Digital Commons Network^™

Parenting Practices And Disordered Eating Behaviors In Adolescents, Rebekah Johnson

Student Works

Background/Purpose: Eating disorders are a common chronic condition among adolescents. Some parenting styles have been associated with adolescent disordered eating behaviors (DEB), which can lead to eating disorders and a variety of other psychological and physical complaints. Healthcare practitioners and parents need to identify these DEB early and intervene in hopes of preventing the sequela of other health problems. The purpose of this article is to review current research on the association between parenting styles or practices and DEB as well as associated psychological symptoms in adolescents.

Methods: CINAHL, Academic Search Premier, MEDLINE, and PsycINFO databases were searched for English-language …

Differential Expression Of Mtor Related Molecules In The Placenta Of Patients With Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, Intrauterine Growth Restriction, Or Preeclampsia, Katherine Price, Brent Kimbler, Nekel Knowlton, Kelsey Hirschi, Paul Reynolds, Juan Arroyo

Student Works

The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is involved in placental growth and function during pregnancy. The mTOR pathway responds to nutrient availability and growth factors regulating protein transcription and cell growth. mTOR disruptions are associated with the development of obstetric complications which may result in adverse health outcomes for the mother and/or fetus. The purpose of this study is to identify the differing placental expression of various mTOR-associated proteins during normal gestation (Control), gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and preeclampsia (PE). Immunohistochemistry was used to stain human placenta for activated proteins (phospho; p)AKT, (p)ERK, (p)mTOR, (p)p70 …

Predictive Power? Textual Analysis In Mergers & Acquisitions, Philip Morgan

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Modern corporations utilize mergers and acquisitions as strategies to develop shareholder value today more than ever before, yet the need for understanding firms’ rationale and strategy is critical in predicting post-merger stock performance for all investors. I apply the interpretive power of textual analysis and regression to a corpus of SEC mergers and acquisitions public company filings between 1994-2017. Not only do I challenge the statistically significant correlation between word content and post-transaction abnormal stock returns, but I also characterize the effects of time segments, transaction size, and industry variation across time. As a final application, I consider sentiment analysis …

Broadcasting The Search For Understanding: The Essay's Relationship With The Podcast, Miriam Bay Sweeney

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this creative thesis project, I explore the relationship between the modern essay and the podcast. I do so by producing the first three episodes of my own essayistic podcast, called Peer-Refined Health. In this foundational exploration, I consider the value of the podcast as a new medium of communication for the essay. I begin this project report with a background on both the podcast and the essay as well as a discussion of my project development. The transcripts of three episodes of Peer-Refined Health follow. Finally, I analyze the relationship between the essay and the podcast and suggest additional …

The Impact Of Gap Years On Academic Outcomes For Women: A Case Study From The Missionary Age Change, Margaret Marchant

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Young adults throughout the United States and other countries participate in “gap years,” or time away from school, often for travel, work, or volunteering. This practice is promoted as a way to mature and refocus. However, some worry that it lowers the likelihood of college completion. Previous literature has investigated the academic, social, and personal benefits of gap years with mixed results; however selection into gap years confounds the true impact with unobservable personal characteristics. To overcome selection issues, I exploit an exogenous policy change that lowered age requirements for missionary service, a unique type of gap year, resulting in …

Uncertainty In Optical Particulate Counting Sensors, Jared Todd Blanchard

Undergraduate Honors Theses

To mitigate the health problems and environmental damage caused by the burning of biomass in homes across the developing world, there is an international effort to design clean burning cookstoves that burn with greater efficiency and emit fewer harmful substances. An important tool for gauging the effectiveness of these alternate stoves is the optical particulate counting (OPC) sensor, which comes in many varieties. To facilitate comparison between measurements from different models, a mathematical model and uncertainty analysis method for OPC’s have been developed. These may be applied to any light-scattering OPC. In addition, a low-cost physical system was developed to …

Eliminating Opioid Use In The Treatment Of Chronic Lower-Back Pain, Tyler Hobbs, Blaine Winters

Student Works

Opioid use is an epidemic in the US costing millions annually. Chronic lower-back pain (CLBP) affects people world-wide and is frequently treated with opioids long-term. Long-term opioid use leads to negative health related consequences, increased risk for depression, negative unintended opioid related side-effects, overdose, and death. The purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to educate PCP on the complexities of CP and negative implications of opioid treatment for CLBP while illuminating the benefits of non-opioid management, 2) to review non-opioid treatment methods for CLBP to eliminate opioids, and 3) to construct feasible options for treating CLBP without opioids.

