Digital Commons Network^™

Characterizing Health Behavior Information: Developing A Surveillance Text Mining Framework Using Twitter For Diet, Diabetes, Exercise, And Obesity, George Shaw Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies have documented the relationship that exists among diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity. Obesity increases people’s risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Exercise and proper dieting are modifiable lifestyle behaviors that can help with reducing people’s overall weight and risk to various chronic conditions like diabetes. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) is the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Twitter provides researchers with a new opportunity and alternative data source to collect information regarding health behaviors using real-time data. Previous studies have demonstrated Twitter’s ability to monitor …

State Specific Poverty Thresholds Adjusted For Cost Of Living Differences, Melissa Gentry

Theses and Dissertations

While poverty is undoubtedly one of the most widely used domestic indicators of social wellbeing, its measurement has a critical shortcoming. Using national poverty thresholds ignores the potential differences in the cost of living across states. States use the national poverty threshold when conducting poverty research and assessing community demographics. Theoretically price level differences between states could mean that, if poverty thresholds were adjusted for cost-of-living by state, the adjusted poverty rate could be different than the official poverty rate Using data specific to individual states that can be found in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, geographically specific thresholds …

The Play’S The Thing: Engaging 6th Grade Social Studies Students Through Movement, Karen Clinkert Paggi

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a description of a proposed action research study driven by a problem of practice. The problem for this action research is that the teacher-researcher’s sixth-grade social studies students lack critical thinking skills. Critical thinkers are engaged and learners who analyze complex issues and challenges within society. The teacherresearcher observed her students performing well on standardized benchmarks that rely on recalling facts, while simultaneously struggling to analyze explicit and implicit information from primary and secondary sources in order to make relevant and logical conclusions. After observing sedentary teaching practices in her classroom, the teacherresearcher began to review a …

Investigating Drug-Related Violence In Indian Country: The Lumbee Tribe Of North Carolina, Asa Alena Revels

Theses and Dissertations

Drug-related violence (DRV) impacts the over-all wellbeing of communities, with disparate health outcomes observable in many poor, minority communities. The purpose of this study was to better understand the multi-level social and environmental factors influencing elevated rates and prevention of DRV within the Lumbee, a southeastern American Indian Tribe. This was accomplished via in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 37 Lumbee Tribal Members and Key Leaders. The findings align with existing research, revealing the influence of such factors as poor socioeconomic conditions, coping strategies, broken family structures, and the influence of federal policy. Of interest was the substantial influence of the local …

The Importance Of Person And Place In Predicting Prostate Cancer Incidence And Mortality Among United States Veterans Seeking Veterans Health Administration Care, Peter Georgantopoulos

Theses and Dissertations

T Introduction: There are several unique characteristics in the epidemiology of prostate cancer (PrCA) that make it an interesting and important cancer to study. The first is that while prostate cancer is the most common cancer that men develop, it is one of the least common cancers that men die from. This indolent nature of PrCA has led to the idiom among health scientists that “men are more likely to die with PrCA than due to PrCA”. Just like other cancers, several individual-level risk factors (e.g., family history of the disease, age, and race) are well established for both PrCA …

An Analysis Of Perceptions Of Restaurant Authenticity At Food Tourism Destinations In The Southeastern U.S, Jamie A. Levitt

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive scale, containing multiple restaurant attributes and authenticity conceptualizations, to measure restaurant authenticity; to test a model examining the mediators and outcomes of restaurant authenticity at independent, full service Southern-style restaurants at food tourism destinations in the Southeastern U.S.; and to determine if the influences of restaurant authenticity differ between food tourists, general tourists, and locals.

A four-step approach adapted from Netemeyer et al. (2003) was used to develop the restaurant authenticity scale (RAS). Ultimately, the RAS contained six authenticity conceptualizations, 20 items and three dimensions: restaurant heritage and environment, food …

Multi-Scale Flow Mapping And Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Origin-Destination Mobility Data, Xi Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

Data on spatial mobility have become increasingly available with the wide use of location-aware technologies such as GPS and smart phones. The analysis of movements is involved in a wide range of domains such as demography, migration, public health, urban study, transportation and biology.

