Digital Commons Network^™

Secondary Traumatic Stress In Intimate Partners And Children Of Service Members, Amber Foreman

Dissertations

This literature review addresses secondary traumatic stress (STS) in intimate partners and children of service members. More specifically, this literature review aims to explore if intimate partners and children of military service members are at risk for developing secondary traumatic stress. Secondly, this review aims to explore if there are specific risk factors associated with the development of secondary traumatic stress in intimate partners and children of service members. Finally, this review examines if there are other stressors and outcomes for intimate partners and children of service members. A systematic review of peer-reviewed research was explored to accomplish addressing the …

Life Is Complicated: The Urgent Call To Support Student Wellbeing Through Social Emotional Learning, Taya Kinzie

Dissertations

Abstract:

Students face increased mental health challenges, including depression, anxiety, trauma, racial trauma, and suicide risk, in addition to opportunity gaps. Despite educators’ work to support students through mental health services and despite the existence of social emotional learning (SEL) programs within the school environment, the impact on student learning and long-term post high school outcomes can feel overwhelming. There is also a perception that the responsibility for SEL belongs only to social workers, psychologists and counselors. The primary research question is; how does embedding of SEL practices vary within instructional, non-instructional, and leadership roles? The related questions are: to …

Body Image Distress And Post Mastectomy Women, Ashley Ceithaml

Dissertations

Body image and breast cancer are closely associated in women who undergo unilateral or bilateral mastectomies. The literature has shown that even if women undergo reconstruction, they still experience adverse side effects with surgery or body image disturbances that may persist for years, affecting their quality of life. It is important for providers to recognize patients experiencing issues with body image distress and be able to provide appropriate care.

The purpose of this quality improvement project is to evaluate body image scores in women who have undergone breast cancer mastectomy within the past five years and educate those who admit …

Reducing Acute Care Hospital Setting Inpatient Falls With Implementation Of Hourly Rounding: A Quality Improvement Project, Courtney Delaparte

Dissertations

Falls in the acute care setting can lead to serious patient injuries. Despite continued efforts to reduce falls, falls are still a common occurrence. One strategy that has been identified as promoting patient safety, including the prevention of falls, is that of hourly rounding. This quality improvement project implemented hourly rounding utilizing the AHRQ's 3B: Scheduled Rounding Protocol on a 48-bed telemetry unit to study the effects on fall reduction. Comparison of fall rates prior to the implementation of hourly rounding to that after hourly rounding was incorporated into practice, showed a reduction; however, the reduction of fall rates was …

Effects Of Thermal And Non-Thermal Methods On The Chemical Composition And Bacterial Inactivation Of Camel Milk, Namariq Dhahir

Dissertations

Understanding the composition of camel milk coupled with studying the effects of thermal and non-thermal treatments on its components and bacterial inactivation were the general objectives of this dissertation. In the first study (Chapter 2), the gross composition of camel milk including milk protein, fat, casein, total solids, lactose, ash, and mineral content were analyzed. In addition, fatty acid profile, amino acid profile, protein fractions, and volatile compounds were evaluated as well. Our results revealed that camel milk has its unique nutrients profile. These findings make it easier for the researchers and consumers to understand some of the nutritional attributes …

Soft Camel Milk Cheese Effects Of Coagulants And Processing Conditions, Mustapha Mbye

Dissertations

In recent years, camel milk (CM) has been acknowledged for several health benefits, including anti-diabetic, hypoallergic, and other effects. Accordingly, CM may provide a complementary or a healthier alternative to bovine milk (BM). This has led to increased interest in processing CM to products like cheese, yogurt, and powders to extend its shelf-life. However, CM is difficult to coagulate into hard gels, affecting its cheese quality and consumer preference. The current research aimed to investigate the impact of different coagulants (chymosin, Withania coagulans, citric and acetic acid) on CM cheese quality and sensory attributes compared to BM cheese. It …

An Exploration Of Parental And Health Professional Perceptions Of Transition For Chronically Ill Students, Iris Robinson

Dissertations

When a young person is diagnosed with a chronic illness, it impacts every phase of the person’s life. During the stages of childhood and adolescence, school is the central socialization site for the student’s developmental and personal identity. That is why it is difficult to replace school as one of the maturing spaces for young people’s transition to adulthood. Chronic illness interrupts the normative life process for an extended period or permanently.

