Digital Commons Network^™

Challenges And Solutions For Native Mandarin-Chinese Speakers In Singing German Lieder, Fei Xia

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

ABSTRACT Challenges and Solutions for Native Mandarin-Chinese Speakers in Singing German Lieder Fei Xia The purpose of this research is to focus on the challenges faced by Mandarin-Chinese speaking singers singing German Lieder, as well as providing these singers with solutions for overcoming these difficulties. Singing art songs such as French Mélodies and German Lieder can greatly improve singers’ artistic and aesthetic values because of the beauty of the poetry and the language. However, it is very difficult for native Mandarin- Chinese speakers to sing German Lieder. Some of the primary difficulties faced by Mandarin-Chinese-speaking singers are German diction and …

Effects Of Ethanol And Nicotine Co-Administration On Risky Choice In Rats, Erin E. Wylie

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Individuals often engage in the comorbid use of alcohol (ethanol) and nicotine, leading to further-escalated health consequences than the use of either drug in isolation. Given the poor health outcomes resulting from the combined administration of ethanol and nicotine, some of which may be due to increased risky choice, more basic research is needed to better characterize drug/dose interactions on risky choice. Probability-discounting procedures involve a series of discrete choices between a smaller, certain reinforcer (i.e., a safer choice) and a larger, increasingly uncertain reinforcer (i.e., a riskier choice). Probability-discounting procedures allow for the assessment of …

Evaluating The Effects Of Modifying Mixing And Pelleting Parameters On Feed Quality, Pellet Production Rate, And Broiler Performance, Lucas E. Knarr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In Chapter 2, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of different mixer types (MTY) and mix times (MTI) on mix uniformity (MU). A 2 (mix time) x 3 (mixer type) factorial was utilized in this experiment to create six treatments, each mixed in three randomized complete blocks. Mix times were designated adequate or inadequate, were based on the manufacturers’ recommendation, and varied based on the mixer utilized. The mixer types utilized included a vertical mixer, horizontal mixer, and transfer mixing system. The transfer mixing system can be described as a batch-to-mix system …

Effects Of Light/Dark Cycle Shifts On Delay Discounting, Katya A. Nolder

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Shift-work conditions are a necessity for the constant provision of certain medical, industrial, and commercial services in modern society. Shift work is associated with the increased risk of many negative health outcomes, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, reproductive issues, and cancer. Shift workers experience multiple levels of circadian-rhythm disruption, which may increase maladaptive decision making, and this may mediate the relation between shift work and negative health outcomes. Circadian-rhythm disruptions can be systematically investigated in the basic laboratory, and one type of procedure involves changing the light/dark cycle in the animal vivarium. The current study investigated effects of light/dark …

Applications Of Digital Filters In Radio Astronomy, Joseph William Kania

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The radio sky spans tens of orders of magnitude in length, density, and time.
In this thesis, using novel filtering techniques and two different telescopes,
we investigate two tracers of cosmic structure: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
(BAOs) and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). BAOs formed as the universe cooled
after the Big Bang. BAOs provide a fiducial length scale of the universe
throughout cosmic time and thus can be used to understand how the universe
is evolving. FRBs are very bright, short timescale, bursts of as-yet unknown
origin which occur uniformly on the sky at a rate of a few thousand per …

Cue Reactivity In Electronic Cigarette Users With Sign-Tracking Or Goal-Tracking Behaviors, Polina Krom

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Polina Krom

Cue reactivity is an important predictor of addiction course and relapse. However, cue reactivity is only observed after an addiction develops. As such, it is unclear to what degree cue reactivity represents a state stemming from the addiction process versus a trait-like propensity towards developing cue-reward associations. Work in animal models has pointed to important individual differences in trait-like inclination to attribute incentive salience to reward-predictive cues that is associated with addiction-relevant behavioral and neurobiological features. These individual differences manifest as sign-tracking (ST) and goal-tracking (GT) behaviors during Pavlovian conditioning. Little research has attempted to translate ST and …

Footwear Image Quality Classification: Using Subjective Assessments And Objective Image Metrics To Predict Impression Quality, En-Tni Lin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Shoeprints deposited during the commission of a crime vary in quality as a function of numerous factors, such as substrates, media, and the specific physical activities carried out by perpetrators. This variability in impression quality impacts the amount of information available from questioned crime scene impressions, and therefore an examiner's confidence in providing opinions of source attribution. In response, this research attempted to characterize footwear impression quality based on image sharpness, contrast, entropy, homogeneity, noise, quantity of information, and complexity, and to integrate these hand-engineered feature descriptions with subjective opinions of impression quality.

