Digital Commons Network^™

How Should I Fall Apart For You? A Critical Autoethnography Exploring Embodied Trauma, Julie R. Terebkov

Master's Theses

Defining and naming trauma is a layered and nuanced process but hegemonic medical and media discourses have forced trauma into a system of binary terms and categories. This study begins with an exploration of how hegemonic discourses define trauma and how focusing on embodied trauma disrupts the limiting language presently available. I use Lisa Blackman’s (2008) work on embodiment to explore how our bodies move, take on, and shed trauma as a form of disruption to oppressive language. Blackman’s theory is used to examine my own embodied trauma through a critical autoethnography using prose and narrative I developed in narrative …

Manifestations Of Communicative Resilience In Experiences Of Serial Arguments Among Adult Children Of Harmful Parental Alcohol Use, Brooklyn Willis

Master's Theses

This thesis investigated the ways in which adult children of harmful parental alcohol use manifest resilience through the lens of the Communication Theory of Resilience (CTR). The CTR presents five communication processes by which resilience, which is the ability to overcome hardship, is demonstrated. Serial arguments, the repeated and unresolved conflicts that occur between romantic partners, were utilized as the context to study resilience. Interviews were conducted to learn about perceptions of serial argument resolvability and the ways and frequencies in which resilience manifested. A pre-interview survey gathered information pertaining to relationship satisfaction and perceptions of resilience. A thematic analysis …

Western Snowy Plover Dispersal In Response To Repeated Nest Loss In Monterey Bay, California, Esther A. Haile

Master's Theses

Western snowy plovers (Charadrius nivosus nivosus) breed and winter along sandy beaches and salt pannes of the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Mexico. Since 2015, the percentage of successful nests in Monterey Bay has declined due to predation. This study examines the site fidelity and dispersal of western snowy plovers after repeated nest loss using nesting data from 2013-2020 from a banded population in Monterey, California. Dispersal distance within a breeding season reflected plovers serially polygamous breeding strategy, with more site fidelity within a breeding season than between two breeding seasons. Nests lost to environmental causes having a 41.3% …

Bubble Detection Under Microgravity In A Closed-Loop Microchannel Perfusion System, Max S. Kim

Master's Theses

Altered gravitational conditions result in changes in biological function. Studies in microgravity have shown irregularities in fluid redistribution within the vascular system. In order to study these irregularities, a cell culture perfusion system is necessary. Bubbles can proliferate in closed-loop systems and are detrimental to cells. However, the effects of bubbles in a closed-loop system in microgravity are unknown. Accordingly, the hypothesis of this investigation is that the absence of a constant-direction gravitational body force will exacerbate the presence of bubbles in a closed-loop microfluidic perfusion system. In order to examine the hypothesis, a closed-loop microfluidic cell culture perfusion system …

An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Female Olympic Athletes’ Experiences With Social Media, Mercedez M. Sanchez

Master's Theses

Social media is prevalent in athletes’ lives and sport today. Sport psychology scholars have conducted numerous research studies on the effects of social media in athletes, yet not specifically athletes who have participated in the Olympic Games. Less is known about how Olympic athletes perceive, interpret, and manage both positive and negative social media effects. It is essential that those involved in athletics are aware of how the highest-level athletes experience various forms of public feedback on social media, and how they can manage the effects of this feedback. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively examine the experiences …

Motivated Reasoning In Technology Workers, Kory Feath

Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to investigate cognitive predictors for motivated reasoning, the process in which evidence evaluation is influenced by prior beliefs, in technology workers. Two hundred and twenty-one technology workers were recruited using Prolific and word-of-mouth to evaluate the conflicting evidence of social media causing digital harm. Past research has found that many individual cognitive styles do not predict motivated reasoning, but by using structural equations modeling to investigate the latent variable analytical/reflective thinking styles, I predicted that more active thinking styles will reduce motivated reasoning and be mediated by prior belief strength. A structural equations model …

