Digital Commons Network^™

Risk Factors Of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae Acquisition Among Adult Intensive Care Unit Patients At A Kentucky Academic Medical Center, Jason Eric Wilson, Jason Wilson

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Background: This study aimed to identify risk factors of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) acquisition among adult intensive care unit (ICU) patients at a Kentucky academic medical center and to evaluate sink drains as a possible environmental reservoir of carbapenem-resistant organism (CRO) transmission.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted from October 1, 2013 through October 31, 2016. Intensive care unit patients were screened for CRE at admission and weekly until discharge. Cases were defined as patients who tested positive for CRE on ICU admission day 3 or greater. Sink drains were sampled for CROs in selected units from January 2018 through …

The Effects Of Systematic Manipulation Of Reinforcement Within A Classroom Management System, Amanda Gayle Chavez

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

Research suggests that best practice is for teachers to incorporate evidence-based classroom management strategies into their daily routines to improve student behavior. One aspect crucial to evidence-based practices is the rate at which teachers deliver reinforcement. Though research recommends reinforcement be provided frequently within classroom management systems (Robacker et al., 2016), no objective recommendation exists that assists teachers in delivering it systematically. In this study, a single case withdrawal design was used to analyze the effects of the systematic delivery of reinforcement within ClassDojo on the off-task behavior of three students in a fifth-grade general education classroom. The participating teacher …

Coaching Caregivers In Rural Communities On Naturalistic Strategies Via Telehealth, Stevie L. Ogburn

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

Naturalistic strategies have been shown in research to promote expressive language in children by embedding opportunities for learning trials during routines and activities. Efforts to promote expressive language development are often focused on training caregivers in implementing naturalistic strategies in their child’s typical daily routine. Coaching is a consistently effective training practice to prepare family members to implement the naturalistic strategies. While coaching has been shown to be effective, the recommended time requirement could be a barrier for most caregivers. Caregivers living in geographically remote areas also face additional barriers, such as higher rates of poverty and less access to …

Comparative Effects Of Words Plus Pictures And Words Alone On The Reading Comprehension Of Youth With Disabilities, Lindsay Caudill

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of two instructional conditions on the reading comprehension of fifth and sixth grade students with moderate and severe disabilities. A words plus pictures and words alone condition were examined through the use of an adapted alternating treatment design replicated across 3 participants. Results indicated that the effect was minimal, with words plus pictures being slightly more effective.

The Relationship Between Stress And Quality Of Life In People With Multiple Sclerosis: The Mediating Role Of Resilience, Byung Jin Kim

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease of the central nervous system encompassing the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerve, in which the patient’s immune system attacks healthy cells and tissues. Due to the unpredictable characteristics of the disease, MS can lead to an unusually high level of stress and may negatively impact the individual’s QoL. Resilience is a psychological structure that shows positive coping and adaptive ability from difficult or stressful situations. Resilience also indicates a buffering effect on the stressors of individuals with disabilities and serves to protect psychological health and function from disability. The purpose of this …

The Effect Of Endophyte-Infected Tall Fescue Seed Consumption On Gut And Satiety Hormones Related To Intake Regulation In Holstein Steers, Mindy Elizabeth King

Theses and Dissertations--Animal and Food Sciences

Cattle consuming endophyte-infected tall fescue (E+) typically experience a syndrome termed fescue toxicosis which is thought to be caused by ergot alkaloids produced by the endophyte. The most abundant alkaloid, and considered the most likely cause of the syndrome, is ergovaline (ERV). During fescue toxicosis, a decrease in ADG is observed which is likely due to the decrease in DMI commonly observed in animals consuming E+ compared to animals consuming non-endophyte-infected tall fescue (E-). However, the cause of the decrease in intake is not well elucidated. Many physiological responses control feed intake including, but not limited to, physical, neural, metabolic, …

Diagrammatics And The Proactive Visualization Of Legal Information, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article performs an analysis of one mode of visual legal communication:

diagrammatics and the visualization of legal data and other information

in legal instruments and communications.

The Proactive Law movement and the Legal Design movement each

seek to transform legal instruments and documents to improve access to and

comprehension of the communication of law to all persons. “All persons”

includes both law-trained and non-law-trained persons and extends from the

literate and educated all the way to disadvantaged, illiterate, and less-thanfully

literate persons. The overall goal of the Proactive Law movement and a

primary goal of Legal Design is to …

Cartoon Contracts And The Proactive Visualization Of Law, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Contracts have always relied on text first, foremost, and usually exclusively. Yet, this approach leaves many users of contracts in the dark as to the actual meaning of the transactional documents and instruments they enter into. The average contract routinely uses language that only lawyers, law-trained readers, and highly literate persons can truly understand.

