Digital Commons Network^™

Ego Sum, Victoria Romero

Theses and Dissertations

The use of first-person narration in literature has traditionally been used to impart a sense of intimacy, immediacy, and relatability between the reader and the work’s narrator. First-person narration has also traditionally acted as an initial step in crafting a signature voice or style for fiction writers in creative writing—one that is often abandoned as the writer’s style matures. Additionally, the cultural climate of this and preceding years has engendered many debates and discussions centering on which voices are heard and received as credible witnesses to political, institutional, and social events. The MeToo Movement, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, …

Composing With Light And Color: Storytelling Through Art And Science, Allison A. Newcombe

Theses and Dissertations

Composing with Color and Light: Storytelling through Art and Science is an exploration of all of theatrical productions that I designed within the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of South Carolina, with a concentration in Lighting Design and focuses on the design process from beginning to end. Each production had its own set of challenges and lessons that have prepared me for more professional design opportunities as my career expands around the world. Each University of South Carolina production presented specific and unique challenges. From paperwork, to learning and understanding how to communicate with a team and …

Are You A Boy Or A Girl?: Representations Of Transgender Children In Picture Books, Joshua Hill

Theses and Dissertations

This research was a critical content analysis of picture books that contained transgender children utilizing Butler’s (2004, 2006) performativity of gender and recognizability of gender alongside Engdahls’s (2014) wrong-body discourse. The question was, how do picture books about transgender represent various versions of queerness in children? This analysis was done by examining 20 total picture books which included 10 books about trans girls, six books about trans boys, and four books about nonbinary children. These 20 books were then broken down into eight books for a deeper analysis of the ways that queerness was represented. The findings included the ways …

Quality Of Life Of Children With Spinal Muscular Atrophy: Parents’ Perspectives In Light Of New Treatments, Analyssa R. Tallas

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: To directly compare parents’ perspectives of the quality of life of their children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) who received supportive care, nusinersen (Spinraza®), onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi (Zolgensma®), or both nusinersen and onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi. Methods: The parents of children with SMA were recruited to complete anonymous online surveys. All surveys included qualitative questions about quality of life. Surveys regarding children in the 1-12-month and 13-24-month age groups included the Pediatric Quality of Life Infant Scales assessment. Surveys regarding children in the 2-4-year age group included the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 Generic Core Scales and the Pediatric Quality of …

Skepticism, Perfectionism, Romanticism – Cavell, Kant, Kleist, Maximilian Gindorf

Theses and Dissertations

Michael Fischer early commented that in “Cavell’s work, literature is always bringing to mind philosophy, and philosophy is always opening itself to literature, generating a dialogue that transforms each one.” (3) For Cavell, this dialogue unfolds around the philosophical problem of skepticism. Romanticism around 1800 was not only invested in questioning the differences between philosophy and literature, but also absorbed by the problem of skepticism. The specific combination of literature and skepticism, however, changes the appearance of the latter. In order to show how this takes place, the first chapter is dedicated to an interpretation of skepticism as philosophical problem …

Circulating Calcium, Phosphorus, And Parathyroid Hormone And Aggressive Prostate Cancer In The North Carolina-Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project, Brittany Crawford

Theses and Dissertations

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the United States. Despite improvements in screening, diagnostic methods, and treatment, African-American men have an increased risk of total and aggressive prostate cancer. In recent years, a growing body of evidence linking biomarkers of calcium and parathyroid hormone (PTH) to prostate cancer development has emerged. Circulating calcium, phosphorus, and PTH are homeostatically related. Prior studies linking prostate cancer and circulating calcium and PTH have produced inconclusive results, and no studies have examined the association between serum phosphorus and prostate cancer. The present study examined the relationship between circulating calcium, …

Text Mining Contemporary Popular Fiction: Natural Language Processing-Derived Themes Across Over 1,000 New York Times Bestsellers And Genre Fiction Novels, Morgan Lundy

Theses and Dissertations

This study endeavors to apply computational methods to a large dataset of popular fictional material, to see what topics emerge when viewed across genre lines and from a new, “machine” perspective. The dataset consists of 1,136 popular and commercially successful novels published between 2005 and 2016, including New York Times bestsellers and “genre fiction,” including science fiction, young adult, romance and mystery novels. Methods are discussed, including dataset preparation, LDA topic modeling and topic number optimization, qualitative topic interpretation, data analysis and visualization. The experiment was conducted in two parts, with the "document" or unit of analysis as each full …

