Digital Commons Network^™

Ice Storm Impacts On Forest Health: Monitoring The Growth And Mortality Of Ice Damaged Trees In Francis Beidler Forest, Brittany Dirienzo

All Theses

Forests in the Southeast U.S. Coastal Plain are subjected to periodic disturbances such as fire, hurricane, ice storm, and drought. For floodplain forests, ice storms are among the most frequent and injurious disturbances that occur. Despite this, these storms have not been studied as often as other disturbances, so their ecological role remains unclear. This study takes place in Francis Beidler Forest, an original growth floodplain forest preserve administered by the National Audubon Society near Charleston, S.C. The study examined the impacts of an ice storm that occurred February 11th-13th, 2014 on 3,700 trees that reside in three forest community …

Disconnect: An Animated Short Narrative Critiquing Our Society's Digital Dependence, Daniel Hale

All Theses

Disconnect is an animated short narrative critiquing our society’s increasing focus on communication through digital devices at the expense of traditional human interaction.

Remnants Of Existence: Discovering Value In Loss, Andrea Hardin Garland

All Theses

Those who precede us in the continuum of humanity may affect our lives even if we are unaware of their influence. To illustrate the residue of previous generations, I emboss textiles inherited from my Southern American family. Formerly useful and distinctly decorative, these embroidered handkerchiefs, crocheted doilies, lace nightgowns and dress gloves are now antiquated curiosities. Using the force of a printing press, I form shadowy impressions of the articles on paper to communicate presence in absence, then manipulate the images with various media. I literally rinse, wring and dry many of these works in an effort to elevate the …

Community In The Crowd: Motivations For Commenting On Twitch.Tv Live Streams, Evan Lybrand

All Theses

Twitch.tv is a growing platform designed or interaction, communication, and socialization. It is space for content creators and viewers can to interact and build communities. Although it is not exclusively video game streams, Twitch.tv has become a major player in the industry. This study is a thematic analysis of comments made during live streams of video game content. The questions guiding this research were: What do viewers comment about on streams? What do these comments reveal about their motivations for participating? What are the variations between content types? After analyzing 9084 comments across 10 streams, what was found was that …

The Impact Of Color On Visual Retention And Preference In Logo Design, Aaron Taylor Alexander

All Theses

Color is often the first thing a person will be drawn to in an object. It fills the world and activates people’s imagination. The purpose of this research is to analyze the impact that color has on a person’s ability to recall visual information. Company logos are used as a focus for this due to the importance a logo has in the way companies market themselves. Therefore, a logo should be memorable at a second’s glance.

This thesis attempts to solve the problem of understanding what makes a logo more memorable to a customer in order to assure maximum visual …

Linear Sediment Control Best Management Practice Assessment Across Three Distinct Eco-Regions Of South Carolina, Daniel Dixon

All Theses

Erosion and sediment loss vary widely across distinct ecoregions. Regulations on construction runoff require improved sediment and erosion control practices to decrease total suspended solids (TSS) and turbidity. This study measures the efficiency of three different best management practices (BMPs) with and without the application of polyacrylamide (PAM) in three distinct regions of South Carolina. Sediment tubes, rock ditch checks (RDC), and rock ditch checks with washed stone (RDC-WS) were evaluated to determine the effects of adding PAM. These BMPs were placed within constructed channels on active highway construction projects. Half-inch rain events or greater that produced runoff were analyzed …

Analyzing And Developing Aspects Of The Artist Pipeline For Clemson University Art, Kunta Kwaku Lowe

All Theses

Major digital production facilities such as Sony Pictures Imageworks, Pixar Animation studio, Walt Disney Animation Studio, and Epic Games use a production system called a pipeline. The term “pipeline” refers to the structure and process of data flow between the various phases of production from story to final edit. This paper examines current production pipeline practices in the Digital Production Arts program at Clemson University and proposes updates and modifications to the workflow. Additionally, this thesis suggests tools that are intended to improve the pipeline with artist-friendly interfaces and customizable integration between software and remote-production capabilities.