The methodology followed a five-pronged approach. First, …

Probabilistic Short Term Solar Driver Forecasting With Neural Network Ensembles, Joshua Daniell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Commonly utilized space weather indices and proxies drive predictive models for thermosphere density, directly impacting objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO) by influencing atmospheric drag forces. A set of solar proxies and indices (drivers), F_10.7, S_10.7, M_10.7, and Y_10.7, are created from a mixture of ground based radio observations and satellite instrument data. These solar drivers represent heating in various levels of the thermosphere and are used as inputs by the JB2008 empirical thermosphere density model. The United States Air Force (USAF) operational High Accuracy Satellite Drag Model (HASDM) relies on JB2008, and …

“Ingenious Entanglements”: Sheriffs, Capitalism, And Civil Society In America, 1750-1850, Chad R. Holmes

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Sheriffs served as indispensable legal actors who facilitated the expansion of democracy and capitalist transformation, processes that eventually limited their ability to profit from their work and diminished their social status. This dissertation is organized around specific sheriffs and the actions they performed to illustrate how county officers influenced society beyond the execution of court orders. These men—Rhode Island’s Beriah Brown, Pennsylvania’s John Barker, and Massachusetts’s Elisha Porter, Luke Baldwin, and Charles P. Sumner—believed they understood how to balance community demands and state directives in ways that would produce personal profit and greater authority. The work of these officers and …

Abundance-Habitat Relationships And Aquatic-Terrestrial Habitat Selection Patterns For Wood Turtles (Glyptemys Insculpta) In The Upper Midwest, Jena Marie Staggs

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Due to range-wide population declines, wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) are under review for federal listing under the United States Endangered Species Act. Understanding how habitat associations and environmental conditions influence population dynamics and spatiotemporal activity patterns is fundamental for designing effective management strategies. Previous work on wood turtle abundance-habitat relationships focused on broad-scale habitat relationships in northeastern North America. However, regional differences in climate, habitat conditions, and land use patterns limit their applicability to much of the wood turtle’s Upper Midwest distribution. Much of our understanding of wood turtle activity patterns is based on radiotelemetry studies, which are biased towards …

The Effect Of Pubertal Stress On Prefrontal Cortex Related Behavior In Adult And Adolescent Mice, Bryan Rodriguez

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is an area of associated with cognitive flexibility, decision making, and value processing. The most common neuropsychiatric disorders globally, including generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and substance abuse disorders, have been associated with dysfunction in the PFC. One of the environmental factors that may lead to increased risk for developing these disorders is exposure to stressful or traumatic situations during key developmental periods, such as adolescence. Human studies found that individuals who were faced with early adverse events but had some form of social interaction or support during that time, had a lower risk …

Dispositional Optimism And Autonomic Reactivity During Passive-Coping And Active-Coping Stress Tasks, Emma R. Pino

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Optimism is a positive psychological factor that has been associated with improved mental and physical health outcomes. To better understand the mechanism through which optimism results in improved health, researchers have examined whether autonomic reactivity to stress moderates this relation. While many studies have examined the relation between optimism and autonomic reactivity to stress, findings are mixed. Although some studies have found optimism to be associated with reductions in heart rate and blood pressure responses to acute stress presentations, many studies exploring this relation have found optimism to be associated with greater blood pressure responses to stress. However, most of …

Quantifying The Impacts Of Genetically Engineered Crops And Deep Soil C Cycling On The Sustainability Of Bioenergy Crop Production, Zoe Pagliaro

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Bioenergy can help mitigate climate change by providing a carbon-neutral fuel source. However, multiple challenges exist to achieving carbon neutrality including converting lignocellulosic materials to fuel and enhancing soil C sequestration during the growth of the feedstocks. To address these challenges, there have been recent efforts to genetically modify feedstocks to produce more energy dense oils that increase fuel conversion efficiency and to cultivate deep-rooted perennial feedstocks that can enhance soil C storage. However, the C consequences and efficacy of these solutions remain largely uncertain.