An Ensemble-Based Projection Method And Its Numerical Investigation, Shuai Yuan

Theses and Dissertations

In many cases, partial differential equation (PDE) models involve a set of parameters whose values may vary over a wide range in application problems, such as optimization, control and uncertainty quantification. Performing multiple numerical simulations in large-scale settings often leads to tremendous demands on computational resources. Thus, the ensemble method has been developed for accelerating a sequence of numerical simulations. In this work we first consider numerical solutions of Navier-Stokes equations under different conditions and introduce the ensemblebased projection method to reduce the computational cost. In particular, we incorporate a sparse grad-div stabilization into the method as a nonzero penalty …

International Conflict, Political Leaders, And Accountability, William Thomas Christiansen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role that an individual leader’s background (e.g. what they did before gaining power) plays in public evaluations of their performance managing international conflicts. I propose a novel theory arguing domestic audience members (e.g. the citizens of a leader’s state paying attention to international conflicts) heuristically analyze the competence of a leader by examining their professional and educational background. Once audience members determine whether a leader is competent, they use these judgments to inform whether a given leader deserves blame or credit for the outcome of a given conflict. I find support for this theory by fielding …

The Interaction Between Caffeine Consumption, Alcohol Use, And Amount Of Sleep On Bone Health, Haley Davis-Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Using cross-sectional data from the 2009-2010 and 2013-2014 NHANES surveys we examined potential interaction between caffeine consumption, alcohol use, and sleep and its relation to bone health, measured using bone mineral density (BMD). The study population consisted of 2,405 individuals at least 40 years old who were not taking any medications or hormones that would affect bone mineral density. Several factors such as smoking status, exercise, dietary intake of calcium, dietary intake of vitamin D, dietary intake of phosphorus, presence of arthritis, age, gender and race were considered in this project. We found a statistically significant negative linear relationships between …

What Can Scattered Light Tell You About Your Favorite Magnetic Material?: A Magneto Optical Investigation Of The Magnetic Properties Of Aligned Janus Fiber Agglomerates.Influence Of Dynamic Multiaxial Transverse Loading On Ultrahigh Molecular Weight Polyethylene Single Fiber Failure, Cory John Dolbashian

Theses and Dissertations

Here we seek to take a traditional Magneto Optic Kerr Effect (MOKE) experimental design, useful for local magnetization measurements, and apply it to measuring aligned multiferroic Janus nano fiber agglomerates. In order to achieve this we modify the traditional MOKE geometry by measuring our Kerr rotation from collimated scattered light, rather than the conventional specular reflection. Using various techniques to improve signal to noise ratio (SNR), we extend the application of this scattered MOKE geometry to build families of First Order Reversal Curves (FORC). Using an alternative analysis technique, FORC curves are processed and become a FORC diagram, which is …

From Cellular To Holistic: Development Of Algorithms To Study Human Health And Diseases, Casey Anne Cole

Theses and Dissertations

The development of theoretical computational methods and their application has become widespread in the world today. In this dissertation, I present my work in the creation of models to detect and describe complex biological and health related problems. The first major part of my work centers around the creation and enhancement of methods to calculate protein structure and dynamics. To this end, substantial enhancement has been made to the software package REDCRAFT to better facilitate its usage in protein structure calculation. The enhancements have led to an overall increase in its ability to characterize proteins under difficult conditions such as …

The Impact Of Professional Development On Technology Integration: A Mixed-Methods Action Research Study Of Teachers New To Ocean County School District, Mary C. Rizzi

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-methods action research study was to evaluate the impact of a technology integration professional development program on teachers who were new to the Ocean County School District. This study was conducted at one middle school with teacher-participants (n = 4) from different grade levels and subject areas. All teacher-participants were new to the district but not new to teaching. Each participant had access to a laptop computer and an interactive white board. The school district was a one-to-one device district, so students, too, had their own laptops to use in the classroom.

Professional development was …

Theraputic Strategies For Altering The Trajectory Of Neurocognitive Impairments In Hiv-1 Associated Neurocognitive Disorders In The Post-Cart Era, Kristen Addie Mclaurin

Theses and Dissertations

The marked increase in life expectancy for individuals with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), following the great success of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), necessitates an investigation of the progression of HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), and associated neural mechanisms, across the functional lifespan. Furthermore, given the persistence of HAND in the post-cART era, there remains a critical need to develop adjunctive therapeutics targeting the neural mechanisms underlying HAND. Thus, the guiding hypothesis for the present study was threefold. First, that there will be a differential progression of NCI in HIV-1 Tg and control animals. Second, that synaptodendritic dysfunction will …

Microbiome Targeted Therapies In Gulf War Illness, Diana Agnes Kimono

Theses and Dissertations

Gulf war illness (GWI) is a chronic multisymptomatic disorder affecting about 30% of veterans of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf war. Affected veterans complain of chronic symptoms which begun during or shortly after the war and persist 30 years later. This dissertation is a report of three studies which use a murine model to investigate the microbiome as a therapeutic target in GWI. Mice were exposed to pesticides and the prophylactic drug pyridostigmine bromide (PB) and studied these chemical’s impact on the microbiome in both an acute and persistence model of GWI.

