Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Oxidative Aging Of Asphalt Binder And It's Effects On Cracking Susceptibility Of Asphalt Mix, Md Shams Arafat

Doctoral Dissertations

Every year around 400 million tons of asphalt mix is being laid in the United States and a significant portion of it is required for pavement rehabilitation. Cracking is one of the most common pavement distresses that is still not fully understood by the researchers. Very few states mandate tests for cracking resistance during the mix design phase; in addition, the test methods vary a lot from state to state. In the presence of oxygen, the asphalt binder over time undergoes chemical changes and becomes stiff which is known as oxidative aging that makes asphalt pavement more susceptible to cracking. …

Measuring Pay-Conversation Effectiveness Using Organizational Justice In A Fortune 100 Organization, Christoph Gloger

Doctoral Dissertations

This study draws from the pay-communication and organizational-justice literature to evaluate the effectiveness of manager/employee pay conversations in a large, North-American insurance company. Collecting survey data from 2230 randomly chosen employees across all managerial levels, tenure, and age groups it has been found that pay conversation quality, assessed by measuring the extent which specific, recommended content was addressed, and best-practice recommendations were followed, affects perceptions of procedural and informational justice, controlling for distributive justice. A higher-order composite of the justice dimension was also positively related to the organization’s definition of employee engagement and turnover intentions. The study’s implication for organizational …

Acquiring Experiences: An Investigation Of The Materialist In Liquid Consumption, Juliann Allen

Doctoral Dissertations

Knowledge-based economies and digital disruption in Western societies have triggered significant changes in the way consumers purchase, communicate and maintain relationships. The shift in consumption patterns reflects a move from solid (physical, ownership-based) consumption to more liquid (ephemeral, access-based) consumption. Increased liquidity can affect need fulfillment and consumption goal achievement across individual values, such as materialism. Materialistic consumers obtain possessions to communicate a successful image, achieve happiness or find enjoyment. The dissertation asks, how are materialistic consumers meeting their needs in the digital realm as liquid consumption increases?

A mixed methods approach addresses the proposition that social media may allow …

Lignin Ethanolysis Depolymerization And Product Upgrading With Mesoporous And Palladium Supported Zeolite Catalysts, Nathan Cody Baxter

Doctoral Dissertations

Lignin is a high-volume farm waste and environmental hazard of paper and pulp industries. To promote the utilization of its rich aromatic units into important chemicals and fuels, efforts were intensively made to breakdown lignin structure with a variety of depolymerization processes involving heating, solvent, and catalysts or their combination. Among those processes, ethanolysis in supercritical conditions shows promising performance for its high lignin conversion and little char formation. To improve the yield and selectivity of aromatics, particularly phenols, we examined the important roles of acidity and pore structure of different zeolite catalyst play in this process. Zeolites with close …

The Sisterhood Ceiling: A Qualitative Case Study On Female Leaders' Perceptions Of The Gender Leadership Gap, Morgan Leigh Patrick

Doctoral Dissertations

Women are underrepresented in leadership (Bichsel & McChesney, 2017; Catalyst, 2018; Cook, 1997; Mesch & Rooney, 2008; United States Senate, n.d.a, n.d.b; United States House of Representatives, 2020a; United States House of Representatives, 2020b). Exploring the underrepresentation of women in higher educational leadership could offer insight that could be used to create opportunities to advance women in order to fill the gender gap. Much is known about the proverbial Glass Ceiling (Bichsel & McChesney, 2017; Catalyst, 2018; Cook, 1997; Mesch & Rooney, 2008) and the Glass Escalator (Malin & Wise, 2018; Maume, 1999; Williams, 1992). However, the challenges related to …

Perceived Support And Overqualification As Related To Discretionary Behaviors, Nivedita Prabhu