Rereading The Journal: Maintaining The Potential For Refinement, Julie Anne Edewaard

All Theses

While much of the Journal exemplifies Henry David Thoreau’s intent to improve the self, this thesis suggests that the Journal was used as a device for maintaining the potential to improve, or refine, rather than acting as a conduit for achieving the fully improved self. In his progress toward becoming his ideal self, Thoreau performs an act of defamiliarization in his writing by omitting himself from his entries and by writing about himself indirectly by writing about an entity that is separate from him, nature. This paper also explores the importance of the concept of change for Thoreau as it …

Armor Influences On Designing A Character Costume With 3d Modeling And Printing Methods, Genevieve Marie Watkins

All Theses

This thesis documents the process of researching, creating, and constructing body armor for a live-action film character, from artists' concepts to 3D modeling methods to physical construction. Additionally, I will review the early and futuristic histories of armor designs, and their influences on the creation, composition, and construction of costume forms. Such review should reinforce the notion that it is important to understand the past for its influence on the future, and that a historical understanding of armor is vital to warrior costume design across multiple platforms.

The idea of a warrior is essential to the development and design of …

Plantations, Planning & Patterns: An Analysis Of Landscapes Of Surveillance On Rice Plantations In The Ace Basin, Sc, 1800-1867, Sada Stewart

All Theses

This thesis explores patterns of the rice plantation landscape of the ACE River Basin in South Carolina during the period of 1800-1860 to assess how planters surveilled enslaved workers. The research consisted of a cartographic study of historic plats of nineteen rice plantations, a sample of the ninety-one plantations that covered the region during the height of rice production in South Carolina. For each of the plantations, the next level of analysis was viewshed and line of sight studies after 3D Sketch-Up models were created from each the plat. These studies yielded maps that support analysis of how planters arranged …

A Change In Southern Character Through Southern Characters, Emma Mccracken

All Theses

This dissertation traces the patterns in southern literature from the 1950s to 2019 that reveals a difference between an Old and New South that occurs circa 2000, when technology and urbanization was booming in the American south. However, it is important to note that it is not only the medium used to share works that is globalizing southern literature, but it is the way its writers have begun to break away from old tropes and traditions in the content of their writing. This pattern is best traced through the analysis of works by contemporary southern writers like Jill McCorkle, Randall …

Culinary Medicine: An Evaluation To Assess The Knowledge, Attitudes, Behaviors And Confidence Of 1st Year Medical Students In A Culinary Medicine Teaching Kitchen, Lauren Elizabeth Vanderpool

All Theses

The World Health Organization predicts that two-thirds of all disease around the globe will be the result of lifestyle choices by the year 2020. Increasing obesity rates contribute to these climbing numbers. The direct relation between obesity and comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), Type II Diabetes, and hypertension cannot be denied. Obesity is directly associated with higher risks of developing CVD, Type II Diabetes, hypertension, and many other health conditions. All of the aforementioned health conditions are associated with physical activity, nutrition and other lifestyle behaviors. In order to combat these extremely prevalent health conditions, it is ideal to …

Behavioral And Population Ecology Of Swift Foxes In Northeastern Montana, Andrew Russell Butler

All Theses

Swift foxes are endemic to the Great Plains of North America, but they were extirpated from the northern portion of their range by the mid-1900s. Despite several reintroductions to the Northern Great Plains, there is still a large range gap between the swift fox population along the Montana and Canada border, and the population in northeastern Wyoming and northwestern South Dakota. A better understanding of the resources swift foxes use and demography of the population at the edge of this range gap in northern Montana might help to managers to facilitate connectivity among populations. In Chapter 1, we collected fine-scale …

Planning For Cougars In An Urban Environment, Edward Drew Brittain

All Theses

Urban sprawl is a ubiquitous term and issue for planners across the United States. As sprawl occurs, planners are attempting to impede the effects (loss of biodiversity, increased effects of climate change, increased interaction between wildlife and urban environments) of converting natural spaces to land uses for humans through the integration of green infrastructure. This green movement (conservation/preservation of land, urban tree canopies, open space acquisition) has helped planners alleviate the resource externalities of urban expansion; however, new issues have risen in response.