Energy And Economic Implications Of Water Transfer, Sa'd Shannak

Open Water Journal

It is well established that population and economic growth will present major challenges for meeting the world’s growing water and energy needs over the coming decades. Water scarcity is rapidly affecting every continent and countries are exploring new sources of water to meet the increased demand for fresh water. This paper seeks to make progress in this area by providing new insights for making tradeoffs between transferring water and other water supply options. The paper reviews cost estimates of transferring water and establishes a method for analyzing the Energy for Water Transfer (EN4WT), a method which could be helpful in …

Oil Spill Contamination Of Ground Water In Chunnakam Aquifer, Jaffna, Srilanka, Saravanan Suntha

Open Water Journal

The Chunnakam aquifer has high capacity and acceptable quality water for drinking and other usages. Water supplies are generated from this area. Fuel smell had been continuously observed in Chunnakam water intake site. The intake site is located very close to the Chunnakam fossil fuel power station, and on analysis, the intake well and the adjacent wells showed oil contamination. A research study was carried out during the period November 2013 to August 2014. The total 150 wells were analyzed, 109 (73%) wells have shown higher oil level than the Srilankan standard 614(1983) of 1.0 mg/l, 07 (4%) wells were …

Discovery Of Geographical Gene Variants In Related Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Bacteriophages, Emilee Carr, Elise Melhado, Emily Loertscher, Trever Thurgood, Ruchira Sharma, Julianne H. Grose

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2019

Antibiotic resistant bacterial strains are a major crisis in the world due to the difficult nature of curing individuals afflicted with them. Phage therapy has been proposed as an alternate treatment for these bacterium. In Dr. Julianne Grose's lab, bacteriophages were against the bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To isolate, environmental samples were utilized in enrichment cultures that were ultimately used in serial dilutions, plaque purification, electron microscopy, DNA isolation, sequencing, and genome annotation. The P. aeruginosa phage, TF17, infects a bacterial strain that is highly related to a strain that causes fatalities as an opportunistic infection in patients with cystic fibrosis. …

Using Women’S Voices In Teaching History And Doctrine, Jennifer Reeder

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In early July 1830, shortly following her baptism, Emma Smith received a revelation through her husband, Joseph Smith, about her position and responsibilities in the new Church of Christ. In the revelation (now known as section 25 of the Doctrine and Covenants), the Lord described Emma as an “elect lady” and charged her to “expound scriptures and exhort the church according as it shall be given thee by my spirit.” The responsibilities were weighty: the 1828 American Webster dictionary defines exhort as “to encourage, to embolden, to cheer, to advise, to excite or to give strength, spirit, or courage.” Likewise, …

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Focus On Faith, Jean B. Bingham

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Assembled dignitaries, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen: I am honored to be here today to discuss the role of faith-based organizations in relieving suffering and building self-reliance among the peoples of the world—particularly those who are most vulnerable. I am grateful to be in the midst of so many friends who recognize the tremendous good that is achieved when people of faith come together.

Adaptive Control For Inflatable Soft Robotic Manipulators With Unknown Payloads, Jonathan Spencer Terry

Theses and Dissertations

Soft robotic platforms are becoming increasingly popular as they are generally safer, lighter, and easier to manufacture than their more rigid, heavy, traditional counterparts. These soft platforms, while inherently safer, come with significant drawbacks. Their compliant components are more difficult to model, and their underdamped nature makes them difficult to control. Additionally, they are so lightweight that a payload of just a few pounds has a significant impact on the manipulator dynamics. This thesis presents novel methods for addressing these issues. In previous research, Model Predictive Control has been demonstrably useful for joint angle control for these soft robots, using …

