Digital Commons Network^™

Contexts Of Reception And Constructions Of Islam: Second Generation Muslim Immigrants In Post-9/11 America, Shahriyar Smith

Dissertations and Theses

The World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 fundamentally transformed the context of reception for Muslim immigrants in the U.S., shifting it from neutral to negative while also brightening previously blurred boundaries between established residents and the Muslim minority. This study explores how second-generation Muslim immigrants have experienced and reacted to post-9/11 contexts of reception. It is based on an analysis of ten semi-structured in-depth interviews that were conducted throughout the Portland Metropolitan Area from January to April of 2016. It finds experiences of discrimination to be primarily affected by two factors: public institutions and gender. It also finds, …

Combat Experiences, Iso-Strain, And Sleep Quality Affect Symptoms Of Posttraumatic Stress Among Working Post-9/11 Veterans, Gilbert Patrick Brady Jr.

Dissertations and Theses

Despite the growing need, prior research on how the civilian work domain may affect posttraumatic stress is scarce. Moreover, few if any studies have investigated how perceptions of one's job and insomnia may shape traumatic stress symptoms, post-combat. Presently, about 4 million Americans have served in the "Global War on Terrorism," including nearly 1 million reservists. By contrast, 8.7 million Americans served in the Vietnam War: over twice the number of U.S. military personnel who have fought since 9/11. Surprisingly, combat experiences alone do not explain the majority of posttraumatic stress disorder cases, even after multiple deployments, suggesting the presence …

Synthesis Of Linear Reversible Circuits And Exor-And-Based Circuits For Incompletely Specified Multi-Output Functions, Ben Schaeffer

Dissertations and Theses

At this time the synthesis of reversible circuits for quantum computing is an active area of research. In the most restrictive quantum computing models there are no ancilla lines and the quantum cost, or latency, of performing a reversible form of the AND gate, or Toffoli gate, increases exponentially with the number of input variables. In contrast, the quantum cost of performing any combination of reversible EXOR gates, or CNOT gates, on n input variables requires at most O(n^₂/log₂n) gates. It was under these conditions that EXOR-AND-EXOR, or EPOE, synthesis was developed.

In this …

Lithography Hotspot Detection, Jea Woo Park

Dissertations and Theses

The lithography process for chip manufacturing has been playing a critical role in keeping Moor's law alive. Even though the wavelength used for the process is bigger than actual device feature size, which makes it difficult to transfer layout patterns from the mask to wafer, lithographers have developed a various technique such as Resolution Enhancement Techniques (RETs), Multi-patterning, and Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) to overcome the sub-wavelength lithography gap.

However, as feature size in chip design scales down further to a point where manufacturing constraints must be applied to early design phase before generating physical design layout. Design for Manufacturing …

Music And Race In The American West, William Steven Schneider

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the complexities of race relations in the nineteenth century American West. The groups considered here are African Americans, Anglo Americans, Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. In recent decades historians of the West have begun to tell the narratives of racial minorities. This study adopts the aims of these scholars through a new lens--music. Ultimately, this thesis argues that historians can use music, both individual songs and broader conceptions about music, to understand the complex and contradictory race relations of the nineteenth century west.

Proceeding thematically, the first chapter explores the ways Anglo Americans used music to …

Stereotype Threat And Effects Of Students' Perception Of Their Math Teacher's Fairness On Their Math Self-Efficacy, Alexis Jocelyn Devigal

Dissertations and Theses

Gender inequalities perpetuated by educational and occupational segregation may be exacerbated in part by socialization processes that occur in the years leading up to when high school students typically begin considering postsecondary options. Students’ feelings of self-efficacy in certain subjects can be an important factor that informs their decisions to pursue coursework and programs. This study used stereotype theory to understand how students' perceptions of their 9th grade math teacher's fairness affected their 11th grade math efficacy and how this relationship was moderated by the gender of the student and their math teacher. Using the High School Longitudinal Study of …

Policing In An Era Of Sousveillance: The Influence Of Video Footage On Perceptions Of Legitimacy, Megan Elizabeth Mohler