Doctoral Dissertations

The number of individuals who believe they are overqualified for their job is rising (Harari, Manapragada, & Viswesvaran, 2017). Previous research has linked perceived overqualification (POQ) with several negative outcomes that impact the employee (e.g., decreased job satisfaction, decreased organizational commitment, Harari et al., 2017) and the organization (e.g., withdrawal behaviors, Maynard, Joseph, & Maynard, 2006; decreased levels of job performance, Erdogan & Bauer, 2009; increased turnover, Erdogan & Bauer, 2009). Since POQ can influence both individuals and the organizations they work for, it is critical to understand better the span of these ramifications and how POQ can be mitigated. …

0e2fa: Zero Effort Two-Factor Authentication, Ali Abdullah S. Alqahtani

Doctoral Dissertations

Smart devices (mobile devices, laptops, tablets, etc.) can receive signals from different radio frequency devices that are within range. As these devices move between networks (e.g., Wi-Fi hotspots, cellphone towers, etc.), they receive broadcast messages from access points, some of which can be used to collect useful information. This information can be utilized in a variety of ways, such as to establish a connection, to share information, to locate devices, and to identify users, which is central to this dissertation. The principal benefit of a broadcast message is that smart devices can read and process the embedded information without first …

Clinical Work With Adult Male Incest Survivors: Therapeutic Themes And Perspectives, Kathryn B. Rosenberg

Doctoral Dissertations

For psychotherapists, encountering clients who have experienced sexual trauma or abuse is inevitable, whether or not the abuse is disclosed to the therapist; however, mental health professionals receive extremely limited (if any) training on how to identify or effectively support adult clients who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Many people who experienced CSA, especially those who identify as male, remain isolated and invisible in their suffering as adults even within therapeutic spaces, facing what feel like insurmountable barriers – both internal and external – to getting help. When sexual abuse is intrafamilial, these barriers are both amplified and …

Versatile Catalytic Processes By Metal Oxide Nanomaterials With Tunable Porosity, Shanka Dissanayake

Doctoral Dissertations

Research on novel highly active mesoporous metal oxides by an inverse micelle method dubbed University of Connecticut (UCT) materials for versatile catalytic reactions is reported. The first section discusses the synthesis of highly active mesoporous cobalt oxide for the elimination of 2-propanol. The superior activity is correlated to better low temperature reducibility, large pore volumes, higher Co3+/Co2+ ratios, and higher number of surface-active oxygen species. Reaction forms carbonyl and carbonate species on the surface of the catalysts before complete oxidation. The second section is devoted to the synthesis of high surface area cerium oxide and zirconium oxide catalysts for self-condensation …

Stirred Not Shaken: Functional, Biological, Two-Dimensional Materials, Megan Puglia

Doctoral Dissertations

Herein, the development of high-quality, biophilic two-dimensional nanosheets for use in a diverse array of applications is discussed. Significantly, a potentially universal method for producing nanosheets from their layered crystal counterparts was developed using proteins as dispersing agents. The shearing mechanism was systematically studied and optimized leading to a better understanding of how to prepare these nanosheets for applications as advanced biomaterials.

High concentrations of low-defect, graphene nanosheet suspensions in water (bGr) (10 mg mL^-1) were produced using bovine serum albumin as the dispersant in a continual flow reactor, allowing for nearly 100% conversion of graphite to graphene …

Shape Coexistence In 28mg: Structure Of A Transitional Nucleus, Daniel G. Mcneel

Doctoral Dissertations

The structure of nuclei outside the region of stability is an area of ongoing experimental research. Recent investigations in the region around ³²Mg have discovered inversions in the usual ordering of shell-model states. From these discoveries, theories of the evolution towards this "island of inversion" predict low-lying deformed intruder states for several nuclei in the region. One such nucleus, which exists in the region of transition between the normal and inverted hierarchies, is ²⁸Mg. In this nucleus the ground state is expected to be mixed, i.e., it is a superposition of nearby 0⁺ neutron-pairing configurations. An excited …

Microcracks And Metabolism Within Articular Cartilage During Mechanical Load, Stephany Santos