Physical Abuse Tendencies Among Males: Initial Development And Validation Of The Likelihood To Physically Abuse, Christina Elisabeth Riley

Theses and Dissertations

Male-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) against women remains as a pervasive and detrimental issue both in the United States and globally. Researchers, counselors, and others often develop psychological measures to help understand the causes of IPV in an effort to prevent this issue from occurring. Debate still persists within IPV research as to the definitive factors that contribute to the perpetration of IPV. The socio-feminist perspective remains as the predominant theoretical basis that drives IPV research and understanding. Despite this, no psychological measure grounded in this theory that predicts IPV perpetration proclivities has been developed and validated to date. The …

Effects Of Larynx Preservation Method On Phonation Threshold Flow In An Excised Porcine Benchtop Model, Emily Huber Webster

Theses and Dissertations

An excised animal larynx model has been used in many studies to better understand the physiological and anatomical properties of the human larynx. One difference between an ex vivo model and an in vivo model is that ion loss occurs postmortem. To compensate for this in the excised model, researchers most commonly use a preservation method that includes completely submerging the specimen in isotonic saline (0.9% Na+Cl-) and then flash freezing it in liquid nitrogen. The flash freezing method allows researchers to maintain the integrity of the structures while also being able to gather specimens as they become available. Not …

Pun Strategies Across Joke Schemata: A Corpus-Based Study, Robert Nishan Crapo

Theses and Dissertations

In the linguistic study of humor, research has largely been centered around the formulation of models and theories or the dissecting and categorization of jokes. Because of the often difficult-to-categorize aspects of verbal jokes, much time has been spent trying to create taxonomies for humor types and mechanisms. Linguists such as Raskin and Attardo have sought to categorize all verbal humor according to various functional elements (Attardo & Raskin, 1991). Such elements include, but are not limited to, the logical mechanism that drives the humor in the joke or the situation where the joke takes place. These categorizations are helpful …

End Matter, Comparative Civilizations Review

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Microbial Community Response To Fumigation In Potato Soils, Trevor Blake Smart

Theses and Dissertations

Soil microorganisms have a variety of beneficial and deleterious effects on plants, impacting such processes as plant growth, soil nutrient cycling, crop yield, disease resistance and tolerance to an array of biotic and abiotic stressors. The disruption of soil microbial community structures, particularly when beneficial soil biota are altered, has been shown to reduce crop yield and leave plants susceptible to disease. Long-term disruption of microbial communities may occur with repeated fumigation, being the application of gaseous pesticides, in agricultural soils. For this reason, we characterized bacterial, fungal, oomycete and nematode populations in paired fumigated and nonfumigated potato fields located …

The Fluid Pastoral: African American Spiritual Waterways In The Urban Landscapes Of Harlem Renaissance Poetry, Maren E. Loveland

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In 1921 Langston Hughes penned, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” in his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (Hughes 1254). Weaving the profound pain of the African American experience with the symbolism of the primordial river, Hughes recognized the inherent power of water as a means of spiritual communication and religious significance. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the American pastoral as typified by white poets such as Robert Frost and Walt Whitman, the African American poets emerging from the Harlem Renaissance established a more nuanced pastoral landscape embedded within urban cultures, utilizing water in particular as …

Winter 2018 Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Bloodland: A Holistic Approach To Contemporary Reclamation Of Native Female Power, Anna Kendall

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Using Video Self-Modeling To Improve Reading Fluency In School Aged Children With Specific Learning Disabilities, Chelsea Nicole Ollar

Theses and Dissertations

Effective reading interventions for students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) are needed. A multiprobe multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the effects of a video self-modeling intervention (VSM) on reading fluency skills. The VSM interventions effects on self-efficacy were also measured. Four male middle school students with SLD watched a pre-recorded video of themselves reading a passage fluently and were then asked to read another passage. Words correct per minute (WCPM) and accuracy data were taken. Results showed that students read significantly more words correct when they watched themselves read the same passage they were about to …

The Effects Of A Three-Hour, After School Bout Of Sedentary Vs Active Behavior On Reward And Cognitive Control Activation In 8- To 9-Year-Old Children: A Randomized Crossover Study, Mary Linn White

