Digital Commons Network^™

Polyaniline Analogs Polymers And Nanocomposites Coating For Corrosion Protection Applications, Raymond Femi Awoyemi

Theses and Dissertations

The economic impact of metallic corrosion on global infrastructure, spanning pipeline networks, bridges, refineries, and automobiles, is considerable. In 2013, it accounted for 3.4% of the global GDP, totaling US$ 2.5 trillion. Organic coatings have gained significance as a prominent strategy to address this widespread issue. Polyaniline (PANI), a conducting polymer, has long been recognized as an effective anti-corrosion coating. This study explores the potential of polyaniline analogs and their nanocomposites as candidates for protective organic coatings in corrosion control applications. Initially, the investigation focuses on conducting polymers with side chains comprising long, branched alkyl groups as potential corrosion suppression …

Longitudinal Influences Of Parental Relationships On Positive Adolescent Functioning, Rebekah Buckley Sparks

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the longitudinal influences of parental relationships – romantic, co-parenting, and parent-child – on positive adolescent functioning. Utilizing data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study investigates how various dimensions of parental relationships impact adolescent well-being at age 15, as measured by the EPOCH scale. Grounded in Attachment Theory and the Life Course Perspective, this research highlights the interconnectedness of early parental interactions and their long-term effects on adolescents’ emotional and social development. Key findings indicate that supportive and stable parental relationships significantly enhance adolescents’ engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness. The study emphasizes …

The Role Of Aarp Mississippi In Healthy Aging, Kimberly Campbell, Melinda Bertucci

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

No abstract provided.

Integrated Delivery Of Health Care And Continuity Of Care For Older Mississippians With Mental And Behavioral Health Concerns, Tockie V. Hemphill

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

The mental health of older adults is of national concern. There is some uncertainty regarding access to care and whether mental and behavioral health care will be readily available in primary care settings. This paper explores the concepts of integrated delivery of care and continuity of care for older adults. The definitions of the two concepts vary in detail, but are similar in purpose. There is an array of strategies presented that outline a continuity of care that involves an integrated delivery system. Relationship development is the core of this system, as well as older adults’ ability and willingness to …

Aging Redefined: Moving Past The Deficit Model, Aaron Guest

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

The remarkable increase in longevity is the pivotal triumph of public health over the last two centuries. Yet, even as we experience the benefits of increased longevity, we continue to face rampant ageism – or the prejudice and discrimination directed at individuals perceived as 'old.' Worst of all, we know that ageism is associated with increased medical costs, poorer health outcomes, and increased mortality. Efforts to combat ageism have been insufficient. The triumvirate of ageism, gerontological illiteracy, and gerontophobia have resulted in a deficit model of aging. Far from being a liability, the rapid increase in the aging population presents …

Caregiver To Caregiver: An Exploratory Case Study In Adult Family Caregiving Experiences, Tamara Brocks, Kaye Bender

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Adult family caregiving is a national public health issue which is more prominently recognized since the COVID pandemic. The National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers (2022) highlights more than three hundred federal government actions in support of family caregivers and more than 150 actions that can be addressed at other levels of government with their partnerships to build a caregiver support system. A partnership between the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH), the Mississippi Public Health Association (MPHA) and AARP MS is working to address many of the issues related to the heathy aging ecosystem in Mississippi. This case study …

Implementing Policy To Increase Health Literacy In Falls Prevention: A Teach-Back And Show-Back Intervention, Yalanda M. Barner, Lollie Vaughan-Robinson, Jazmin Adjei

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Background: Although falls are preventable, falls among older adults remain a public health concern. Research indicates that over one-third of persons over 65 fall. Approximately 3 million report to emergency rooms due to falls annually. Falls are attributed to health conditions such as cognitive impairment, poor eyesight, arthritis, and polypharmacy.

Purpose: This study adapted the Teach-Back/Show-Back method for older persons in adult daycare and faith-based settings to assess their understanding of falls prevention techniques. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the risk factors, prevention strategies, and policy recommendations of falls prevention among older adults.

