Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Ethnicity And Residential Setting On Cultural Factors Of Low-Income Pregnant Adolescents, Cynthia S. Selleck

Dissertations

Much research has been conducted on adolescent pregnancy; however, culture, as it relates to adolescent pregnancy, has been cited as an area in need of further study. This research focused on the effect of ethnicity and residential setting on cultural factors of low-income pregnant adolescents. The cultural factors studied were social support, knowledge of prevention of pregnancy, and importance of becoming pregnant. These variables were described and compared in white, black, rural, and urban pregnant adolescents. Relationships among these variables were also investigated.

Intergenerational Health Promotion In African-Americans, Donna Behler Mcarthur

Dissertations

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for people over the age of 25 and is largely preventable through behavioral changes. Diet and physical activity patterns, which may be amenable to change through age- and generation-appropriate interventions, have not been extensively tested in school-based programs. The purposes of this study were to: (1) Assess the impact of a school-based intervention in promoting healthy cardiovascular behaviors in elementary school children; and, (2) Evaluate the efficacy of elementary school children as conduits of health promotion information for older generations. Three inner city public elementary schools located within a one mile radius …

The Effect Of Gender On A Predictive Model Of Violent Behaviors In Rural Youth Using A Contextual Framework, Kathleen T. Patterson

Dissertations

Adolescent violence is a serious health concern. It is manifest by aggressive and delinquent behavior in many of the contexts in which the adolescent is embedded: the family, peer group, school and community. Many research studies have focused on the risk behaviors of substance use, firearm availability and victimization in urban settings. Rural youth are also at risk, yet empirical efforts have been sparse with this population. The specific aims of this study with rural youth were: (1) to propose and test a predictive model of violent behavior that involves the individual characteristics of the adolescent, the risk/opportunity potential of …

Nursing Students' Perceptions Of Briefing In Simulation, Beena Maret

Dissertations

Briefing for a clinical simulation in nursing school is an information session that sets the stage for a meaningful simulation activity. Improper or inadequate briefing practices can impact the quality of learning nursing students receive through clinical simulation experience. The purpose of this study, guided by the novice to expert and social cognitive theories, was to explore accelerated baccalaureate nursing (ABN) students' perceptions of their briefing experiences and how the briefing experiences influenced the acquisition of clinical skills and knowledge. Twelve ABN students from a school of nursing in one of the Northeastern states were interviewed through e-mail correspondence. Thematic …

Differences In Coping Between Parents Of Mentally Handicapped Children And Parents Of Non Handicapped Children, Cynthia Chatham

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to ascertain if there was a difference in perceived effectiveness of coping behaviors between mothers and fathers of a mentally handicapped child and mothers and fathers of a non handicapped child. The conceptual framework was derived from the work of Lazarus (1961) and Pearl in and Schooler (1978). Utilizing a descriptive design, 64 parents (28 parents of a mentally handicapped child and 36 parents of a non handicapped child) were surveyed using the Family Coping Inventory (FCI). Twenty-eight parents of a mentally handicapped child completed an additional instrument, the Coping Health Inventory for Parents …

Health-Seeking Behavior And Health Services Use By Latino Men In A Rural Iowa Community, Neil Scot Macnaughton

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to describe and compare the health-seeking behavior and health services use by Latino men, linked to the meatpacking industry, within the context of the community in which they reside; and (b) to describe and analyze the capacity of one typical Iowa community to respond to its changing ethnic composition, specifically with the provision of care to this immigrant group.

Streaming Feature Grouping And Selection (Sfgs) For Big Data Classification, Noura Helal Hamad Al Nuaimi

Dissertations

Real-time data has always been an essential element for organizations when the quickness of data delivery is critical to their businesses. Today, organizations understand the importance of real-time data analysis to maintain benefits from their generated data. Real-time data analysis is also known as real-time analytics, streaming analytics, real-time streaming analytics, and event processing. Stream processing is the key to getting results in real-time. It allows us to process the data stream in real-time as it arrives. The concept of streaming data means the data are generated dynamically, and the full stream is unknown or even infinite. This data becomes …

How Exemplary Urban Superintendents Build Trust With And Between School Board Members, Damon J. Wright

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed-methods study was to identify and describe what strategies exemplary urban superintendents perceive as most important to build trust with school board members using the 5 domains of competence, consistency, concern, candor, and connection. In addition, it was the purpose of this study to identify and describe strategies exemplary urban superintendents perceive as most important to build trust between board members.

