Digital Commons Network^™

Bibliography, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Charles H. Smith.

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 29. Extraterrestrial Entertainment: Are We Being Monitored By Alien Beings?, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823−1913) was an early advocate for the rational assessment of likelihood of extraterrestrial life. Current efforts to evaluate the situation have ranged from the heavily self-indulgent to the more objective, and it is still often difficult to decide just how much of the information we are receiving on the subject is dependable. An attempt is made here to cut through the haze and reduce the matter to elementals.

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2022 (Fa 1410), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1410. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Hudson, Hannah Leigh, B. 2000 (Sc 3704), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3704. “Historical Overview of Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee,” a paper by WKU student Hannah Hudson.

Baird, Nancy Disher, B. 1935 (Sc 3705), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3705. “Enid Yandell: Kentucky Sculptor,” a speech delivered at the Filson Historical Society, December 1983, by Nancy Baird [also the author of an article subsequently published as “Enid Yandell: Kentucky Sculptor,” Filson History Quarterly v. 62 (1988)].

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2021 (Fa 1409), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1409. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2018 (Fa 1407), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1407. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2019 (Fa 1408), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1408. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2017 (Fa 1406), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1406. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2016 (Fa 1405), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1405. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Meeting Minutes, Wku Staff Council

Staff Council

Minutes of December 2023 meeting.

Physical Characteristics, Movement Pattern And Heart Rate Response Of Indian Cricketers During Batting In Twenty20 (T20) Matches, Subhashis Biswas, Rupayan Bhattacharya, Arnab Das

International Journal of Exercise Science

International Journal of Exercise Science 16(6): 1413-1425, 2023. The study aims to provide a morphological profile of Indian cricketers and find physiological demands and positional differences of the batsmen in T20 matches according to their batting order. Eighty-three male cricketers (age: 17.93 ± 2.23 years) participated in this study and categorized into upper-order (n = 36), middle-order (n = 35) and lower-order (n = 12) batsmen. Height, weight, body fat%, and somatotype were measured. Movement analysis and heart rate (HR) responses were recorded during batting in T20 matches using PolarV800 smart-watch and H7 HR sensor. Descriptive statistics, …

Horse Cave Heritage Festival, 2014 (Fa 1404), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1404. Audio, photographs, and video documenting the Horse Cave Heritage Festival, an annual September event in Horse Cave, Kentucky celebrating local heritage with craft artisans, antique vehicles, children’s activities, food, music, and other attractions. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Comparison Of Muscle Activity During A Ring Muscle Up And A Bar Muscle Up, Cody W. Walker, Adam J. Bruenger, W. Steven Tucker, Hyung Rock Lee

International Journal of Exercise Science

International Journal of Exercise Science 16(1): 1451-1460, 2023. The muscle up (MU) is a variation of a common gymnastics movement that combines a pull up and a dip. It can be performed on a bar (BMU) or a set of rings (RMU). The difference in upper extremity muscle recruitment (MR) between BMU and RMU has not been evaluated. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the MR of select muscles during BMU and RMU. Ten active males (27.6 ± 7.9 years) performed 5 repetitions of BMU and RMU in randomized order. Muscle recruitment of the upper (UT) and …

Using Improvement Science To Address Early Elementary Teacher Efficacy And Competency When Addressing Trauma-Induced Behavior, Laura Hayes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

As more research sheds light on the effects of trauma on school-age children, educators must learn to apply the research and make adaptations in the classroom and school settings. While the body of literature has grown, limitations still exist in research focused on specific strategies and applications for classroom teachers. Many teachers feel ill-equipped and exhibit low self-efficacy when working with students affected by trauma. As a result, many students receive disciplinary action rather than constructive practices that promote healing. Some teachers feel that more targeted and specific training and resources would improve efficacy, confidence, and effectiveness. In this study, …

Social Media & Mental Health: An Examination Of Tiktok & Mental Health Outcomes, Jessica Maddox

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The goal of this research study was to examine the relationship between amount of Tiktok use and the results of various mental health scales. The hypothesis was that increased Tiktok use would be correlated with a decrease in self-esteem, and an increase in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and overall loneliness. Participants were recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and paid a small monetary benefit in exchange for completion of the study. There were a total of 285 participants. Correlations and linear regression analysis were used to determine statistical significance; results showed no statistical significance and none of the hypotheses were …

Pollutant Forecasting Using Neural Network-Based Temporal Models, Richard Pike

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Jing-Jin-Ji region of China is a highly industrialized and populated area of the country. Its periodic high pollution and smog includes particles smaller than 2.5 μm, known as PM2.5, linked to many respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses. PM2.5 concentration around Jing-Jin-Ji has exceeded China’s urban air quality safety threshold for over 20% of all days in 2017 through 2020.