Methods: A survey …

Personality Profile Of Rural-Dwelling Older Adults With Hoarding Disorder, Mary E. Dozier, Caitlyn A. Nix, Hilary L. Deshong

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Hoarding in late life represents a major barrier to aging in place, particularly for rural-dwelling older adults. One risk factor for hoarding disorder in late life may be underlying personality factors. However, there has not yet been an investigation of late life hoarding and possible maladaptive personality factors from the continuous five-factor model perspective in a sample of individuals diagnosed with hoarding disorder. Thus, we evaluated the five-factor personality profiles of older adults enrolled in treatment studies for hoarding disorder in rural Mississippi. Raw scores on the International Personality Item Pool-NEO-60 were converted into categories of Low (<1SD from …

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Hot Spots In Mississippi, Taylor Jansen, Elizabeth Dugan

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Abstract

Introduction. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the sixth leading cause of death in the US and approximately 10% of people 65 years and older have COPD. This study examines the association of geographic-level risk factors with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) prevalence using spatial-based analyses with the goal of identifying risk factors associated with county-level COPD and to identify communities at risk.

Methods. The study sample consisted of all N=82 counties in Mississippi and all data is reported at the county level. All measures were drawn from the 2023 Mississippi Healthy Aging Data Report. A hot spot …

The Mississippi Healthy Aging Data Report: Tools To Advance Health Equity, Elizabeth Dugan, Taylor Jansen, Chae Man Lee, Nina M. Silverstein, Yan-Jhu Su

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Introduction. This article describes the Mississippi Healthy Aging Data Report, which includes 125 indicators reported at the county and state level.

Methods. Data sources include the American Community Survey from the U.S. Census, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and other sources. Small-area estimation techniques are used to calculate age- and gender-adjusted county rates. Data visualizations illustrate health disparities.

Results. Mississippi is home to 663,581 people age 60 or older – 22% of the state’s total population. Approximately 12.9% of Medicare beneficiaries in Mississippi have Alzheimer’s disease or a related …

Association Of Self-Report Measures With Salivary Biomarkers In Post-Menopausal Women, Laree M. Hiser, Karen Arrant, Jung Hye S. Lee, Lei Zhang

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Background: Symptoms of menopause include inadequate sleep, depression, and anxiety. Studies of healthy aging frequently use self-report tools that are unverified by objective measures.

Purpose: To investigate the correlation between self-report measures of sleep or affect and salivary biomarkers in a small (n=32) sample of post-menopausal women.

Methods: Salivary cortisol and a-amylase were quantified by laboratory tests. Self-report data included hours of sleep and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS^®) tools for sleep disturbance, anxiety, and depression. Correlation analyses were conducted between self-reported measures and biomarker concentrations.

Results: No statistically significant correlations were found between cortisol …

Let’S Have A Family Conversation, Kimberly C. Tarver, Kina White

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Simulation Tool To Study Secondary Electron Emission In Copper Coated With Graphene, George Vassilakopoulos, Eric Collins

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Secondary electron emission (SEE) arises from the interaction of high-energy particles with metallic surface materials. The emission of electrons from copper surfaces can be problematic in a variety of applications, such as particle accelerators or microchips operating in spacecraft. Emitted electrons can build up in accelerator walls, reducing the accuracy of the experiment. SEE in microchips can flip logical bits, create unwanted heat, and reduce the device's lifespan. In …

Continuous Data Assimilation For Two-Phase Flow, Mary H. Graveman, Amanda E. Diegel

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

We propose a numerical approximation method modeling two-phase flow (via the Cahn-Hilliard equation) that incorporates data to achieve long-time accuracy. The underlying numerical method utilizes the Galerkin finite element method for spatial discretization and a method known as continuous data assimilation to incorporate the known data. We demonstrate the method is long-time stable and long-time accurate provided enough data measurements are incorporated into the simulation, overcoming possibly inaccurate initial …

Validation And Runtime Improvements In Neural Networks For Interatomic Potentials Via Automatic Fingerprint Selection, Spencer Evans-Cole, Kip Barrett, Doyl Dickel

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

The development of interatomic potentials via machine learning on first principles results is driven by the need to accurately and quickly analyze atomic environments. When encoding atomic environments for neural networks, a series of different two and three-body functions are used to transcribe the local environments to produce a vector of inputs, making it imperative that the local environments are encoded optimally. Given a set of atomic environments, we …

