Digital Commons Network^™

The Geriatric Cancer Experience In End Of Life: Model Adaptation And Testing, Harleah Graham Buck

Dissertations

The National Institutes of Health recommends the development of conceptual models to increase rigor and improve evaluation in research. Validated models are essential to guide conceptualizations of phenomena, selection of variables and development of testable hypotheses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a methodology useful in model testing due to its ability to account for measurement error and test latent variables. The purpose of this study was to test a model of The Geriatric Cancer Experience in End of Life as adapted from Emanuel and Emanuel's framework for a good death using SEM.

The Lived Experiences Of African American Male Students: An Exploration Of African American Male Student Athletes And African American Male Student Nonathletes At California Community Colleges, Marie Harris

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences and differences between African American male student athletes and African American male student nonathletes at California community colleges. Methodology: The methodology of this study is a qualitative phenomenological design to explore the lived experiences of African American males who are student athletes and those who are student nonathletes enrolled at three California community colleges. In depth and semistructured interviewing techniques were utilized to capture their stories. Findings: There were 9 major findings that emerged through the data collection and analysis. The findings showed that African American …

Principal And Teacher Perceptions Of Classroom Walkthroughs In Middle School Settings, Ethel Shanklin

Dissertations

There is no question that education is paramount to student success. The goal of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), did not work. The last revision of this act, the Every Students Succeeds Act of 2016 is now being implemented, Educators are yet struggling for the panacea that is effective for all students’ competencies in the world. Students from low socio-economic areas are at a greater risk of their educational needs not being met for various reasons. There is the opportunity to reach students in schools in spite of their home situations. Instruction begins and ends with instructional leaders in …

Acupuncture For Symptom Management In A Menopausal Population: An Exploration Of Mechanism And Experience, Cheryl L. Wright

Dissertations

This early phase study examined the effects of a series of ten standard-protocol acupuncture treatments over four weeks in 12 healthy, but symptomatic, menopausal women. In addition to measuring two biologic markers that may shed light on the physiologic impact of acupuncture, symptom experience data were collected.

Measuring Nursing Home Staff Turnover Using Date-Of-Hire From Current Payroll Records, C. Jo Riggs

Dissertations

Turnover in nursing homes is a major problem that threatens quality of care. Widespread staffing shortages already exist, and these shortages are projected to worsen. The lake of accurate data sources makes the study of nursing home staff turnover problematic. The purpose of this at the University of Missouri-Columbia. This TS mathematically estimates turnover from current payroll data including date-of-hire; job title, and full- or part-time status. TS scores from this sample of 72 Missouri nursing homes added to distribution data obtained during pilot testing; and nonparametric correlational analysis revealed significant relationships between lower turnover (TS scores) and lower rates …

Studies Of Two-Phase Flow With Soluble Surfactant, Ryan Peter Atwater

Dissertations

Numerical methods are developed for accurate solution of two-phase flow in the zero Reynolds number limit of Stokes flow, when surfactant is present on a drop interface and in its bulk phase interior. The methods are designed to achieve high accuracy when the bulk Péclet number is large, or equivalently when the bulk phase surfactant has small diffusivity

In the limit of infinite bulk Péclet number the advection-diffusion equation that governs evolution of surfactant concentration in the bulk is singularly perturbed, indicating a separation of spatial scales. A hybrid numerical method based on a leading order asymptotic reduction in this …

The Impact Of Direct Instruction At English Learner Instructional Sites Compared To Indirect Instruction At English Learner Support Sites, Lauren Shim

Dissertations

Approximately one in every ten public school students in the United States is considered an English learner (Sanchez, 2017). It has also been determined that the English learner population is one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States (Gibson, 2016). This study focused on a school district in the Midwest region of the United States, where approximately 4% of the student population was classified as English learners, and the population had been steadily growing since 2014 (School District Manual, 2019). This Midwestern school district offered a unique English learner program by transporting students to specific Instructional Sites for English …

A Study Of Information Bots And Knowledge Bots, Amartya Hatua

Dissertations

In this dissertation, a study of different aspects of information bots and knowledge bots is done. The research contributes to a better understanding of the various characteristics of information bots as well as the different patterns and factors responsible for the information diffusion in a social network. This research also shows how these factors can be used to predict information diffusion for a particular topic in a social network. The second part of the research is focused on strategies for improving the knowledge base of knowledge bots, where two different approaches are studied. In the first approach, knowledge is transferred …

Variable Compact Multi-Point Upscaling Schemes For Anisotropic Diffusion Problems In Three-Dimensions, James Quinlan

