Digital Commons Network^™

An Analysis Of Suspended Sediment Dynamics In A Partially Mixed Estuary, Riyadh Hamad Muttaleb

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this work is to investigate via data analysis and numerical modeling the SPM (suspended particulate matter) dynamics of a heavily contaminated partially urban estuary, the Lower Passaic River estuary (LPR), NJ. Accordingly, I investigate the quantity and mechanics of variation of fine and coarse SPM in the LPR via data analysis. Data analysis focuses on the parameters that affect SPM dynamics at six moored stations occupied during the Fall and Spring seasons, from near the estuary mouth to tidal freshwater. A 3D hydrodynamic model (Delft3D-FM) is used to analyze the effects of estuary topography on the dynamic …

The Perceptions Of Rural Teachers Engaged In Environmental Education Professional Development Workshops: A Case Study Of The Alder Creek Community Forest And The Story Of Your Place, Bryan R. Benz

Dissertations and Theses

Environmental issues can be difficult for people to understand and for teachers to address in their classrooms. Issues such as climate change and ozone depletion are difficult to comprehend and present a challenge for most people to understand thoroughly the complexity of these environmental challenges. Professional development programs could provide the tools for teachers to improve their environmental literacy and a pathway for learning new methods for engaging their students. However, in rural Oregon, where professional development opportunities are scarce, teachers rely on a lean supply of organizations to provide these experiences. Alder Creek Community Forest, a nonprofit organization, provides …

Thermodynamics Of Ligand Binding And Global Structural Stability Of Human Serum Albumin, Matthew Walter Eskew

Dissertations and Theses

Protein structure is integral to its function. For the past 70 years differential scanning calorimetry has been used to measure protein structural stability. More recently it has been used to study macromolecular interactions. Interactions between proteins and ligands can manifest on differential scanning calorimetry melting curves or thermograms. Utilizing differential scanning calorimetry thermograms to detect or diagnose diseases has been a major goal in disease diagnostics. However, correlating specific ligand-protein interactions, as manifested in a thermogram, with a disease-specific plasma thermogram, has proven elusive.

Modified human serum albumin was utilized to develop a process to capture and retrieve ligands from …

Complex Fluid Dynamics: Chemo-Hydrodynamics Driven By Autocatalytic Reaction Fronts, Matthew Walter Eskew

Dissertations and Theses

Chemo-hydrodynamics generated from reaction-diffusion-convection processes of autocatalytic chemical systems are extensively studied for their applications in modeling complex systems. Compared to the more extensively studied autocatalytic systems, chlorite-tetrathionate and chlorite-trithionate, the chlorite-thiourea systems is relatively unexplored. Compared to the two previous systems, chlorite-thiourea has more straightforward chemical kinetics. To narrow the gap between chlorite-thiourea and the other systems a combination of experimental study and numerical simulation were employed to quantify this system.

Compared to established literature, experiments were performed at five orders of magnitude lower concentration of indicator, minimizing confounding effects of indicator on hydrodynamic motion. To accurately image the …

Gas Stations And The Wealth Divide: Analyzing Spatial Correlations Between Wealth And Fuel Branding, Jean-Carl Ende

Dissertations and Theses

The gasoline refining and sales industry has many peculiarities. One such oddity is a difference in sales, distribution and pricing between branded and unbranded gasolines. Although fuels leave the refinery a uniform commodity, branding determines entirely different marketing and pricing schemes, with entirely different volatility and risk premiums. In order to determine if this volatility is felt evenly across all wealth demographics, this study uses t-tests and CART models to analyze income, home value and other wealth-based indicators in the areas surrounding gas stations, to determine if there is a correlation between branding and wealth. The results show the wealth …

Memristor Crossbar Array Testing Using Sneak Paths, Rasika Dhananjay Joshi

Dissertations and Theses

Moore's law decline has paved the way to shift to new technologies at architectural and device levels. CMOS based technologies are facing many challenges with the growing demand for miniaturization. The growing heat dissipation is the major limitation for performance, energy efficiency and reliability with the increasing transistor count in integrated circuits. Manufacturing costs and process/memory performance gap have also grown steadily over the last several decades with the scaling down of the CMOS feature size. Memristor, a nanoscale device, has the potential to address the CMOS limitations because of its non-volatility, high density, low power operation, low cost per …

An "I" For An "I" : A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis Of Instigated And Reciprocal Incivility, Lauren Sarah Park

