Digital Commons Network^™

University Names New Assistant Vice Chancellor For Marketing, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi has named Ryan Whittington to a new position as assistant vice chancellor for marketing.

Biologist Works To Understand, Reverse Oak Decline In Forests, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – Oak trees are powerhouses of forest ecosystems in the eastern United States, providing homes to insects and animals, food to herbivores and oxygen for all. But in many areas, the numbers of some species of oaks are declining.

Supplemental Information. Theoretical Rotational And Vibrational Spectral Data For The Hypermagnesium Oxide Species Mg2o And Mg2o+, Athena R. Flint, Brent R. Westbrook, Ryan C. Fortenberry

Faculty and Student Publications

Tables to accompany a forthcoming article in the journal ChemPhysChem.

Carole Murphey Appointed Director Of Mississippi Judicial College, Christina Steube

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi School of Law has appointed Carole Murphey as the new director of the Mississippi Judicial College.

Hpv Vaccine Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, And Behaviors Among Community College Students: A Scoping Review, E. Pittman, D. Barker, S. Veeramachaneni, B. Suttles, M. Nagra, A. Ford-Wade, M. Kang, H. Allen, M. Barnard

Faculty and Student Publications

Background: Human Papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Approximately 42.5 million individuals in the U.S. are infected with disease-associated HPV and 13 million new cases occur every year. It is estimated that 85% of sexually active adults will be infected with HPV at some point during their lifetime. Most individuals infected with HPV are asymptomatic and clear the virus without any complications. However, in some individuals, the virus persists. Prolonged HPV infection has been associated with six different types of cancer and genital warts. There are approximately 37,000 cases of HPV-associated cancers diagnosed annually …

05.20.2024 Orsp Connect, Liz Williamson

ORED Newsletter

NIH RPPR Update (Research Performance Progress Report)

An Appetite For Truth: Journalism Professor Retires After 25 Years, Marvis Herring

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – As anti-Vietnam protests erupted in the U.S. and teachers threatened a statewide strike, Kathleen Wickham discovered her calling: journalism. The undergraduate at Rowan University became executive editor of the school's student newspaper.

Researchers Study What Happens When Officers Break The Law, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – Law enforcement officers are statistically more likely to get away with crimes than civilians. And police officers often face less severe punishment than civilians once convicted.

Jtc 24: Hitting The Right Notes, Andrea Drummond

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2024 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Graduate Student's Book Lands Netflix Deal, Marvis Herring

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – Via Bleidner kept detailed journals after transferring from a Catholic school to a Los Angeles County high school full of wealthy, fame-seeking teenagers. Her coming-of-age accounts shared in "If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous By Now" (Macmillan, 2021) have scored a Netflix series deal.

Chemistry Professor Named 2024 Distinguished Researcher, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi recognized chemistry professor Nathan Hammer for his exceptional teaching, research, creativity and service during the 2024 spring faculty meeting.

Jtc 24: Unstoppable Drive, Mackenzie Ross

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2024 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Exploring Social Workers Potential Role In Mitigating Maternal Mortality Through Coordinated Care, Jena Brown-Talib

Honors Theses

Maternal health disparities persist as a significant challenge in Mississippi, particularly for African American women. This thesis explores the intersection of coordinated care models and social work interventions in addressing maternal mortality. Coordinated care involves collaboration among physicians, nurses, practitioners, social workers, community health workers, and other support services, aiming to maximize pregnant patients' overall health outcomes.

Analyzing strategies of social workers within coordinated care models is important for improving maternal health outcomes within this study. A qualitative approach was chosen to delve beyond statistics and illuminate the reality of maternal health disparities and the efforts to resolve them. Data …

Examining The Nexus Of Food Insecurity And Oral Health, Abigayle Talbot

Honors Theses

This research paper delves into the relationship between oral health and nutrition status among individuals with food insecurity. As both oral health and nutritional well-being play pivotal roles in overall health, understanding their interplay in the context of food insecurity becomes important. This study investigated how inadequate access to food resources, a characteristic of food insecurity, can impact oral health, leading to a spectrum of dental issues. The study explores the impact of compromised oral health on dietary habits, potentially resulting in nutritional deficiencies or malnutrition. By examining the potential pathways through which these factors influence each other, the study …