Where And Why Do Ecosystem-Based Adaption Projects Take Place In California?, Daniel K. Jacobson

Master's Theses

California is experiencing the harmful impacts of climate change and will continue to do so for generations. As a result, municipalities have been forced to turn to adaptation solutions to help local residents adjust to inevitable impacts such as sea level rise, extreme heat, and extreme weather. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), the use of nature and ecosystem services to help human systems adapt to climate change impacts, is an increasingly popular, cost-effective, and multi-benefit adaptation strategy. While prior research has shown that other forms of adaptation, often referred to as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ strategies, disproportionately benefit whiter and wealthier populations, there …

Quantum Mechanics And Dynamical Models For Finite Unlabeled Simple Graphs, Nathan M. Lewis

Master's Theses

This thesis constructs quantum mechanical theories of finite simple graphs for both labeled and unlabeled graphs.These theories may provide a description for discrete spacetime in a quantum gravity theory. Finite simple graphs and their properties are introduced. The first and second quantization of the standard quantum mechanics of particle systems are reviewed. A quantum mechanical theory of graphs similar to first quantization of standard quantum mechanics is developed via a correspondence of graph edges to particles in particle systems. An algorithm for constructing quantum states of graphs which is independent of graph vertex labeling is developed. It builds antisymmetric graphstates …

Intrinsic Motivation By The Principles Of Non-Linear Dynamical Systems, Phu C. Nguyen

Master's Theses

The design of appropriate control rules for the stabilization of dynamical systems can require quite substantial domain knowledge. Modern AI methodologies, such as Reinforcement Learning, are often used to mitigate the need for such knowledge. However, these can be slow and often rely on at least some hand-designed reward structure, and thus human input, to be more effective. Here, we propose an alternative route to construct rewards requiring only minimal domain knowledge, essentially relying on the structure of the dynamical system itself. For this, we use truncated Lyapunov exponents as rewards to calculate the stabilizing controller from samples. Concretely, the …

Bosons In Anti De Sitter Spacetime, Thi Khanh Linh Pham

Master's Theses

I am extremely grateful to Dr. Kassahun Betre for his support and guidance throughout my thesis journey. His wisdom, knowledge, and encouragement have been invaluable to me. His willingness to take me on making this project and the collaborative friendship is the highlight of my master’s program. Many thanks to Dr. Curtis Asplund and Dr. Ehsan Khatami for participating on my committee and with regard to their valuable feedback on my thesis draft, ensuring the completion of this work. Finally, I am grateful to my family for their unwavering love and all the support and absolute patience over the years …

Advertisement Blindness In Social Media Apps, Nora Szladovics

Master's Theses

Advertisement blindness (ad blindness) is a general term that refers to people’s tendency to automatically and unconsciously ignore advertisements. The phenomenon was originally identified in banner ads, then later in text and native ads on websites. Today, social media is an effective tool for advertisers, yet research investigating users’ interaction habits with social media ads in mobile applications (apps) is unexplored. This study expands the ad blindness concept to mobile social media apps, examining its presence and whether target position has an influence. Further, it investigates the relationship between social media use and ad blindness. Employing a novel approach, the …

Exploring The Benefits Of Library Consortium: The Information Resource Sharing., Muhammad Bala Kasim, Fati Abba, Hajara Jibril, Yahaya Abdullahi Isah, Aliyu Muhammad Babadoko

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This paper examines the cardinal benefits of library consortium which is the resource sharing. Resource sharing aims at maximizing collection and services of libraries and information centres at minimum cost. Various sources of information (primary and secondary literature) were perused to view the essentiality of resource sharing in carrying out effective and efficient library and information services to users. The paper also highlighted the requirements needed for successful resource sharing practices among libraries. The significance/benefits of resource sharing as it relates to economic, developmental, academic/research as well as social life of librarians and library personnel were clearly stated. An ideal …