Theses and Dissertations

PURPOSE: To compare the effects of after-school sedentary versus active play on activation in the reward and cognitive control regions of the brain to pictures of high- and low-calorie foods. METHODS: 32 children (12 girls, 20 boys; age 8.7 ± 0.5 years; height 137.9 ± 6.9 cm; weight 32.4 ± 6.2 kg) participated in a randomized crossover study with counterbalanced treatment conditions. Conditions took place on separate days after school and included three hours of active or sedentary play. After each condition, neural activation in reward and cognitive control regions of the brain were assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging …

Psychiatric Symptom Severity Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Meta-Analysis, Benjamin Douglas Eschler

Theses and Dissertations

Objectives: A meta-analysis was conducted to determine the average effect size of internalizing and externalizing symptoms after pediatric traumatic brain injury across a range of severity (mild, moderate, and severe). Two-meta-regressions were also conducted to determine the role of age at injury at time since injury on these effect sizes.Participants and Methods: 9725 titles and abstracts were collected from PubMed, PsycInfo, and Web of Science. Of these, 63 full-text articles were examined for inclusion criteria to determine eligibility for the study. To be included, the studies needed to be published prior to March 2017 in English, needed to have a …

Teacher Experiences In Highly Impacted Schools That Produce Happiness, Brittany Nicole Lund

Theses and Dissertations

Teachers represent a large percentage of the workforce in the United States, yet there is a high demand for teachers every year due to a large number of teachers exiting the profession (Ingersoll, 2001). Staying beyond the first five years is a feat nearly half of the teachers in the United States do not accomplish which leads to problems within the school community (Ingersoll, 2002; Ingersoll, 2004). Through an exploration of the positive stories of teachers' experiences this study identifies some of the common themes found within those stories that led teachers to greater happiness in their profession. While this …

The Socialization Of Financial Giving: A Multigenerational Exploration, Ashley Brooks Lebaron

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has found that family socialization influences financial giving behaviors and that financial giving predicts personal wellbeing. However, little research since the early 1980s has explored this phenomenon, and virtually none of the research has been qualitative in nature. As part of the Whats and Hows of Family Financial $ocialization project, this study employs a diverse, multi-site, multigenerational sample (N = 115) to qualitatively explore the following research question: how do children learn about financial giving from their parents? In other words, how is financial giving transmitted across generations? From interviews of emerging adults and their parents and grandparents, …

Improving Post-Wildfire Seeding Success Using Germination Modeling And Seed Enhancement Technologies, William Charles Richardson

Theses and Dissertations

Arid and semi-arid rangelands are important ecosystems that are consistently degraded through disturbances such as wildfires. After such disturbances, the invasion and dominance of annual grasses, like cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), can lead to an overall loss of ecosystem productivity and an increase in fire frequency. To reduce weed dominance, native and introduced perennials species are typically be seeded in the fall. High mortality is seen from these seeded plant communities due to germinated seed being exposed to freezing, drought, fungal pathogens, and other biotic and abiotic stressors during winter months. We utilized wet-thermal accumulation models to first further …

The Effects Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Correct Production Of Emotion Words For Children With Language Impairment, Julia Vincent Hetherton

Theses and Dissertations

Many school-age children with language impairment (LI) have difficulties with aspects of social and emotional learning. This study was structured to evaluate one aspect of the effectiveness of a social communication intervention, the appropriate production of emotion words. Four school-aged children with LI participated in 20 sessions of story-based intervention targeting understanding and usage of emotion-based words. Emotions targeted included the emotion word categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Because the knowledge of the emotion word categories varied from child to child, each child had different target words. The percentage of correct production of targeted emotion …

Cultural Differences In Russian And English Magazine Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach, Emily Kay Furner

Theses and Dissertations

Many American companies looking to increase sales and achieve growth targets consider expanding the reach of their product lines to other countries. However, expansion on a global scale often requires much trial and error as English-speaking companies try to market their goods to a foreign audience. In order to ease this process, localization experts are often hired to "localize" or change advertisements in order to make them more culturally relevant to consumers. Because the field of localization is relatively new, there is little research done on the degree and extent to which advertisements are localized. The purpose of this study …