Digital Commons Network^™

End Of Life Costs In Medicare Beneficiaries With Parkinson’S Disease, Sasikiran Nunna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative disorder which is characterized by motor and non-motor disorders. The prevalence of PD is high among elderly patients. Due to the chronic nature of PD, increasing prevalence and ageing population, it is important to understand the burden of PD at various stages of patient’s life so that value of PD therapies can be assessed. While direct healthcare costs during the life time of PD were assessed in previous studies, there is lack of information about end of life costs in PD patients. This dissertation aimed at filling the gap in literature …

Community Resilience: A Meta-Study Of International Development Rhetoric In Emerging Economies, Rachel Ann Haggard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understood generally, community resilience is the ability of communities to adapt, absorb, mitigate, and recover from shocks and stressors in such a way that facilitates positive future outcomes and reduces overall vulnerability to future shocks and stressors (Adger, 2000; Norris, Stevens, Pfefferbaum, Wyche & Pfefferbaum, 2008; USAID, 2013; Walker et al., 2004). The core of this definition relates to sustainability and the capability of socio-ecological systems and communities to adapt and transform to both day to day fluctuations and stressors as well as major disasters (Milman & Short, 2008; Walker et al., 2004). This meta-study seeks to shed light on …

The Politics Of Place, The Urban-Rural Divide, And Geographic Identities In American Politics, Daniel Fudge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To test these theories, I conduct a series of empirical tests using survey data from the American National Election Survey (ANES) and an original survey experiment. Chapter two examines how people’s ideological perceptions are moderated by living in a particular area. Using the ANES data, I conduct a regression analysis with an interaction of the respondent’s ideology and the geographic location. Chapter three analyzes how individuals perceive a political candidate based on partisan and geographic information presented to the respondent. Using an original survey experiment, this study seeks to illustrate how individuals across urban and rural America perceive Republican and …

Regionalism And Reform: The Consequences Of Consociationalism In Belgium, Elizabeth L. Brown

Honors Theses

With the success of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), a Flemish regionalist party, in recent federal and regional elections, the continued role of regionalism in Belgian politics has been made clear. This has occurred despite significant efforts by Belgian politicians to counteract this tendency. By analyzing the impact of the six state reforms that have drastically affected the political system within the country, this paper outlines how the reforms themselves have unintentionally incentivized the political parties to pursue regionalism as a winning political strategy, which laid the groundwork for the current success of the N-VA. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates how the …

Examining The Impact Of Meaning And Resilience On Survivors' Life Satisfaction After Hurricane Harvey, Emily A. Gawlik

Honors Theses

The experience of a traumatic event such as a natural disaster can often lead individuals to suffer a variety of negative sequelae, including the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms. However, certain positive psychological constructs like meaning and resilience have been shown to mitigate these consequences. The purpose of this study was to explore the contributions of meaning and resilience to the life satisfaction of individuals (N = 55) impacted by 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. It was hypothesized that not only would meaning and resilience be significantly and positively related to life satisfaction but that meaning would contribute more to the prediction …

Dismantling The “Deep State”: The Evolution Of Legitimacy In The American Intelligence Community, Sydney Carol Stanard

Honors Theses

SYDNEY CAROL STANARD: Dismantling the “Deep State”: The Evolution of Legitimacy in the American Intelligence Community (Under the direction of Dr. John Winkle)

This thesis explores the nature of legitimacy and how it applies to the American intelligence community. The laws and regulations that allow the intelligence community to be a legitimate actor within the American democracy have changed over the years, and there have been periods where these safeguards have failed. I will examine how and why these legitimacy crises, were rectified in the past and how current legitimacy questions are affecting the intelligence community. My research is based …

