American Studies Commons^™

Predicting Early Adolescents’ Academic Achievement And In-School Behavior With A Dual-Factor Model Of Mental Health, Amanda L. Thalji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A dual-factor model of mental health includes indicators of wellness (i.e., subjective well-being) and psychopathology (i.e., internalizing and externalizing behavior problems) in defining psychological wellness. The present empirical investigation examined the utility of SWB and psychopathology examined separately and together (as in a dual-factor model of mental health) in predicting students' subsequent academic achievement and in-school behavior. Specifically, it determined if SWB, psychopathology, and membership in a specific mental health group yielded by the dual-factor model (i.e., complete mental health, vulnerable, symptomatic but content, or troubled) at Time 1 was related to achievement (i.e., GPA, FCAT-math, FCAT-reading, absences, office disciplinary …

Descartes' Bête Machine, The Leibnizian Correction And Religious Influence, John Voelpel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

René Descartes’ 1637 “bête machine” characterization of nonhuman animals has assisted in the strengthening of the Genesis 1:26 and 1: 28 disparate categorization of nonhuman animals and human animals. That characterization appeared in Descartes’ first important published writing, the Discourse on the Method, and can be summarized as including the ideas that nonhuman animals are like machines; do not have thoughts, reason or souls like human animals; and thus, cannot be categorized with humans; and, as a result, do not experience pain or certain other feelings. This characterization has impeded the primary objective of environmental ethics - the extension of …

Effects Of Ingesting Fat Free And Low Fat Chocolate Milk After Resistance Training On Exercise Performance, Breanna Myers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Collegiate athletes are always looking for ways to improve their performance. Resistance training has been incorporated into most collegiate athletic programs for this very reason. In order to improve strength, lean body mass, and exercise performance, resistance exercise and timely protein ingestion must be followed. Incorporating protein ingestion into a resistance training routine has been shown to improve net protein balance. Milk protein is gaining popularity as an ergogenic aid. There has been growing interest in the potential use of bovine milk (cow’s milk) as an exercise beverage, especially during recovery from resistance training and endurance sports. No studies have …

Comparing The Effectiveness Of Behavioral Contracts That Use Function Based Reinforcers Versus Highly Preferred Items For Attention Maintained Behaviors, Dánica M. Diáz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral contracts were used to reduce the socially inappropriate and stigmatizing behaviors of adult men diagnosed with an intellectual disability. All three participants were residing in an intensive residential habilitation facility and receiving 24 hour supports due to the intensity of their problem behaviors. A multiple baseline across subjects with a series of reversals within the intervention phase was used to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of two types of behavioral contracts: one based on the function of the behavior and the other based on highly preferred items. Brief functional analyses were conducted to determine the function of the participants' …

Morton, David, 1886-1957 (Sc 2232), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2232. Eighty-six poems by Kentucky poets, copied by hand from the publications in which they were published. The poems were chiefly authored by Elkton, Kentucky native David Morton, but the collection includes works by Kalfus Kurtz Gusling, Anna Blanche McGill, and Robert Burns Wilson.

Brennan, Mary Zita, B. 1955 (Sc 2229), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2229. Dissertation titled "Sense of Place: Reconstructing Community Through Archeology, Oral History, and GIS" written by Mary Zita Brennan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a doctorate in anthropology at the University of Arkansas. The work focuses on families along Moccasin and Indian Creeks in northwest Pope County, Arkansas. Appendices on compact disc. Tate Cromwell "Piney" Page was on the faculty of Western Kentucky University for many years.