There is a movement in the law in the United States and many other nations called the visualization of law movement that attempts to bridge these gaps in contractual communication by using highly visual instruments. In appropriate circumstances, even cartoons and comic book forms of sequential …

Plagiarism Pedagogy: Why Teaching Plagiarism Should Be A Fundamental Part Of Legal Education, Brian L. Frye, Megan E. Boyd

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As a practicing lawyer, if you aren’t plagiarizing, you’re committing malpractice. Litigators copy forms and arguments from winning briefs rather than bill their clients for reinventing the wheel. Transactional lawyers copy enforceable agreements to ensure their agreements are enforceable too. Partners routinely present documents prepared by associates (and sometimes even paralegals) as their own work. And judges are the most prolific plagiarists of all, copying briefs, opinions, treatises, and legal and nonlegal scholarship, adopting arguments from lawyers and holdings from other judges as their own and claiming authorship of opinions written primarily by their clerks or the parties to the …

A Textualist Interpretation Of The Visual Artists Rights Act Of 1990, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For numberless generations, jurisprudes waged total war in the

conflict among textualism, intentionalism, and purposivism.

Textualists insisted that courts must interpret statutes based on the

meaning of their text, intentionalists insisted on the intention of the

legislature, and purposivists insisted on the purpose of the statute.

Eventually, textualism prevailed. Courts universally recognize

that they are obligated to interpret statutes in light of their text, or

at least pretend that the text of the statute determined their

interpretation. And the few remaining heretics are swiftly identified

and corrected by their superiors. As Justice Kagan famously

observed, “We’re all textualists now.” Whether …

A License To Plagiarize, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Since time immemorial, authors have wanted to own various kinds of

exclusive rights in the works they create. Curiously, the rights authors want

to own at any particular point in time tend to reflect the nature of the market

for the works they create. The first exclusive right authors wanted was attribution.

In classical Greece, philosophers accused each other of copying

ideas without attribution. The Roman poet Martial coined the term plagiarius

to criticize other poets for passing off his poems as their own. Even

medieval Irish poets observed plagiarism norms that prohibited copying

without attribution. In all of these …

Special Education's Lessons For School Funding Litigation, Spencer C. Weiler, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this Article, we make the case that the currently dominant approaches to challenging the constitutionality of a state’s funding efforts have proven ineffective. Instead, future lawsuits designed to bring about lasting funding reform should be informed by the successes within the field of special education by asking courts to examine individual-rights claims based on one student, or several similarly-situated individual students, petitioning the court for relief tailored to that student or class. Such an approach to school finance litigation could result in a decision that limits relief to just one application of the entire funding formula, and the remedy …

Limits Of The Rule Of Law: Negotiating Afghan “Traditional” Law In The International Civil Trials In The Czech Republic, Tomas Ledvinka, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Drawing on ethnographic research of judicial cases in the Czech Republic which involve the law in migrants' countries of origin, this Article outlines how multiple strategies handle encounters with the legal-cultural differences of Afghanistan in order to neutralize what may be called the “alterity” of law. The Article suggests that far from being analytical tools, concepts such as “context,” “culture,” and “customary” are strategically used by courts to neutralize unsettling aspects of foreign Afghan legalities. Further, it applies Leopold Pospíšil´s ethnological concept of legal authority as a vehicle for reinterpreting the contextual differentiation of Afghan “traditional” law as an alternative …

Grounding Suicide Terrorism In Death Anxiety And Consumer Capitalism, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article examines an influential theory on suicide attacker motivations, the Significance Quest Theory, and suggests that this death anxiety approach can be improved by shifting its focus toward the related, but more comprehensive, Terror Management Theory. The theoretical productivity of this realignment is tested by examining the relationship between suicide attacks and one of the variables thought to trigger the underlying anxieties: the local pressures from global consumer capitalism. After describing the relationship between death anxiety and suicide terrorism generally, this article concludes by applying these insights to the ethnographic context of Egypt.