Dissertations

Simulation is a useful tool to mitigate risk and uncertainty in subsurface flow models that contain geometrically complex features and in which the permeability field is highly heterogeneous. However, due to the level of detail in the underlying geocellular description, an upscaling procedure is needed to generate a coarsened model that is computationally feasible to perform simulations. These procedures require additional attention when coefficients in the system exhibit full-tensor anisotropy due to heterogeneity or not aligned with the computational grid. In this thesis, we generalize a multi-point finite volume scheme in several ways and benchmark it against the industry-standard routines. …

Synthesis Of Alpha-Methylselenocysteine, Its Relevant Analogues, And An Unnatural Glutathione Disulfide Core, Robert J. Wehrle

Dissertations

Selenoproteins, such as glutathione peroxidase, have gained interest for their ability to act as antioxidants, and their potential to act as anti-cancer agents. Synthesizing and studying selenoproteins can be problematic, however, due to their propensity to degrade from over-oxidation. The degradation from over-oxidation can be avoided by the incorporation of the unnatural amino acid, alpha-methylselenocysteine. A synthesis utilizing methyl malonic esters was used to synthesize protected (R)-alpha-methylselenocysteine efficiently (46% over four steps) and in high enantio-purity (88% enantiomeric excess). Using similar procedures, the (S)-enantiomer was also synthesized as well as a beta-analogue.

The use of enzymes …

Empirical Studies Of Deep Learning On Information Diffusion On Social Networks And Collective Task Learning For Swarm Robotics, Trung T. Nguyen

Dissertations

Researchers in multiple disciplines have recently adopted deep learning because of its ability of high accuracy representation learning from big and complex data. My research goal in this thesis is developing deep learning models for information diffusion analysis on social networks and collective tasks learning in swarm robotics. Firstly, the information diffusion on social networks is modeled as a multivariate time series in three dimensions with ten features. Then, we applied time-series clustering algorithms with Dynamic Time Warping to discover different patterns of our models. Then, we build a prediction model based on LSTM, which outperforms traditional time-series prediction methods. …

Core Subject Integration In The K-6 Music Classroom, Rose Bowe

Dissertations

Federal legislation through No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (2002) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (2015) held schools accountable for improved test scores and academic achievement. The heightened scrutiny in performance and expectations placed enormous pressure on students, teachers, and administrators to reach the lofty goals of the accountability model and put emphasis on state-mandated tests for several subjects. Non-tested subjects often encountered a shift in funds and their programs became diminished or even eliminated. Subjects that were not tested, such as music education, were considered non-essential. Nonetheless, the value of music used for instruction to stimulate knowledge retention was …

The Principal And Teacher Evaluation: A Study Of Influencing Pressures, Andy Brock

Dissertations

This quantitative study focused on determining the amount of influencing pressure principals encountered during summative teacher evaluations, determining if there was a relationship between the pressures a principal experienced while completing a summative teacher evaluation and the summative evaluation score teachers received, and determining if there was a relationship between teacher evaluation scores and district accountability levels. A survey instrument was created containing 23 possible influencing pressures derived from a literature review along with 14 items for the purpose of collecting demographic data from each participant. The survey instrument used a horizontal numeric scale to measure the amount of influencing …

Teacher Beliefs And The Intent And Current Use Of Movement As It Influences Students With And Without Adhd, Kimberly Mcquagge

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to add to the knowledge base regarding utilizing movement in the classroom as it influences reading and mathematics achievement for students with and without Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Mississippi public school teachers (n= 379) responded to an online questionnaire that gathered demographic data and collected ratings based on teacher beliefs and both their current use of movement and intent to use movement in the classroom based on a 5-point Likert scale.

In order to predict if a relationship existed between teacher beliefs of utilizing movement in the classroom and both their current use of movement …

A Narrative Case Study Of Transfer Students In Instrumental Music Education, Ashley Glenn

Dissertations

Transfer students in music fields face challenges that are different from other fields of study. Research has shown that transfer students in music are expected to acclimate and operate as upperclassmen with minimal onboarding while also potentially having to retake courses they received credit for at the community college level. This study examines the experiences of five transfer students in music education through the lens of Schlossberg’s transition theory and Dewey’s model of transaction. Building on existing transfer student research, it asks: what do transfer students experience in terms of acceptance and self-integration, and how do these experiences affect transfer …

Reconstructing Single-Cell 3d Genome Structures Based On Lennard-Jones Potential, Mengsheng Zha