A movement data set consists of a set of moving objects, each having a sequence of sampled locations as the object moves across space. The locations (points) in different trajectories are usually sampled independently and trajectory data can become very big such as billions of geotagged tweets, mobile phone records, floating vehicles, millions of migrants, etc. …

Sir Walter Scott And Lady Anne Lindsay: New Light On Their Relationship, Sarah Flatt

Theses and Dissertations

While Sir Walter Scott is best known for his Waverly novels and Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, he also played an important role in helping lesser known writers publish their work. In particular, he was known for helping women writers. Scott’s relationship with Lady Anne Lindsay (later Barnard), however, is especially interesting. Lindsay is best known for her poem, “Auld Robin Gray.” There is far more to Sir Walter Scott’s relationship with Lady Anne Lindsay than first meets the eye. The two knew of each other through family and social connections, but they never met in person. They did, however, …

Catchment Hydrology In The Anthropocene: Impacts Of Land-Use And Climate Change On Stormwater Runoff, Chen-Ling Jenny Hung

Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization and climate change are associated with extreme changes to hydrologic processes that alter the amount and timing of runoff delivery in the Anthropocene. This dissertation research examined the degree of urbanization, climate change, and hydrologic responses in Rocky Branch Watershed (RBW), a small, highly urbanized catchment with dense vegetation canopy in Columbia, South Carolina. This dissertation is composed of three parts: (1) an automated algorithm for mapping building impervious areas (BIA) from remote sensing data for estimating percent impervious area (PIA), (2) a paired watershed study contrasting a forested with an urban watershed, and (3) a hydrologic simulation model …

A Divisive Community: Race, Nation, And Loyalty In Santo Domingo, 1822 – 1844, Antony Wayne Keane-Dawes

Theses and Dissertations

On 8 February 1822, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer entered Santo Domingo and ended the short-lived experiment of a moderate republic and the triumph of a popular and radical vision of nationhood. For the next two decades, this unified Haitian Republic faced the scrutiny of Spanish, French, and British slave empires, fueled by the accounts and reports of those Dominicans who rejected this change in events. Using government correspondences, reports, pamphlets, and proclamations, this study argues that the Haitian Unification affected Dominican political allegiances and drove white elites to support Spanish monarchy in contrast to those in Santo Domingo who supported …

“Catering To The Local Trade”: Jewish-Owned Grocery Stores In Columbia, South Carolina, Olivia Brown

Theses and Dissertations

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe fled persecution, anti-Semitism, and violence in search of the “American dream.” Both the Rivkin family and the Kligman/Baker family found their way to Columbia, South Carolina, rather than staying in urban centers like New York and Philadelphia. While both families eventually operated grocery stores in Columbia, their respective roles within their communities were very different.

Jacob Rivkin, and later his son Caba, originally ran a grocery in the heart of the Jewish community that sold kosher products unavailable elsewhere in the city. The popularity of Rivkin’s Grocery led to …

Frontier Re-Imagined: The Mythic West In The Twentieth Century, Michael Craig Gibbs

Theses and Dissertations

T The author begins by reviewing Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “Frontier Thesis” and by surveying the twentieth-century consensus of the “New Western Historians.” The author then poses a question: even though the physical frontier “closed” in the late-nineteenth century, did American writers turn away from the imaginative frontier? To a great extent, the writers of literary fiction did turn to other material during the modernist period. Simultaneously, however, Westerns began to dominate popular fiction and film. More notably, writers such as Raymond Chandler began to transform the traditional Western. In Philip Marlowe, Chandler created an urban cowboy; this cowboy locates …

Urban Social Landscapes And Urban Places: Processes Of Making And Informing Maronite Identity In Beirut, Divin Boutros

Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the Maronites of Beirut and examines, from their perspective, the role of belonging, imagined geographies, and memories of place in the processes of making and informing Maronite identity in Beirut after the civil war of 1975. The civil war of 1975 allows me to examine the city’s change in demographics in relation to the Green Line that divided the city between a Muslim West Beirut, and a Christian Eastern Beirut during the civil war. The thesis approaches Beirut’s homogenous neighborhoods, a result of the city’s cantonization during the civil war, as problematic for the future of …

Investigation Of Hydrologic Change In The South Fork Edisto Basin 1981-2016, Alexander Preston Butler

