Digital Commons Network^™

Metaphors In Language Learning And Teaching: Discovering The Underlying Factors Affecting Demotivation In Anglophone Learners Of Modern Foreign Languages, Holly Sallah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In response to increased levels of demotivation in anglophone students of modern foreignlanguages, this thesis attempted to discover potential underlying causes through the use of metaphor elicitation directed at tertiary learners in the United States of America. Students were asked to metaphorize both the language learning process and the role of the language teacher. Afterwards, a qualitative metaphor analysis revealed that participants were overwhelmingly positive in respect to the role of the language teacher, but more mixed in their metaphors regarding the language learning process, with high frequency words such as “work” and “skill”. Contrary to the literature, the role …

Botanical Aphrodisiacs For Women's Health, Hayley N. Prescott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) affects nearly 40% of women in the United States. While males have five FDA approved drugs for ED, there is only one FDA-approved as-needed treatment for premenopausal women with acquired, generalized Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), the most prevalent FSD. The lack of approved drugs is largely due to the biopsychosocial complexity of HSDD; however, there are neurobiological underpinnings evident. Due to the lack of safe efficacious treatment options, we hypothesize that botanical species traditionally used as aphrodisiacs may be promising leads, and exert their effects via activation of melanocortin’s, an excitatory circuit implicated in sexual …

This Is Home: Stories Of H-2a Placemaking In The U.S. And Mexico, Lillian Slaughter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contextualizes the lived experiences of two agricultural guest workers who I work with in Kentucky. Beginning in 1917, the history of agricultural guest worker programs in the United States is detailed up until today with the H-2A visa program. The first chapter pro-vides this history and pays close attention to the impact of the liberalization of Mexico’s econo-my and integration into the larger agricultural market between the US and Canada. In chapter two, census data of Kentucky and the county that the farm is located, provides a background on the Latino population. This chapter focuses on the growth …

Fair Sharing Of Channel Resources In The Coexistence Of Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, Sudat Tuladhar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasing spectrum resources in cellular networks are always needed to carry the exponential data traffic growth in wireless cellular networks. Limited spectrum resources in the licensed band have necessitated Long-Term Evolution (LTE) to explore available unlicensed spectrum where an incumbent WiFi system already exists. With the deployment of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) that utilizes Listen Before Talk (LBT) for channel access in the unlicensed spectrum along with an incumbent WiFi, the coexistence of LAA and WiFi with acceptable fairness is a major challenge. In this work, we address the issues of licensed assisted access coexisting with incumbent WiFi in an …

Perceptions Of English Learner Support Provided By K-12 Leaders To Educators In Mississippi, Ladonna Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The demographic of public schools in America is continuously changing. According to the United States Department of Education (USDE), the English learner population increased in over 25 states from the 2009-2010 school year to the 2014-2015 school year (USDE, 2017). In 2014-15, there were more than 4,800,000 English learners enrolled in schools, accounting for 10% of the total student population (USDE, 2017). With this shifting demographic, educators must be prepared to meet the needs of EL students.

The purpose of this study is to examine educators and instructional leaders’ perceptions of EL instructional support and to highlight the need for …

Reimagining Mississippi: Black Power And The Student Activist Plight To Dismantle White Supremacy, Jasmine Stansberry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the recent scholarship exploring Black student activism at Mississippi colleges and universities during the twentieth century, the formation of a statewide coalition of Black students from historically Black colleges and predominantly white institutions remains unexamined. Historians interested in Mississippi’s Black Student Movement have failed to include a study that explores the Black intercollegiate ad hoc committee that formed after the mass arrests of Black students at Mississippi Valley State College and the University of Mississippi in February of 1970. Between 1969 and 1970, law enforcement officials arrested and detained over one thousand Black college students at Mississippi’s infamous Parchman …

The Perceptions Of Black Law Students Regarding The Barriers Of Access To Public Law Schools Located In The South, Joshua Quinn Tucker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study applies the conceptual framework of Positive Deviance and the theoretical framework of Critical Race Theory to understand the problem of low Black student enrollment at four public law schools in the South. Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find solutions to problems than their peers without fully understanding how, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges. Critical Race Theory analyzes the role of race and racism in perpetuating social disparities between dominant …