One issue for planners has been the increased occurrences of wildlife in urban areas. While some of …

Reducing Uncertainties In Conservation Decision-Making For American Alligators, Abigail Lawson

All Dissertations

Effective conservation decision-making necessitates monitoring programs that are designed to collect unbiased and precise measurements of relevant attributes deemed to reduce structural uncertainty of the managed resource state. American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis; hereafter alligator) are a keystone species within the southeastern United States that have cascading effects on ecosystem structure and function, and are managed under consumptive use management programs throughout their range. Management of alligator populations in South Carolina is challenging due to pervasive uncertainties regarding the size class distribution, which is only partially observable using the primary monitoring tool (nightlight surveys), a lack of demographic parameter …

Cm Scale Flapping Wing Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle At Very Low Reynolds Numbers Regime, Abduljaleel Altememe

All Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the CM$-$SCALE Flapping Wing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (FWUAV) that can accommodate nacelles of the scale of current Unmanned Air vehicle (UAV) designs are complex systems and their utilization is still in its infancy.

The improving design of unmanned aerial vehicle from previous teams by improving the wings and outer body of bird. So, to potentially improve wing design, a complaint joint mechanism is proposed in order to make wing flapping and provide lift and thrust needed to fly. Also, change the wing design from flat wing to airplane wing by using two different airfoils, NACA 0012 …

Development Of Tissue Engineered Vascular Grafts Resistant To Diabetes Mellitus, Jhilmil Dhulekar

All Dissertations

Diabetes Mellitus, characterized by high levels of blood sugar, is a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Almost 25 million Americans are currently diagnosed with diabetes, with numbers rising rapidly. Hyperglycemia and dyslipidemia coexist in diabetes and result in inflammation, stiffening and degeneration in blood vessels which contributes to the development of atherosclerosis and arterial diseases such as coronary and peripheral artery disease. The diseased arteries can be replaced with synthetic materials, but the small-diameter arterial replacements (< 6 mm diameter) fail after 5-10 years because they are not resistant to the damage associated with diabetes. Tissue engineering offers a promising approach to develop decellularized extracellular matrix-based vascular scaffolds, repopulated with the patients’ own stem cells, to provide a non-immunogenic, patient-tailored vascular graft with improved remodeling and integration with native tissue. However, the presence of diabetes will structurally modify the implanted tissue engineered grafts. Therefore, it is necessary to develop tissue engineered vascular constructs capable of resisting diabetes-related alterations. The primary focus of this research was threefold: 1) Develop decellularized vascular scaffolds derived from porcine renal arteries with matrix integrity and mechanical properties similar to native blood vessels, 2) test the resistance of scaffolds treated with penta-galloyl glucose (PGG) to diabetes in functional small animal model, and 3) determine the immunomodulatory effect of adipose derived stem cell differentiation and seeding on scaffold remodeling in a diabetic environment.

First, a complete decellularization procedure of porcine renal arteries was established and optimized to remove all cellular and nuclear material from the …

Glucose Adaptation And Glycosome Import Machinery Of Trypanosoma Brucei, Logan Phillip Crowe

All Dissertations

Trypanosoma brucei is the protozoan parasite responsible for Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) and the cattle wasting disease Nagana endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. T. brucei and other kinetoplastids possess specialized peroxisomes called glycosomes that compartmentalize many processes including glycolysis and gluconeogesis. While most studies on T. brucei has been performed on lab-adapted 29-13 strain parasites, it has been observed that glucose is an important signaling cue for differentiation of AnTat1.1 cells. Currently, most parasites are maintained in the glucose-rich medium SDM-79, and studies using low glucose media have used either SDM-80 or SDM-79 in which glucose has been depleted by cell …