The first study looks at the effect of altered …

The Effect Of Peer-To-Peer Recognition Systems On Helping Behavior: The Influence Of Rewards And Group Affiliation, Paul W. Black

Theses and Dissertations

Peer recognition systems are an increasingly popular management control tool through which employees can recognize and thank other employees. While these systems have potential to motivate firm desired behaviors, including behaviors that are unobservable by management, little is known about if, or when, they are effective. Using a laboratory experiment, I examine the effectiveness of these systems in motivating employee helping behavior, both when the system includes rewards and when it does not. While I document that helping behavior is generally greater when peer recognition systems are present, I also document that group affiliation is a key moderating factor in …

Effects Of Material Characteristics And Equipment Configuration On Profilometry Scanning Results For Error Mitigation In Automated Fiber Placement, Jacob Ondeck

Theses and Dissertations

The Automated Fiber Placement manufacturing process is a method for constructing layered composite parts. This is done by placing tapes of material on a tool using a compaction roller and heat to tackify the material [1]. This manufacturing process is not new, but latest equipment generations can still introduce randomly occurring defects, presenting often as tow twists, gaps, unintentional overlaps and even missing tows during the layup process. These defects deviate the manufactured structure from the as-designed structure, and have been proven to introduce stress concentration sources, which can ultimately undermine the performance of a structure [2]. To detect and …

Having Newcomers In Diverse Teams: The Effects Of Subgroup Identification And Established Faultlines On Newcomer Information Seeking And Team Creativity, Xing Liu

Theses and Dissertations

The current literature has demonstrated the importance of newcomers’ information seeking on their socialization in teams and the consequences of newcomers on team outcomes such as team creativity. However, there is limited knowledge on the antecedents of newcomer information seeking and team creativity in diverse teams after the entry of a newcomer. In this dissertation, with a focus on newcomers in diverse teams, I investigated two phenomena at the individual level and team level, respectively. At the individual level, I explored the influence of newcomers’ subgroup identification on information seeking via their feelings of psychological safety and the role of …

Newcomer Student-Athlete Perceptions Of Coaches’ Socialization Strategies: Scale Development, Evelyn Su Jara-Pazmino

Theses and Dissertations

In this era of multi-million dollar paydays, the need to fill arenas and the pressure to win has increased dramatically. In order to build a winning program, the coaching staff turns to national and international recruiting. According to David Ching, Senior Contributor of Forbes, “Nearly every Power Five college athletics program spends more than $1 million per year on recruiting” (Ching, 2018). The fact that student-athletes have a limited time of four years of eligibility to perform for their institutions, results in a continuous influx of newcomers to the team. Student-athletes with a diverse cultural background have to adapt to …

Remote Sensing And Social Sensing For Improved Flood Awareness And Exposure Analysis In The Big Data Era, Xiao Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Floods are among the most devastating hazards on Earth, posing great threats to a large amount of population in the world. As the severity and frequency of flood events have noticeably increased, there is a growing need to improve the flood awareness and exposure analysis to assist flood mitigation. Fortunately, the Era of Big Data has fostered many innovative spatial data sources as well as spatial data analytics. This dissertation advances the existing flood monitoring studies by obtaining enhanced flood awareness via the development of a data fusion enable and deep learning supported flood monitoring framework that systematically integrates remotely …

Windows And Generalized Drinfeld Kernels, Robert R. Vandermolen

Theses and Dissertations

We develop a generalization of a construction of Drinfeld, first inspired by the Qconstruction of Ballard, Diemer, and Favero. We use this construction to provide kernels for Grassmann flops over an arbitrary field of characteristic zero. In the case of Grassmann flops this generalization recovers the kernel for a Fourier-Mukai functor on the derived category of the associated global quotient stack studied by Buchweitz, Leuschke, and Van den Bergh. We show an idempotent property for this kernel, which after restriction, induces a derived equivalence over any twisted form of a Grassmann flop.

Task Focused In The Age Of Distraction: High School Avid Students Use Of Digital Learning Logs To Support Self-Regulated Learning In A One-To-One Chromebook Setting, Era Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research was to evaluate the impact of digital learning logs to support self-regulated learning (SRL) for high school students of average achievement who have individual access to digital connectivity within the classroom. Increased student access to and use of digital connectivity within school settings has resulted in access to high-interest material and off-task behavior. A small, rural, Southern high school provided each student a Chromebook. Additionally, this school implemented the Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) program to provide instruction for academic strategies to increase achievement. This setting was selected to provide SRL strategy support in …

Social Trust And Soft Power: The Role Of Social Trust In Democratic Countries’ Soft Power Use, Judit Trunkos