New Weighting Parameters For Non-Local Means Based Denoising Algorithm, Ely Carroll, Hyeona Lim

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Current image denoising techniques can be broadly categorized into two types: variational methods which use minimizing functionals, and filtering methods via pixel averaging. Specifically, the non-local means (NLM) filtering based image denoising algorithm involves replacing each pixel value by the weighted averages of all pixels in the entire image. The basic non-local means algorithm is predicated on manually inputting a parameter to determine the weight of each pixel. We …

Developing Machine Learned Interatomic Potentials For Hydrogen Dissociation Over Molybdenum Phosphide, Jeremy Lugo, John Michael Lane, Woodrow N. Wilson, Neeraj Rai

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Molybdenum phosphides are promising catalysts for biomass conversion, particularly in the hydrogenation of organic molecules. Hydrogen dissociation on the surface of such catalysts is a critical step in the process. Traditional computational methods such as density functional theory (DFT) can provide valuable insights into hydrogen-catalyst interactions but are limited by their high computational cost and inefficiency for large systems and long time scales. Machine learning has emerged as a …

Repulsive Coulomb Interactions Enhance Superconductivity Selectively At Density 0.5 Per Site, Jeremy Padvorac, Rudolf Torsten Clay

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

The globally accepted Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory explains the pairing mechanism in low-temperature elemental superconductors but fails to explain pairing in high critical temperature superconductors. Unconventional superconductors with higher critical temperatures require moreexotic pairing mechanisms considering electron-electron interactions, such as spin-fluctuated-mediated pairing. Many-body calculations within the Hubbard model, which includes short-range electron-electron repulsion, have shown that superconducting pair correlations are enhanced when the density of carriers is close to one-half …

A Docking Analysis Of Reactivators For Sarin-Inhibited Acetylcholinestrase Can Aid In Screening Candidate Compounds, Ryan Pirger, Steven Gwaltney

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Poster created as part of the Center for Computational Sciences' Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science and presented at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Organophosphate (OP) poisoning disrupts nerve signaling by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an essential enzyme. Current oxime-based treatments for OP poisoning lack efficacy in severe cases due to blood-brain barrier (BBB) impermeability. A prior machine learning study identified promising AChE reactivators with BBB permeability and synthetic feasibility. Our study employed in silico docking simulations using AutoDock to evaluate the interactions between these potential reactivators and a sarin-inhibited human AChE model. The …

Alkylidyne Molybdenum Formation From Lithiated Transmetalation: A Computational Insight, Niles Wahlin, Nghia Le, Charles Edwin Webster

Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Computational Methods with Applications in Materials Science

Alkylidyne complexes have garnered significant interest for advances in catalysis in various industrial processes, such as Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and alkyne metathesis. Recently, the alkylidyne complex [N3N]MoCH was synthesized by reacting [N3N]MoCI with lithiated methanoanthracene. Despite the structural similarity between norbornadiene and methanoanthracene, as well as the overall exergonic nature of the reactions, the reaction ony proceeds experimental with lithiated methanoanthracene. To shed light on this transformation, which involves multiple spin states of various short-lived intermediates, we report a computational study elucidating the structure-reactivity relationship of lithiated cyclic reagents. The reaction proceeds through a transmetallation step followed by an endergonic carbon …

Skyscrapers, Liza Bondurant

CoE Publications

No abstract provided.

Embodied Explorations Of Slope, Rebecca Hudson, Payeton Stevens-Balducci, Liza Bondurant, Lee Dean, Catherine Putnam

CoE Publications

Promote student engagement and deep thinking about the meaning of slope.