Proposals To Address Health Disparities In Occupational Therapy, Madison Michelle Cotten

Honors Theses

Health disparities, “preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health,” are infamous for their effects within both general healthcare and occupational therapy settings (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2008). Though existing literature establishes a need for the widespread adoption of anti-discrimination measures, specific recommendations for occupational therapy schools remain limited. This project aims to remedy this gap in knowledge by serving as an initial overview of healthcare disparities within occupational therapy and by addressing the potential value of incorporating diversity courses into the curriculum of occupational therapy schools. Through the presentation …

Russian Interventionism: A Case Study Of President Vladimir Putin's Personal Influence In The Syrian Civil War, Lee Holmes

Honors Theses

The most influential factors in implementing interventionist policies into vulnerable countries are widely debated depending on political factors in the international relations sphere. Russia’s decision to intervene in Syria’s civil war in 2015 while Syria collapsed from civil unrest and authoritarian corruption is a prime example. Although most literature agrees that Russia’s intervention stemmed from an attempt to solidify political influence and diplomatic relations in the Middle East, hardly any addresses President Vladimir Putin’s individual influence as a determining factor. Since national power is consolidated to the individual leader in authoritarian regimes, it is crucial to understand President Putin’s personal …

Scared To Give? A Look Into How Terrorism Affects The Flow Of Foreign Aid, Madelyn Jarjoura

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of formal ties to terrorism and its effect on foreign aid

from donor countries considered either democratic or not. I hypothesize that as more seats are occupied in a recipient country’s government by a known terrorist organization, the less total aid democratic donor countries will send to that country (vice versa for non-democratic donors). However, with stronger ties to terrorism, the more aid democratic donors will bypass through NGOs (vice versa for non-democratic donors). To test this, I used Hezbollah’s seats in Lebanon’s Parliament from the years 1995 – 2021 as a case study for …

University Of Mississippi 171st Commencement, 2024, University Of Mississippi, Glenn F. Boyce, Noel E. Wilkin, Wright Thompson

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Remembering The Civil War In Indian Territory: Conflict, Commemoration, And The Birth Of A State, 1861-1965, Sarah Elliott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project argues that the Civil War was the mechanism by which Indian Territory transformed into the white-dominated U.S. state of Oklahoma, both in population and identity. Factions of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole Nations in Indian Territory allied with the Confederacy at the outset of the war. During Reconstruction, the federal government used these alliances to justify harsh treaty terms that dissolved tribal sovereignty and dispossessed these nations of much of their land. Initially, the federal government resettled other forcibly removed Indigenous peoples on this confiscated land, but the late nineteenth century, the Dawes Allotment Act and …

Jtc 24: The Right Match, Emily O'Reilly

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2024 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Jtc 24: From Goldwater To Graduate, Audrey Samples

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2024 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Can Vice Make Us Virtuous? The Effects Of Greed Reminders On Charitability, Hayley Pitts

Honors Theses

Historically, society wishes to encourage people to be good – but also warns against being bad. There is little comparison between the two of which works: the threat of damnation through vice, or the promise of salvation through virtue. This study examines how each of these affect donation behavior. There are two studies within the present research, each with 149 participants randomly assigned into three categories: control, vice, and virtue. Participants were distracted then asked to view an image based on their randomly assigned category, followed by a donation question: would participants donate a $1.00 bonus to a local charity, …

The Effects Of Processing Tasks On False Memories, Caroline Lewis

Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects that three different processing tasks had on the rate of false memories. Participants were randomly assigned into a story condition, survival condition, or a pleasantness condition. Using a word list that had three groups of ten words each connected to a nonpresented critical word, participants were asked to process the words using instructions based on their given condition. Processing occurred through written sentences, which was then followed by a short mathematical distraction test. Participants were then given time to recall all of the words presented on the list by …

Biogeographic Patterns In Phyllosphere Bacterial Communities On Southern Magnolia Trees In A Small Town, Elizabeth M. Eckard, Venkat K. Kota, Kurre T. Luber

