Digital Commons Network^™

Frege's Conception Of Truth As An Object, Junyeol Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I explore Frege’s conception of truth. In particular I defend the thesis that Frege in his mature career takes truth to be an object, i.e., the True qua the reference of true sentences. In the literature on truth Frege has been usually taken to be a truth deflationist or a truth primitivist. Indeed Frege leaves a number of comments that sound like typical deflationist claims and his famous indefinability argument is the most discussed argument for primitivism. However, Frege is neither a deflationist nor a primitivist. His deflationist remarks and the indefinability argument are rather his arguments …

Mdma-Assisted Psychotherapy For Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Examining Ethnoracial Differences In Efficacy And Safety, And A Mixed-Methods Case Study Of A Participant Of Color, Terence Ching

Doctoral Dissertations

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy was shown in previous clinical trials to be efficacious and safe for alleviating treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, due to low ethnoracial diversity, the question remains as to whether ethnoracial minority participants would benefit similarly. Thus, in Study 1, ethnoracial differences in PTSD symptoms, secondary outcomes, and suicidality were examined for a multisite, open-label trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. A total of 11 ethnoracial minority and 26 non-Hispanic White participants formed the modified intent-to-treat (ITT) set. General and generalized linear model analyses were used to test group differences. Correlational analyses were conducted to test relationships between changes in …

Stress Appraisals And Coping Strategies In Response To Palatable Food Cues Among Women With A Spectrum Of Internalized Weight Stigma, Mora A. Reinka

Doctoral Dissertations

Across two experiments, we set out to explore whether palatable food—densely caloric, low nutrition food—acts as a stigma-based stressor for individuals who have internalized negative stereotypes and beliefs against larger bodies. Using a sample of women with a normative BMI spectrum, we test whether participant’s cognitive, physiological, and psychological responses to food map onto a commonly theorized stress appraisal process—specifically that the food images are appraised as relevant, negative, and exceeding the available resources the individual possesses to deal with the implications or consequences. Furthermore, we explore coping responses to stress through direct measurement of caloric intake in the laboratory …

Predictors Of Foster Parents’ Home-Based Academic Involvement With Their Foster Youth, Jonelle Alicia Reynolds

Doctoral Dissertations

Parental involvement in children’s education has been associated with children’s academic success; however, little is known about the academic involvement of foster parents with their foster youth or their understanding of their roles and responsibilities related to education. The primary purpose of this study was to explore associations between and among factors that have been relevant in the general literature around academic success and foster parents’ academic involvement. This study explored the relationship between these factors of parental self-efficacy, knowledge and skills, time and energy, and the foster child’s invitation, and home-based academic involvement practices of foster parents. A secondary …

Small Molecules To Control Porcine Reproductive And Respiratory Syndrome Virus Infection, Chang Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is an economically significant panzootic affecting the swine industry worldwide. CD163 is the indispensable receptor for PRRS virus (PRRSV) infection and porcine alveolar macrophages (PAMs) are the principle target for productive PRRSV infection in pigs. We validated that the interleukin 10 (IL-10) stimulated Janus kinase (JAK)-signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling upregulates CD163 expression in pig cells. We identified a natural compound cryptotanshinone (Cpt) that inhibits IL-10-stimulated and basal level of CD163 expression in PAMs, and thus suppresses infection of PAMs by type I and type II PRRSV in vitro. …

Providing Students With Instructional Choice: Does The Type Of Choice Matter?, Sarah Wilkinson

Doctoral Dissertations

Students with disabilities, including emotional and behavioral disorders and learning disabilities, tend to experience a higher rate of challenging behavior in school than their peers (Lane et al., 2008; NCLD, 2019). At the same time, increasing numbers of students receiving special education services are being educated in general education classrooms by teachers with limited training in evidence-based classroom management practices (Freeman et al., 2014; NCLD, 2019; Oliver & Reschly, 2010). Thus, there is a need for feasible classroom management strategies that effectively support the behavior and academic achievement of all students. One strategy with promising evidence is instructional choice (e.g., …

Stem Identity Authoring: Intergenerational Collaborative Learning In Informal Stem Programs, Laura Rodriguez

Doctoral Dissertations

The problem this research addresses is the lack of opportunities for many people to develop positive identification with STEM fields (i.e., science, technology, engineering and math). This multiple case study will investigate STEM identity authoring in three intergenerational collaborative learning partnerships in an informal STEM program. Adults and high school teens were paired in two-day workshops to learn conservation science and geospatial technologies with the goal of designing and implementing community conservation projects and further developing their identification with STEM. This research examined how the design and implementation of intergenerational projects provided opportunities for: (1) adults and teens to demonstrate …