Conceptualizing Socio-Emotional Disablism: A Duoethnography Of Crohn’S Disease And Ocd During Covid-19, Kristen L. Cole, Brandi Lawless

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

We utilize duoethnography to help readers better understand the constitutive nature of disability in the contexts of chronic illness and mental health. By doing so, we articulate the concept of socio-emotional disablism, which expands structural and psycho-emotional theories of disablism to account for the ways socio-material interactions trigger emotion-work—the communicative labor and fatigue that accompanies negotiating our own emotions as well as the emotions of others in disabling contexts—thus limiting relational and ideological engagement with disability. We conclude by discussing what the concept of socio-emotional disablism teaches us about how to build more inclusive social futures through deeper interpersonal engagement …

Beta Cortical Oscillatory Activities And Their Relationship To Postural Control In A Standing Balance Demanding Test: Influence Of Aging, Yang Hu, Steven J. Petruzzello, Manuel E. Hernandez

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Age-related changes in the cortical control of standing balance may provide a modifiable mechanism underlying falls in older adults. Thus, this study examined the cortical response to sensory and mechanical perturbations in older adults while standing and examined the relationship between cortical activation and postural control. Methods: A cohort of community dwelling young (18–30 years, N = 10) and older adults (65–85 years, N = 11) performed the sensory organization test (SOT), motor control test (MCT), and adaptation test (ADT) while high-density electroencephalography (EEG) and center of pressure (COP) data were recorded in this cross-sectional study. Linear mixed models …

Tesol Programs In Flux, Priyanvada Abeywickrama, Stefan Frazier, David Malinowski, Scott Phillabaum

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

TESOL graduate programs in the U.S. have seen a steady decline in international and domestic student applications over the past several years. Among the possible causes of this decline are economic turmoil, changing immigration policies and politics, and broader social turbulence, issues that were present before the COVID-19 pandemic but which have been exacerbated by its persistence, forever changing education and learning. As we look forward, TESOL graduate programs must rethink, re-envision, and reconsider how they prepare teachers for a changing world. This chapter discusses ways that two well-established graduate TESOL programs have confronted the changes mentioned above, and presents …

Neighborhood Market Potentials For Alcohol Use And Rates Of Child Abuse And Neglect, Bridget Freisthler, Christiana Kranich, Jennifer Price Wolf, Reiko Boyd, Paul J. Gruenewald

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Alcohol use can lead to child abuse and neglect even if the person using alcohol does not use heavily. Yet relatively few measures that reflect alcohol use are available at smaller geographic units. We assess whether the estimated level of total alcohol use per capita is related to measures of child abuse and neglect that include substantiated reports of maltreatment, total entries into foster care, and alcohol-related entries into foster care. Methods: Our sample consists of 326 Census block groups in Sacramento, California over three time points (978 space–time units). Administrative data for substantiations of child abuse and neglect …

Controlling Neocortical Epileptic Seizures Using Forced Temporal Spike-Time Stimulation: An In Silico Computational Study, Joseph Schmalz, Rachel V. Quinarez, Mayuresh V. Kothare, Gautam Kumar

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Epileptic seizure is typically characterized by highly synchronized episodes of neural activity. Existing stimulation therapies focus purely on suppressing the pathologically synchronized neuronal firing patterns during the ictal (seizure) period. While these strategies are effective in suppressing seizures when they occur, they fail to prevent the re-emergence of seizures once the stimulation is turned off. Previously, we developed a novel neurostimulation motif, which we refer to as “Forced Temporal Spike-Time Stimulation” (FTSTS) that has shown remarkable promise in long-lasting desynchronization of excessively synchronized neuronal firing patterns by harnessing synaptic plasticity. In this paper, we build upon this prior work by …

Distributed Cooperative Kalman Filter Constrained By Advection–Diffusion Equation For Mobile Sensor Networks, Ziqiao Zhang, Scott T. Mayberry, Wencen Wu, Fumin Zhang