Perceptions Of Black First-Generation College Students Regarding The Impact Of Recruitment Practices At A Predominantly White Institution During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Deann Handy Walter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2020, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) plagued the United States, becoming one of the greatest disruptions to the U.S. higher education system in history. Affecting every aspect of institution’s operations, prospective fall 2020 and beyond students were impacted greatly by the interruption of traditional college recruitment practices which would have occurred as they made their enrollment decisions. Most affected by this interruption were students of underrepresented groups. This dissertation focuses particularly on Black first-generation students and their perceptions regarding the impact of recruitment practices at a Predominantly White Institution during the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative study is proposed as the …

On Symmetric And Computationally Efficient Gini Correlations In Several Bivariate Distributions Dissertation, Courtney Vanderford Michael

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The standard Gini correlation plays an important role in measuring the dependence between random variables with heavy-tailed distributions. It is based on the covariance between one variable and the rank of the other. Hence, for each pair of random variables, there are two Gini correlations and they are not equal in general, which brings a substantial difficulty in interpretation. We study two symmetric and computationally efficient Gini correlations with the computational complexity of O(nlogn). The properties of the two symmetric Gini correlations are explored. The influence function approach is utilized to study the robustness and the asymptotic behavior of these …

Implications Of Gender Dysphoria On Gender Schema And Social Cognitive Theories Of Gender Development, Beau Bourgeois

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project considers the implications of gender dysphoria under two prominent theories of gender development, gender schema theory (GST) and social cognitive theory (SCT). Gender dysphoria is considered a significant motivator for transgender behavior and is presented in the DSM-5 as the experience of a strong desire, or as primarily affective in nature. GST and SCT differ in a number of ways, most notably in the role affect plays for gender development and behavior motivations. The former places primary emphasis on environmental influences, leaving the role of affect in question, while the latter posits gender behavior and motivation as an …

Transforming Place: The Socio-Environmental Afterlives Of Tellico, Cheyenne Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis assesses the socio-environmental afterlives of the Tellico Dam controversy that affected citizens of Loudon, Blount, and Monroe Counties in East Tennessee. The central goal is to understand the impacts that development-induced displacement and resettlement had on communities following dam construction. The people from the aforementioned counties witnessed the landscape transform from one that had an abundance of farmland to an area where the farmland is diminished due to the creation of the dam, the reservoir, and the waterfront properties that surround the reservoir. This project analyzes these post-Tellico Dam impacts in terms of waterfront property development, gentrification, land …

Late-Stage Diversification Of Select Natural Products €“ New Chemical Entities With Improved Biological Activities, Moneerah J. Alqahtani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Owing to their complexity, diverse structures and molecular targets, natural products have contributed, and will continue to contribute, to the development and discovery of new drugs. Although natural products provide numerous active compounds, their complex structures and poor pharmacokinetics make meeting the eligibility criteria for clinical trials unfeasible. In order to improve their drug-likeness, structural modification is an effective tool to generate countless natural product-based molecules with potential therapeutics. This proposal entails synthetic efforts towards late-stage diversification of natural products in two projects.

The first study highlights the multi-factorial nature of Alzheimer’s disease and brings attention to the importance of …

Synthetic Studies On Valuable Fluorinated Building Blocks, Maali Alshammari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fluorine chemistry plays a diverse role in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, and material industries. In fact, around 25% of pharmaceuticals and 40% of agrochemicals contain at least one fluorine atom. The incorporation of fluorine into pharmaceuticals or natural products can increase bioavailability by enhancing lipophilicity, metabolic stability, and overall pharmacokinetics properties. Our laboratory has designed a method to generate difluoroenolates from pentafluoro-gem-diols. This reactivity can be used to produce molecules displaying a difluoromethyl group. The reaction occurs through the release of trifluoroacetate. We improved the design and synthesis of fluorinated derivatives of flavones and measured their antioxidants activities. This work expanded …

Auditors Are Known By The Companies That Keep Them: The Effect Of Media Sensationalism And Audit Firm Responses On Auditor Ratification, Latoya Flint

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines media influence on auditor relationships with client shareholders. Audit firms are concerned about client loss due to reputational damage. Sensationalized media reports of corporate accounting frauds can be misleading in their description of the auditor’s responsibility for fraud detection. Although audit firms do not control media sensationalism, they can respond to it. I conduct an experiment to examine the impact of media sensationalism and audit firm responses on shareholders’ likelihood to support auditor ratification. I predict and find that high media sensationalism leads shareholders to perceive a higher level of audit firm control over adverse fraud outcomes. …