Engaged parents, legal and social advocacy, innovative medical research, public policy, educational workshops, and finally, the consortium of family, health, medical, educational and community support have been advocates …

Short-Term Crash Risk Prediction Considering Proactive, Reactive, And Driver Behavior Factors, Sina Darban Khales

Dissertations

Providing a safe and efficient transportation system is the primary goal of transportation engineering and planning. Highway crashes are among the most significant challenges to achieving this goal. They result in significant societal toll reflected in numerous fatalities, personal injuries, property damage, and traffic congestion. To that end, much attention has been given to predictive models of crash occurrence and severity. Most of these models are reactive: they use the data about crashes that have occurred in the past to identify the significant crash factors, crash hot-spots and crash-prone roadway locations, analyze and select the most effective countermeasures for reducing …

Colloidal Quantum Dot (Cqd) Based Mid-Wavelength Infrared Optoelectronics, Shihab Bin Hafiz

Dissertations

Colloidal quantum dot (CQD) photodetectors are a rapidly emerging technology with a potential to significantly impact today’s infrared sensing and imaging technologies. To date, CQD photodetector research is primarily focused on lead-chalcogenide semiconductor CQDs which have spectral response fundamentally limited by the bulk bandgap of the constituent material, confining their applications to near-infrared (NIR, 0.7-1.0 um) and short-wavelength infrared (SWIR, 1-2.5 um) spectral regions. The overall goal of this dissertation is to investigate a new generation of CQD materials and devices that advances the current CQD photodetector research toward the technologically important thermal infrared region of 3-5 ?m, known as …

Gradient Free Sign Activation Zero One Loss Neural Networks For Adversarially Robust Classification, Yunzhe Xue

Dissertations

The zero-one loss function is less sensitive to outliers than convex surrogate losses such as hinge and cross-entropy. However, as a non-convex function, it has a large number of local minima, andits undifferentiable attribute makes it impossible to use backpropagation, a method widely used in training current state-of-the-art neural networks. When zero-one loss is applied to deep neural networks, the entire training process becomes challenging. On the other hand, a massive non-unique solution probably also brings different decision boundaries when optimizing zero-one loss, making it possible to fight against transferable adversarial examples, which is a common weakness in deep learning …

Multi-Stage Stochastic Optimization And Reinforcement Learning For Forestry Epidemic And Covid-19 Control Planning, Sabah Bushaj

Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on developing new modeling and solution approaches based on multi-stage stochastic programming and reinforcement learning for tackling biological invasions in forests and human populations. Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is the nemesis of ash trees. This research introduces a multi-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming model to assist forest agencies in managing emerald ash borer insects throughout the U.S. and maximize the public benets of preserving healthy ash trees. This work is then extended to present the first risk-averse multi-stage stochastic mixed-integer program in the invasive species management literature to account for extreme events. Significant computational achievements are obtained using …

Towards Adversarial Robustness With 01 Lossmodels, And Novel Convolutional Neural Netsystems For Ultrasound Images, Meiyan Xie

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates adversarial robustness with 01 loss models and a novel convolutional neural net systems for vascular ultrasound images.

In the first part, the dissertation presents stochastic coordinate descent for 01 loss and its sensitivity to adversarial attacks. The study here suggests that 01 loss may be more resilient to adversarial attacks than the hinge loss and further work is required.