Looking Into The Past: The Diversification Of Amphibians In The Neotropical Savannas, Ísis Da Costa Arantes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aim: Reveal the evolutionary processes that contributed to biotic diversification in the Cerrado savanna using amphibians as a model. Evolutionary patterns were investigated by comparing the phylogeographic and biogeographic history of biome-specific yet widely distributed amphibian species (Chiasmocleis albopunctata, Dendropsophus rubicundulus and Physalaemus nattereri). Location: Cerrado region, central South America. Methods: I sampled thousands of loci randomly distributed throughout the genomes of all three species. I applied phylogenetic, phylogeographic, demographic, and coalescent species delimitation methods to these molecular data, in combination with species distribution modeling for the past, in order to resolve questions of evolutionary history, taxonomic diversity, …

The Plantation Pull: Modernities And Genre In The Anglo-Hispanic-Dutch Caribbean-Atlantic, 1831-1935, Natalie Magdalena Aikens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, “The Plantation Pull: Modernities and Genre in the Anglo-Hispanic-Dutch Caribbean-Atlantic, 1831-1935” contrasts the idea of homogeneous national ideals with depictions in literature of stratified geopolitical regions deeply divided by issues of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status matching those ambivalent spaces described by Homi Bhabha in Nation and Narration. The project demonstrates in literature the way that the values of the capitalist plantation machine based around mechanization and modernization, what I term “the plantation pull,” nevertheless thwarts one of the major iterations of modernity in the nineteenth century: nation formation. The “plantation pull” …

Households And Changing Use Of Space At The Transitional Early Mississippian Austin Site, Benjamin Garrett Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Austin Site (22TU549) is a village site located in Tunica County, Mississippi dating to approximately A.D. 1150-1350, along the transition from the Terminal Late Woodland to the Mississippian period. While Elizabeth Hunt’s (2017) masters thesis concluded that the ceramics at Austin emphasized a Late Woodland persistence, the architecture and use of space at the site had yet to be analyzed. This study examines this architecture and use of space over time at Austin to determine if they display evidence of increasing institutionalized inequality. This included creating a map of Austin based on John Connaway’s original excavation notes, and then …

Road Trippin': Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives From On The Road To The Road, Scott M. Obernesser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Road Trippin:’ Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives and Petrocultures from On The Road to The Road" examines late-twentieth century U.S. road narratives in an effort to trace the development of American petrocultures geographically and culturally in the decades after World War II. The highway stories that gain popularity throughout the era trace not simply how Americans utilize oil, but how the postwar American oil ethos in literature, film, and music acts upon and shapes human interiority and vice versa. Roads and highways frame my critique because they are at once networks of commerce transportation and producers of a unique, romantic …

Virtually There: A Phenomenological Study Of Secondary Students And Their Engagement With Virtual Reality Field Trips, Melissa Sonta Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study seeks to inform solution to the lack of student exposure to frequent, culturally enriching field trips in school. To address the concern of limited learning through school field trips, this phenomenological study seeks to explore the lived experiences of virtual reality field trips for secondary students. The study seeks to examine how students respond emotionally, physically, and cognitively to the use of virtual reality within the classroom. Data analysis consists of observing, interviewing, and assessing students as they engage in and complete a virtual reality field trip. The three research domains are transcribed and analyzed to better understand …

Validating Military Culture: The Factor Analysis Of A Military-Related Adaptation Of Acculturation, Mathew A. Tkachuck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of acculturation has a long history, and measures of the construct attempt to assess the degree to which attitudes and behaviors reflect the interaction between different cultures. Berry’s acculturation framework (1997) is arguably the most empirically-supported and well-known model of acculturation. Berry’s model posits that an individual may have difficulty appropriately adapting to a culture different than his or her own depending on how much they are oriented to either culture. Moreover, Searle and Ward (1990) hypothesized that an individual’s acculturation orientation, in addition to how different the dominant and non-dominant cultures are from one another, impacts psychological …

Crafting Stone Discoidals On The Frontier: Production And Identity In Southwest Virginia, Hamilton Hastie Bryant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stone discoidals are widely recognized as a class of artifacts associated with Mississippian cultural traditions and even some of its various descendant communities. Excavations at the Carter Robinson site a Fourteenth Century Mississippian frontier site in Lee County Virginia have revealed evidence of the production of stone discoidals. Although craft production in Mississippian societies has been the subject of much debate little to no attention has been given to the production of stone discoidals. The purpose of this thesis is to explicate the method of stone discoidal production at Carter Robinson and to explore how this production was organized overtime …

Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature, Josh-Wade Ferguson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature” revises the methodological assumptions that have underwritten our understanding of blues literature and the politics of race and region that surround it. Where previous commentators have defined blues literature primarily through its formal and thematic connections with blues music and with the sociohistorical contours of black southern life more generally this dissertation expands the boundaries of how we conceive blues literature by examining Langston Hughes’ poems “The Weary Blues” (1925) and “Po Boy Blues” (1926) August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011) James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods …

Content Analysis Of The Journal Of Historical Research In Music Education: 1980-2019, Gail Simpson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this descriptive study is to explore the trends in historical research over a period of forty years (1980-2019) as presented in peer-revieJournal of Historical Research in Music Education (JHRME). This content analysis is geared towards examining categories of research conducted particularly within the last decade (2010-2019) with comparisons to previous studies. Adopting categories and definitions from Heller (1985), McCarthy (1999, 2012), and Stabler (1986), five questions guide the focus of investigation to include historical periods of study (e.g., 20th century), individuals, events, outcomes, and process variables, i.e., the teacher, the learner, the interaction of the teacher and …

Comment Letters On Proposed Strategy And Work Plan, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Auditing Standards Board

Exposure Drafts, Comment Letters, and Statements of Position

No abstract provided.

Revenue Recognition, January 1, 2019; Audit And Accounting Guide, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants (Aicpa)

Industry Guides (AAGs), Risk Alerts, and Checklists

No abstract provided.

Spatio-Temporal Distribution Of Spiroplasma Infections In The Tsetse Fly (Glossina Fuscipes Fuscipes) In Northern Uganda, Daniela I. Schneider, Norah Saarman, Maria G. Onyango, Chaz Hyseni, Robert Opiro, Richard Echodu, Michelle O'Neill, Danielle Bloch, Aurélien Vigneron, T. J. Johnson, Kirstin Dion, Brian L. Weiss, Elizabeth Opiyo, Adalgisa Caccone, Serap Aksoy

Faculty and Student Publications

Copyright: © 2019 Schneider et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Tsetse flies (Glossina spp.) are vectors of parasitic trypanosomes, which cause human (HAT) and animal African trypanosomiasis (AAT) in sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, Glossina fuscipes fuscipes (Gff) is the main vector of HAT, where it transmits Gambiense disease in the northwest and Rhodesiense disease in central, southeast and western regions. Endosymbionts can influence transmission efficiency of parasites through their insect …

State And Regional Comparisons Of Breastfeeding Policies And Rates: A National Study, Erin Johnson

Honors Theses

State legislation focused on promoting and supporting breastfeeding is relatively new, beginning in the 1990s. The purpose of this study is to determine if there is an association between state breastfeeding rates and state breastfeeding legislation and other institutional policies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases breastfeeding report cards with the most up-to-date state breastfeeding rates. These reports are used to examine the relationship between state breastfeeding rates and number of breastfeeding policies passed by a state. Government initiatives, such as Healthy People Initiative, and organizational practices, such as Baby-Friendly USA Inc., are also studied to determine their …

German Regional Identity And Soccer: Comparison Of Soccer’S Impact On Cultural And Political Identities In Munich And Dortmund, Germany, Megan Degrafft

Honors Theses

This paper aims to explore the relationship between soccer from a regional perspective using FC Bayern Munich and Munich, Germany and Borussia Dortmund and Dortmund, Germany and how those cities’ soccer teams elicit political and regional identities through the dichotomy between the fans and the business mindset of contemporary German soccer. A media analysis using two German language newspapers was used in order to collect articles that reported on the two soccer clubs apart from their result on the field. Pre-existing Twitter hashtags were also used to collect fan reactions towards the reported events. The findings revealed three different crises …