Dissertations and Theses

The current climate surrounding the police in the United States could be described as strenuous. This is large in part due to certain shifts in technology and news disbursement; citizens now have the ability to record and share police-citizen encounters. Certain controversial events have been captured and undoubtedly have contributed to a growing mistrust towards the police, evident by the development of movements for police reform. Within the field of criminology, perception of police legitimacy has been a long studied concept. Research has shown that when the police are viewed as legitimate, the public is more likely to cooperate and …

The Influence Of Sense Of Community On The Relationship Between Community Participation And Recovery For Individuals With Serious Mental Illnesses, Rachel Elizabeth Terry

Dissertations and Theses

The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 launched the deinstitutionalization movement, whereby individuals with serious mental illnesses were released from psychiatric hospitals and began living and receiving mental health care in the community (Carling, 1995). However, these actions have not necessarily integrated those individuals into all aspects of community life (Dewees, Pulice, & McCormick, 1996). This is unfortunate because people with serious mental illnesses frequently report that community integration is not only important to them, but that it also aids in reducing symptoms and promoting recovery (Townley, 2015). Although past research suggests that receiving mental health care in the community …

Animals Coupling: Stories, Corey Robert Millard

Dissertations and Theses

We find ourselves at a unique place in American history: language is losing its value; decency--or "political correctness"--is becoming taboo; and our future is legislated by those who feel they have been left behind. The stories in Animals Coupling don't attempt to explain contemporary America, but they do attempt to demonstrate (through language, character, style, and circumstance) an expressive rendering of what it looks and feels like to live in the here and now. There is a sense of detachment threading through these works, along with absurdity, loneliness, humor and anomie. But though a minor key may ring loudest, Animals …

When You Aren't Who Your Friends Are: The Moderating Influence Of Racial Similarity On The Association Between Friendships And Mental Well-Being, Philip Tostado

Dissertations and Theses

Friendships are a mental health resource for adolescents. Their availability and strength have been shown to predict lower levels of depression, higher self-esteem, and higher life satisfaction. They can also alleviate the stress that often leads to negative mental health outcomes. However, studies examining the stress process rarely consider the fact that social networks like friendship groups are not a static resource that effects all people the same way. Rather, demographic characteristics of both the individual and their friends could change the role of friendship networks within the stress process.

In this thesis, I investigate the importance of one such …

Patients And Nurses And Doctors Oh My!: Nurse Retention From A Multi-Foci Aggression Perspective, Kevin Oliver Novak

Dissertations and Theses

Attrition is a serious issue in the nursing industry. One factor influencing rates of attrition in nursing is aggression victimization at work (Estryn-Behar et al., 2010). However, there is little research in the aggression literature that examines how aggression from different sources affects attrition (both job and career turnover) differently. This study attempts to better understand the linkages between aggression victimization and nursing attrition; specifically how aggression from different sources (i.e. patients/patients’ families, coworkers, and licensed independent practitioners) differentially affects retention factors (i.e. job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and career commitment). This study also attempts to understand the role that prosocial …

The Littlefield Rhyolite, Eastern Oregon: Distinct Flow Units And Their Constraints On Age And Storage Sites Of Grande Ronde Basalt Magmas, Brian Mcculloch Webb

Dissertations and Theses

The Littlefield Rhyolite consists of widespread, high-temperature, hotspot-related rhyolitic lavas that erupted in eastern Oregon contemporaneous to late-stage Grande Ronde Basalt lavas. The estimated total volume of erupted rhyolites is ~100 km³ covering ~850 km².