Design And Evaluation Of A Green Bittorrent For Energy-Efficient Content Distribution, Jeremy H. Blackburn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

IT equipment has been estimated to be responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions and data centers are responsible for 1.2% of U.S. energy consumption. With the large quantity of high quality digital content available on the Internet the energy demands and environmental impact of the data centers must be addressed. The use of peer-to-peer technologies, such as BitTorrent, to distribute legal content to consumers is actively being explored as a means of reducing both file download times and the energy consumption of data centers. This approach pushes the energy use out of the data centers and into the homes …

Doyon, Anne Marie P. (Mss 300), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 300. "Kentucky's Traditional Courthouses: Preservation in the Heart of the Community," a Master's project written by Ann Marie P. Doyon for the Department of Historic Preservation, College of Design, University of Kentucky.

Shape And Pose Recovery Of Novel Objects Using Three Images From A Monocular Camera In An Eye-In-Hand Configuration, Steven C. Colbert

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Knowing the shape and pose of objects of interest is critical information when planning robotic grasping and manipulation maneuvers. The ability to recover this information from objects for which the system has no prior knowledge is a valuable behavior for an autonomous or semiautonomous robot. This work develops and presents an algorithm for the shape and pose recovery of unknown objects using no a priori information. Using a monocular camera in an eye-in-hand configuration, three images of the object of interest are captured from three disparate viewing directions. Machine vision techniques are employed to process these images into silhouettes. The …

Immune Redistribution To Skin In Wild And Domesticated Songbirds, Joshua Ryan Kuhlman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Implantation of dental sponges under the skin of lab rodents has been used to evaluate whether acute stress enhances leukocyte infiltration to a surgical site. First, I replicated this technique in house sparrows to test whether transient stressors cause similar immunoredistribution (i.e., movement of immune cells out of circulation and to the periphery) in a wild animal. As placement into captivity alone may serve as a stressor to wild animals, I compared sponge infiltration over different periods of captivity. Second, I compared how domestication affects immunoredistribution by comparing results of wild sparrows to domesticated zebra finches. Zebra finches were chosen …

Patient Reported Efficacy Of Botulinum Toxin Type A In The Treatment Of Chronic Migraine Headaches, Patrick F. Whitney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objective: To assess patient reported efficacy of Botulinum toxin type-A for the prophylaxis of migraine headaches in patients with frequent migraine headaches prior to initiation of treatment with Botulinum toxin type-A compared to post treatment. Questions addressed include is there a difference in frequency of migraine headaches following treatment with Botulinum toxin type-A, is there a difference in cost of conventional treatment versus Botulinum toxin type-A and is there a difference in quality of life.

Research Plan: Questions addressed patient status prior to the initiation of treatment as well as post treatment. Patient quality of life change, duration and frequency …

Semi-Supervised Self-Learning On Imbalanced Data Sets, John Nicholas Korecki

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Semi-supervised self-learning algorithms have been shown to improve classifier accuracy under a variety of conditions. In this thesis, semi-supervised self-learning using ensembles of random forests and fuzzy c-means clustering similarity was applied to three data sets to show where improvement is possible over random forests alone. Two of the data sets are emulations of large simulations in which the data may be distributed. Additionally, the ratio of majority to minority class examples in the training set was altered to examine the effect of training set bias on performance when applying the semi-supervised algorithm.

Use Of Model Compounds To Study Potential Removal Of Pharmaceuticals Using Octolig®, Wen-Shan Chang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The existence of pharmaceuticals in the environment has some adverse effects, and may pose threat to the organisms in the environment. The possibility of removing certain pharmaceuticals from wastewater was tested using Octolig®, a commercially available material with polyethyldiamine moieties covalently attached to high-surface area silica gel. Selected drug models were subjected to column chromatography in efforts to effect removal by means of ion encapsulation, the effectiveness of which would depend upon having appropriate anionic functional groups. The experimental results suggested that the model compounds, Rose Bengal, Eosin Y, Erythrosine , ZPS, and Lissamine Green B were successfully encapsulated by …