Fat-Soluble Vitamins In Dietary Supplements: Optimization Of Extraction, Simultaneous Determination By Hplc And Stability Studies, Yaqi Wang

All Dissertations

In recent decades, consumption of multivitamin/mineral (MVM) dietary supplements has significantly increased, reflecting a huge demand from the commercial market. Meanwhile, there is a big concern of the stability and shelf-life of vitamins, including fat-soluble vitamins (FSVs), in the dietary supplements. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct precise analysis and stability evaluation of the FSVs in the commercial products so as to scrutinize their content levels.

An optimized method to extract the encapsulated FSVs (i.e., vitamin A acetate, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D3 and vitamin E succinate) from MVM supplements was developed in light of four critical factors, including the …

Machinic Eyes: New And Post-Digital Aesthetics, Surveillance, And Resistance, Brian Gaines

All Dissertations

This work concerns the rise of the New Aesthetic, an art project developed by James Bridle in 2012. The New Aesthetic, as envisioned by Bridle, was chiefly concerned with the overlapping of physical and digital realities through both the artifacts produced by this overlapping and the systems involved therein. I introduce the advent of the New Aesthetic and present the major criticisms: the lack of a robust theoretical and scholarly framework, the lack of a historical framework, the privileging of artifacts over systems as new Aesthetic, and the fragmented scholarly outlook on the New Aesthetic.

Upon further examination, I discovered …

Investigating The Cultural Context For Big Cat Conservation Around The World, Kathleen Elizabeth Krafte

All Dissertations

Populations of predators are in decline worldwide as human growth and development destroys and alters their habitats. At the same time, large predators are a tourist attraction in many regions of the world, bringing essential income to governments and local communities. The complex interactions between predator populations and local communities often result in conflicts that can negatively impact both humans and wildlife populations. To gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of human-predator conflict and potential solutions, this study focuses on assessing the social suitability for predator conservation that measures the cultural context for conservation in a region. First, a …

Purpose-Driven: Employee Engagement From A Human Flourishing Perspective, Crystal Susan Wiedemann

All Dissertations

Employee engagement continues to be one of the most popular topics in the organizational sciences over the past few decades. Despite this popularity, however, the antecedents of employee engagement and its underlying motivational framework are still unclear and unavailable to guide organizational interventions (Macey & Schneider, 2008). Using data from a sample of 518 employees in a southeastern university, this study investigated the work environment antecedents of job demands-abilities fit, transformational leadership, and corporate social responsibility and found positive significant relationships with employee engagement. Additionally, in a time where an increasing number of workers are searching for more meaning and …

Evaluating Effects Of Character Appearance On Ownership And Learning In Virtual Applications, Lorraine Lin

All Dissertations

Virtual applications are now a dominant commercial and social platform. Sixty-seven percent of households own a gaming device, and eighty-one percent of the United States population has a social media profile. Now, virtual reality appears to be the next technological frontier that will take over mainstream markets. New, low-cost devices for virtual reality or mixed reality such as the Oculus Rift, Sony's PlayStation VR, or Samsung's Gear VR are already available or have been announced and might even outperform previous high-cost systems. With the prevalence of this technology, it is important to know how it influences us. One common factor …

Three Essays On The U.S. Film Industry, Chen Wang

All Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses three papers. My first paper assesses film makers' choices on product quality and variety in film production. Production budget and genre are used to represent quality and variety, respectively. My research is unique in that it exploits the peculiar lack of price variation in the film industry, as ticket prices are the same for each film. I construct a theoretical model of duopoly competition over genre and budget rather than the traditional focus on price. The model predicts that an increase in expected demand will result in an increase in the budgets of the films, as well …

The Role Of Tbx5 In Sinoatrial Node Differentiation In Mouse Embryonic Stem Cell Derived Cardiomyocytes, Yunkai Dai