The focus of this study has been to investigate the stratigraphy and petrology of the Littlefield Rhyolite and whether field and geochemical relationships exist to help constrain the timing and storage sites of Grande Ronde Basalt magmas. Although often indistinguishable in the field, our data reveal that the Littlefield Rhyolite consists of two geochemically distinct rhyolite flow packages that are designated here …

Exploring The Positive Utility Of Travel And Mode Choice, Patrick Allen Singleton

Dissertations and Theses

Why do people travel? Underlying most travel behavior research is the derived-demand paradigm of travel analysis, which assumes that travel demand is derived from the demand for spatially separated activities, traveling is a means to an end (reaching destinations), and travel time is a disutility to be minimized. In contrast, the "positive utility of travel" (PUT) concept suggests that travel may not be inherently disliked and could instead provide benefits or be motivated by desires for travel-based multitasking, positive emotions, or fulfillment. The PUT idea assembles several concepts relevant to travel behavior: utility maximization, motivation theory, multitasking, and subjective well-being. …

Capturing Peers', Teachers', And Parents' Joint Contributions To Students' Engagement: An Exploration Of Models, Justin William Vollet

Dissertations and Theses

Building on research that has focused on understanding how peers contribute to students' engagement, this dissertation explores the extent to which peer group influences on students' engagement may add to and be contextualized by qualities of the relationships they maintain with their teachers and their parents. To focus on how each of these adult contexts work in concert with peer groups to jointly contribute to changes in students' engagement, the two studies used data on 366 sixth graders which were collected at two time points during their first year of middle school: Peer groups were identified using socio-cognitive mapping; students …

Intestinal Microbiota Diversity Of Pre-Smolt Steelhead (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) Across Six Oregon And Washington Hatcheries, Christina Carrell Yildirimer

Dissertations and Theses

The Pacific Northwest is known for its once-abundant wild salmonid populations that have been in decline for more than 50 years due to habitat destruction and commercial overexploitation. To compensate, federal and state agencies annually release hundreds of thousands of hatchery-reared fish into the wild. However, accumulating data indicate that hatchery fish have lower fitness in natural environments, and that hatchery rearing negatively influences return rates of anadromous salmonids. Recently, mounting evidence revealed that the richness and diversity of intestinal microbial species influence host health. We examined the gut microbiota of pre-migratory hatchery-reared steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) to assess …

Design And Experimental Investigation Of 500kv Current Transformer Seismic Retrofit Utilizing Structure Rocking And Supplemental Damping With Self-Centering, Ilya S. Palnikov

Dissertations and Theses

Electrical substations perform a key role in electrical transmission and distribution; the ability for a substation to remain functional during and after a seismic event contributes significantly to the resilience of the clients supplied. Many legacy components currently installed in the main grid substations were designed with minimal consideration of lateral loads and are not qualified per IEEE693. One of the more critical high-voltage substation components that are vulnerable to earthquake damage is the 500kV freestanding current transformer (CT). The CT is particularly vulnerable due to the slenderness and mass distribution of the component. Current transformers are typically constructed from …

Impact Analysis Of Increased Dispatchable Resources On A Utility Feeder In Opendss, Crystal Eppinger

Dissertations and Theses

Oregon utilities are replacing their portfolios of traditional fossil fuel generation with renewable generating sources. Stepping away from carbon-producing energy will leave a deficit of on-demand power, resulting in decreased reliability. To overcome these technical challenges, utilities must maximize the use of their present dispatchable resources. One such resource is the Portland General Electric (PGE) Dispatchable Standby Generation Program (DSG), which is an aggregated 105 MWs of distributed generation (DG). These resources are brought on-line when there is a critical need for power. Resources are added to the program if a transfer trip scheme is in place or a modeling …

Socioeconomic Determinants Of Health Disparities By Race And Ethnicity: The Mediating Role Of Social, Psychological And Behavioral Factors, Amanuel Zimam Melekin

Dissertations and Theses

Socioeconomic status (SES) is inversely related to health status. Disparities in health status among races and ethnic groups are partly attributable to differences in SES, but the indirect pathways by which SES may influence health status are not widely studied.

Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data, this dissertation examined the pathways by which SES, via social, psychological, and behavioral factors predicted physical impairment and overnight hospitalization, and asked whether these indirect relationships differed by race/ethnicity. The HRS is a nationally representative multistage area probability sample administered biennially to respondents over the age of 51 and their spouses. Data …

Symbiosis With Nitrogen-Fixing Rhizobia Influences Plant Defense Strategy And Plant-Predator Interactions, Adrienne Louise Godschalx

Dissertations and Theses

As sessile organisms, plants evolved a plethora of defenses against their attackers. Given the role of plants as a primary food source for many organisms, plant defense has important implications for community ecology. Surprisingly, despite the potential to alter entire food webs and communities, the factors determining plant investment in defense are not well-understood, and are even less understood considering the numerous symbiotic interactions in the same plant. Legume-rhizobia symbioses engineer ecosystems by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere in trade for plant photosynthates, yet connecting symbiotic resource exchange to food web interactions has yet to be established. Here I test …

The Efficacy Of Virtual Protest: Linking Digital Tactics To Outcomes In Activist Campaigns, Rina Lynne James

Dissertations and Theses

Activists are increasingly relying on online tactics and digital tools to address social issues. This shift towards reliance on the Internet has been shown to have salient implications for social movement formation processes; however, the effectiveness of such actions for achieving specific goals remains largely unaddressed. This study explores how the types of Internet activism and digital tools used by activism campaigns relate to success in meeting stated goals. To address these questions, the study builds on an existing framework that distinguishes between four distinct types of Internet activism: brochure-ware, which is oriented towards information distribution; e-mobilizations, which treats digital …

Identity And Community In Rural Higher Education: Creating New Pathways To Women's Leadership In Oaxaca, Mexico, Amanda Marie Elder

Dissertations and Theses

The emergence of higher education opportunities in rural areas of Mexico such as throughout the state of Oaxaca has opened new opportunities for young women's professional development and new individual and community identities. I explore tensions between the collective imaginary of rural Mexico and rural women's emerging sense of independence and self-determination in light of higher education's expanding opportunities. Educational opportunities lead to community formation around commonality of experience in addition to ascribed community relationships and roles. I situate this analysis within the context of the Universidad Tecnológica de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca (UT), a small university in San …

Mineral Evidence For Generating Compositionally Zoned Rhyolites Of The Devine Canyon Tuff, High Lava Plains, Oregon, Erik Paul Shafer

Dissertations and Theses

Large-volume silicic eruptions are often evacuated from magma reservoirs which display gradients in composition, temperature, crystallinity, and volatile content. The 9.7 Ma Devine Canyon Tuff (DCT) of eastern Oregon represents such an eruption, with >300 km³ of compositionally zoned pyroclastic material deposited as a variably-welded ignimbrite. The ignimbrite displays homogenous bulk tuff major element compositions with a wide range of trace element compositions, allowing for the investigation of how these magmas were generated, stored, and modified in the magma reservoir by studying pumices which represent the primary magmas composing the DCT. Five pumices ranging from dacite to rhyolite bulk compositions …

Rhyolite Petrogenesis At Tower Mountain Caldera, Or, Elizabeth Ann Brown

Dissertations and Theses

Tower Mountain Caldera is the main feature of an Oligocene volcanic field located in the Umatilla National Forest, eastern Oregon. It is perfectly suited to investigate models of rhyolite petrogenesis as all of the important rock components for evaluating generation models are present in a single location and thus are presumably related; basalts, intermediate igneous rocks (which consist of older plutons and younger volcanic rocks, which are ~coeval with rhyolites), metamorphic basement rocks of significant grade, and rhyolites of varying composition. The formation of the caldera produced the Dale Tuff, which comprises the intra-caldera and outflow facies. ⁴⁰Ar/^{39 …}

Shouts Of The Khori-Challwa: Andean Mythological And Cosmological Reconsiderations Of The American Identity In Gamaliel Churata’S El Pez De Oro, Stephen Delaney Mcnabb

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the possible creation of a new categorization of American Literature as presented in the Andean novel El pez de oro: Retablos del Laykhakuy (1957) by Gamaliel Churata. In El pez de oro, Gamaliel Churata presents a strategy for the recuperation of native Andean cultural agency that enables the Andean subject to reclaim traces of their ancestral past under more verisimilar and verifiable terms. Churata argues that through a recuperation of native language and its infusion into the body of the major colonial language, Spanish, the Andean subject is equipped with a new culture producing tool that …