Intercellular Communication In The Mouse Ovarian Follicle Analyzed By Three-Dimensional Electron Microscopy, Valentina Baena Echeverri

Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout follicle development, oocytes and somatic granulosa cells depend on each other for proper development. Granulosa cells provide nutrients and other small molecules that govern the meiotic cycle of the oocyte. cGMP, produced by the natriuretic peptide receptor 2 (NPR2) in the granulosa cells, diffuses through gap junctions across the many cell layers of the follicle until it reaches the oocyte. High levels of cGMP in the oocyte keep it in meiotic arrest until luteinizing hormone, which binds to its receptor expressed on the outer-most granulosa cells, inactivates NPR2, causing cGMP levels to drop and meiosis to resume in the …

Development Of A Facebook Group Intervention To Increase Health-Promoting Self-Care Among Primary Caregivers Of Children With Developmental Disabilities, Emily Auerbach Iovino

Doctoral Dissertations

Primary caregivers of children with developmental disabilities (DD) are critical for supporting the development of the children for whom they provide care. In order to most effectively provide care, caregivers of children with DD need to be physically and psychologically healthy. However, caregivers of children with DD can experience challenges in these areas as a result of stress. Health-promoting self-care and social support can mediate the stress process to influence health outcomes. Given that a lack of social support is a barrier to engaging in health-promoting self-care, social support is needed for caregivers to engage in health-promoting self-care and together …

Cosmological Fluctuations In Standard And Conformal Gravity, Matthew Phelps

Doctoral Dissertations

In the theory of cosmological perturbations, extensive methods of simplifying the equations of motion and eliminating non-physical gauge modes are required in order to construct the perturbative solutions. One approach, standard within modern cosmology, is to decompose the metric perturbation into a basis of scalars, vectors, and tensors defined according to their transformation behavior under three-dimensional rotations (the S.V.T. decomposition). By constructing a projector formalism to define the basis components, we show that such a decomposition is intrinsically non-local and necessarily incorporates spatially asymptotic boundary conditions. We continue application of the S.V.T. decomposition and solve the fluctuation equations exactly within …

Bias Estimation And Coordinate Conversion In 3-D Sensor Measurements, Michael Kowalski

Doctoral Dissertations

In the field of target tracking there are many challenges associated with error in sensor measurements. Sensors can be subject to sources of consistent error such as temperature warping of the physical equipment, environmental effects in the surrounding atmosphere, and internal clock errors. These errors are known as sensor measurement biases. Biases can corrupt many different types of sensor measurements with many different error models. To overcome such error it is necessary to estimate the biases affecting the system. Two primary methods of bias estimation are examined in this work. The first is simultaneous target state and sensor bias estimation, …

Hadronic Contributions To The Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment Using Lattice Qcd, Cheng Tu

Doctoral Dissertations

The hadronic vacuum polorization (HVP) contribution and long-distance hadronic light-by-light (HLbL) scattering contribution to the muon anomalus magnetic moment are evaluated by using lattice QCD. The HVP calculations are performed with 2+1+1 flavors of HISQ fermions at the physical pion mass from three ensembles, generated by the MILC collaboration. In the long-distance part of the HLbL contribution, we replace the QCD, four-current connected Green’s function from previous HLbL study with the product of two independent πγγ amplitudes, which are joined by an analytic, position space pion propagator. The calculations are performed with near physical pion mass on four different lattice …

“Give Them A Firm Handshake, Look Them In The Eye, Try To Make A Connection”: Critical Graduate Perspectives On School Advancement Practices Of De Marillac Academy, Alicia M. Tapia

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation engages graduates of De Marillac Academy, a NativityMiguel school in San Francisco, in critical inquiry regarding school advancement practices. Graduates were asked how they participated in school advancement practices face-to-face with guests and donors, through media, on-campus and off-campus at their Annual Scholarship Benefit. Graduates engaged in photo and video elicitation interviews, in which photos and videos were used to spark commentary regarding their thoughts and experiences in advancement settings. As Catholic school educators, we are called to investigate the effects of a student’s formal and hidden curriculum in all aspects of their educational experience. This study found …

On Bayesian Methods For Spatial Point Processes, Jieying Jiao

Doctoral Dissertations

Spatial point pattern data are routinely encountered. A flexible regression model for the underlying intensity is essential to characterizing and understanding the pattern. Spatial point processes are a widely used to model for such data. Additional measurements are often available along with spatial points, which are called marks. Such data can be modeled using marked spatial point processes.