Methodology: In this explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, surveys and interviews were used to secure data from exemplary superintendents to identify, emphasize, and highlight the strategies they used to build trust with and …

Perceptions Of Elementary School Parents, Principals, And School Resource Officers Regarding Visitor Management Systems And School Safety, Janalee Olhausen-Kaylor

Dissertations

Currently, three out of 10 parents fear for their students’ safety while attending classes within the public school setting (McCarthy, 2015). This study focused on two elements that directly affect safety within schools: visitor management and intruder prevention. To analyze each of these two elements, qualitative methodology was utilized through four focus groups to determine the perceptions of Elementary school administrators, parents, and school resource officers on school safety. After conducting multiple interviews, four common themes emerged. The first theme was monitoring access to school buildings. Participants asserted taking an active approach in this area would increase the overall safety …

The Lived Experience Of Spiritual Well-Being Amongst Informal Caregivers Of Persons With Dementia On Palliative Care Living At Home, Michael Baumgardner

Dissertations

Title. The Lived Experience of Spiritual Well-Being Amongst Informal Caregivers of Persons with Dementia on Palliative Care Living at Home.

Purpose.This study explored the lived experience of spiritual well-being amongst informal caregivers of a person with dementia who were living at home and enrolled in palliative care.

Background. Patients with dementia comprise the third leading diagnosis in palliative care patients and many receive informal care from family members. Palliative care improves quality of life in patients and their informal caregivers. However, little is known about spiritual well-being in the setting of caregiving of persons with dementia on palliative care. …

Multi-Sensory Deep Learning Architectures For Slam Dunk Scene Classification, Paul Minogue

Dissertations

Basketball teams at all levels of the game invest a considerable amount of time and effort into collecting, segmenting, and analysing footage from their upcoming opponents previous games. This analysis helps teams identify and exploit the potential weaknesses of their opponents and is commonly cited as one of the key elements required to achieve success in the modern game. The growing importance of this type of analysis has prompted research into the application of computer vision and audio classification techniques to help teams classify scoring sequences and key events using game footage. However, this research tends to focus on classifying …

Staphylococcus Aureus Evasion Of The Innate Immune System, James Paul Grayczyk

Dissertations

Upon entry into the host, pathogens must overcome innate immunity in order to cause disease. The innate immune system represents a fast-acting initial line of defense to prevent infection. In order to withstand innate defenses, bacterial pathogens like the Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, produce a wide array of virulence factors that can inhibit innate immune cell recruitment and antimicrobial activity, or directly target and kill phagocytic leukocytes thereby facilitating pathogenesis. Infection with S. aureus can cause disease in virtually any tissue site and is a significant burden to human health. In this dissertation, we sought to understand how S. aureus …

Alcohol Induced Bacterial Changes In The Setting Of Colitis, Paulius Kuprys

Dissertations

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) affect a large number of individuals around the world. This group of diseases is largely composed of two types: Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Upon development of IBD, patients experience cyclical episodes of inflammation, known as flares. Flare induction appears to arise from multiple factors, which can also vary on a person-to-person basis. Alcohol has been shown to trigger IBD flares and onset, though the underlying mechanism has not been established.Defining factors of the IBD intestinal environment include an altered microbiome, bacterial infiltration of the intestinal epithelium, and increased leakage of proinflammatory bacterial byproducts. …

Generating Biologic And Genetic Research Tools To Investigate Serotype I Feline Coronaviruses, Robert Christian Mettelman

Dissertations

Serotype I feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) is an alphacoronavirus of high veterinary importance due to the 99% mortality rate observed in cats. Since the 1980s, robust experimentation on these viruses has been limited by availability of culturable pathogenic strains, few permissive cell lines, and a lack of standardized methods to study their basic virology. These complications have resulted in variable and conflicting literature reports, have slowed study of clinical strains and hindered effective vaccine design. The goal of this dissertation was to develop a laboratory "toolbox" containing standardized methods, permissive cell lines and genetic techniques to alleviate some of …

Binge Alcohol Drinking Exacerbates Ulcerative Colitis Flare, Abigail Cannon

Dissertations

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) remains a prominent medical concern affecting over 1.4 million people in the U.S. One of the most common forms of the disease is ulcerative colitis (UC), and UC patients will often head doctor's advice to refrain from drinking alcohol. However, whether this phenomenon of alcohol exacerbating UC symptoms occurs is still unknown, which necessitated the generation of a mouse model of UC and binge alcohol. Therefore, we examined a range of DSS concentrations (2-4%) and 2 alcohol paradigms in C57BL/6 mice. Mice receiving 2% DSS ad libitum for five days with a three-day alcohol binge had …

Noise Reduction In Eeg Signals Using Convolutional Autoencoding Techniques, Conor Hanrahan

Dissertations

The presence of noise in electroencephalography (EEG) signals can significantly reduce the accuracy of the analysis of the signal. This study assesses to what extent stacked autoencoders designed using one-dimensional convolutional neural network layers can reduce noise in EEG signals. The EEG signals, obtained from 81 people, were processed by a two-layer one-dimensional convolutional autoencoder (CAE), whom performed 3 independent button pressing tasks. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the signals before and after processing were calculated and the distributions of the SNRs were compared. The performance of the model was compared to noise reduction performance of Principal Component Analysis, with …