"Neither Of The Boxes": Accounting For Non-Binary Gender Identities, Erin Patricia Savoia

Dissertations and Theses

This research examines the ways in which individuals who identify with nonbinary gender identities 1) understand and perform their gender identities and 2) navigate the workplace, intimate partner relationships, friendships, and the LGBTQ+ community. Prevailing understandings of gender rely on a gender binary; identification with a binary gender is compulsory. Individuals are assigned a gender at birth and are expected to identify fully with that gender for their entire lives. However, despite significant social pressures to identify as man or woman, there exist individuals whose identities bring into question the stability of the gender binary. Non-binary is sometimes used to …

Exploring The Health Effects Of Precarious Employment By Sex/Gender Using Mixed Methods, Kathleen Flandrick

Dissertations and Theses

Employment in the United States has changed dramatically since the mid-1970s. Labor market forces like globalization and diversification of the American workforce have led to a heavily segmented labor market where new types of flexible employment such as temporary, contingent, and nonstandard work arrangements are increasingly common. These newer types of work are often on the lower end of the precarious employment continuum, categorizing jobs by their degree of: 1) temporariness, 2) disempowerment, 3) vulnerability, 4) compensation (wages), 5) rights, and 6) ability to exercise worker rights. The increase in precarious employment likely disproportionately affects women when compared to men, …

The New York City Childcare Influenza Vaccine Mandate: A Case Study, Amy E. Metroka

Dissertations and Theses

Background. In 2014, New York City (NYC) became the third jurisdiction in the United States (US) to enact a childcare influenza vaccine mandate, after the states of New Jersey and Connecticut. The mandate was enacted by the NYC Board of Health by amending the NYC Health Code. The mandate’s goal was to increase vaccination rates among 6-59-month-olds attending city-regulated public and private childcare programs, including prekindergarten, to protect children, families, and the community against influenza. Children younger than 5 years are at high risk for severe illness and complications from influenza. Children are also known to be a major source …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Professional Development Providers' Epistemological And Nature Of Science Beliefs And Their Professional Development Programs, Alfonso Garcia Arriola

Dissertations and Theses

In the last twenty years in US science education, professional development has emphasized the need to change science instruction from a direct instruction model to a more participatory and constructivist learning model. The result of these reform efforts has seen an increase in science education professional development that is focused on providing teaching strategies that promote inquiry learning to learn science content. Given these reform efforts and teacher responses to professional development, research seems to indicate that whether teachers actually change their practice may depend on the teachers' basic epistemological beliefs about the nature of science. The person who builds …

The Voices Of Special Educators: How Do Special Educators Teach English Language Learners Who Are Receiving Special Education Services?, Elizabeth Ann Dubois

Dissertations and Theses

Disproportionality in special education has been examined from various perspectives over a 50-year period. English Language Learner (ELL) students have been included in the discussion among researchers in the past two decades as a disproportionate number of ELL students are referred to special education. Though the problem of disproportionality has been acknowledged, documented and discussed over a period of decades, there is a lack of research from the voices of special educators. The purpose of this study was to describe special education teachers' experiences teaching students currently or previously enrolled in an English language learner program who are receiving special …

Predicting Parturition In A Long-Gestating Species: Behavioral And Hormonal Indicators In The Asian Elephant (Elephas Maximus), Heather Kelly Velonis

Dissertations and Theses

Captive populations of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in North America are not self-sustaining, and increasing reproductive success within captive populations is a high priority. The ability to accurately predict parturition can have a direct impact on elephant welfare. Elephants in captivity often require significant preparation and management throughout the birthing process, and complications during labor and delivery can necessitate immediate intervention, including stillbirth, protracted labor, maternal aggression towards a newborn calf, and dystocia. Being able to predict when parturition will commence can ensure appropriate staff is available and adequate monitoring is performed. Routine endocrine sampling can be used …