The first part of this dissertation focuses on the heterogeneity of point processes. We propose a Bayesian semiparametric model where the observed points follow a spatial Poisson process with an intensity function which adjusts a nonparametric baseline intensity with multiplicative covariate effects. …

High-Fidelity Modeling Of Buoyancy-Driven Diffusion Flames Towards Fire Suppression, Bifen Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Buoyancy-driven diffusion flames have been widely studied as a canonical fire configuration due to practical and scientific interests. Numerical investigations are conducted in this dissertation to improve understandings of interactions and couplings among turbulence, chemistry, soot, and multiphase radiation in buoyancy-driven diffusion flames. A high-fidelity modeling framework based on OpenFOAM-5.x, including detailed models for chemistry, radiation, and soot, is developed to improve the numerical accuracy and the computational efficiency with scale-resolved simulations. A Monte Carlo ray tracing (MCRT) based radiation solver coupled with line-by-line databases is developed to describe gas and soot radiation. Detailed and efficient radiation models for water …

Physical Unclonable Functions For Authenticating And Preventing Reverse Engineering Of Integrated Circuits And Electronics Hardware, Md Shahed Enamul Quadir

Doctoral Dissertations

Electronics hardware is subject to a number of potential threats such as reverse engineering and counterfeiting. As a result, hardware authentication mechanisms and anti-reverse engineering techniques such as obfuscation and tamper-resistance are essential. In this thesis, we will present methods to approach these problems, and the primary research contributions of this thesis are a Low pass filter PUF for the authentication of PCBs and ICs; Key generation for hardware obfuscation using strong PUFs; and Session key generation using strong PUF modeling.

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are probabilistic circuit primitives that extract randomness from the physical characteristics of a device. In …

Identity Development In Transgender Women Of Color: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Angel Tseng

Doctoral Dissertations

Transgender women of color have been at the forefront of LGBT rights moments in the U.S. and has been credited for leading the Stonewall resistance (Roberts, 2018). Though much has changed since Stonewall, transgender women of color still face harassment, discrimination, and many other barriers and health risks today. One of the many challenges faced by transgender women of color is identity conflict. The purpose of the study was to examine the identity development processes of transgender women of color. This qualitative research study utilized Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the lived experiences and narratives of individuals from this community …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between School Climate, Self-Determined Academic Motivation, And Academic Outcomes Among Middle And High School Students, Daniel T. Volk

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore connections among student perceptions of specific school climate-factors, self-determined academic motivation, and academic outcomes in a sample of middle and high school students (sixth through eleventh grade). Structural equation modeling techniques were used to identify meaningful grade specific associations within a sample of 2,463 students. The school climate factors of perceived teacher support, peer support, and school bullying emerged as the most salient school climate-based predictors of academic motivation factors. Perceived teacher support positively predicted academic competence and relatedness, whereas school bullying negatively predicted relatedness. Student academic competence, in turn, was found …

Aging Women With Human Immunodeficiency Virus: A Narrative Analysis Of Stigma, Seja Jackson

Doctoral Dissertations

Aging Women with Human Immunodeficiency Virus: A Narrative Analysis of Stigma

Seja Jackson, Ph.D.

University of Connecticut, 2020

Over 50 % of people living with HIV are over age 50 (CDC, 2019a). Older women face unique challenges due to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) stigma, which leads to complications including late diagnosis and poorer outcomes. Despite the transition of HIV to a chronic disease, HIV stigma remains.

In alignment with feminist principles, this author used Catherine Riessman’s (1993; 2008) method of thematic narrative analysis to illuminate the stories of aging women living with HIV. I interviewed 12 women over 50, aging …

From Patient To Pathways: An Sh2-Based Workflow For Studying Signaling In Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Using Biochemical And Computational Methods, Adam Lafontaine

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

Trp Channels In Cardiovascular Disease, Albert Yu

Doctoral Dissertations

Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels are evolutionarily conserved ion channels that have been implicated in a wide range of physiological and pathophysiological responses. As versatile ion channels that are permeable to calcium, the exact nature of these ion channels have been furiously studied since its initial discovery in Drosophila. Many TRP channels are thought to be gated by PIP2, a well-known membrane signaling molecule. Here we show that membrane potential alters PIP2 in such a way to reduce TRPM7 activity, presumably through PIP2 depletion. This novel mechanism of TRPM7 regulation gives us a clearer picture into a complicated protein that …

What Makes A ‘Biodiversity Hotspot’ Hot? The Consequences Of Trait Variation And Covariation For Individual Plant Performance And Species Coexistence In South African Proteaceae, Kristen Nolting