In the second part, this dissertation proposes sign activation network with a novel gradient-free stochastic coordinate descent algorithm and its ensembling model. The study here finds that the ensembling model gives a high minimum distortion (as measured by …

Stochastic Programming And Agent-Based Simulation Approaches For Epidemics Control And Logistics Planning, Xuecheng Yin

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the resource allocation challenges of fighting against infectious disease outbreaks. The goal of this dissertation is to formulate multi-stage stochastic programming and agent-based models to address the limitations of former literature in optimizing resource allocation for preventing and controlling epidemics and pandemics. In the first study, a multi-stage stochastic programming compartmental model is presented to integrate the uncertain disease progression and the logistics of resource allocation to control a highly contagious infectious disease. The proposed multi-stage stochastic program, which involves various disease growth scenarios, optimizes the distribution of treatment centers and resources while minimizing the total expected …

Towards Understanding The Role Of Central Processing In Release From Masking, Nima Alamatsaz

Dissertations

People with normal hearing have the ability to listen to a desired target sound while filtering out unwanted sounds in the background. However, most patients with hearing impairment struggle in noisy environments, a perceptual deficit which current hearing aids and cochlear implants cannot resolve. Even though peripheral dysfunction of the ears undoubtedly contribute to this deficit, surmounting evidence has implicated central processing in the inability to detect sounds in background noise. Therefore, it is essential to better understand the underlying neural mechanisms by which target sounds are dissociated from competing maskers. This research focuses on two phenomena that help suppress …

Designing Collaborative Lifelogging To Facilitate Learning In Collaborative Physical-Recreation Communities, Sayed Mousa Ahmadi Olounabadi

Dissertations

Since the 1940s, researchers have envisioned lifelogging as the systematic capture and utilization of lived experiences for augmenting learning, performance, and community Unfortunately, this vision was never actualized since few, if any, systems support lifelogging in the term's original sense. Technologies that emerged through the Quantified-Self (QS) movement allowed users to monitor and track almost every life aspect. However, the decontextualized self-tracking data QS systems produced are unsuitable for supporting learning and community engagement, and therefore have not made lifelogging a reality yet. Central to this dissertation is understanding how to augment learning and community through lifelogging. This is particularly …

Essays On Health Care Quality: Timeliness, Equity, And Efficiency, Abubakar-Sadiq Bouda Abdulai

Dissertations

According to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) (formerly called the Institute of Medicine), a quality health care system embodies six attributes: timeliness, equity, safety, efficiency, effectiveness, and patient-centeredness. Timeliness is to avoid unnecessary delays in care delivery for patients and caregivers; equity is to ensure that the quality of care that patients receive does not vary based on their personal characteristics; safety is to ensure that the care that is intended to help patients does not harm them; efficiency is to avoid waste and optimize resource allocation to improve care delivery; effective care is one that relies on sound …

Constructive Solution Methodologies To The Capacitated Newsvendor Problem And Surrogate Extension, Pinyuan Shan

Dissertations

The newsvendor problem is a single-period stochastic model used to determine the order quantity of perishable product that maximizes/minimizes the profit/cost of the vendor under uncertain demand. The goal is to fmd an initial order quantity that can offset the impact of backlog or shortage caused by mismatch between the procurement amount and uncertain demand. If there are multiple products and substitution between them is feasible, overstocking and understocking can be further reduced and hence, the vendor's overall profit is improved compared to the standard problem. When there are one or more resource constraints, such as budget, volume or weight, …

Towards Quality By Design (Qbd) Of Pharmaceutical Oral Films Loaded With Poorly Watersoluble Drugs, Eylul Cetindag

Dissertations

Oral films are an emerging drug delivery dosage form with numerous advantages such as ease of handling, the possibility to circumvent the first-pass metabolism, better patient compliance, capability for continuous manufacturing, and as a platform for personalized medicine. As films are different from other final dosages by their dimensions and their matrix form, further research is required to better understand the impact of excipient and drug on product performance to assure a consistent and good quality product. Therefore, this dissertation aims to contribute towards the processability and manufacturability of films by examining the impact of the materials and processes. First, …

