Digital Commons Network^™

Service To American Heroes: Exploring The Experiences Of Veterans Suffering From Ptsd Transitioning From Military Service To Civilian Careers, Samuel Scaife

Dissertations

Purpose. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the experiences of post-9/11 veterans suffering from PTSD residing in California who transitioned from military service to civilian careers within the last 3-5 years, through the lens of Schlossberg’s 4S factors of situation, self, social support, and strategies.

Methodology. A qualitative case study was used allowing for in-depth exploration. A multiple case study was selected to explore the lived experiences of PTSD veterans who recently transitioned from military service to civilian careers in San Diego, CA. The primary method of data collection was semi-structured interviews to gather the …

Psychometric Evaluation Of A New Pressure Ulcer Skin Risk Assessment Scale For The Pediatric Burn Patient, Mary D. Gordon

Dissertations

Prevention of pressure ulcers is a primary goal in nursing practice, and achievement implies excellence in clinical care. One component of prevention is to understand the risk for pressure ulcer development. The benefit of knowing risk is to initiate pressure ulcer preventive interventions. Pressure ulcers are a significant problem in the pediatric burn patient population. Unfortunately, no skin risk assessment scale exist that capture the unique risk indices of the burn injury, thus the Pressure Ulcer Skin Risk Assessment Scale (PrUSRAS) was developed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity, reliability and predictability of scores from the …

Hemodynamic Changes Associated With Manual And Automated Lateral Rotation In Mechanically Ventilated Intensive Care Patients, Shannan K. Hamlin

Dissertations

Objective: To investigate hemodynamic responses to lateral rotation. Design: Time-series within a randomized controlled trial pilot study.

Low Income African American Adolescent Girl's Eating Choices, Sandra Kay Jenkins

Dissertations

The aim of this exploratory qualitative study is to identify the problems African American adolescent girls face in making eating choices and to learn how they make decisions about eating. Differences related to culture and socioeconomic status influences, and decision-making strategies were explored. Three sites in African American communities were selected for focus groups and individual adolescent girl-parent dyad interviews for data collection. Data were gathered in 5 focus groups and 4 individual adolescent girl-parent dyad interviews with African American adolescents (n=30). Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory (EST) provided the conceptual framework for informing the analysis and interpretation of the data. …

The Lived Experience Of Pregnancy While Carrying A Child With A Known, Non-Lethal Congenital Abnormality, Jane L. Hedrick

Dissertations

In the United States, 164 babies per 100,000 live births are born with congenital abnormalities. Although it is not known how many of the abnormalities are diagnosed prenatally, it is estimated that approximately 50% of all pregnant women now undergo some form of prenatal screening. It is important to gain an understanding of how prenatal diagnosis can impact the process of prenatal attachment for women facing the possibility of carrying, delivering, and raising a child with a congenital abnormality. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the lived experience of prenatal attachment in mothers who are carrying a …

Electrical Characterization And Detection Of Blood Cells And Stones In Urine, Nida Nasir

Dissertations

Urine contains an immense amount of information related to its physical, chemical, and biological components; hence, it is a promising tool in detecting various diseases. Available methods for detecting hematuria (blood in the urine) are not accurate. Results are influenced by many factors, such as, health and vitals of the patients, settings of the equipment and laboratories, which leads to false positive or false negative outputs. This necessitates the development of new, accurate, and easy-access methods that save time and effort. This study demonstrates a label-free and accurate method for detecting the presence of red and white blood cells (RBCs …

Psychoimmunological Outcomes Of A Dementia Caregiver Intervention: The Progressively Lowered Stress Threshold, Linda J. Garand

Dissertations

The goal of this study was to evaluate mood and immune outcomes of a community-based psychoeducational intervention (the Progressively Lowered Stress Threshold, PLST Model) designed to teach family caregivers to manage behavioral problems of persons with dementia. A randomized, repeated measures, experimental design was used to evaluate immune and mood outcomes of teaching the PLST model to family caregivers.

Taxonomy Of Nursing Clinical Credibility As Described By Nurses And Physicians, Claudia Disabatino Smith

Dissertations

Nursing clinical credibility, a complex, abstract concept is rarely mentioned in the clinical setting, but is implicitly understood by nurses and physicians. The concept has neither been defined nor explored, despite its repeated use in literature. A review of the extant literature formed the basis for a concept analysis of nursing clinical credibility, which is currently under review for publication.