Dissertations and Theses

Workplace incivility and its negative impacts on individuals, teams, and organizations have been widely studied. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of incivility from the instigator's perspective. The purpose of this dissertation was to demonstrate a set of meta-analytic relationships with instigated incivility to understand what individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors facilitate or prevent incivility instigation. Additionally, this work aimed to empirically test moderating effects of the relationship between experienced and instigated incivility, elucidating the conditions under which targets of incivility are more or less likely to instigate incivility in turn. This meta-analysis included 35,344 workers from 76 independent …

Assessment Of The Blockchain Technology Adoption For The Management Of The Electronic Health Record Systems, Saeed Mohammed Alzahrani

Dissertations and Theses

Blockchain is an emerging technology that holds great promises in healthcare despite slow adoption and previous unsuccessful implementation projects. Blockchain adoption in healthcare has been slow, partly because healthcare is a heavily regulated and complex industry. Blockchain applications span various areas of healthcare such as patient data management, health information exchange, health supply chain management, financial and insurance claims, clinical trial, biomedical devices tracking, and pharmaceutical counterfeit. The main challenges with blockchain technology in healthcare are: scarcity of real applications, the high level of failing projects, and the need for various parties to function together. There is, however, a lack …

Forecasting Optimal Parameters Of The Broken Wing Butterfly Option Strategy Using Differential Evolution, David Munoz Constantine

Dissertations and Theses

Obtaining an edge in financial markets has been the objective of many hedge funds, investors, and market participants. Even with today's abundance of data and computing power, few individuals achieve a consistent edge over an extended time. To obtain this edge, investors usually use options strategies. The Broken Wing Butterfly (BWB) is an options strategy that has increased in popularity among traders. Profit is generated primarily by exploiting option value time decay. In this thesis, the selection of entry and exit BWB parameters, such as profit and loss targets, are optimized for an in-sample period. Afterward, they are used to …

Automated Test Generation For Validating Systemc Designs, Bin Lin

Dissertations and Theses

Modern system design involves integration of all components of a system on a single chip, namely System-on-a-Chip (SoC). The ever-increasing complexity of SoCs and rapidly decreasing time-to-market have pushed the design abstraction to the electronic system level (ESL), in order to increase design productivity. SystemC is a widely used ESL modeling language that plays a central role in modern SoCs design process. ESL SystemC designs usually serve as executable specifications for the subsequent SoCs design flow. Therefore, undetected bugs in ESL SystemC designs may propagate to low-level implementations or even final silicon products. In addition, modern SoCs design often involves …

Gender Role As A Mediating Factor In Gender Pay Equity Analysis, Jillian Ann Girard

Dissertations and Theses

The gender wage gap has been persistent despite the introduction of new laws designed to address the disparity. One of the challenges in addressing this inequity is the lack of complete understanding of the driving factors of the pay gap. One yet unexplored factor is the impact of the gender role, which is a social role based on sex/gender which provides a structure and expectations for social relationships. The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between gender role, biological sex, and base pay. A matched, cross-sectional sample drawn from large U.S. cities was utilized to test the …

Developing An Archaeologically Literate Citizenry Through Public Archaeology: Assessing Archaeology Websites, Lisa Marie Catto

Dissertations and Theses

Assessment has been a growing focus of public archaeology in recent years, however, most assessment has focused on in-person activities with little on digital public archaeology. With the pervasive popularity of digital media, such as websites, among global public audiences and the popularity of websites as a communication tool for archaeologists, it is critical that archaeologists focus on evaluating websites to make this public-facing communications tool as effective as possible. My thesis addressed this gap in assessment by using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) to assess the messaging on the most popular archaeology websites, defined based on Google ranking. My specific …

Methods For Object Tracking With Machine Vision, Zachary Simon Stamler

Dissertations and Theses

As machine learning and deep learning systems continue to find applications in science and engineering, the problem of providing these systems with high-quality data continues to increase in importance. Many of these systems utilize machine vision as their primary source of information, and in order to maximally leverage their abilities it is important to be able to provide them with high quality, accurate data. Unfortunately, many sets of tracking data extracted from video suffer from the problem of missing frames, which can arise from a multitude of causes depending on the system. These missing frames can result in confusion between …

Mit-S1 Constitutive Model Calibration For A Portland-Area Soil, Steven Ryan Young

Dissertations and Theses

Soils that are intermediate to sands and clays are a challenge for geotechnical engineers since most methods for interpreting soil properties or soil behaviors are based on sands or clays and do not address behaviors of intermediate soils. This is a particular challenge for engineers in the Portland-area where many of the major soil units are composed of intermediate soils. Analysis of intermediate soils is further challenged since many standard constitutive models are based on sandy or clay-like soils. However, the MIT-S1 constitutive model is capable of capturing intermediate soil behavior. A calibration of the MIT-S1 constitutive model for Portland-area …