All Dissertations

The sinoatrial node of the mouse embryo arises from the wall of the right atrium near the border of the sinus venosus. Early in development this region expresses the transcription factor Tbx5. Because of this, Tbx5 is thought to sit at the apex of a transcriptional cascade leading to sinoatrial node (SAN) differentiation. To test this we produced a mouse embryonic stem cell line B1 (pTripZ-mTbx5; αMHC::GFP) that conditionally overexpresses Tbx5, to determine if this would lead to enhanced SAN differentiation. We found that ES cells overexpressing Tbx5 showed enhanced overall cardiac differentiation and that cardiac cells showed increased beat …

14th Annual Focus On Creative Inquiry Poster Forum Program, Clemson University

Focus on Creative Inquiry

The Focus on Creative Inquiry (FoCI) Poster Forum is an annual event in which Creative Inquiry (CI) teams can present their research and project accomplishments through posters and interactive displays. It is a celebration of student and mentor collaborations and accomplishments! Teams take this opportunity to develop and hone their communication skills.

Geospatial Analysis Of Flooding From Hurricane Florence In The Coastal South Carolina Using Google Earth Engine, H. A. Zurqani, C. J. Post, E. A. Mikhailova, K. Ozalas, J. S. Allen

Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium (GRADS)

Flooding impacts from hurricanes and other natural hazards are an important concern in many areas of the world. The objectives of this study were to: (1) develop a framework to identify flood-affected areas after storm impact; (2) map the flooded areas caused by the hurricane Florence; and (3) assess the major effect of the hurricane on the land cover and agricultural crops in the coastal South Carolina during the flood period. The coastal South Carolina regions are recognized as the most important agricultural area in the state. The developed framework identified and mapped the affected areas during the hurricane season. …

Metabolic Adaptation During Infection In The Intestinal Parasite Entamoeba Histolytica: Roles Of Pfk Enzymes, Irem Bastuzel, Cheryl Ingram-Smith

Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium (GRADS)

Entamoeba histolytica is a water- and food-borne intestinal parasite that causes diarrheal disease in an estimated 90 million people each year worldwide. This pathogen encounters many different environments during infection and must adjust its metabolic activities specifically to that environment. Entamoeba lacks many common metabolic pathways and must ingest other cells to obtain many of the cellular building blocks such as amino acids that it cannot synthesize itself. E. histolytica relies on breakdown of the sugar glucose as the main means for obtaining energy. This is done through glycolysis, a metabolic pathway that is present in essentially all organisms. A …

Screening Unsaturated Fat Sources Included To Low And High Forage Diets With Different Fat Dietary Concentration Using An In Vitro Gas Production System, Saad M. Hussein, M. X. Toledo, S. Twyman, O. Thomas, J. Echesabal, Gustavo J. Lascano

Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium (GRADS)

Fat inclusion can increase energy density of diets fed to ruminants, but detrimental effects to nutrient digestion have been reported. There is evidence that not all fat sources have this negative response and this effect can vary depending on the forage concentration in the diet. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effects of including different types of unsaturated fats to high and low forage diets in vitro digestibility and fermentation. An experiment was conducted using an in vitro gas production (GP) system. Treatments included either low forage (LF; 35%) or high forage (HF; 70%) with 2 dietary …

Re-Imagining The Rhetorics Of Human-Computer Interaction: Addressing Hcl Issues And Problems In Non-Western Cultures, Octaviyanti Dwi Wahyurini

Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium (GRADS)

The current Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) knowledge is designed and developed from Western thinking, neglecting the non-Western rhetorical and cultural situation that determines or at least informs users in Non-Western settings to react to the computer technology. In those Non-Western countries with communal and collective ways of living and communication, HCI needs to be responsive to these people's need. This research is to propose new approach to create better engagement in HCI through rhetoric as a practice for people from the Non-Western community.