Doctoral Dissertations

The Cape Floristic Region (CFR) in southwestern South Africa is a ‘biodiversity hotspot,’ hosting ~9,000 plant species in an area just over 90,000 km². What is especially extraordinary about the CFR is that diversity here rivals that in many tropical forests, but it is not located in the highly diverse equatorial regions, making it difficult to identify the ecological and evolutionary processes that generate diversity and maintain it today. One way to better understand variation in species diversity across communities is to evaluate the distribution of the traits species’ possess. Specifically, trait variation within and across species can …

Women’S Experiences Of Disability And Community-Based Rehabilitation In Sri Lanka, Carmen R. Britton

Doctoral Dissertations

The majority of people with disability (PWD) live in the global South. Over the last four decades, community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programs have dominated the way development programs operate and intercede in the lives of PWD, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This research uses participant observation and in-depth interviews to gather women’s experiences of disablement and CBR in Sri Lanka. Major findings detail ways CBR programs fail to address larger social inequities, specifically centered around ableism and sexism, and how these barriers are embedded in societies. Thus, these programs continue to target rehabilitation efforts at the level of the individual, …

Influence Of Physical Characteristics And Chronic Statin Therapy On Thermoregulation And Cardiovascular Responses In Runners, Rachel K. Katch

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

The Genetics Of Floral Carotenoid Pigmentation In Monkeyflowers (Mimulus), Lauren E. Stanley

Doctoral Dissertations

Carotenoids are red, orange, and yellow pigments found in photosynthetic organisms critical for light capture and photoprotection. In flowering plants, carotenoids may also accumulate as secondary metabolites, contributing to the bright colors of many flowers and fruits. Because the main function of floral and fruit carotenoids is the attraction of pollinators and seed dispersers, these pigments are crucial in the ecology and evolution of many angiosperms. To accumulate dispensable carotenoids, plants activate carotenoid biosynthesis pathway (CBP) genes and develop storage organelles called chromoplasts. Genetic regulation of these processes during development determines when and where pigments are accumulated, leading to an …

The Impact Of Heat Acclimatization Induction And Intermittent Exercise-Heat Exposures On Physiological Adaptations, Courteney Benjamin

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

The Practical Application Of Heat Acclimatization Induction And Intermittent Exercise-Heat Exposures In Endurance Athletes, Yasuki Sekiguchi

Doctoral Dissertations

Background: Heat acclimation (HA) and heat acclimatization (HAz) are impactful strategies to mitigate negative impact of exercise performance in the heat. However, there is no practical strategy to prevent decay following HAz and HA. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of HA following HAz or dual heat acclimatization (DHA) on endurance performance and the effect of heat training (HT) on endurance performance following DHA. Methods: Twenty-six endurance athletes (mean (M)±SD; age, 35±12yrs; body mass, 72.8±8.9kg; height, 178.7±6.3 cm; VO_2max, 57.3±6.7ml·kg^-1·min^-1) completed five 4km time trials (TT) (baseline-unacclimatized, test^{#1 …}

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Employers’ Personal Dispositions And Their Implicit Gender And Racial Bias During Hiring Processes For Entry-Level Sport Management Positions, Junyoung Cho

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between employers’ personal dispositions associated with implicit biases (race and gender) and their perceptions of applicants to entry-level sport management positions. Two sections were formulated in relation to the overall conceptual framework. Based on implicit bias, social role theory and intersectionality, section 1 focused on the tendency to prefer higher social status groups (i.e., white men). Section 2 focused on subjective uncertainty reduction theory and social identity theory which posit that employers tend to prefer candidates in the same gender and racial groups. Simulated employment procedures were applied in the …

Qos In Sdn-Based Large-Scale Networks, Haitham Ghalwash

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent research has shown that the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology is a promising architecture providing abstraction and programmability of modern networks and enables a more efficient solution to many of the security, performance, management, and QoS issues. This dissertation researches and enriched SDN with an added level of QoS for network applications. Starting by investigating the potential of an SDN-based large-scale networked system, two topologies widely used in modern data centers, namely, Fat-tree and BCube, are considered. Their behavior and performance under different network scales, traffic loads, and traffic patterns are studied. Experimental results indicate the superiority of a …

Executive Functioning And Adherence To Antihypertensive Medications Among A Sample Of Older Adults, Lauren Strainge

Doctoral Dissertations

Objective: Consistent medication adherence is critical for the effective management of hypertension among the elderly. Executive functioning (EF), higher-order cognitive abilities that include set-shifting, information updating, and inhibition, have been associated with medication adherence among other populations, but the role of these processes in adherence to medications in older adults with hypertension is unknown. A conceptual model of the ways in which specific executive processes could impact adherence is presented, and specific executive processes and broad EF were examined as predictors of adherence to antihypertensive medication over a 3-month study of hypertension and cognition in the elderly.

Method: 76 adults …