Economic Advancement Across The European Playing Field, Zac Herring

Honors Theses

This project seeks to examine the relationship between economic history, soccer, and economic institutions in countries who have attained varying levels of success on the soccer field and economically. The work of several influential scholars in recent decades has drawn attention to the need for a shift in the goal for economic achievement from industrialization to institutional effectiveness. This study develops a model to further understand the relationship between economic achievement and soccer success. It then includes case studies of three countries from the model in order to further understand the impact of the institutions that have a significant presence …

A Discussion Of Twelve Financial Accounting Topics, Katherine T. Oglesby

Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to investigate twelve different financial reporting topics using specific scenarios and financial positions of existing companies that have been presented in various case studies. The case studies cover multiple topics, long-term debt, equity sales, marketable securities, deferred income taxes, revenue recognition, financial reporting of cash flows, impairments and securities’ sales related to debt, and capitalized costs and earnings quality. In addition to the financial reporting topics, four cases cover various accounting-related topics, including data analytics incorporated into the profession as a whole, transparency and ethics both during the accounting recruiting process, along with during …

Sons Of The Sāqiya: Grassroots Water Politics In Southeastern Morocco, John Chappell

Honors Theses

This study examines the informal institutions that govern the sāqiya and khettāra irrigation system in southeastern Morocco. I frame those institutions using literature concerning politics of irrigation, governing the commons, and North African political culture. While interviewing farmers in agricultural communities near the Morocco-Algeria border, five themes emerged as key aspects of sāqiya and khettāra governance: the definitions of irrigation communities, the methods of water distribution, the institutions for selecting leaders, and those leaders’ authorities and responsibilities. Institutional arrangements and management practices associated with those themes show that sāqiya and khettāra governance is rooted in the democratic values of consensus …

The Latino South: Race And Racialization, Brittany M. Brown

Honors Theses

Taking into consideration the South’s historic black-white racial binary, this multi-media research project documents the place-specific experiences of 23 Latinos living in Oxford, Mississippi, using anthropologic methods. A digital archive accompanies the written thesis. Through interdisciplinary methods, this research examines and seeks to understand how the Latino community is conforming to or challenging the staunch view of race and identity in the U.S. South, where race is and has always been at the forefront of culture and society. Through knowing the history of race in the South and understanding the black-white racial binary, the presence of Latinos is creating space …

Lost In Translation: Challenges And Solutions To Language Barriers In Healthcare In Mississippi, Galina Ostrovsky

Honors Theses

Language barriers can impede access to healthcare and compromise quality of care for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients. Although a rights-based framework would suggest and federal mandates require healthcare facilities to provide language access services, multiple factors result in the persistence of language barriers in healthcare. As the literature review shows, these factors include limitations in policy, enforcement, standardization, resources, and ability to recruit and retain professional interpreters. This thesis uses a multi-method case study entailing Mississippi in general and information from two specific sites, a rural Delta county and an urban central county, to assess the issue of language …

Toolkit For Possibility: Creating A Coaching Culture At Your Organization, Sarah Elliott, Amber Setter, Brian Kush, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Women’S Initiatives Executive Committee

Guides, Handbooks and Manuals

No abstract provided.

Issue 317: December 13, 2018-January 10, 2019, The Local Voice

The Local Voice

No abstract provided.

Comment Letters On Proposed Interpretation Of The Aicpa Code Of Professional Conduct Staff Augmentation Arrangements Interpretation (Et Sec. 1.295.157), December 7, 2018, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Professional Ethics Executive Committee

Exposure Drafts, Comment Letters, and Statements of Position

No abstract provided.

Review Of An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies And New Granada’S Transimperial Greater Caribbean World, Jesse Cromwell

Faculty and Student Publications (Open Access)

No abstract provided.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Media Coverage Of The Golden State Killer, Lasherica Thornton

Honors Theses

This thesis focused on the media’s extensive coverage of serial killers and, thus, how it could propel them to a state of fame. It discusses that no matter a serial killer’s circumstance, the media typically finds a story. For example, a serial killer can be on a rampage or can be dormant, but in subsequent stories, the media will center a story around the killer’s first and/or recent crimes, his identity, or his possible next move. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times coverage of the Golden State Killer frames the analysis of this manuscript. The purpose was to …