Elemental And Isotopic Analysis Of Leaves Predicts Nitrogen‑Fixing Phenotypes, Joshua R. Doby, Carolina Moriani Siniscalchi, Mariela Pajuelo, John Krigbaum, Douglas E. Soltis, Robert P. Guralnick, Ryan A. Folk

UL Publications

Nitrogen (N)-fixing symbiosis is critical to terrestrial ecosystems, yet possession of this trait is known for few plant species. Broader presence of the symbiosis is often indirectly determined by phylogenetic relatedness to taxa investigated via manipulative experiments. This data gap may ultimately underestimate phylogenetic, spatial, and temporal variation in N-fixing symbiosis. Still needed are simpler field or collections-based approaches for inferring symbiotic status. N-fixing plants differ from non-N-fixing plants in elemental and isotopic composition, but previous investigations have not tested predictive accuracy using such proxies. Here we develop a regional field study and demonstrate a simple classification model for fixer …

Abstracts Of The 12th Annual Mississippi Association Of Entomologists, Nematologists, And Plant Pathologists Meeting, October 30 And 31, 2023, Mississippi Association Of Entomologists, Nematologists, And Plant Pathologists

Midsouth Entomologist

No abstract provided.

2023 Soybean Insect Losses In The United States, Fred R. Musser, Emily Bick, Sebe A. Brown, Whitney D. Crow, Jeffrey A. Davis, Christina Difonzo, Chase Floyd, Scott H. Graham, Jeremy K. Greene, Kelly A. Hamby, David Kerns, Sean Malone, David Owens, Dominic D. Reisig, Phillip M. Roberts, Nicholas J. Seiter, Adam J. Sisson, Benjamin C. Thrash, Kelley J. Tilmon, Raul T. Villanueva

Midsouth Entomologist

Estimated insect management costs and losses due to insects and other invertebrates in soybean during the 2023 growing season were collected and compiled from 19 states to provide a record of insect pressure and management practices for the year. These annual estimates provide a historical record of pest pressure and insect management and have been compiled in some states since 2004. Participating states represented 58% of soybean acreage grown in the United States, with near 100% participation in southern states. Overall, the stink bug complex was the costliest insect pest in soybean followed by corn earworm and soybean looper. Total …

Using Chatgpt As A Thought Partner In Writing Relevant Proportional Reasoning Word Problems, Andrea Berryhill, Lendon Chandler, Liza Bondurant, Bima Sapkota

CoE Publications

No abstract provided.

Rhetoric Or Change? The Role Of State Policies And Conditions In Shaping Postsecondary Education Access And Success For Rural Students, Darris R. Means, Jenay F. E. Willis, Kim Getfield, Devon Golden, Bryson Henriott, Brandon Lee, Alejandra Medina, Hannah Reilley, Lily K. Tunstall, Ying Zhou

The Rural Educator

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, increasing attention has been paid to rural communities. For our study, we used a multicase study approach that included five states to study the difference between the rhetoric about the need to focus more attention on rural communities soon after the 2016 election and the practiced reality of state conditions (e.g., policies, practices, constraints) changing to support postsecondary education outcomes (e.g., enrollment, retention, and graduation) for rural students between 2017 and 2021. We collected and analyzed two forms of data for our study, legislative records and newspaper articles. We noted inequitable funding for rural …

How Poverty Measures Account For Differences Between “In-Town” And “Out-Of-Town” Students, Robin Clausen

The Rural Educator

Rurality in education research is a function of the size of the school, the distance of a school in relation to urban areas, and factors within each school that may differentiate the school community based on geography. Distance matters. This study finds variation between rural communities at different distances from an urban center and differences based on analysis of student groups and student outcomes within a locale. By taking a granulated geographic approach to rurality we can better compare differences within locales. This analysis of the distance a student lives from school highlights socioeconomic differences between student groups. One related …

Rural Teacher Preparation In The State Of Alabama, Avington Medeiros, Eva Kane

The Rural Educator

Rural teacher recruitment and retention is a matter of interest for the state of Alabama as policymakers look to understand teacher shortages in rural schools across the state. How teachers are prepared to teach in rural schools is an essential part of rural teacher recruitment and retention. Preservice teachers need exposure to rural contexts as a part of their teacher preparation programs. This study examined how teacher preparation programs in Alabama are integrating rural-specific components. Among the 25 teacher preparation programs in Alabama, nearly 25% reported integrating three or more rural-specific components into their teacher preparation programs. Some teacher preparation …

Addressing Food Insecurity: Why A Comprehensive Farm Bill Is Essential For Rural Communities, Stephanie Oudghiri

The Rural Educator

No abstract provided.