Doctoral Dissertations

Physical pain limits the quality of life for more than 20% of the adult population around the world. Joint injury and acute trauma account for a significant portion of this pain. The most common joint injuries include ankle sprains, ACL tears in the knee, Patellofemoral syndrome (injury resulting from the repetitive movement of the patella against the femur), and Tennis Elbow (Epicondylitis). There is strong evidence that suggest these injuries trigger a cascade of events that lead to post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). PTOA is a multifactorial disease that affects all aspects of joints, including ligaments, tendons, bones, menisci, and most prominently, …

Domain-Specific Creativity And Vocational Interests: How Do Creativity And Related Factors Relate To Vocational Interests And Different Latent Riasec Profiles?, Xiaochen Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Creativity has potential as a key element in understanding students’ vocational interests but has yet to be fully studied. Two questions were proposed: (1) Can potential predictors (demographics, academic achievements, domain-general and domain-specific creativity factors, and the interactions between gender and creativity-related factors) significantly predict vocational interests as derived from Holland’s RIASEC Model and (2) do domain-general and domain-specific creativity factors exhibit differential mean levels across distinct latent vocational profiles?

This dissertation drew on a dataset that collected 4,052 valid responses from grade 9 to 12 students who registered American College Testing (ACT) in the United States for the June …

On The Positivity Of The Discrete Green's Function For Unstructured Finite Elements Discretizations In Three Dimensions, Andrew Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, we will establish new estimates for the discrete Green's function and obtain some positivity results. In particular, we establish that the discrete Green's functions with singularity in the interior of the domain cannot be bounded uniformly with respect of the mesh parameter h. Actually, we show that at the singularity the Green's function is of order h^(-1), which is consistent with the behavior of the continuous Green's function. In addition, we also show that the discrete Green's function is positive and decays exponentially away from the singularity. We also establish numerically persistent …

Tensegrity And Recurrent Neural Networks: Towards An Ecological Model Of Postural Coordination, Martin Fultot

Doctoral Dissertations

Tensegrity systems have been proposed as both the medium of haptic perception and the functional architecture of motor coordination in animals. However, a full working model integrating those two aspects with some form of neural implementation is still lacking. A basic two-dimensional cross-tensegrity plant is designed and its mechanics simulated. The plant is coupled to a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). The model’s task is to maintain postural balance against gravity despite the intrinsically unstable configuration of the plant. The RNN takes only proprioceptive input about the springs’ lengths and rate of length change and outputs minimum lengths for each spring …

Sequential Estimation Methodologies With Observations Gathered In Groups: Theory, Practice And Data Analysis, Zhe Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Purely sequential procedure has been widely studied in different inference problems. However, in purely sequential procedure, only one observation should be taken at-a-time. In real life, packaged items purchased in bulk often cost less per unit sample than the cost of an individual item. This dissertation discussed this situation when observations are gathered in groups. First, two fundamental problems on purely sequential estimation are revisited: (i) the fixed-width confidence interval (FWCI) estimation problem, and (ii) the minimum risk point estimation (MRPE) problem, in the context of estimating an unknown mean in a normal population having an unknown variance. We begin …

Development Of A School Climate Walkthrough Assessment, Jesslynn Rocha Neves

Doctoral Dissertations

School climate measurement is an increasingly important component of data-driven school improvement efforts. The present study involved the development of the School Climate Walkthrough Assessment (SCWA), a measure for evaluating environmental indicators and oral student reports of school climate alongside the Georgia Elementary School Climate Survey (GESCS), a validated self-report survey of school climate. The SCWA is administered by an adult who rates features of the school environment and then selects a subset of students for a school climate interview. It is meant to provide a snapshot of the general school climate in conjunction with school climate data obtained via …

“This Is A Place Of Business:” The Market Schema And Graduate Employee Unionization In The Corporate University, Kathleen Ragon

Doctoral Dissertations

Scholars, educators, and the public have raised the alarm about the corporatization of higher education in the United States. Graduate employee unions (GEUs) have been at the forefront of this critique of corporatization. However, there is little consensus on exactly what corporatization is or how to measure it. Further still, there is debate about the impact of GEUs themselves on corporatization. This dissertation intervenes in these debates by drawing on the concept of “institutional schemas” (Polletta & Gardner 2015) to create a framework for understanding corporatization and the impact of GEUs on higher education. I draw on qualitative data from …