Causation And Apportionment Issues In Opioid Litigation, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In November 2019, an Oklahoma trial court judge, sitting without a jury, ruled that Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals were guilty of creating a public nuisance because their production and marketing of prescription opioid painkillers significantly contributed to the current opioid epidemic in the State of Oklahoma. The judge also held that Johnson & Johnson must contribute $65 million to pay for the State's program to abate this nuisance. Although the case has been appealed, it is significant because it was the first government sponsored opioid case to actually go to trial. Although there are many issues …

The Impact Of The 2018 Kentucky Cigarettes Taxes On Tobacco Use Among Youth, Claire W. Mampunza

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Introduction: In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, cigarette smoking results in 1.92 billion dollars spent every year on medical costs, the death of approximately 9,000 Kentuckians, and 34 percent of all cancer cases. In 2017, 14.3 percent of high school students in Kentucky declared being current cigarette smokers, compared to 8.8 percent nationally. Tobacco use among youth is a public health concern because 88 percent of adult smokers initiate smoking before age 18. Youth nicotine use can damage the growing brain, which continues to develop until 25 years of age. In July 2018, the excise tax on cigarettes increased from …

Educational Intervention To Change Knowledge And Attitudes Regarding Sexual Behaviors To Reduce Rates Of Sexually Transmitted Infections Among University Of Kentucky’S Sorority Life Students., Julianna Maita

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Sexually transmitted infections disproportionally affect young adults. Within this age group, women are at an increased risk for contracting and STI and face more severe long-term adverse consequences than men. College aged individuals are at an increased risk for contracting an STI due to risky sexual behaviors such as unprotected sex with multiple partners. College students involved in Greek Life have been found to engage in risker sexual behaviors than non-Greek life students. These individuals perceive themselves to be at a higher risk for contracting an STI and have an increased number of unprotected sexual encounters under the influence of …

Changes In Cardiovascular, Respiratory, And Neural Activity By Music: Effects Of Breathing Pathway On Feeling Emotions, Mohammad Javad Mollakazemi

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

Listening to music can induce emotional and physiological changes. Increasing recognition of the palliative effects of music has led to its use as an adjuvant therapeutic tool in the treatment of various diseases. It is also well known that autonomic nervous activities and some cardiorespiratory rhythms change in correspondence with music. However, less is known about how these effects triggered by music come about. Listening to music affects synchronization between electroencephalograms (EEGs) and cardiac rhythmic activity. This interaction between cardiac and electrical responses led us to investigate whether EEG segments synchronized to different portions of the cardiac cycle can better …

Risk-Based Construction Inspection, Shannon Rush

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

State Transportation Agencies have been experiencing staffing difficulties in the last couple of decades due to the deterioration of infrastructure and a large number of employees retiring or transitioning to the private sector. Therefore, the STA demographic has become much younger and a loss of critical knowledge has resulted from this changeover. Construction Inspection in particular has been severely impacted. Inspired by the NCHRP Synthesis 450, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has initiated the Risk-Based Construction Inspection project which focuses on prioritizing construction activities based on the risk associated with failure of that work item. The purpose of which is to …

Investigation Of Nitrate Transfer In Karst Basins During Storm Events Using Submersible Underwater Nutrient Analyzers, John Pike

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Knowledge of nitrate sources and pathways in karst basins remains incomplete and hinders management of nutrients that cause algae blooms and degrade municipal water supply. However, the increased availability of optical, ultraviolet nitrate sensors allows advancement of nitrate source and transfer for water managers. A concept model is hypothesized for nitrate transfer during hydrologic events and baseflow that considers the multiple porosity of karst. To test the concept model, 15-minute nitrate sensor data is collected with submersible underwater nutrient analyzers over a multi-year period from two locations in a karst basin in the inner bluegrass region of central Kentucky, USA. …

Artificial Intelligence And Soft Computing In Smart Structural Systems, Sajad Javadinasab Hormozabad

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Next-generation smart cities are the key feature in the next chapter of human life. Cities that employ innovative and technology-driven solutions to improve the sustainability, resilience, prosperity, and amenity of the community are considered smart cities. Development of smart cities requires fundamental innovations in many technical and technological aspects including those contributing to smart structures. Smart technologies improve the structural performance against natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, and promote the sustainability of structural systems. Next-generation smart structures encompass a variety of technologies including Structural Control (SC) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). SC covers methodologies and technologies that modify the …

Impact Of Short Meditation On Attentional Performance, Lauren E. Guerriero

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Meditation describes a large variety of traditions that all include the conscious focus of attention. By maintaining attention, meditators experience both acute and long-term changes in physiology, anatomy, and cognitive performance. The type of performance benefit is believed to depend, at least in part, on the specific type of mental training. What is much less clear in the literature is the impact of a single session of meditation on the brain and how the acute changes could impact performance. Studies in advanced meditators show an increase in neuronal coordination and slowing of neuronal firing across many regions in the brain, …

Admittance Modeling For Elastic Thickness Across The Mars Crustal Dichotomy Boundary, Aspen Davis