Modeling And Evaluating Cost-Effectiveness Of Host-Microbiome Investigations, Renuka Panchagavi

Dissertations

Cost-effectiveness modeling accounts for how expenditures impact outcomes and is an appropriate step towards efficacy of the different methods used for modeling the dynamics of microbial communities. This will help to identify challenging aspects of microbiome studies and the associated costs, including the major differences in research designs (cross-sectional or time series-based) used for conducting such studies. The two major stages of our investigation were to first collect and model cost variable data for microbiome investigations, and then to evaluate how trade-offs related to sample size and expenditures impact investigational outcomes. We screened different potential sources of data for microbiome …

Modulating The Tumor Microenvironment To Induce Cross-Priming For Cancer Immunotherapy, Erica Fleming-Trujillo

Dissertations

Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) using T cells engineered to express tumor-specific T cell receptors (TCR) holds great promise in treating cancer patients. ACT involves the in vitro generation of large numbers of tumor-specific T cells, which are then administered back to the patient, to establish an in vivo response and effective tumor control. Our lab conducted a phase I clinical trial in which metastatic melanoma patients received systemic infusions of autologous T cells transduced to express a tyrosinase-specific TCR (TIL 1383I). We observed tumor regression in one of seven patients and the development of vitiligo, indicative of T cell-mediated killing …

Elucidation Of The Molecular Mechanisms Of Electrically-Induced Cardioprotection, Anne Elizabeth Roessler

Dissertations

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, is a major event in cardiovascular disease characterized by reduced blood flow to the heart. The ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) injury associated with an MI results in a region of dead tissue in the heart called an infarct, the size of which influences patient prognosis. In the 1980s, it was discovered that short, non-lethal episodes of I/R, termed ischemic preconditioning (IPC), can protect the heart against a subsequent MI. Ischemic preconditioning demonstrated the phenomenon of endogenous cardioprotection. Cardioprotection has great potential …

Adventist Healthcare: A Qualitative Study Of 19th Century Founding Governing Principles In 21st Century Adventist Hospitals, Cesiah Yareth Pimentel Melendez

Dissertations

Problem and Purpose

Founding values and principles can help organizations stay focused on fulfilling their mission. This is especially true in faith-based organizations that seek to continue their founding principles as a governing commitment to their core identity. This study identified Adventist healthcare founding principles in Ellen G. White's early health visions and explored how Adventist healthcare leaders perceived these principles as governing principles applied to current Adventist healthcare practices.

Conceptual Framework and Research Design

Two metaphors and three areas of literature review guided my approach of this qualitative study of Adventist healthcare founding principles. My first metaphor of DNA …

Journey With Autism: Successful Educational And Social Interventions From A Single Case Study, Kwame M. De Jonge-Moore

Dissertations

Problem

Statistics indicate that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is on the increase in America and worldwide (Xu, Strathearn, Liu, & Bao, 2018; Baio et al., 2018). Autism spectrum disorder can impair an individual’s ability to engage in neurotypical behavior, which has the potential to increase their vulnerability to being shunned and bullied. This makes autism a major societal concern with significant costs to the individual, their family, private/public health insurance, state financial aid programs, and to the nation. This present study was undertaken to determine, in the opinions of those connected to the case, whether the interventions engaged in this …

Molecular Role Of Angiopoietin-Like 4'S Carboxy-Terminal Domain In Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Progression, Crissy L. Tarver

Dissertations

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) represents 85% of pancreatic cancers. With early stage diagnosis, PDAC has a relative five-year survival rate of 34% but drops to 3% with metastasis. There is a lack of distinct symptoms and dependable biomarkers which delays diagnosis, leading to poor prognosis. Angiopoietin-like 4 (ANGPTL4) protein has been indicated in the progression of several types of aggressive cancer. ANGPTL4 is natively present in two fragments, an amino-terminus coiled-coil domain (nANGPTL4) and a carboxy-terminus fibrinogen-like domain (cANGPTL4), which have demonstrated diverse biological functions. Biochemical studies have been performed but a full structural understanding of functions and interactions is …

Analytical Aeroelastic Models For Chordwise And Spanwise Flexible Flapping Wings In Forward Flight, Deepa Kodali

Dissertations

Animal wings deform significantly during flight. However, the aerodynamic features of flexible wings interacting with the surrounding fluid have not been adequately explored. One of the main challenges in predicting aerodynamic forces is that the wing shape and motion are a priori unknown. In this dissertation, two-way coupled analytical fluid-structure interaction models for chordwise and spanwise flexible flapping wings in forward flight are derived. The unsteady aeroelasticity is modeled with the Euler-Bernoulli beam and Theodorsen equations under the small deformation assumption. The two-way coupling for a chordwise flexible airfoil is realized by considering the trailing-edge deformation relative to the leading-edge …

Working Memory And Attention As Predictors Of Processing Speed In Elementary School Students: A Developmental Study, Monih Alshehri

Dissertations

Problem

Many studies suggest that Processing Speed (PS), Attention, and Working Memory (WM) are major cognitive functions that collaborate to achieve a coherent cognitive system. The aim of the current study was to improve the conception of how these cognitive functions interrelate. The study addressed two main questions: the first, whether PS can be predicted by WM (visual, verbal, and the central executive) and attention of elementary students in first and fifth grade; the second, whether there are gender differences in the rate of change in WM and PS from first to fifth grade.