The Shades Of Immigration: How Skin Tone Shapes Attitudes Towards Venezuelan Immigrants In Latin America, Madison Hamilton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Venezuela is currently home to one of the most profound economic crises in modern-day Latin America and the most severe in any non-war-ridden country in recent years. Due to this, mass amounts of Venezuelan immigrants have left to countries such as Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru. This immigration within Latin America, with similar culture and language, leads to the question of if and how does skin tone predict attitudes towards Venezuelans in several Latin American countries? This study uses data from the 2018/19 LAPOP data survey to assess the link between skin tone and support for Venezuelan immigrants. Results of …

Abaqus Implementation Of A Hyperelastic Damage Model For Glass-Reinforced Polymers Under Shock And Impact Loading, James Stuart Fraser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accurate computational modeling of the ballistic response of heterogenous materials is crucial when designing lightweight armor and protective structures. Currently, due to the structural complexity inherent in composites, this behavior is poorly understood. In the present work, a novel computational model to describe the glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GRP) response to shock and impact loadings was implemented in the commercially available Abaqus© finite element software via a VUMAT subroutine. Before damage initiation, the model utilized an experimentally-determined tetragonally-symmetric stiffness matrix for the elastic representation of the GRP. Once damage was initiated, a hyperelastic continuum damage mechanics (CDM) based model described the …

George Whitefield Chadwick And Robert Ayres Barnet’S Tabasco, John-Peter Springer Ford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Until recently George Whitefield Chadwick’s burlesque opera Tabasco (1894) had been largely forgotten. In 2018, however, conductor Paul Mauffray completed a reconstruction of Tabasco that has brought renewed attention to this seldom heard work. Set to a libretto by Robert Ayres Barnet, Tabasco was commissioned as the third in a series of comic operas by the Boston Men’s Army Cadets as fundraiser for the construction of a new armory. This thesis explores the history of Tabasco from its inception through the national tour produced by Thomas Q. Seabrooke’s Comic Opera Company, which would eventually lead to the withdrawal of the …

The Epistemic Obligations Of The Ideal Citizen: A Neo-Aristotelian Solution For Truth-Decay In Democratic Societies, Dakota Shane Layton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary democratic societies are currently encumbered by the problem of truth-decay. Truth-decay is defined as the following set of interrelated trends:

Blues Is My Business (And Business Is Good?), David N. Larson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work focuses on the social, political, and economic trends that govern the blues music scene in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Clarksdale is seen as a sort of “ground zero” in the blues world, it is often referred to as, “the land where blues began.” This claim is not without merit but it is not strictly historically accurate. Many of the town’s spokespeople use euphemisms that distort the troubled history of race relations in the town and its music spaces.

This investigation centers around the economic state of the town’s tourism industry, the individuals who act as the town’s promoters, and the …

Speech Fluency Changes Following Deep Brain Stimulation Of The Subthalamic Nucleus In Parkinson’S Disease: A Meta-Analysis, Emily Morphis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Speech fluency changes following deep brain stimulation are one aspect that is crucial to consider when exploring treatments for Parkinson’s disease. Deep brain stimulation, specifically of the subthalamic nucleus, has been linked to a decrease in speech fluency despite improved bodily motor control. This acquired dysfluency is referred to as “neurogenic stuttering.” The purpose of the current study is to determine the incidence and severity of speech fluency decline following deep brain stimulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease. A meta-analysis was conducted with 7 studies (239 subjects) that recorded changes in speech fluency. All studies used a quantitative assessment, …

Race, Religion, And Politics: An Analysis From A Conjoint Experiment, Joseph Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Building on existing research, I seek to understand how both religious and racial identities can shape the religious and ideological perceptions of voters in low-information environments. Using a conjoint experiment, I test the effects of multiple identity traits on respondents’ religious and ideological evaluations of political candidates, as well as the willingness to support the candidate. Consistent with previous research showing the importance of perceptions on voting behavior, I find evidence that candidate identities can shape the ideological and religious perceptions of voters, and influence the willingness of respondents to vote for the candidate in a low-information setting.