Exploring Fused Deposition Modeling (Fdm) Three-Dimensional Printing Tablet Design Options For Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms, Guluzar Gorkem Buyukgoz

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the use of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) based three-dimensional (3D) printing approach for developing patient-specific dosage forms and addressing related technical challenges in such drug delivery systems. The first main objective is to explore pharmaceutical tablet design options using novel FDM 3D printing technology as the drug delivery platform such that drug form and tablet properties are tailored by considering patient age-specific formulations and dissolution control. Of the five different design options, two proposed options meet the main objective of providing similar drug release, whereas the popular option of fixed drug concentration but differing tablet size could …

The Effect Of Choice Programs On Student Achievement, David Whitham

Dissertations

Educational choices provide unique learning opportunities for all children to have access to and allow parents to be the decision-makers for their child’s education (Valant & Lincove, 2018). Brown v. Board of Education (1954) of Topeka sparked the creation of choice programs in the United States to end the segregation of students and empower families to be direct stakeholders in their child’s education (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). This study focused on a school district in the Midwest region of the United States, which investigated the expansion of learning options available to the community. The purpose of this study …

The Influence Of Gender, Weight, And Age On Osa Progression In Rem And Nrem Sleep, Alan M. Jones

Dissertations

In the United States, it is estimated that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which greatly increases the risk of many adverse health conditions, affects over 25 million adults with prevalence rates that have drastically increased over the last two decades, likely due to the obesity epidemic. Research has identified several explanatory variables of OSA, but studies have indicated that OSA incidence and severity is mainly determined by three variables: gender, weight and age.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects and importance of gender, weight, and age on OSA levels (as measured by respiratory disturbance index (RDI) values) …

Temporal Evolution Of Structure And Function In The Periphery And Central Auditory Systems With Mild Blast Induced Tinnitus In Rat Animal Models, Ningning Shao

Dissertations

Exposure to blast causes debilitating trauma including tinnitus among soldiers and civilians (Cave et al., 2007; Remenschneider et al., 2014; Singh et al., 2016). Tinnitus is a constant ringing noise perception without external acoustic event; it affects sleep, concentration, behavior, leading to suicidal tendencies (Swan et al., 2017). Though blast induced tinnitus has been studied, structural and functional dysfunctions along auditory systems have not been systematically studied. It was hypothesized in this work that blast causes tinnitus even while the ears are mechanically protected, and the damage occurred in both central and peripheral auditory systems, which contributed to increased anxiety …

An Explanatory Sequential Study Of Cadet Commitment At The United States Air Force Academy, Justin Pendry

Dissertations

Character and leadership are the essence of the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). USAFA’s mission is to develop leaders of character responsible for defending this nation. Our country has the most lethal Air Force this world has ever known. The men and women entrusted with protecting its citizens must be committed to the highest standards of ethical leadership. To accomplish this, USAFA provides a robust education and training program with extensive opportunities for cadet development. However, achieving USAFA’s vision of creating the nation’s best leaders of character relies upon cadet trust in the process and commitment to their development …

Stress, Anxiety, And Depression: Role Of Campus Connectedness, Social Support, And Coping Among Nepalese Nursing Students, Priscilla Samson

Dissertations

High levels of stress, anxiety, and depression (SAD) can adversely influence physical health, psychological well-being, and academic and clinical performance of nursing students. Numerous studies have identified the factors associated with SAD; however, a paucity of empirical research addresses the relationship of SAD with campus connectedness (CC), perceived social support (PSS), and coping. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional study, guided by Lazarus and Folkman's theory of stress, coping, and adaptation, was to determine the prevalence of SAD and examine its relationship with CC, PSS, and coping among undergraduate nursing students of Nepal. Survey research was conducted using depression anxiety …

A Description Of Cultural Humility As Perceived By Nursing Faculty In Baccalaureate Nursing Education, Linda Webster

Dissertations

In diverse populations, health inequities can exist, thereby contributing to health disparities. A lack of knowledge regarding unfamiliar cultural patterns and practices by health care providers can contribute to miscommunication and mistrust. The willingness to adopt the practices of self-awareness and self-reflection with critique is cultural humility. This concept may help to reduce health inequities and suboptimal health outcomes when a mutual respect for culture and diversity is present.