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In this paper, a distributed cooperative filtering strategy for state estimation has been developed for mobile sensor networks in a spatial–temporal varying field modeled by the advection–diffusion equation. Sensors are organized into distributed cells that resemble a mesh grid covering a spatial area, and estimation of the field value and gradient information at each cell center is obtained by running a constrained cooperative Kalman filter while incorporating the sensor measurements and information from neighboring cells. Within each cell, the finite volume method is applied to discretize and approximate the advection–diffusion equation. These approximations build the weakly coupled relationships between neighboring …

Edible Learning: School Food Service Programming And Experiential Education That Promote Sustainable Agriculture And Better Nutritional Health, Kristina Grasty

Dissertations

The typical American diet, which involves the consumption of processed foods high in saturated fats, sodium, and refined sugar, is known to be unhealthy. Millions of students in the U.S. suffer from symptoms of malnutrition, making them susceptible to compromising health conditions such as type 2 diabetes that may persist into adulthood. Well-designed school nutrition programs and action learning that promotes sustainable agriculture have the potential to enhance students’ nutritional well-being as well as their understanding of the ecological systems needed to support good nutrition. This dissertation uses documentary film as an exploratory, qualitative research method to investigate approaches used …

Proof-Of-Stake For Spartangold, Nimesh Ashok Doolani

Master's Projects

Consensus protocols are critical for any blockchain technology, and Proof-of- Stake (PoS) protocols have gained popularity due to their advantages over Proof-of- Work (PoW) protocols in terms of scalability and efficiency. However, existing PoS mechanisms, such as delegated and bonded PoS, suffer from security and usability issues. Pure PoS (PPoS) protocols provide a stronger decentralization and offer a potential solution to these problems. Algorand, a well-known cryptocurrency, employs a PPoS protocol that utilizes a new Byzantine Agreement (BA) mechanism for consensus and Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs) to securely scale the protocol to accommodate many participants, making it possible to handle …

The Bias Report: An Automated News Aggregator For Political Bias Classification And News Summarization, Anant Joshi

Master's Projects

Political polarization is on the rise in the US, driven in large part by divisive news that goes viral on the Internet. Specifically, many media outlets use slanted language and publish misinformation in order to drive user traffic and engagement. Almost 80% of US citizens get their news from online sources, but there is a lack of public safeguards against biased news. A large amount of news is published online every day by media organizations, and it is impossible to manually analyze this amount of data. There is a clear need for automated, public-facing solutions in the current political climate …

High Performance Distributed File System Based On Blockchain, Ajinkya Rajguru

Master's Projects

Distributed filesystem architectures use commodity hardware to store data on a large scale with maximum consistency and availability. Blockchain makes it possible to store information that can never be tampered with and incentivizes a traditional decentralized storage system. This project aimed to implement a decentralized filesystem that leverages the blockchain to keep a record of all the transactions on it. A conventional filesystem viz. GFS [1] or HDFS [2] uses designated servers owned by their organization to store the data and are governed by a master service. This project aimed at removing a single point of failure and makes use …

Enhancing The Security Of Yioop Discussion Board, Prajna Gururaj Puranik

Master's Projects

Yioop is an open-source web portal that serves as a search engine and a discussion board, enabling users to create, join, and share content within groups. Data security is a critical concern for Yioop, as it involves storing and accessing user-generated data and generating statistical data. Yioop has an existing security mechanism in place, but continuous enhancements are needed to protect against potential vulnerabilities and cyber threats.