Theses and Dissertations

Increased demands on water resources coupled with an increased awareness of the need to preserve environmental flows have led to a need to understand how anthropogenic activities may have impacted water resources in South Carolina. The South Fork of the Edisto River has been facing increasing demands for both surface water and groundwater. This research investigated if and why hydrologic change, as indicated by a change in the rainfall/ stream discharge relationship, occurred in the South Fork Edisto Basin, in South Carolina, between the years 1980-2016. A double-mass curve analysis, which is corroborated by runoff coefficients, indicates that a fundamental …

Beattie's The Minstrel: A Missing Link In Scottish Poetry, Ian C. Robertson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the Scottish poet James Beattie's poetry, especially his major work The Minstrel, and his shorter poem in Scots, "To Mr Alexander Ross," in terms of his connections, role and influence within the Scottish poetry and culture of the mid- to late 18th century, arguing that without taking into account Beattie's complex relationship to Scottish, and specifically Aberdonian, culture, the development of 18th century Scottish poetry between Ramsay and Burns cannot be adequately understood.

December 6, 2017 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Examining The Relationship Between Park Neighborhoods, Features, Cleanliness, And Condition With Observed Weekday Park Usage And Physical Activity: A Case Study, Kerry Hamilton, Andrew T. Kaczynski, Melissa L. Fair, Lucie Levesque

Faculty Publications

Background. Little research has comprehensively explored how park features, quality indicators, and neighborhood environments are associated with observed park usage and physical activity (PA). This case study examined whether weekday park usage and PA differ by neighborhood type, across numerous categories of park features, and according to park feature condition and cleanliness. Methods. Direct observation was used to capture the number of users and PA levels within 143 park features in 6 parks (3 urban, 3 suburban) over the course of six weeks. Audits of park environments assessed the type, condition, and cleanliness of all features and amenities. …

November 1, 2017 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Climatic History Of The Northeastern United States During The Past 3000 Years, Jennifer R. Marlon, Neil Pederson, Connor Nolan, Simon Goring, Bryan Shuman, Ann Robertson, Robert Booth, Patrick J. Bartlein, Melissa A. Berke, Michael Clifford, Edward Cook, Ann Dieffenbacher-Krall, Michael C. Dietze, Amy Hessl, J. Bradford Hubeny, Stephen T. Jackson, Jeremiah Marsicek, Jason Mclachlan, Cary J. Mock, David J.P. Moore, Jonathan Nichols, Dorothy Peteet, Kevin Schaefer, Valerie Trouet, Charles Umbanhowar, John W. Williams, Zicheng Yu

Faculty Publications

Many ecosystem processes that influence Earth system feedbacks - vegetation growth, water and nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes - are strongly influenced by multidecadal- to millennial-scale climate variations that cannot be directly observed. Paleoclimate records provide information about these variations, forming the basis of our understanding and modeling of them. Fossil pollen records are abundant in the NE US, but cannot simultaneously provide information about paleoclimate and past vegetation in a modeling context because this leads to circular logic. If pollen data are used to constrain past vegetation changes, then the remaining paleoclimate archives in the northeastern US (NE US) are …

October 4, 2017 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

University Libraries - Fall 2017, University Libraries--University Of South Carolina

University Libraries Minizine

University Libraries is a magazine published biannually by the University of South Carolina Libraries.

Contents:

Collections In the K-12 Classroom... p.4

The Evolution of I.T... p.6

New Grants... p.9

U.S. Marine Corps Film Archive... p.10

Step by Step... p.11

Weird Science... p.16

Environmental Influences On Forest Fire Regime In The Greater Hinggan Mountains, Northeast China, Qian Fan, Cuizhen Wang, Dongyou Zhang, Shuying Zang

Faculty Publications

Fires are the major disturbances in the Greater Hinggan Mountains, the only boreal forest in Northeast China. A comprehensive understanding of the fire regimes and influencing environmental parameters driving them from small to large fires is critical for effective forest fire prevention and management. Assisted with satellite imagery, topographic data, and climatic records in this region, this study examines its fire regimes in terms of ignition causes, frequencies, seasonality, and burned sizes in the period of 1980–2005. We found an upward trend for fire occurrences and burned areas and an elongated fire season over the three decades. The dates of …

The Shifting Discourse On Third Places: Ideological Implications, Mark N. Wexler, Judy Oberlander

Journal of Ideology

Within the social sciences, literature on third places attempts to assist in the construction of a social concept of “place”. This notion of a place is an idealization of the bridging space with home and family on one side, and work with the rule-based impersonality of life in mass society, on the other. Like the idea of work-life balance—as seen through the vocabulary of placemaking—third places provide people with a place in which there is a balance between the emotive attachments of home and family and the challenge striving for merit and reward in the marketplace. To date, third places …