Engaging Others, Teresa Allen

Doctoral Dissertations

We all have views on controversial issues: gun control, climate change, and abortion, to name a few. Due to the controversial nature of these issues, it can often be difficult to engage with those with whom we disagree. Precisely because of how much these issues matter, however, it is important to figure out whether and how we ought to engage. Aside from moral and political concerns, there are epistemic concerns. For instance, is open-minded engagement always epistemically responsible or required? The purpose of this dissertation is to clarify the role that open-mindedness ought to play in our lives. Given that …

Automatic Depression Screening And Depressive Symptom Prediction Using Smartphone Sensing Data, Shweta Ware

Doctoral Dissertations

Depression is a common, yet serious health problem. It has significant detrimental impacts on both physical and psychological functioning. Current diagnosis techniques rely on physician-administered or patient self-administered interview tools, which are burdensome and suffer from recall bias. Additionally, these techniques incur higher medical costs. There is an urgent need for an accurate, objective and easily accessible depression screening tool for mass usage. In this dissertation, we explore the usage of smartphone sensing data, collected directly on smartphones or meta-data collected from a WiFi infrastructure, for automatic depression screening and depressive symptom prediction.

In the first part of the dissertation, …

Dynamic Resource Management Algorithms For Complex Systems And Novel Approaches To Adaptive Kalman Filtering, Lingyi Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis considers three combinatorial optimization problems of substantial practical importance. First, a new approach to efficiently obtain a large number of ranked solutions to a 3-dimensional assignment problem is presented, and is applied to generate fuel assembly loading patterns. Second, we formulate the problem of dynamically scheduling maritime surveillance assets, and solve it using branch-and-cut and approximate dynamic programming (ADP) with rollout, and investigate the tradeoffs between the two. Third, a multi-objective ship routing problem is also investigated, where we propose a solution combining approximate dynamic programming techniques and clustering techniques to contain the computational and storage complexity. Lastly, …

Gasoline Production Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Using Bi-Functional Structured Catalytic Reactors, Chunxiang Zhu

Doctoral Dissertations

Gasoline accounts for more than half of U.S. transportation energy usage and its consumption continues growing. Crude oil is where gasoline originates from. However, crude oil reserves are limited in most of the countries around the world. U.S. imports thousand barrels of gasoline per day, making it highly dependent on foreign oil import which imposes a threat to U.S. homeland security. To make the U.S. gasoline independent, alternative processes such as Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis process (FTS) can be promising to mitigate high gasoline demand on transportation fuel and increase fuel diversity. However, scalable, selective, and more efficient FTS technologies are required …

High Electric Field Conduction And Polarization In Polymer Dielectrics, Zongze Li

Doctoral Dissertations

Polymer dielectrics with high energy density are essential elements to fulfill the future needs on pulse power, power conditioning, and electrification applications. The energy density is determined by the breakdown strength and dielectric constant of the polymer dielectrics, essentially controlled by conduction and polarization processes. However, the high field conduction and polarization phenomena of polymer dielectrics with a lack of fundamental understanding are extremely complex involving electronic and conformational structure of polymer, multi-factor interactions from electrical, thermal, mechanical and chemical properties. Thus, the basic experimental and theoretical research on conduction and polarization phenomena of polymer dielectrics under high electric field …

Design And Synthesis Of Crystalline Metal Oxide/Sulfide-Based Mesoporous Materials: Catalysis And Energy Storage, Lei Jin

Doctoral Dissertations

Mesoporous materials process many unique properties, such as high surface area and large pore volume, which are important in the applications of catalysis and energy storage. In these applications, mesoporous materials with controllable porosity and crystallinity are critical. However, the synthesis of mesoporous materials with crystallinity is challenging using traditional methods due to the disruption of mesoporosity at high temperatures. Therefore, a novel synthetic strategy is needed. In this thesis, the design and general synthesis of mesoporous materials with controllable mesoporosity and crystallinity were reported. The mesoporous materials include oxides, sulfides, and metal oxides-based hybrid materials. Furthermore, their porosity-correlated properties …

Topics On Asymptotically Hyperbolic Manifolds In General Relativity, Hyun Chul Jang

Doctoral Dissertations

Asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds are natural objects to be considered in certain physical circumstances. This dissertation particularly focuses on construction and rigidity of such manifolds, which includes the following three main results.