Effect Of A Preoperative Warming Intervention On The Acute Phase Response Of Surgical Stress, Vanda Doreen Wagner

Dissertations

When a patient is exposed surgical stress, the endocrine system secretes hormones in response to that stress. These hormones further activate the immune system to release cytokines and other acute phase reactions. These processes are supposed to protect the body by upregulating the innate immune system and producing an inflammatory response that acts to protect and heal. However, uncontrolled surgical stress may cause a weaker immune response that may lead to delayed wound healing. The phenomenon of unplanned perioperative hypothermia is known to expose patients to additional surgical stress. The purpose of this preliminary experimental study was to determine the …

Behavioral Symptoms, Inflammation And Cortisol: Relationship To Cardiac Health And Quality Of Life In Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients, Deborah Anne Sindewald

Dissertations

Background: The experience of a cardiac event is associated with psychological stress, which is often accompanied by depressive mood, fatigue and sleep disturbance (i.e., psycho-behavioral symptoms). To assist in recovery, cardiac patients can participate in a structured rehabilitation program, which provides monitored exercise and health education. There is limited knowledge, however, as to the extent to which cardiac rehabilitation reduces psycho-behavioral symptoms; nor is there knowledge of the association of these symptoms with stress-related biological mediators. Cortisol and inflammatory mediators (e.g., interleukin 6; IL-6) contribute to cardiovascular disease, and are also associated with greater stress perception, depressive mood, fatigue, and …

Function And Nature Of The Heavenly Sanctuary/Temple And Its Earthly Counterparts In The New Testament Gospels, Acts, And The Epistles: A Motif Study Of Major Passages, Leonardo G. Nunes

Dissertations

The present dissertation examines the function and nature of the heavenly sanctuary/temple and its relationship to the earthly counterparts in the major passages of the New Testament (NT) Gospels, Acts, Pauline and General Epistles where the sanctuary/temple motif is found (a total of twenty-two passages). After the introductory chapter, chapters 2, 3, and 4 are devoted to the exegetical analysis of these major passages following canonical order and divisions of the NT. This exegetical analysis has detected the relevance of the heavenly sanctuary/temple motif for NT studies, i.e., how its function, nature, and relationship to the earthly counterparts influence the …

Image Instance Segmentation: Using The Cirsy System To Identify Small Objects In Low Resolution Images, Orghomisan William Omatsone

Dissertations

The CIRSY system (or Chick Instance Recognition System) is am image processing system developed as part of this research to detect images of chicks in highly-populated images that uses the leading algorithm in instance segmentation tasks, called the Mask R-CNN. It extends on the Faster R-CNN framework used in object detection tasks, and this extension adds a branch to predict the mask of an object along with the bounding box prediction. Mask R-CNN has proven to be effective ininstance segmentation and object de-tection tasks after outperforming all existing models on evaluation of the Microsoft Common Objects in Context (MS COCO) …

Classification Of Animal Sound Using Convolutional Neural Network, Neha Singh

Dissertations

Recently, labeling of acoustic events has emerged as an active topic covering a wide range of applications. High-level semantic inference can be conducted based on main audioeffects to facilitate various content-based applications for analysis, efficient recovery and content management. This paper proposes a flexible Convolutional neural network-based framework for animal audio classification. The work takes inspiration from various deep neural network developed for multimedia classification recently. The model is driven by the ideology of identifying the animal sound in the audio file by forcing the network to pay attention to core audio effect present in the audio to generate Mel-spectrogram. …

Interpreting Minorness And Minor Characters In The Victorian Novel, Grace Pregent

Dissertations

An unprecedented and staggering wealth of characters floods the Victorian novel with its rich social representation of the nineteenth century. in reading these capacious narratives that seemingly accumulate objects, plots, and people, critics continuously privilege plot and minimize or dismiss the intricate participation of minor characters in the construction of meaning. Studies of literary characterization have classically struggled to articulate a theory of character that moves beyond reductive dichotomies€”flat or round, major or minor€”but that does not become inflated and cumbersome. Despite a lack of comprehensive critical attention, minor characters are no minor matter, and the brevity of their textual …

Pulmonary And Systemic Pathophysiological Impact Of Silver Nanoparticles: Effects Of Coating, Time, And Dose, Zannatul Ferdous

Dissertations

Nanotechnology is rapidly developing, and engineered materials (ENMs) are utilized in a wide array of end-user products owing to their unique physicochemical properties. Of the various forms of ENMs, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have gained much attention for potential uses in commercial applications. Due to their unique features, particularly antimicrobial properties, there had been a surge in the production of AgNPs-based products, hence increasing the potential of both occupational and consumer exposure. Among the various routes of human exposure, pulmonary exposure to AgNPs has received increased interest due to their potential to cause pulmonary injury, cross the alveolar-capillary barrier, and distribute …

Selectivity For Allosteric Effectors Of Bacterial Adp-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase: Structural And Functional Studies, Mashael Alghamdi