Effects Of Working Memory And Fatigue On Decision-Making In People With Traumatic Brain Injury, Dennis John Tirri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Worldwide, traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are the leading cause of injury related death and disability for children and young adults, with an estimated 50 million TBIs occurring annually. Post-traumatic cognitive fatigue, or the perceived lack of mental energy needed to accomplish a goal, is a debilitating symptom of TBI, preventing many survivors from returning to work or enjoying their pre-injury quality of life. The mechanisms underlying TBI often cause executive function deficits, such as compromised ability to make adaptive decisions. Although decision-making and fatigue share portions of the same neural network, no literature to date has examined the potential mediating …

The Impact Of The Good Behavior Game On Adolescent Student Behavior In Restrictive And Inclusive Learning Environments, Allison Nicole Oliver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three articles investigating the effects of the Good Behavior Game to increase academic engagement and decrease disruptive behaviors in students who have behavior disorders. Previous literature examined the effects of the Good Behavior Game on student populations in elementary and mainstream settings. Unfortunately, there is a lack of investigation with use of the Good Behavior Game in secondary settings with students with disabilities, especially behavioral disorders. Collectively, these three articles will determine the impact of the Good Behavior Game in secondary settings with students with behavior disorders in mainstream, inclusive and restrictive learning environments. This dissertation …

Role Of Astrocytic Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 In The Regulation Of Behavior, Cognition, And Neuroinflammation, Brayden Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern medicine has consistently extended life expectancy over recent decades and centuries. Despite this, age-associated cognitive decline and risk of neurodegenerative disease grow in parallel with lifespan, meaning the capacity to live healthier has not mirrored that to live longer. Many studies in both human and rodents have shown the association between age-related cognitive impairment and reduction of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) signaling. Additional research has indicated that dysregulated IGF-1 signaling, either systemic or local to the central nervous system (CNS) in cells like neurons and glia, leads to impaired spatial learning and memory in mice. Glia, or glial cells, …

The Impact Of Ethnicity Within The Field Of Speech-Language Pathology, Maliah Wilkinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The estimated racial/ethnic diversity within the field of speech-language pathology is considered to be less than 10% despite population trends predicting that over half of the United States’ population will be identified as a racial/ethnic minority by 2044 (Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060, 2014). The limited diversity is likely to be coupled with inclusion and equity barriers in higher education (i.e., barriers related to financial and educational demographics, graduate school preparedness/support, etc.). In the field of speech language pathology, little is known about the impact of these challenges experienced by students from …

Face Detection Using Web Images, Chris Zhao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current facial recognition algorithms struggle with accuracy on real world cases. Haar cascade based algorithms are fast, but require fine tuning per image in order to achieve the best results. When tasked with images where there are multiple faces at different locations, the current algorithms seem to underreport the number of faces. This study attempts to produce a more accurate classifier through the use of taking the maximum result of multiple Haar cascade classifiers with differing parameters. To do this, a web image scraper was written to gather real world images from Google images and Flickr. These images were …

Closing The Opportunity Gap In Mathematics Education, Candies Nicole Winfun-Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shifting our attention from the achievement gap (standardized test results) to the opportunity gap (unequal opportunities and experiences among students of differing socioeconomic and racial backgrounds) is necessary to shrink gaps in the American educational system. Although previous studies have focused on the achievement gap in terms of students’ success on standardized tests, there has been limited research on the missed opportunities experienced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in high school mathematics classrooms. This qualitative study revealed the lived experiences of BIPOC students as participating in college and career mathematics readiness activities in a single high school …

Re-Engineered Metalloproteins And Rationally Designed De Novo Peptides: Towards Artificial Hydrogenases, Pallavi Prasad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Metals play a crucial role in biology. Metalloenzymes perform various functions in various life sustaining processes. Global energy crisis is a major challenge that the world is facing. The depleting fossil fuels and increasing carbon footprint calls for a need of alternate clean energy sources. Researchers have been working to help alleviate this challenge for decades. Hydrogen gas comes up as a potential candidate which can be used as a biofuel in a hydrogen fuel cell. Hydrogenase is a metalloenzyme that does a two-electron reversible conversion of protons to hydrogen, making it an excellent hydrogen source. However, this native enzyme …

Understanding Classroom Engagement For Middle School Students, Jason W. Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand the dynamics of student engagement and motivation in middle school students. The action research method involves collecting quantitative data through a student survey first and then explaining the quantitative results with in-depth qualitative data through interviews and focus groups. In the first, quantitative phase of the study, the motivation and engagement scale data will be collected from middle school students in the fifth through eighth grade of Regents School of Oxford to test the motivation and engagement of these students to assess whether intrinsic motivations relate to classroom student engagement. The second …

She Owns It: A Study Of White Women Landowners, Hannah Bullock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southeast Missouri is home to some of the nation's most valuable farmland per acre on average. Just twenty-four percent of this agricultural land is in possession of female landowners. This study investigates the experiences of these female producers using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping in order to understand their decision making process and the barriers that they are confronted with in their social field, as well as their relationship to capital, as women in agriculture. The findings of this study can serve as a needs assessment for this community and can be used to develop solutions that can help this community achieve …