Honors Theses

The phyllosphere, consisting of aerial plant surfaces colonized by microorganisms, remains a relatively understudied ecosystem in terms of bacterial biogeography, particularly at intermediate spatial scales. This study characterized the bacterial community on the leaves of 89 Magnolia grandiflora trees throughout a small town, encompassing an area of approximately 60 km². Sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene revealed the dominant bacterial phyla to be Alphaproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Acidobacteria, consistent with other studies of the phyllosphere. Unlike other studies over smaller spatial scales, there was no significant relationship between phyllosphere community similarity and distance between trees (i.e., trees further …

Revisiting Snack-Time: Analyzing How A Food Prescription Program In Charleston, Ms Affects The Children Of Participating Parents And Caregivers, Aubrey Bethay

Honors Theses

This study examines how Food Rx programs impact the children of enrolled families. Currently, research in this area is limited to data that focuses on produce consumption rates and BMI; however, there are other measures of physical and mental well-being that require evaluation. Consequently, this paper takes a more comprehensive approach, looking into childrens’ sense of security and perception of healthy food. 10 parents (representing 23 children) were interviewed and participated in recorded focus groups in order to gather information. From here, their responses were organized into domains in order to categorize the data.

Many parents reported that their children …

Effects Of Vdac 1 And 2 N-Terminal Peptides On Bax Conformation Assessed By Blue Native Gel Electrophoresis, Allison G. Dupree

Honors Theses

Members of the Bcl-2 family are responsible for regulating the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis through Bcl-2 homology 3 (BH3) domain interactions of pro- and anti-apoptotic members. Apoptosis occurs when BH3-only pro-death members overwhelm the pro-survival ones, leading to oligomerization of the multi-BH domain pro-death protein Bax to signal death by releasing cytochrome c from mitochondria into the cytoplasm. This process is essential for proper embryonic tissue development as well as maintenance of mature tissues. While BH3-only proteins such as Bim and Bid bind to and activate Bax through their BH3 domains, other regulators of this mitochondrial permeabilizer may exist. Two …

An Analysis Of Congressional Disgust Language On Twitter By Party Identification, Martha Nichols

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to advance the existing work in the field of political communications through a study of congressional Twitter use. While there has been a significant amount of study focused on presidential Twitter presence, there is less existing literature on the use of Twitter by members of the U.S. Congress. This study focuses on the use of disgust language on Twitter and tests the hypothesis that Republican congressmen and women will have a higher proportion of disgust language in their Twitter presence over time. The hypothesis was unsupported, as the results produce an unexpected outcome that Democratic members of …

Timber And Tornadoes: A Journalistic View Of Mississippi's Escalating Climate Challenge, Alice Ann Hollingsworth, Alice Ann Hollingsworth

Honors Theses

Timber and Tornadoes: A Journalistic View of Mississippi’s Escalating Climate Challenges is a project which explores the impact of climate change on the state of Mississippi and its industries. Specific areas of interest were the recent onslaught of wind disasters including tornadic activity and hurricanes as well as the impact of weather events on the timber and forestry industries in the state. This project involved interviews of industry professionals as well as academic experts. In addition, interview questions and necessary supplemental context were developed using significant background research. Emphasizing the potential challenges that climate change will present for the state …

An Analysis Of Professional Education For Future Physicians To Address Implicit Racial Bias In Black Maternal Health, Jasmine Butler

Honors Theses

The history of medicine in the United States is littered with incidences of racism and exploitation of Black Americans. The extensive history of medical racism has continued to be perpetuated in healthcare today. Within the field of maternal health, the dark history of medicine shows its face with the treatment of black mothers. Black maternal health is a current public health crisis currently being exacerbated through discrimination in the form of implicit bias. Implicit bias is a current issue in our healthcare system that needs to be addressed through adequate training of both medical students and physicians. This qualitative research …

An Examination Of Cardio-Vascular Patients’ Experiences In A Rural Food Prescription Program, Julia Hansen

Honors Theses

The burden of diet-related chronic diseases in rural communities has prompted the implementation of food prescription programs in rural areas to investigate the impact of more affordable and accessible fresh produce on these vulnerable populations. Because there is little research on the impact of food prescription programs on cardiovascular patients in rural areas, this study will focus on how food prescription programs can benefit this at-risk population. Another goal of this study is to receive feedback from participants to improve food prescription programs to better suit cardiovascular participant needs. To accomplish these goals, a series of questions were asked to …