September 13, 2017 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

A Modified Normalized Difference Impervious Surface Index (Mndisi) For Automatic Urban Mapping From Landsat Imagery, Zhongchang Sun, Cuizhen Wang, Huadong Guo, Ranran Shang

Faculty Publications

Impervious surface area (ISA) is a key factor for monitoring urban environment and land development. Automatic mapping of impervious surfaces has attracted growing attention in recent years. Spectral built-up indices are considered promising to map ISA distributions due to their easy, parameter-free implementations. This study explores the potentials of impervious surface indices for ISA mapping from Landsat imagery using a case study area in Boston, USA. A modified normalized difference impervious surface index (MNDISI) is proposed, and a Gaussian-based automatic threshold selection method is used to identify the optimal MNDISI threshold for delineating impervious surfaces from background features. To evaluate …

Parasite Biodiversity Faces Extinction And Redistribution In A Changing Climate, Colin J. Carlson, Kevin R. Burgio, Eric R. Dougherty, Anna J. Phillips, Veronica M. Bueno, Christopher F. Clements, Giovanni Castaldo, Tad Dallas, Carrie A. Cizauskas, Graeme S. Cumming, Jorge Doña, Nyeema C. Harris, Roger Jovani, Sergey Mironov, Oliver C. Muellerklein, Heather C. Proctor, Wayne M. Getz

Faculty Publications

Climate change is a well-documented driver of both wildlife extinction and disease emergence, but the negative impacts of climate change on parasite diversity are undocumented. We compiled the most comprehensive spatially explicit data set available for parasites, projected range shifts in a changing climate, and estimated extinction rates for eight major parasite clades. On the basis of 53,133 occurrences capturing the geographic ranges of 457 parasite species, conservative model projections suggest that 5 to 10% of these species are committed to extinction by 2070 from climate-driven habitat loss alone. We find no evidence that parasites with zoonotic potential have a …

Patterns Of Communication Technology Utilization For Health Information Among Hispanics In South Carolina: Implications For Health Equity, Deanne K.Hilfinger Messias, Robin Dawson Phd, Rn, Cpnp-Pc

Publications

Background: Language, culture, geographic, social, and economic factors are associated with health disparities. Among more recent Hispanic immigrants, limited English proficiency and immigration status are barriers to health information and healthcare access. Improved access to culturally and linguistically tailored health information through technology could potentially enhance healthcare access and health outcomes. However, little is known about health information-seeking through technology among Hispanics in recent settlement areas. Purpose: The aim of this exploratory study was to describe patterns of self-reported utilization of technology for health information-seeking among the growing Hispanic population in South Carolina (SC) over a period of 5 years. …

Lack Of Spatial Resilience In A Recovery Process: Case L'Aquila, Italy, Diana Contreras, Thomas Blaschke, Michael E. Hodgson

Faculty Publications

The lack of coordination between government agencies, involvement of the collaboration networks existing in the community, and incorporation of spatial planning in the location of the new settlements around L'Aquila (Italy) after the 2009 earthquake has delayed reconstruction of the city centre. The displaced population was relocated to 19 new settlements. These new settlements are characterized by a lack of urban facilities. The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between urban facilities, collaboration networks and lack of spatial resilience in the recovery process in L'Aquila. Specifically, we focused on the preferences of inhabitants to search for alternative …

Mapping Typical Urban Lulc From Landsat Imagery Without Training Samples Or Self-Defined Parameters, Hui Li, Cuizhen Wang, Cheng Zhong, Zhi Zhang, Qingbin Liu

Faculty Publications

Land use/land cover (LULC) change is one of the most important indicators in understanding the interactions between humans and the environment. Traditionally, when LULC maps are produced yearly, most existing remote-sensing methods have to collect ground reference data annually, as the classifiers have to be trained individually in each corresponding year. This study presented a novel strategy to map LULC classes without training samples or assigning parameters. First of all, several novel indices were carefully selected from the index pool, which were able to highlight certain LULC very well. Following this, a common unsupervised classifier was employed to extract the …

Assessing The Viability Of Race-Neutral Alternatives In Law School Admissions, Eboni S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.