To examine the C consequences of enhancing oil content of bioenergy feedstocks, I examined the …

Right Treatment Wrong Time: Immunotherapy Administration Post-Radiotherapy Decreases Tumor Burden In A Preclinical Model Of Brain Metastasis, Kathryn Elizabeth Blethen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation (a) provided an in-depth literature review of methods to modulate the blood-brain and blood-tumor barriers to increase drug delivery and efficacy in brain metastases, (b) evaluated the effects of whole-brain radiation therapy on the blood-brain barrier in immunocompetent and immunocompromised mouse models and proposed a mechanism by which the immune response to radiation disrupts the blood-brain barrier, and (c) developed a syngeneic lung cancer brain metastasis model to determine the impact of coordinated immunotherapy administration with radiotherapy. The blood-brain barrier is an impediment to drug delivery to the brain. The inherent leakiness of the blood-tumor barrier does not …

Measuring And Modeling How Plant-Microbe Interactions Control Soil Carbon And Nitrogen Cycling In Managed And Unmanaged Ecosystems, Joanna Ridgeway

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Our understanding of how plant-microbe interactions regulate carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) retention in soil organic matter (SOM) remains uncertain. Conflicting evidence suggests that microbial decomposition can lead to the loss of unprotected particulate SOM, but also that microbial decomposition produces simpler compounds that preferentially form more persistent aggregate- or mineral-protected SOM pools. Further, uncertainty remains in how plant-microbe interactions alter SOM retention in these different pools through litter chemistry controls on microbial decomposition traits and rhizosphere priming. As a result, this uncertainty limits our ability to sustainably manage ecosystems and understand future feedbacks between terrestrial ecosystems and the global …

Characterizing & Mitigating Interstellar Scattering In Radio Observations Of Pulsars, Jacob E. Turner

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit concentrated beams of radiation from their magnetic poles. Measuring the arrival of these pulses via pulsar timing is a powerful tool in efforts to detect low frequency gravitational waves (GWs). However, the interstellar medium (ISM) presents a significant source of timing uncertainty that must be mitigated to improve the sensitivity of pulsar timing efforts to these GW signals. By examining the effects of pulsar emission interactions with this medium, we can properly correct for the resulting effects in pulsar timing efforts, as well as study the astronomical unit-to-parsec scale structure and behavior …

Glial Cell-Specific Contribution Of Pkr-Like Er Kinase (Perk) In Neuroinflammation And Behavior, Anirudhya Lahiri

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS) are a major public health concern in the US, with no available therapeutic cure. Chronic neuroinflammation and aberrant proteostasis in the central nervous system (CNS) are the major hallmarks of neurological diseases. Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) is a major cellular organelle involved in protein synthesis, folding and maturation of various secretory and transmembrane proteins. Pathophysiological stressors such as trauma and infection result in misfolded protein accumulation in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen, which results in ER stress. To regain proteostasis (protein homeostasis), cells activate the unfolded protein response (UPR). UPR is an evolutionarily conserved …

Aggregation Bias And Input-Output Regionalization: Detail Or Accuracy?, Randall Jackson, Caroline Welter, Gary Cornwall

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

Conventional wisdom holds that results from input-output (IO) models with greater sectoral detail are superior to those from models with less detail. However, there is an implicit assumption that the more detailed data are as accurate as their aggregated counterparts. In this paper, we explore the tradeoffs between sectoral detail and model accuracy in the context of IO regionalization, a practical context in which greater sectoral detail is commonly achieved via the imputation of missing values. This reality is especially apparent for increasingly smaller geographical regions where privacy concerns result in more suppressed and undisclosed data. As the number (or …

The Dental Health Of Rural Elderly People And Its Social Justice Implications, Jacqueline Fox

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Immigration Solution For Improving Rural Healthcare, Kit Johnson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Seeking Equitable Educational Opportunities For English Language Learners In Elementary Schools, Wenjuan Mo

Graduate Student Scholarship

I propose that providing equitable educational opportunities for students is to build up their identities and maximize their potential. Therefore, this research aims to explore the effectiveness and various implications of incorporating students’ identities and subject learning abilities while providing equitable education for ELLs within the learning community. In order to achieve this, I plan to launch a summer reading program at an elementary school in Monongalia County, West Virginia (WV). This qualitative research study is expected to be carried out among 15 students, three to four instructors, five to six volunteer parents, and one school coordinator. An experimental pattern …