This project aims to strengthen the security of Yioop by implementing additional security measures that build upon the existing security mechanism. To prevent statistical attacks, this project extends differential privacy to mask the …

Concept Drift Detection In Android Malware, Inderpreet Singh

Master's Projects

Machine learning and deep learning algorithms have been successfully applied to the problems of malware detection, classification, and analysis. However, most of such studies have been limited to applying learning algorithms to a static snapshot of malware, which fails to account for concept drift, that is, the non-stationary nature of the data. In practice, models need to be updated whenever a sufficient level of concept drift has occurred. In this research, we consider concept drift detection in the context of Android malware. We train a series of Support Vector Machines (SVM) over sliding windows of time and compare the resulting …

Effectiveness Of Standardized Vs. Individualized Cancer Treatment Education, Jija Issac

Master's Projects

As the number of cancer diagnoses continues to increase and is expected to keep rising, it becomes imperative to explore avenues to optimize patient education. Research has consistently demonstrated that effective education plays a crucial role in improving patient outcomes. Through my previous experiences in various outpatient oncology infusion centers, I have observed significant variations in the methods employed for delivering patient education across different facilities. In this literature review, I explored the effects of standardized chemotherapy education and individualized chemotherapy education on patients in outpatient oncology clinics. The predominant themes across these studies encompass patient awareness of anticipated symptoms, …

Unlearning Hidden Bias Between Refugees : An Initial Empirical Investigation, Akshay Sunil Gurnaney

Master's Projects

The challenges that refugees in various regions encounter are common knowledge. One such challenge is a bias among refugees on ethnocentric grounds. In particular, there are various articles that have pointed out the struggles faced by Syrian refugees in countries like Europe as a result of implicit bias. In fact, the media coverage of Syrian crises and the government responses to the same shed negative light on the refugees themselves. On the contrary, the media coverage of Ukrainian crises is very different with lesser restrictions from the governments.

This research attempts to identify the extent of implicit bias between Ukrainian …

Ensemble Transformer Architecture For Efficient And Real Time Sign Language Translation, Sumeet Ghegade

Master's Projects

Sign language is a form of visual language that uses face expression and hand gestures to communicate thoughts and concepts. The term refers to multiple visual languages that share some common visual cues but differ in their grammar and syntax. Sign language translation (SLT) is a crucial step in closing the communication gap between hearing and hearingimpaired people. The study of SLT using machine learning has gotten a lot of interest during the last three years but despite progress, SLT research is still in its early phases. Most of the previous approaches first convert the signs to glosses and then …

The Effect Of Covid-19 On The Decision-Making Processes Of Local School Governing Boards With Regard To Considering And Enacting State And Federal Policies, J Jesus Contreras

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine and analyze the decision-making and policy development of local governing boards acting in response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative and qualitative data was gathered through open-ended items in a mixed-methods survey and through a focus group interview. This research sought to gather governing board members' perceptions about the effects that the COVID-19 crisis had on their decision-making processes with regard to enacting state, federal, and COVID-19 Relief Funds policies. The findings in the study indicate that governing board members’ understandings of state and federal policy were not nuanced enough …

How Can I Help You Today? How First-Generation Latinx/A/O Community College Students Perceive Counseling, Isaac Escoto

Dissertations

Latinx/a/o students make up almost half of the California Community College system’s population. However, Latinx/a/o students account for about 15% of three-year completion rates (certificate, degree, or transfer). In support of student success strategies, the literature describes the role of counselors and how they help students navigate the complexities of higher education. This mixed-methods study investigated how community college counseling practices and services are perceived by Latinx/a/o students; and which of those practices and services best supported the success of this student population. Key findings included the importance of counseling services, as well as preferred counseling appointment logistics and topics …

Ethnic Studies Implementation In A K-8 District: Culture, Critical Consciousness And Collective Efficacy, Genvieve Dorsey

Dissertations

This research was a descriptive study in which the researcher explored the beginning phases of Ethnic Studies implementation in a Kindergarten through Eighth grade (K-8) school district in Northern California. Using a social justice lens, and through a review of Ethnic Studies, Collective Efficacy, Critical Consciousness, and School Culture constructs, the researcher attempted to capture and articulate a cultural profile of the school district and the degree to which it aligned to the cultural typologies articulated among Ethnic Studies scholars.The study included the collection of several types of data, including: (1) archival documents; (2) teacher focus groups; and (3) administrator …