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

We use a Bouguer mass-sheet approximation for spectral admittance and correlation modeling to estimate elastic thickness, crustal thickness, crustal density, and load density across the Mars crustal dichotomy boundary near the landing site of NASA’s InSight Lander. We derive and constrain the parameter ranges using RMS misfit between the observed and theoretical admittance and their error bars. Spherical cap windows of 15° (900 km) radius are used to study 15 locations in the Northern Lowlands, the Southern Highlands and near and on the boundary which suggest distinct, but not sharp, difference in lithospheric properties. Elastic thickness estimates range generally between …

The Use Of Distraction: Doomscrolling, Losing Time, And Digital Well-Being In Pandemic Space-Times, Jacob Saindon

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In the space-times of the COVID-19 global health crisis, how have our relationships with smartphones changed? How do popular discourses designate mundane engagements with digital technologies as healthy or unhealthy, and how are these notions of wellness practiced? This thesis draws upon an online survey of smartphone users residing in Kentucky, and a review of marketing, journalistic, and academic literature to establish current understandings of ‘digital well-being’. The paper then analyzes interviews with Kentucky smartphone users who were asked to track their screen time for a one-week period. This project reveals normative conceptions of well-being and the role of smartphone …

Debilitating Debts And Recapacitating Loans: How Fintech Made Markets For Unsecured Consumer Debt Using Alternative Data And Machine Learning, Michael Joshua Mccanless

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This thesis investigates the production and management of consumer debt on digital platforms. First, this study investigates how borrowers navigate spaces of debt and indebtedness created by fintech consumer lenders. Second, this thesis analyzes the process and impact of ‘alternative’ data and machine learning on fintech credit scoring models. As consumer lending ‘moves online’, this research analyzes the increasingly important role of digital spaces in the creation and management of debt. Tracking the interfaces and algorithms used by online consumer lenders, I weave together insight from digital and financial geographies to argue that digital technologies are enabling firms to marketize …

The Influence Of Socioindexical Information On The Speech Perception-Production Link: Evidence From A Shadowing Task, Kyler B. Laycock

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The body of work on speech perception demonstrates the ability of listeners to utilize both visual and acoustic information in their processing of a given speech signal. More recent studies have established that listeners are sensitive to cues in both these modalities which inform their perception of a speaker's identity in parallel with the linguistic message, but the relationship between social information in perception and production together is unclear. This study reports the results of an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that expectations about a speakers identity is able to influence a listener's perception and production of speech in …

Reality And Ideology: The Use Of Gender Indexing Features In Reality Tv, Steven J. Gerencser

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This article analyzes 4 episodes of the Japanese reality television program Terrace house: Aloha State for instances of gender indexing language to investigate the gap between actual speaker usage of these features and the linguistic ideology surrounding their usage as is perpetrated and perpetuated by media. Specifically, the gender indexing features which will be investigated to accomplish this are sentence final particles and first-person pronouns. Instances of these linguistic features are typically presented as features of gendered language, but as will be demonstrated, this does match their actual usage by speakers. I set out to answer three research questions, (1) …

"To Claim That Greatness For Themselves”: A History Of The Kentucky Horse Park, Emily Elizabeth Libecap

Theses and Dissertations--History

The Kentucky Horse Park describes itself as the world’s only equine theme park. However, the park is not entirely without historical precedent; instead, world’s fairs, amusement parks, and theme parks all form a century-long pedigree chart through which the park can trace its ancestors. The Kentucky Horse Park’s links to these predecessors deepen our understanding of how the park is a reflection of the world around it and the motivations for how and why it was built. From its inception in the late 1960s, to when it opened in 1978, through the present day, the Kentucky Horse Park was and …

Building Public Health In A Rural State: Strategies For Preventing Disease In Kentucky, 1883-1914, Abigail Stephens

Theses and Dissertations--History

During the period from 1883-1914, the Kentucky State Board of Health developed strategies for preventing disease in the state by enforcing hard power measures of vaccination, quarantine, and isolation of disease suspects, and through the soft power measures of written and spoken communication. Throughout this period their efforts to prevent and contain disease were limited by inadequate funding as well as opposition from the public, local authorities, and the state legislature, demonstrating that while hard power measures can be effective in combating disease, they cannot be fully successful without support from the people they aim to protect.

Appalachia On The Airwaves: A History Of Public And Educational Television In The Southern Mountains, Carson Benn

Theses and Dissertations--History

Through a series of historical case studies of individual states within the multi-state region of the Appalachian mountain range, as well as the region as a whole, this dissertation examines educational television (ETV) operations, both at the network level and that of individual stations. Though mostly thought of as “public television”—an educational and noncommercial alternative to mainstream broadcast media—these ETV networks offered, I argue, something more analogous to present-day understandings of distance education and the use of instructional media and technology. Station directors, philanthropic benefactors, and school administrators took different approaches to providing the service of ETV, but all were …