Dissertations

Reconstructing 3D chromosomal structures based on single-cell Hi-C data is a challenging scientific problem due to the extreme sparseness of the single-cell Hi-C data. In this research, we used the Lennard-Jones potential to reconstruct both 500 kb and highresolution 50 kb structures for chromosomes based on single-cell Hi-C data. A chromosome was represented by a string of 500 kb or 50 kb DNA beads and put into a 3D cubic lattice for simulations. A 2D Gaussian function was used to impute the sparse singlecell Hi-C contact matrices. We designed a novel loss function based on the Lennard-Jones potential, in which …

A 3d Image-Guided System To Improve Myocardial Revascularization Decision-Making For Patients With Coronary Artery Disease, Haipeng Tang

Dissertations

OBJECTIVES. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common type of heart disease and kills over 360,000 people a year in the United States. Myocardial revascularization (MR) is a standard interventional treatment for patients with stable CAD. Fluoroscopy angiography is real-time anatomical imaging and routinely used to guide MR by visually estimating the percent stenosis of coronary arteries. However, a lot of patients do not benefit from the anatomical information-guided MR without functional testing. Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) is a widely used functional testing for CAD evaluation but limits to the absence of anatomical information. …

Machine Learning Approaches For Improving Prediction Performance Of Structure-Activity Relationship Models, Gabriel Idakwo

Dissertations

In silico bioactivity prediction studies are designed to complement in vivo and in vitro efforts to assess the activity and properties of small molecules. In silico methods such as Quantitative Structure-Activity/Property Relationship (QSAR) are used to correlate the structure of a molecule to its biological property in drug design and toxicological studies. In this body of work, I started with two in-depth reviews into the application of machine learning based approaches and feature reduction methods to QSAR, and then investigated solutions to three common challenges faced in machine learning based QSAR studies.

First, to improve the prediction accuracy of learning …

Student Perceptions Of Their Undergraduate Science Laboratories, Eva N. Nyutu

Dissertations

The science laboratory learning environment has been a distinctive area in science education since the 19th century. The science laboratory environment has been examined extensively at the high school level using the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI). There are, however, very few studies about the science laboratory environment done at the college level. An instrument that may be helpful for college instructors is one that assesses the degree to which students perceive the laboratory as intended by their science instructors. An examination of the literature indicated that there are no validated and reliable instruments for measuring student perceptions of what …

Resource Optimization In Support Of Iot Applications, Ihab Ahmed Mohammed

Dissertations

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart communities, managing computation and communication resources required by billions of smart devices becomes a concern. To tackle this problem, we develop algorithms for resource management to ensure better Quality of Service (QoS), safety, and performance. We focus our efforts on three problems.

In the first problem, we studied the strict QoS requirements of applications and differentiated service requirements in different situations of vehicular networks. We propose a generic prioritization and resource management algorithm that can be used to prioritize the processing of received packets in vehicular networks. We formulate …

The Assessment Of Co2 Exposures, Workload Demands, And Musculoskeletal Disorder Risk On Heart Rate For Select Craft Brewery Job Tasks, David L. Huizen

Dissertations

Americans have embraced craft beer, and the ensuing demand has resulted in an ever-increasing number of craft breweries opening over the past 20 years. Craft brewers are generally small employers and, as such, lack the resources necessary to address the safety and health of their employees adequately. Brewers face many safety and health hazards in their work environment. These hazards include exposures to carbon dioxide (CO₂), workload demand, and MSD risk. It is essential to evaluate these hazards in craft breweries as they handle carbon dioxide (CO₂) differently than large breweries by having the CO_{2 …}

Software Quality Control Through Formal Method, Jialiang Chang

Dissertations

With the improvement of theories in the software industry, software quality is becoming the most significant part of the procedure of software development. Due to the implicit and explicit vulnerabilities inside the software, software quality control has caught more researchers and engineers’ attention and interest.

Current research on software quality control and verification are involving various manual and automated testing methods, which can be categorized into static analysis and dynamic analysis. However, both of them have their own disadvantages. With static analysis methods, inputs will not be taken into consideration because the software system isn’t executed so we do not …

A Framework For Using Fused Image Data In Statistical Process Control, Shengfeng Chen

Dissertations

The use of image data in manufacturing quality control systems has grown rapidly over the years. Technological advancements in imaging devices (e.g., digital cameras, x-ray scanners, infrared cameras) have provided convenient and cost-effective ways to obtain images. These images contain important quality features (e.g., textures and product dimensions) that can be used to monitor, diagnose, predict, and control manufacturing processes. A key tool for monitoring images is statistical process control charts. Integrating images of parts to detect process shifts can significantly improve a quality systems efficiency. Unfortunately, appropriate techniques that take full advantage of data-rich images for control charting are …

A Comprehensive Security Approach On Data Race Detection And Deepfake Defense, Yu Guo

Dissertations

In the past decades, even the computer techniques have a significant improvement. The topic about security will be never out of date.