Algebra, Wvu Mathematics Department

M.S. Advanced and Ph.D. Entrance Exams

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Fashion Design Exploration: Transformation To Zero-Waste, Colleen Moretz

Sustainable Fashion Design Exploration

Sustainability has been at the center of my scholarship across the apparel and textile disciplines. Focusing my creative design scholarship on sustainability generates awareness of sustainable issues within the apparel industry to hopefully encourage change in fashion practices. This concentration on sustainability has been an evolution of investigating sustainable design processes through the exploration of transformation, aesthetics, zero waste, and up-cycling.

The Effect Of Monitoring And Crowds On Crime And Law Enforcement: A Natural Experiment From European Football, Brad R. Humphreys, Alexander Marsella, Levi Perez

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Technological advancements like the presence of smart phones and body cameras have led to increased monitoring of police, but little evidence exists on their impact. We address these problems using data on fouls from football matches in five European football leagues over six seasons. This period contains exogenous changes in monitoring rule enforcers through introduction of Video Assistant Referee review and limited "bystanders" from Covid-19 restrictions. Results from difference-in-differences models estimated separately for each league indicate that both events influenced the number of fouls called with substantial heterogeneity across leagues and home/away teams.

Public Interest Or Policy Diffusion: Analyzing The Effects Of Massage Therapist Municipal Licensing, Darwyyn Deyo, Kofi Ampaabeng, Conor Norris, Edward Timmons

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Massage therapy is widely licensed by the states. However, municipalities also often passed massage therapist licensing, motivated by preventing prostitution. Using a novel dataset on municipal licensing and crime data from the FBI, we test if local massage therapist licensing reduced prostitution. We also test a policy diffusion hypothesis, in which cities pass responsive massage therapist licensing. We find that municipal massage therapist licensing does not lead to a reduction in prostitution, but we find support for the policy diffusion hypothesis, with municipalities up to 65% more likely to pass responsive licensing within three years of their neighbor doing so.

The Impossible Delivery: Codifying The Joint-Acquisition Defense, Taylor Glass, Christopher Maidona

West Virginia Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Are West Virginia Banks Unique?, Eduardo Minuci, Scott Schuh

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Many factors contribute to weak economic growth in Appalachia, but little research has examined the role of banking heterogeneity and efficiency across states. This paper documents how West Virginia (WV) banks' financial behavior differs from other U.S. banks and shows these differences cannot be explained fully by the composition of banks in the state. Despite experiencing faster banking consolidation, West Virginia still has more and smaller banks that are less efficient and profitable. WV banks' customers and managers heavily favor liabilities (time deposits) and assets (real estate loans) with longer maturity and lower risk and returns. Although shares of time …

Dry Matter Intake By Cattle, Edward Barrow Rayburn

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

WVU-Extension fact sheet

Vertical Integration And Competitive Balance In Professional Sports: Evidence From Minor League Baseball, Qi Ge, Brad R. Humphreys, Alexander Eisert

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Major League Baseball (MLB) teams regularly call up players from their Minor League Baseball (MiLB) affliates to fulfill roster needs. This paper utilizes a manually collected panel of player call-ups between 1946 and 2019 and studies their impact on competitive balance in the minor leagues. Our results indicate an overall positive relationship between call-ups and competitive balance in the MiLB, with the pro-competitive effect primarily driven by the AA leagues and not AAA leagues. We also  find suggestive evidence of the effect being likely explained by the promotion of MiLB players to MLB, rather than the demotion of MLB players …

How Environmental Litigation Has Turned Pipelines Into Pipe Dreams, Madison Hinkle, Jesse J. Richardson

Law Faculty Scholarship

Proposed oil and gas pipelines have faced a myriad of legal challenges in the past several years. Even where pipeline proponents have prevailed, the cost and delay of protracted litigation has often caused cancellation of pipeline projects. In addition, presidential transitions have led to abrupt reversals of pipeline policies, which courts have often reviewed skeptically. This Article explores the regulatory framework for pipeline construction and analyzes recent lawsuits, describing the legal requirements that agencies must follow to change policies and discussing policies of the Obama and Trump Administrations in context of the legal challenges. It concludes by analyzing the approaches …