Dissertations

The biosynthesis of the intracellular polysaccharide in bacteria and plants, glycogen and starch, respectively, controlled by the key regulatory step that catalyzed by ADP-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase (ADP-Glc PPase). ADP-Glc PPase is an allosteric enzyme regulated by metabolites produced of the principle carbon assimilation pathway in each organism. Agrobacterium tumefaciens enzyme activated by fructose 6-phosphate (Fru6P) and pyruvate, whereas Escherichia coli enzyme activated by fructose 1,6-bisphosphate (FBP), and both enzymes inhibited by AMP. Here, we targeted the allosteric regulation of the A. tumefaciens enzyme, examined some residues that may impact the regulation mechanism (Ser72, His71, Arg75, Ser351, Ser334, Arg368, Asn350, and Asp291), …

Women And Strategies Of Violence: Gender Roles, Foreign Support And Maintaining The Rebellion, Caglayan Baser

Dissertations

How do women affect conflict dynamics in different ways than men? I examine how expectations based on gender identities impact rebel group strategies, as well as attitudes of foreign publics and political elites toward rebel groups. First, women can substantially contribute to rebel groups' ability to resist governments and maintain their rebellion through unique gendered ways. These include enabling greater tactical diversity, increased appeal to international audiences, and spearheading coup-proofing strategies against intra-organizational factions. Women's contributions to rebel groups are most salient during times of crises and in settings where gender stereotypes are stronger. Second, rebel groups with women participants …

Dietary Intake And Executive Function In Youth And Emerging Adulthood: Environmental Correlates And Developmental Considerations, Amy Michelle Egbert

Dissertations

Obesity is a major public health concern impacting one in five young people in the U.S., and research suggests that consumption of high calorie, low nutrient foods may play a role in weight gain. Executive function (EF) has emerged as a factor that may play a role in dietary intake across youth development. Although biopsychosocial models of obesity emphasize the importance of identifying individual and environmental influences that may be associated with poor dietary intake, empirical research in this area is lacking. Therefore, the current set of studies seeks to 1) systematically review the literature on the association between EF …

Elucidating The Targets And Function Of The Mlr Compass-Like Complex During Development, David Joseph Ford

Dissertations

MLR COMPASS-like complexes are highly-conserved epigenetic regulators required for enhancer establishment and subsequent reprogramming during differentiation and development. Mutation of MLR complex subunits in humans is associated with cancer and developmental disorder, yet much remains to be determined concerning both the healthy and disease-altered functions of these complexes. Using the developmental model Drosophila melanogaster, I further elucidate the functions of the MLR complex during in vivo organ development as well as stress response. I characterize the miRNa bantam as a regulatory target of the complex, required for proper tissue patterning during wing and compound eye formation. in the same systems …

Elucidating The Impact And Mechanism Of Hepatitis C Virus Cell-To-Cell Spread, Karina Durso-Cain

Dissertations

Virus cell-to-cell spread has been implicated in the establishment of persistent infection and has been shown to be involved in the transmission of antiviral resistant mutants. However, relatively little is known about how virus cell-to-cell spread impacts infection or the specific mechanisms by which cell-to-cell spread occurs. as such, this dissertation focused on investigating HCV cell-to-cell spread not only to learn more about this medically important virus, but also to determine the broader impact cell-to-cell spread has on viral infection dynamics, identify the cellular factors involved, and perhaps ultimately provide insight into antiviral strategies that might enhance the barrier to …

Utopian Discourse In Contemporary Speculative Fiction, Casey Alan Jergenson

Dissertations

I argue in this dissertation that utopianism is a vibrant form of cultural production in the post-Cold War period, despite the paucity of recent texts depicting €œgood€ societies. Most literary historical accounts of the genre place the decline of the utopian narrative in the early twentieth century, with a brief resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary culture has since become inundated with dystopian and post-apocalyptic visions of the future. If we take this generic distribution at face-value, it seems symptomatic of the utopian idea's retreat from cultural production since the 1980s. Influential critics have resisted this narrative by demonstrating …

Seed Conflicts In Colombia: Ethnorace, Territory, And Violence, Nathalia Hernandez Vidal

Dissertations

This dissertation follows the theoretical approach of the food regime scholarship (Friedmann and McMichael, 1989) to understand the process of privatization of seeds and the social and material processes associated with it, known as the Corporate Seed Regime (CSR). the CSR is a transnational regime of governance over the bios (life) born in the post- World-War II period, imagined and enforced by and through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank (McMichael, 2013). in this work, I explain how a corporate seed regime (CSR) has taken form in Colombia. Extant sociological studies on the formation of CSRs explain …

Distinct Roles For Carbohydrate And Protein Receptors In Coronavirus Infection, Enya Qing

