recent studies have shown that human hand motion possesses very high joint correlation which translates into a set of predefined postures, or synergies. The hand produces a motion using a complementing contribution of multiple joints, called synergies. The similarities place variables onto a common dimensional space, effectively reducing the number of independent …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Electrospun Cactus Mucilage Nanofibers, Yanay Pais

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to fabricate, optimize, and characterize nanofibers of cactus Opuntia ficus-indica mucilage and Poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) by electrospinning. Mucilage is a neutral mixture of sugars produced by cactus and PVA is a non-toxic, water-soluble, synthetic polymer, which is widely used as a co-spinning agent for polymers. Mucilage was extracted from the cactus pad and prepared for electrospinning by mixing with acetic acid. Two types of PVA were used differentiating in high and low molecular weights. Concentrations of PVA were varied to find an adequate threshold for fiber formation. Changing the ratio of PVA to cactus mucilage produced …

An Analysis Of Remote Biometric Authentication With Windows, Brandy Marie Eyers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One thing that everyone seems to be worried about when it comes to his or her computer is security. If your computer is not secure then private information could be stolen. Many people now use passwords to protect themselves though they are discovering that using multi-factor authentication is much more secure. It allows you to use multiple different proofs of who you are. Biometrics is one of the ways to prove identity. Using it, you could log into a system with just a fingerprint, which is something that is very difficult to steal. We present a suite of software tools …