A foundational, qualitative descriptive study was proposed to investigate cultural humility as perceived by nursing faculty. The purpose of this study was to describe the concept of cultural humility from the …

Using Visual Storytelling To Design Solutions-Based Approaches To Homelessness, Peggy Peattie

Dissertations

Despite millions of dollars spent over several decades on assistance programs, the nation’s homeless population has increased for the last four years in a row. The number of people reporting as homeless for the first time doubled in San Diego between June 2019 and June 2020. Trying to impose a one-size-fits-all model of care on a population comprised of unique individuals has resulted in many homeless opting for the street rather than subjugating themselves to rules they feel do not treat them with respect and dignity. Yet, the perspectives of homeless individuals are excluded from decision-making dialogue around policies and …

Alcohol As A Catalyst For Hiv-Associated Neuroinflammation And Tbi-Induced Iron Toxicity, Agnieszka Agas

Dissertations

Alcohol has long been considered an exacerbator of diseases, disorders, and injuries as well as many of the accompanying symptoms. As an alternative approach, this dissertation explores alcohol as a catalyst for two different human disease conditions, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated neuroinflammation and traumatic brain injury (TBI)-induced iron toxicity. In HIV-1 infection, this dissertation presents a novel anti-viral drug, called Drug-S, for a possible inhibition and treatment of HIV-1 disease progression.

The first aim explores the influence of alcohol with HIV-associated neuroinflammation on macrophage migration across an in vitro model of the blood brain barrier. There is a gap in …

Exploring Perspectives Of Legal Nurse Consultants As Entrepreneurs: A Case Study, Evelyn H. Bell

Dissertations

Entrepreneurial opportunities exist in the nursing profession for nurses who are seen as innovative, forward thinkers, and have a desire to work independently. Entrepreneurship as a legal nurse consultant is a career choice that allows for that independence while supporting the legal community. Legal nurse consultants use training and clinical experience to provide expert opinions related to practice standards of care and damages. In this exploratory qualitative case study, the researcher explored the perceptions of legal nurse consultants regarding the journey to become entrepreneurs. The problem that was the focus of this study was absence of sufficient and applicable research …

Nursing Faculty Perceptions About Peers With Physical And Sensory Disabilities, Tammy C. Killough

Dissertations

Nursing faculty perceptions of peer faculty with sensory and physical disabilities is an important topic for research, as the review of literature indicates that this topic has not been adequately investigated. Current research related to nursing faculty with disabilities has been primarily focused on nursing students with disabilities. This study explored nursing faculty's perceptions about nursing peers with disabilities. A descriptive qualitative research design was selected to best reflect the viewpoints of the participants and to allow for a more holistic open view of participants' perceptions about the research questions. The participants participated in an online survey using Survey Monkeyâ„¢. …

Preceptor Effectiveness As A Mediator Of Relationship Between Psychological Empowerment And Newly Registered Nurses' Intent To Stay, Deborah Taffe

Dissertations

The nursing profession is currently experiencing a nursing shortage that is projected to worsen. One in five newly licensed registered nurses (NLRNs) leaves the profession within the second year of practice (National Healthcare Retention and RN Staffing Report, 2018). Work empowerment has been shown to decrease turnover rates among nurses: However, the factors that mediate this concept have not been fully explored.

The purpose of this study was to investigate nurses' perceived preceptor effectiveness as a mediator of the relationship between psychological empowerment during the transition from an academic environment into practice and intent to stay in practice for NLRNs …