Amount And Depositional Fate Of Carbon Mobilized By Landsliding In Se Alaska, Bryce Alois Vascik

Dissertations and Theses

Forest disturbances in the form of landslides mobilize carbon (C) sequestered in vegetation and soils. The mobilized C has two basic depositional fates, deposition onto hillslopes or into water, which sequester C from and release C to the atmosphere at different time scales. The C-dense old-growth temperate forests of SE Alaska are a unique location to quantify the C mobilization rate by frequent landslide events. In this study, we estimate the amount of C mobilized by debris flows over historic time scales by combining a landslide inventory with maps of modeled biomass and soil carbon. We then infer depositional fate …

Reassessing Hydrothermal Heat Discharge And The Relationship Of Hot Springs In The North Oregon Cascades, Aaron Alexander Orr

Dissertations and Theses

Reservoir temperatures of hydrothermal systems in the Pacific Northwest reflect the feasibility of geothermal energy production and the tectonic framework of the region. Multicomponent geothermometry techniques were applied to new and historic water chemistry data in the north-central Oregon Western Cascades and the lower Wind River Valley in southern Washington in order to recalculate reservoir temperatures. Revised reservoir temperatures, water chemistry, and isotope data were used to determine relationships between hot springs in the north-central Oregon Cascades. Geothermal reservoir temperatures were estimated for the lower Wind River Valley (98.44 ± 0.96°C) and for Austin and Bagby Hot Springs (100.10 ± …

Development Of Graphene Synthesis And Characterization Techniques Toward Cmos Applications And Beyond, Otto Kno Zietz

Dissertations and Theses

Graphene exhibits mechanical and electrical properties which, coupled with its two dimensional (2D) morphology, make it an attractive material component for inclusion in a wide range of industries. Since the discovery of graphene in 2004, industry adoption has been limited due to the demanding synthesis requirements for high quality and connected graphene as well as the difficulties associated with direct incorporation. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has emerged as the most cost efficient method for producing high quality graphene at scales suitable for mass production. However, the 1000°C temperatures and micrometer thick catalysts required for this process preclude direct inclusion in …

Decolonizing Healthcare: A Black Feminist Analysis Of Sisters Informing Sisters On Topics Of Aids (Sista), Joy Mutare Fashu Kanu

Dissertations and Theses

This mixed methods project combines the conceptual insights offered by institutional ethnography, the deductive and inductive attributes of content analysis, semi structured interviews, and quantitative data analysis to study Sisters Informing Sisters on Topics of AIDS (SISTA), a social skills training program designed for sexually active, heterosexual African American women. This progressive program serves as a site to examine the complex relationship the U.S. state has had, and continues to have, with marginalized populations, particularly African Americans. The program reveals how the state, through the public health service, partners with scholars, researchers, and community-based organizations to produce, reproduce and perpetuate …

Readiness To Change In Rural Adults At High Risk For Diabetes, Katherine A. Wagner

Dissertations and Theses

Type II diabetes is one of the most devastating chronic diseases in the United States and is associated with decreased lifespan and serious comorbidities. While evidence-based prevention strategies of nutrition and physical activity exist, behavior change is an essential component. Researchers use readiness to change to predict clinical outcomes of chronic disease prevention programs, however, this has not been well studied in rural populations. The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between readiness to change and attrition rates and clinical outcomes among rural dwellers enrolled in a nutrition and physical activity intervention. Article one of this three-article …

The Effects Of A Changing Neighborhood Ethnicity On Voting, Richard Ray Galusha

Dissertations and Theses

During most of the 20th century, immigration to the United States had slowed considerably. When the United States changed to the immigration policy of family reunification in 1965, the source of immigrants shifted from Europe to South America, Central America, and Asia. With this change, the nation became increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. With increased pluralism, the number of intergroup contacts increased. In a society whose history of race relations has been complicated and often unpleasant, this paper begins an on-going examination as to how the majority group, Whites, responded politically to increased pluralism. Racial threat theory explains how Whites …

Relationship Between The Broad Autism Phenotype, Social Support, Emotion Regulation, And Depression In Parents Of Children With Autism, Chelsey Vanness

Dissertations and Theses

Associations between the Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) and depressive symptoms among parents of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been well established. However, the nature of this relationship has not been examined; emotion dysregulation and perceived social support could provide further understanding. This study aimed to explore the indirect association between BAP traits and depressive symptoms via emotion dysregulation and perceived social support. Participants were 219 parents of children with ASD, ages ranging from 22 to 69 years old (M = 38.37, SD = 8.72). Participants completed online questionnaires including the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ), Difficulties in …