Firstly, we obtain a new construction of a 3-dimensional asymptotically hyperbolic manifold from a 2-sphere by using a solution of the Ricci flow as a foliation. These asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds provide examples of `admissible extensions' in the context of an asymptotically hyperbolic analogue of the Bartnik mass.

Secondly, we prove the equality case of the positive mass theorem for asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds without a spin assumption. This is the …

An Investigation Of Motivational Dysfunctions In A Rat Model Of Effort-Related Choice Behavior: Behavioral And Neurochemical Evidence For Possible Novel Pharmacological Treatments, Renee A. Rotolo

Doctoral Dissertations

Motivational symptoms such as fatigue, anergia, and amotivation are seen in depression, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and other disorders. These symptoms are often left untreated by the most frequently prescribed antidepressants, which typically block serotonin transport. Considerable evidence implicates brain dopamine (DA) in the regulation of behavioral activation and effort-related aspects of motivation. Animal studies of effort-based choice are being used to provide formal models of motivational dysfunctions in humans. Drugs that block DA transport (DAT) are able to reverse the effort-related effects of the vesicular monoamine transport inhibitor tetrabenazine, a drug that blocks DA storage and depletes DA. Many of …

Effects Of Emailed Prompts On Teachers’ Verbal Prompt Delivery, Hao-Jan Luh

Doctoral Dissertations

Decades of research has shown that teachers’ classroom management practices are critical for students’ performance in class. Despite the development, evaluation, and dissemination of classroom management practices, teachers struggle to implement these practices and need implementation supports. To address this issue, there has been a growth of implementation strategies for teachers in the literature. However, a need for effective, efficient, and socially valid implementation supports persists. Emailed prompting is a feasible, ongoing implementation strategy for classroom management practices. Previous studies have examined its effects on the implementation of the Good Behavior Game and responsive behavioral strategies. This study extended these …

Rising Poverty And Diversity In Suburbs: Decomposing Population Trends For The Chicago-Joliet-Naperville Metropolitan Area In The 2000s, Fabian Terbeck

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates rising poverty in suburbs in the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville metropolitan area in the 2000s. In that decade, suburbs saw an unprecedented rise in the number of poor and the reasons for this increase are not yet fully understood. Moreover, there are signs that this increase was not only the consequence of the decade's two recessions but of an on-going fundamental neighborhood change and shifting population compositions in metropolitan areas. In this dissertation, I use a combination of decomposition methods to identify the underlying racial, ethnic and socioeconomic dynamics for the increase in suburban poverty. Themes of this dissertation are …

A Geography Of Repression. The Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of The First Years Of The Special Tribunal In Fascist Italy, 1925-1928, Antonio Barocci

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the spatial and temporal patterning of political arrests during the initial years of the fascist regime in Italy, from 1925 to 1928. These were crucial years because Italy’s fascists acted rapidly to consolidate their power and to suppress their opponents. A key element of this takeover was the creation of a political court, the Special Tribunal. I argue that while the Special Tribunal did target political enemies, it was also used as a sophisticated system of control of territory and population.

In the first part of the research, it considers the spatial patterning of political arrests from …

Topology Optimization Of Architected Latticeswith Geometric Primitives, Hesaneh Kazemi

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis advances novel computational techniques to design multi-material, multi-scale and programmable truss lattices. The architecture of lattice materials can be engineered to exhibit desired behavior. I focus on truss lattices made of cylindrical struts, which lead to open-cell designs that are more amenable to additive manufacturing. In this work, I use topology optimization to determine the optimal design of the periodic unit cell to attain extremized mechanical properties. Finite element analysis of the unit cell and numerical homogenization are employed to determine the effective properties of the lattice. To efficiently perform the analysis of the unit cell for any …