Dissertations

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are common human and animal pathogens. in humans, four endemic CoV species together account for one third of mild respiratory infections worldwide. More severe and frequently fatal respiratory pathologies are caused by recent CoV outbreaks that resulted from occasional zoonotic spillover from animal CoV reservoirs, namely, SARS-CoV in 2002, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. Because CoVs threaten global health, any chance of relieving CoV's threat on human populations would rely heavily on our understanding of the mechanistic requirements for CoV tropism, whose major determinant is at the level of viral entry. CoVs have evolved to use …

Developing Caspase-1 Biosensors To Monitor Inflammation In Vitro And In Vivo, Sarah Talley

Dissertations

Inflammation is central to the pathogenesis of numerous human diseases. in many contexts, inflammation drives immune responses which are critical to protection against many pathogens. However, uncontrolled inflammation can drive the pathology of numerous diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases, intestinal disorders, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. a primary mediator of inflammation is the inflammasome complex, which drives the release of inflammatory mediators through caspase-1 activation. Our goal was to develop a tool that would allow us to monitor caspase-1 activation in vitro and ultimately in vivo. to this end, we employed a circularly permuted form of luciferase in which the N- and …

Targeting Epha2 In Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Uncovering Its Therapeutic Potential And Beyond, Hao Wang

Dissertations

Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) remains one of the deadliest malignancies worldwide. One major obstacle to treatment is a lack of effective molecular-targeted therapies. Here, we identify EphA2 receptor tyrosine kinase as a clinically relevant target for HCC. EphA2 expression and signaling is enriched in human HCC and associates with poor prognosis. Loss of EphA2 suppressed the initiation and growth of HCC in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, CRISPR/CAS9 mediated EphA2 inhibition significantly delayed tumor development in a genetically-engineered murine model of HCC. Mechanistically, we discovered that targeting EphA2 simultaneously suppresses both JAK1/STAT3 and AKT signaling, two separate oncogenic pathways in HCC. …

The Patient Speaks: A Phenomenological Exploration Of The Patient's Experience Of Psychoanalysis, Katherine Williams

Dissertations

The goal of this study was to conduct a qualitatively based clinical outcome study of the patient's experience of a psychoanalytic treatment and to explore how the analysis impacted the patient's life post treatment. Much of what is known about analytic treatments comes from analysts in the form of case reports or journal articles. the goal of this study was to directly obtain patient's views of their analysis. in order to do this a heuristic phenomenological research design was used. the phenomenological approach puts a focus on the experience of the participant of a particular phenomenon in the case of …

Electron Transfer Of Shewanella Oneidensis Mr-1 At Clay-Modified Ito Electrode, Reem Faez Alshehri

Dissertations

Various strategies have been established to enhance the extracellular electron transfer and energy output capability of microbial fuel cells, with the majority being aimed at anode modification. The anode has a significant impact on the electricity generation performance of MFCs because it is in direct contact with the microorganisms. The materials of the anode should be favorable for the bacterial cell and capable to facilitate the electron transfer. Developing of an electrode using low-cost and effective materials assists to enhance the bacterial cell attachment and extracellular electron transfer. This provides a significant improvement in MFC performance. In this study, clay …

Changing Concepts Of Merit In China's Education System: An Oral Historical Research Of Teachers In Key Schools, Yao Chen

Dissertations

This study examines teachers' views of meritocracy and how their conceptions and views influence their everyday practices in schools with regard to producing, recognizing, and awarding individual merit in China's key schools. This study uses a qualitative methodology, especially oral history interviews. It shows that the meaning of merit has changed over time, depending on cultural and institutional contexts during China's transition from Mao's age to the present. Thirteen teachers, who have been working in the education system of China since the early 1980s, and who have worked as teachers in China's key (magnet/elite) schools (including higher education institutions), were …

Cellular And Molecular Mechanism Underlying Alcohol Inhibition Of Bone Fracture Healing, Jonathan Michael Eby

Dissertations

Alcohol consumption is associated with increased risk taking and injuries leading to bone fracture. During bone fracture repair mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) located at the site of injury differentiate into chondrocytes and osteoblasts to form a fracture callus. While most fractures heal without complication, studies show that alcohol abuse can lead to delayed fracture healing and fracture callus formation in both people and animals. Despite what is known about alcohol consumption in pre-injury pathologies like osteopenia and osteoporosis, the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which alcohol consumption inhibits fracture callus formation following orthopaedic injury remain to be elucidated. Here, we …

Reducing Inequality And Poverty In Latin America: Conditional Cash Transfer Programs In Chile, Colombia, And Mexico, Jorge Humberto Guzman Gonzalez

Dissertations

Latin America is the most unequal region across the globe. Inequality has increased the election of populist leaders and has resulted in massive social movements and protests in the region. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 2000s, a process of inequality reduction started in the majority of the countries. Since the end of the 1990s, a large number of Latin American countries were the world pioneers developing Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), to put money in the hands of the poor with the conditions of school attendance and nutritional check-ups for their children. Most of the studies have analyzed the effectiveness …