Examining Behavioral Engagement And Social Skills As Academic Enablers Of Children’S Reading And Math Achievement, Karissa Marie Jensen

Dissertations and Theses

The importance of nonacademic skills, termed academic enablers, in facilitating and supplementing academic success is well-established (DiPerna et al., 2002; DiPerna et al., 2005). Previous investigations of academic enablers have established engagement, or the degree students interact with academic activities, and social skills, or the learned behaviors that facilitate positive interactions with others, as key to understanding the behaviors essential for academic success (DiPerna et al., 2002; Gresham & Elliott, 1984). However, less research has established the nature of the relationship between these academic enablers and reading and math achievement, especially across time. The current study aims to test the …

Characterizing The Cellular Dynamics Of Nup155 And A Clinically Identified Variant, Emily Storm

Dissertations and Theses

The nuclear pore complex (NPC) is a highly conserved, yet dynamic structure within the cell. As the sole point of communication between the nucleus and cytoplasm, maintenance of its function and composition is essential. Recent studies have shown that both NPCs and their constitutive components, nucleoporins (NUPs), can have diverse roles separate from canonical transport. In addition, mutations in individual NUPs have been linked to a wide variety of clinical diseases, however, the exact mechanism by which they cause pathology is often unclear. Recently, a point mutation in NUP155, R391H, was identified specifically in patients with familial atrial fibrillation. We …

Disaster And Hope In The Comic Universe Of 'Gardening In The Tropics', Molly Mosher

Dissertations and Theses

In this paper, I explore ideas of dominion and how Western canon has helped propagate ideas of human domination of the natural world. Using Joseph W. Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival, I trace a line from the advent of the literary tragedy to the climate crisis. To contrast, I use his idea of comedy as the antidote to domination — a way of thinking that might inspire collaboration with the natural world. I will explore the comic with, predominately, Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, alongside Jamaica Kincaid’s gardening studies and Mona Lisa Saloy’s essay on environmental destruction. To …

Mira Muchacha: The Latinx Bildungsroman In Elizabeth Acevedo’S The Poet X, Layza M. Garcia

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores how the Bildungsroman’s traditional narrative transforms into a window to the Latinx experience in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X. The traditional Bildungsroman features white, male, and European protagonists, according to Louis F. Caton in “Romantic Struggles: The Bildungsroman and Mother-Daughter Bonding in Jamaica Kinclad’s Annie John” (126). Recognized as the first work in the Bildungsroman genre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796) tracks the development and education of the protagonist from boyhood to manhood. In 20th and 21st century literature, the Bildungsroman structure expands to reflect the diverse cultures, lifestyles, and identities of its readers. …

Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, The Funneling Effect Of Capitalism, And The Production, Consumption, And Proliferation Of Violence For Profit, John Timlin

Dissertations and Theses

Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 is a realist text, one that reflects the simple fact that in contemporary capitalism, the physical destruction of female bodies is a profitable enterprise; one that forces its readers to confront their complicity or outright participation in violence against women; and one that relates directly to violence against women as consumable entertainment in American mass culture.

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

The Jamaican Maroons Of The 17th And 18th Centuries: Survivalists Of The New World, Lance J. Parker Jr

Dissertations and Theses

The Jamaican Maroons, in the beginning, served as fugitive slaves avoiding captivity and liberating other enslaved people. To stop the Maroons from liberating other enslaved people, the British granting them freedom on the condition that they stop freeing slaves and even return runaways. Historians portray the Maroons as either freedom fighters or collaborators, sometimes even both. I argue that both narratives were a part of Maroon history, but I want to introduce them as survivalists. My research's significance is that I am exploring how the Maroons transitioned from freedom fighters to collaborators through notions of cultural identity. This project aims …

Dynamics Of Simultaneous Nitrite Ion And Ammonia Chlorination In Complex Water Quality Matrices And Their Impact On Chlorine Residual Speciation During Disinfection, Shirin Estahbanati

Dissertations and Theses

Although chlorination of ammonia and nitrite ions have been studied comprehensively, the kinetics of chlorination in water matrices containing ammonia in the presence of nitrite ion have not been fully understood. The coexistence of the two nitrogen compounds is a phenomenon most often encountered during biological nitrification of municipal wastewaters. The spatial variation of the nitrogen species generates unpredictable complications in the effectiveness of chlorination as the disinfection process. The focus of the research study was the examination of chlorine residual speciation and the fate of ionic nitrogen species, i.e. nitrite and nitrate ions, under various experimental conditions. The experimental …