Method

The participants were taken from …

The Theological Significance Of The Relations Of Freedom And Time In The Sciences And Humanities: An Evaluation Of The Contributions Of David Bohm And Pauli Pylkko, Michael F. Younker

Dissertations

The concepts of freedom and time underlay all other philosophical and theological questions. This dissertation addresses the natures and relations of freedom and time and their impact upon theological reflection, primarily through the works of the philosopher of science, David Bohm and the philosopher of the humanities, Pauli Pylkkö. These two representatives come from the two competing cultures of the sciences and humanities, which illustrate the deep philosophical conflict that has emerged between these cultures concerning the natures of freedom and time. Specifically, the paradigmatic contributions of Albert Einstein's four-dimensional 'timeless space-time' (with timeless freedom) alongside Bohm, on the one …

Sources And Atmospheric Oxidation Of Sulfur Dioxide And Formaldehyde Based On Wintertime Aircraft Observations Over The Eastern United States, Jaime R. Green

Dissertations

Plume intercepts from flights on the NSF-C-130 during the Wintertime Investigation of Transport, Emission and Reactivity (WINTER) campaign were used to estimate (1) the oxidation rates of Sulfur Dioxide (SO₂) under wintertime conditions and the factors that determine SO₂ removal; and (2) to examine the oxidation, lifetime and source apportionment of formaldehyde (HCHO). Observations suggest that OH governs the rate SO₂ oxidation in the eastern United States during winter. The range of mean oxidation rates during the day from power plants were 0.22–0.71%/hr, producing SO₂ lifetimes of 13–43 days, if SO₂ consumption is assumed …

Assessing The Temporal Dynamics Of The Lower Urinary Tract Microbiota And The Effects Of Lifestyle, Travis Kyle Price

Dissertations

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections in humans, accounting for $3.5 billion in health care expenditures yearly in the United States alone. Yet, treatments for UTI have seen little innovation over the past decade. As demonstrated in other body sites, such as the vagina and gastrointestinal (GI) tract, acute and infectious diseases often have indirect microbial contributions which serve as intriguing new targets for therapies. The recent discovery of the existence of a resident community of bacteria (i.e., microbiota) in the bladders of both women and men, represents a novel avenue for targeting UTIs. However, …

Feminism And School Leadership: A Qualitative Study Utilizing Effective Women Principals' Self-Perceptions To Determine What Makes Them Successful, Christina Maria Sylvester

Dissertations

Women are underrepresented in a variety of fields, including educational leadership. Upon assuming leadership roles, women often struggle to effectively lead due to a pervasive context of sexism and genderism in the workplace. Schools are not immune to this phenomenon. Since women comprise approximately 50% of the population, it seems logical that they should assume a comparable percentage of leadership roles in education, but this is not the case. Beyond parity, it is important that there are not only more women leaders in educational administration but also that those women in leadership roles are supported within a context that enables …

Explicitly Teaching Scientific Argumentation: Using Action Research To Study High School Science Readiness And Detracking, Ami Lefevre

Dissertations

Access to advanced-level science courses can be difficult for those students who start in a tracked system. Tracking is an educational practice where students are assigned to different classes based on ability level. African American and Hispanic students are most at risk since most minority students are found in the lower level track (Burris, 2014; Mehan, 2015; Oakes, 2005). This investigation used an action research approach to determine how explicitly taught elements of scientific argumentation would impact student mastery of argument skills and influence instructional practices by a professional learning community. A mixed method study was used to collect qualitative …

Daxx As A Restrictor Of Tumor Initiating Cell Survival In Er+ Breast Cancer And Its Therapeutic Implications, Daniel Seamus Peiffer

Dissertations

Breast cancer overall is the second most common cause of cancer related death in women, with one in eight women being diagnosed during their lifetime. Breast cancer itself is divided into subtypes based on the expression levels of the hormone receptors including the estrogen receptor (ER) and the progesterone receptor (PR), as well as expression of the growth factor receptor epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). ER+ breast cancer is the most common breast cancer diagnosis, and these tumors are defined as being initially dependent on activation of the receptor for growth. Based on this, targeted endocrine therapies (ETs) have …