Theses and Dissertations

We have learned about democracies’ peaceful behaviour but we know relatively little about why some democracies are more peaceful and use more soft power instruments than others. I argue that contrary to competing theories that link soft power use to budget size or institutions, it is the variation in the public’s social trust that drives the variation in peaceful behaviour. Individual’s social trust toward peaceful foreign policies are shaped by their core beliefs about trusting other people, which vary across democracies. I argue that leader’s with more trusting populations will be more likely to use soft power instruments becasue they …

Exploring The Experiences And Needs Of Faculty When Implementing Active Learning At A Public Southeastern Regional University: A Mixed-Methods Approach, Michael Lampe

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research was to identify participant experiences and needs of faculty when teaching in the active learning classrooms at a public regional southeastern university. This study aimed to determine what were the experiences of faculty members who have taught in the active learning classrooms, what were the experiences of students who have taken a course in the active learning classrooms, and what are the faculty development, classroom technology, and technical support needs of faculty members who have taught in such classrooms. With the five-year Federal grant cycle ending in 2019, the university needs to create a …

Serving As A Backup Plan: Accounting Reserves And Their Impact On Managerial Risk-Taking, Kun Lui

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how accounting reserves influence firms’ internal decisions. In particular, this study investigates whether and how reserves currently reported in a firm’s balance sheet affect managerial risk-taking in the making of capital investment decisions. The experimental results show that firm managers are more likely to take risks in the making of capital investment decisions when the amount of reserves is large compared with when it is small. Additionally, the amount of reserves influences managerial risk-taking through sequentially influencing managers’ perceived risks of missing relevant earnings targets and managers’ perceived risks of investing in risky capital investment options. These …

Performance Edition Of Franz Simandl’S 30 Etudes For The String Bass With Critical Commentary, Austin Gaboriau

Theses and Dissertations

More than 100 years after František, “Franz,” Simandl’s (1840–1912) death, his pedagogical works are still widely used by aspiring double bassists. Simandl’s methodology codified in these works standardized lower position left-hand technique for most modern bass players. His 30 Etudes for the String Bass is still commonly studied, but existing editions don’t provide adequate instruction to students who haven’t already worked through Simandl’s New Method. With many more recent beginner method books available to present day students, it can’t be expected that students always work through the New Method before moving on to 30 Etudes for the String Bass as …

Motivating Critical Thinkers In Fourth Grade Science: Action Research Promoting 21st Century Skills Through Technology Integrated Project-Based Learning., Diane Lawson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research was to evaluate the integration of technology with project-based learning to determine its effect on critical thinking, science content knowledge, and motivation for science learning for fourth grade students. There is increased motivation for student-centered learning environments that engage students in critical thinking, motivating students to learn in active ways that relate to the real-world applications. Project-based learning is based in constructivist learning theory, where students construct knowledge through active learning strategies. This research explored three questions related to increasing science content knowledge, critical thinking skills and motivation to learn science content through the …

Tow-Path Characterization For Automated Fiber Placement, Roudy Wehbe

Theses and Dissertations

Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) is a manufacturing process used to fabricate large composite structures for aerospace applications. During the process, the machine head deposits multiple bands of composite material named tows over a prescribed path. Temperature, speed, and compaction pressure can be varied to obtain a good layup quality. For conventional laminated plate structures manufactured using the AFP process, fibers are laid at constant angles (0°, 90°, ±45°) in straight paths. However, to manufacture complex shell structures or variable stiffness plates, curved paths are necessary in the design leading to a length mismatch between the parallel edges of the towpath. …

Motor Competence And Quality Of Life In Youth With Cancer And Visual Impairments, Emily N. Gilbert

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of a systematic review of the literature and two descriptive analytic studies, for a total of three studies. The overall purpose of this dissertation was to examine the motor competence of youth with pediatric cancers, a visual impairment (VI), and VI sequela of cancer (VISC), and to explore if motor competence and other variables in the physical domain predict overall health-related quality of life (HRQoL).

The purpose of Study 1 systematic review of literature was to explore and describe the motor competence of pediatric cancer patients and survivors in comparison to peers without cancer and to …

Fundamental Studies Of Bimetallic Model Surfaces And Metal Organic Framework Thin Films, Fathima Sharfa Farzandh

Theses and Dissertations

This work is mainly focused on gaining a fundamental understanding of conventional bimetallic catalysts in order to correlate their macroscopic properties with the observed kinetic properties. This is achieved by synthesizing and studying fundamental model surface analogues of conventional catalysts that are difficult to study due to their complex, ill-defined nature. A wide array of surface science techniques that use ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions are readily available for detailed studies that can be conducted on model surfaces. This work focuses on the synthesis and investigation of two fundamental bimetallic catalysts formed via the addition of a second metal to an …