The quantity of ground weather stations that measure the concentrations of these pollutants, and their valuable data, is unfortunately small. By employing many machine learning strategies, many researchers have focused on interpolating finer spatial grids of PM2.5, or hindcasting PM2.5. However, …

Index Bucketing: A Novel Approach To Manipulating Data Structures, Jeffrey Myers

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Handling nested data collections in large-scale distributed systems poses considerable challenges in query processing, often resulting in substantial costs and error susceptibility. While substantial efforts have been directed toward overcoming computation hurdles in querying vast data collections within relational databases, scant attention has been devoted to the manipulation and flattening procedures necessary for unnesting these data collections. Flattening operations, integral to unnesting, frequently yield copious duplicate data and entail a loss of information, devoid of mechanisms for reconstructing the original structure. These challenges exacerbate in scenarios involving skewed, nested data with irregular inner data collections. Processing such data demands an …

Internationalization Of Higher Education: Leadership Roles And Challenges Senior International Officers Face In Their Efforts To Internationalize Regional Comprehensive Universities In The United States, Ibrahima Yaro

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study investigated the leadership roles and challenges senior international officers (SIOs) face in the internationalization of regional comprehensive universities in the United States. The study also explored senior international officers’ understanding of internationalization in the context of regional comprehensive universities, and the strategies they utilize to address the challenges they face. A qualitative approach, specifically an interpretive phenomenological analysis, was employed to conduct this research. Twelve in-depth interviews were conducted with SIOs from five U.S. regions: West, Midwest, South, Southeast, and Northwest. Findings show that senior international officers at regional comprehensive universities perceive internationalization as a tool to train …

Landscape/Atmosphere Interactions And Carbon-Dioxide Dynamics In The Great Onyx Groundwater Basin, Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky, Meghan Raines

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

An increase in atmospheric CO2 since the Industrial Revolution has altered rates of global climate change and has motivated a need to better quantify the flux of carbon between Earth’s reservoirs. Attempts to quantify the exchange of atmospheric carbon between sources and sinks have led to an increasing interest in the terrestrial landscape, including the continental carbon sink associated with carbonate-mineral dissolution. This research sought to better inform an understanding of karst landscapes and their relationship with global climate change through carbon cycling. The study utilized high-resolution data collection of pH, temperature, and specific conductance of waters in the Cascade …

Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry Method Development For The Determination Of Β–Defensins In Bovine Milk, Elisha Ogbebor

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Bovine mastitis is caused by a wide range of pathogens which results in a substantial economic loss for the dairy cattle livestock industry. β-defensins are a part of the innate immune system and act as the first line of defense against mastitis in bovine. β-defensins (~6- 10kDa) are antimicrobial peptides that contain about 28 to 67 amino acids, the presence of six cysteine residues results in their three disulfide bonds and a β-sheet structure. A few β- defensins have been identified in cows based on the site of occurrence and time of expression in tissue, but not in milk. A …

Towards The Quantification Of Estrone And 17Β-Estradiol Conjugates In Dairy Cattle Urine Sorptive Stir Bar Extraction And Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectometry, S.M. Istiak Ahmed

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The global concern regarding the presence of compounds with estrogenic properties in the environment has grown significantly. Endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) are environmental pollutants that disrupt the endocrine systems of both wildlife and humans. Estrogens, with their potent estrogenic effects, are particularly noteworthy among the various substances with endocrine-disrupting properties. They are of concern due to their prevalence in the environment, especially due to dairy waste contamination. These lipophilic compounds can accumulate in livestock fat tissues, potentially entering the human food chain. Sulfated forms of estrone and β- estriol, which exhibit a higher degree of saturation than their non-conjugated counterparts, have …

Bioactivity And Structural Properties Of Hydroxyapatite On Ti6a|4v And Si(100) Surfaces By Pulsed Laser Deposition, Salizhan Kylchbekov