To meet with the requirement of computation, the number of CPU cores has changed from single core to multi-cores. At the same time, the multi-thread programs are also proposed to maximize the advantages of multi-core computing power. While even the performance has been improved, but it also brings some new issues which were never happened on sequential programs called current bugs. Data race is a major type of current bugs, it is happened when multiple threads access the …

Maia And Admonita: Mandatory Integrity Control Language And Dynamic Trust Framework For Arbitrary Structured Data, Wassnaa Al-Mawee

Dissertations

The expansion of attacks against information systems of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities in the United States and other countries, are noticeable with potential catastrophic real-world implications. Data integrity is a fundamental component of information security. It refers to the accuracy and the trustworthiness of data or resources. Data integrity within information systems becomes an important factor of security protection as the data becomes more integrated and crucial to decision-making. The security threats brought by human errors whether, malicious or unintentional, such as viruses, hacking, and many other cybersecurity threats, are dangerous and require mandatory …

Accumulation Of Polar Vorticity On Giant Planets: Towards A Three-Dimensional Theory, Shawn R. Brueshaber

Dissertations

My research investigates the polar atmospheric dynamics of the giant planets: Jupiter and Saturn (gas giants), and Uranus and Neptune (ice giants). I conduct my research modifying and applying the Explicit Planetary Isentropic Coordinate global circulation code to model the polar regions of the four giant planets.

The motivation behind my research is to uncover the reason why giant planet polar atmospheric dynamics differ. Jupiter features multiple circumpolar cyclones arranged in geometrical configurations, whereas Saturn features a single pole-centered cyclone. Uranus and Neptune also appear to have single pole-centered cyclones, albeit, larger than those on Saturn. …

Recidivism Rates And Its Correlation To Mathematics And Reading Comprehension Among Detention Center Juveniles Who Participate In Trauma Informed Teaching, Isaac Collin

Dissertations

In this study rates of recidivism and their relationship with mathematics and reading comprehension will be analyzed. In the literature, a full comprehensive study of high school mathematics and reading was taught without the implementation of a watered-down academic curriculum. In order for detention center students to benefit from a detention center education they need instructors to expose them to state academic standards. The research questions guiding this study included 1) Is there a significant difference in the achievement scores in mathematics and reading skills and abilities based on the rates of recidivism at XYZ Detention Center, 2) Do XYZ …

Reasons For Choosing A Study Abroad Destination: A United States Student Perspective, Kristy Sue Berg

Dissertations

Berg, Kristy Sue. Reasons for Choosing a Study Abroad Destination: A United States Student Perspective. Published Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, 2020. The number of U.S. students who study abroad has been rising for the past 60 years (Institute of International Education [IIE], 2010). Since the 2017/2018 academic year, U.S. college study abroad rose 2.7% over the 2016/17 academic year with approximately 341,751 students participating in a study abroad program (IIE, 2020e). One in 10 undergraduate students participates in a study abroad program before graduation (IIE, 2020e). Perceptions U.S. students have of other countries impact their choice …

Statistical Downscaling Techniques To Enhance The Spatial Resolution Of The Grace Satellite Data And To Fill Temporal Gaps, Hossein Sahour

Dissertations

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has been successfully used to monitor variations in terrestrial water storage (GRACE_TWS ) and groundwater storage (GRACE_GWS) across the globe, yet such applications are hindered on local scales by the limited spatial resolution of GRACE data. Using the Lower Peninsula of Michigan as a test site, I developed optimum procedures to downscale GRACE Release-06 monthly mascon solutions. A four-fold exercise is conducted. Cluster analysis is performed to identify the optimum number and distribution of clusters (areas) of contiguous pixels of similar geophysical signals (GRACE_TWS time series); three clusters are …

Inverse Problems For Polynomial And Rational Matrices, Richard Allen Hollister

Dissertations

Inverse problems have long been studied in mathematics not only because there are many applications in science and engineering, but also because they yield new insight into the beauty of mathematics. Central to the subject of linear algebra is the eigenvalue problem: given a matrix, and its eigenvalues (numerical invariants). Eigenvalue problems play a key role in almost every field of scientific endeavor from calculating the vibrational modes of a molecule to modeling the spread of an infectious disease, and so have been studied extensively since the time of Euler in the 18th century.

If a typical matrix eigenvalue problem …