Anuran And Tree Community Structure Of Cypress Domes In Tampa, Florida, Relative To Time Since Incorporation Within The Urban Landscape, Christopher Haggerty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wetlands in densely urbanized landscapes display altered physical, chemical, and biological features; however, long term trends in these are poorly known. The purpose of this study was to determine if biological, physical, and chemical changes in isolated cypress domes are related to time since incorporation within an urban landscape. Sixteen cypress domes in Tampa, Florida were placed into four decadal age groups based on construction date of residential homes within 200 m of wetland edge, with multiples in each age group: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and rural sites as regional controls. Each site was visited monthly from July 2008 until …

Spanish Spelling Errors Of Emerging Bilingual Writers In Middle School, Diana Julbe-Delgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In spite of the significant growth in the Spanish-English bilingual population, there has not been sufficient research on cross-language effects, or how language transfer may affect important components of literacy, such as spelling. Many studies have focused on the influence of Spanish on the acquisition of English spelling skills; however, few studies have focused on how the acquisition of English influences Spanish spelling. The purpose of this investigation was to study the spelling errors of bilingual adolescents as they learn English.

A total of 20 bilingual Spanish-English students in grades 6 through 8 (ages 11 to 14 years) were selected …

A Generalized Acceptance Urn Model, Kevin P. Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An urn contains two types of balls: p "+t" balls and m "-s" balls, where t and s are positive real numbers. The balls are drawn from the urn uniformly at random without replacement until the urn is empty. Before each ball is drawn, the player decides whether to accept the ball or not. If the player opts to accept the ball, then the payoff is the weight of the ball drawn, gaining t dollars if a "+t" ball is drawn, or losing s dollars if a "-s" ball is drawn. We wish to maximize the expected gain for the …

A Philosophical Inquiry On The Valuation And Selection Of Musical Materials For Culturally Diverse Learners In Global Environments, Jonathan Bassett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The selection of musical materials for use in the classroom is problematic. Since music educators have limited time with students, the inclusion of musical materials necessitates the perceived exclusion of other musical materials. This perception is due in part to the increasing diversity of students represented in the classroom, the cultural labeling of musical materials, the influence of multiculturalism on music education, and the influence of the Western aesthetic in music education. Since diverse groups can and do propose socially perceived valuations of these materials as critical for the inclusion of specific musical materials for use in the classroom, this …

Parallel Genetic Algorithm Engine On An Fpga, Mark La Spina

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The field of FPGA design is ever-growing due to costs being lower than that of ASICs, as well as the time and cost of development. Creating programs to run on them is equally important as developing the devices themselves. Utilizing the increase in performance over software, as well as the ease of reprogramming the device, has led to complex concepts and algorithms that would otherwise be very time-consuming when implemented on software. One such focus has been towards a search and optimization algorithm called the genetic algorithm. The proposed approach is to take an existing application of the genetic algorithm …

Biosynthesis Of Fatty Acid Amides, Emma K. Farrell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Primary fatty acid amides (PFAMs) and N-acylglycines (NAGs) are important signaling molecules in the mammalian nervous system, binding to many drug receptors and demonstrating control over sleep, locomotor activity, angiogenesis, vasodilatation, gap junction communication, and many other processes. Oleamide is the best-studied of the PFAMs, while the in vivo activity of the others is largely unstudied. Even less is known about the NAGs, as their discovery as novel compounds is much more recent due to low endogenous levels. Herein is described extraction and quantification techniques for PFAMs and NAGs in cultured cells and media using solvent extraction combined with …

Beyond The Business: Social And Cultural Aspects Of The Atlanta Life Insurance Company, Alisha R. Winn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation research is an examination of the social and cultural dynamics of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company (ALIC) in Atlanta, GA. During the Jim Crow era (and post Jim Crow era), the ALIC provided economic mobility through employment, home loans, life insurance, and community solidarity. The company was one of the largest and most successful African-American financial institution in the country during the 20th century. It was founded in 1905 by Alonzo F. Herndon, a prosperous black barber and entrepreneur who rose from enslavement to become by 1927 the wealthiest African American in Atlanta. Renamed as the Atlanta Life …