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Although biomedical implant technology is very advanced, there are still caveats in terms of biocompatibility properties because metals are inert to biological processes such as osseointegration, cell growth, and cell adhesion. This results in statistically significant complications and opens rooms for improvements. Among many techniques to improve this problem, coating the metal surface with biologically functional materials has resulted in the best performances. Hydroxyapatite (HAP), Ca_₁₀(PO_₄)_₆(OH)_₂, is the most stable form of calcium phosphates in human body environment and is functional in key processes such as ion exchange, osteoblast (bone cells) formation, …

The Socialization Of Social Media: Examining The Impact Of Social Media Use On Interpersonal Skills During Face-To-Face Interaction, Tenille Thomas

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research has well established that the use of social networking sites (SNS) has increased accessibility and connectivity to people with limitless boundaries. SNS have progressively become the preferred source of communication. However, often overlooked is the impact SNS use has on face-to-face interactions, specifically on interpersonal skills. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between SNS use and face-to-face interaction. Specifically, this study examines the participant’s ability to recognize and interpret nonverbal cues with increased SNS use. This was a correlational study utilizing a quantitative design of self-reported questionnaires. A total of 178 participants, ranging in age …

Adaptable Object And Animation System For Game Development, Isaiah Turner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In contemporary times, video games have swiftly evolved into a prominent medium, excelling in both entertainment and narrative delivery, positioning themselves as significant rivals to traditional forms such as film and theater. The burgeoning popularity of gaming has led to a surge in aspiring game developers seeking to craft their own creations, driven by both commercial aspirations and personal passion. However, a common challenge faced by these individuals involves the considerable time investment required to acquire essential skills and establish a foundational framework for their projects. Accessible game development engines that offer a diverse range of fundamental features play a …

The Role Of Leaders In Implementing Effective Leadership Strategies Towards The Educational Barriers Of Us-Based Refugee Students: A Qualitative Case Study Of Congolese Refugee Students, Faustin Busane

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This qualitative research study explored the experiences of three families of refugee school students, two school officials (a Superintendent and a Principal), three teachers, and one humanitarian agent all living in a Southeastern U.S. city. The results of the study revealed that the language barrier is the main academic challenge that refugee students encounter when they enroll in U.S. schools. The study also found that educators conceptualize their responsibilities toward refugee children by emphasizing the importance of high-quality teaching, and establishing through establishing strong relationships between parents, school officials, and exercising patience in the process. This study poses important implications …

Landseer, Edwin, 1802-1873 (Sc 3703), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3703. Letter, 16 November 1828, from artist Edwin Landseer, Lisson Grove, London, to fellow artist and collector William Mayor in Islington. He apologizes for missing a recent meeting and asks Mayor to visit him the following Saturday and “dine in a very quiet way here.”

Exploring College Student Experiences In A Kinesiology Course Using A Gamified Grading System, Rachel E. Williams, Jedediah E. Blanton, Christopher D. Kilgore, Matthew Jones

Educational Practices in Kinesiology

Past findings indicate mixed results on the effectiveness of gamification in college courses. The use of a gamified version of specifications-based grading (e.g., gamified grading) is not yet well understood. The purpose of this two-part study was to understand students’ perceptions of intrinsic motivation and engagement in a kinesiology course using gamified grading, facilitated by a gamified grading platform called GradeCraft©. We used qualitative inquiry to capture a robust description of the student experience across a semester, identifying themes describing the course management (e.g., comparison with traditional course, individual approach), and the psychological experience (e.g., autonomy, stress). The following semester, …

Homer Ledford Award, 2023 (Fa 1402), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1402. Video, audio, and photographs documenting the Homer Ledford Award, presented to an exemplary Kentucky luthier and given out in partnership with the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Folklife Program, and WKU’s Department of Folk Studies & Anthropology. The ceremony took place on 11 March 2023 at the Kentucky Crafted Marketplace in Lexington, Kentucky. Includes interviews and a narrative stage hosted by the Kentucky Folklife Program.

Kentucky Crafted, 2023 (Fa 1403), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1403. Audio, video, and photographs documenting folk artists in receipt of grants from the Kentucky Arts Council to train and mentor apprentices. Includes narrative stages in the “Folk Art Zone,” part of the Kentucky Crafted Marketplace at Alltech Arena in Lexington, Kentucky and held on 11-12 March 2023 in partnership with the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Folklife Program, and the WKU Department of Folk Studies & Anthropology.