Digital Commons Network^™

Description Of Cranial Elements And Ontogenetic Change Within Tropidolaemus Wagleri (Serpentes: Crotalinae)., Nicolette L. Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tropidolaemus wagleri is a species of Asian pitviper with a geographic range including Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Bruniei, parts of Indonesia, and the hilippines. Tropidolaemus is a member of the Crotalinae subfamily, within Viperidae. The genus Tropidolaemus includes five species, and was once included within the genus Trimeresurus. While some osteologic characteristics have been noted a comprehensive description of cranial elements has not been produced for T. wagleri. An in-depth description of the cranial skeleton of Tropidolaemus wagleri lays the foundation for future projects to compare and contrast other taxa within Crotalinae and Viperidae. The chosen reference specimen …

Flushed, Virgilia K. Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist describes the process and development of the work throughout her graduate career, relating them to the most recent works of her thesis exhibition. Topics discussed include experiences of beauty and themes of transformation. Contextual influences include the Rococo period as well as ideas and theories of Romanticism and the sublime. Histories and theories on representations of the body are also discussed.

The artist discusses her MFA thesis exhibition Flushed, at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee, from April 13th to April 24th, 2015. Two painting installations, a sculptural installation, and a number of collages are included. Media …

Description, Taphonomy, And Paleoecology Of The Late Pleistocene Peccaries (Artiodactyla: Tayassuidae) From Bat Cave, Pulaski County, Missouri, Aaron L. Woodruff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The late Pleistocene faunal assemblage from Bat Cave, central Ozarks, Missouri provides an opportunity to assess specific aspects of behavior, ecology, and ontogeny of the extinct peccary Platygonus compressus. All identifiable elements referable to this taxon were catalogued and examined, and a minimum number of individuals of 70 was determined for the sample. The presence of distinct, non-overlapping age groups suggests that P. compressus utilized Bat Cave on a seasonal basis. A predator-prey relationship with Canis dirus, the second most abundant vertebrate from the Bat Cave site, is also described in this study. Damage patterns suggest that the …

The Apoptotic And Inhibitory Effects Of Phylloquinone In The U937 Cell Line, Tesha E. Blair

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Phylloquinone is a natural analog of vitamin K that has been shown to both inhibit cancer cell growth and induce apoptosis in several cancer cell lines. This study examined these effects in a non-Hodgkin lymphoma cell line, known as U937. Cell growth inhibition and apoptosis were assessed through the quantification of cell density and area, following treatment with several concentrations of phylloquinone. In addition, apoptosis was detected and quantified using immunofluorescent markers of apoptosis (i.e. annexin V, APO-BrdU). Treatment with phylloquinone resulted in reduced overall cell density, increased overall cell area, and an increased frequency of apoptosis in U937 cells. …

New Records Of Colubrids From The Late Hemphillian Gray Fossil Site Of Northeastern Tennessee, Derek J. Jurestovsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Gray Fossil Site is a rich Hemphillian (North American Land Mammal Age) locality located in northeastern Tennessee which has produced tens-of-thousands of fossils of multiple taxa including hundreds of individual snake skeletal remains. Analyzed here are cranial and vertebral fossils identified as belonging to various colubrid taxa including Carphophis sp., Gyalopion sp., Heterodon sp., Natricinae indeterminate, Thamnophis sp., and a new, undescribed genus and species. In addition, multiple new features of snake vertebrae are described, some of which question the validity of the genus Neonatrix. Finally, the distribution and paleoecology of the listed genera allows an interpretation of …

Exploring Ethnic Stereotypes Through The Production Of Five Short Films, Ines Galiano Torres

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a nontraditional thesis that combines social research in ethnic stereotypes in TV and film with the creative process of film production. This paper contains the formal step of research, in addition to the details on the production and creation of five original short films related to the issue of ethnic representations.

Kindred, Katelyn Osborne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Kindred, an MFA exhibition held at the Tipton Gallery located in downtown Johnson City from Feburary 22^nd to March 4^th. Kindred presents two bodies of work, which are a collection of drawings, etchings, monoprints, and lithographs, that center around a personal mythology and symbolism of self-identity and discovery. These works explore the physical and spiritual connection behind being a fraternal twin through the metaphorical use of animal imagery.

The ideas discussed in this paper center around the process of creating a personal mythology and symbolism through my observations of animals and how I relate that experience to …

Regulation Of Acute And Chronic Immune Responses By Β-Arrestin2, Hui Yan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

β-arrestin2, previously recognized as a facilitator for G-protein associated 7 TMR desensitization/ internalization, has now been appreciated as an independent signal transducer that regulates multiple cellular responses including inflammation. Cecal ligation and puncture procedure (CLP) induced septic shock is an acute inflammatory response characterized by uncontrolled systemic inflammation. Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion is a chronic sterilize inflammation that requires the reaction of macrophages, fibroblasts and cardiac stem cells for regeneration and remodeling of the infarcted myocardium. Restrained chronic stress is an immune suppression model in which the inactivation of macrophages may be involved. Here we showed β-arrestin2 overexpression inhibited CLP-induced heart dysfunction …

Dollhouse, Whitney Goller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the work in DollHouse, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition on display at Tipton Gallery, Johnson City, Tennessee from January 25 to February 5, 2016. The exhibition was an installation consisting of five sets, each containing furniture - both 2D and 3D - and a mask with instructions relating to a room found within a dollhouse.

The sets and supporting thesis explore the ideas of social norms, feminism, and identity, and how submission to ideologies can create emptiness, while engagement can prompt social change. Topics include the process and evolution of the work and the artists who …

Remembrance: Drink While The Water Is Clean, Marissa Angel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper supports the Artist’s Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at the Tipton Gallery, located in downtown Johnson City TN from November 30, 2015 through January 22, 2016. The works Included in the exhibition consists of a series of mixed media collage paintings, a large scale etching combined with clay and a site specific installation.

The Exhibit features work that delves into the concept of nature as a subject of beauty, as well as a symbol of the resiliency of life. The work in this exhibit exposes the separation that exists between humanity and the natural world. Through …

Your Face Betrays You: A Fantasy Theme Analysis Of Lie To Me, Caroline Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research concerning the consequences of edutainment has revealed that television shows have the capability to influence audience members. As the lines between education and entertainment are becoming increasingly blurred, viewers may not be aware of how watching such shows impacts them. Lie to Me is a popular edutainment television series that educates viewers about the power of micro expressions. Ekman has dedicated a large part of his life to the development of research related to micro expressions. The show’s main character, Cal Lightman, portrayed Paul Ekman’s special talents and knowledge through his ability to detect micro expressions. The first three …

Yellowstone Exodus, John Herceg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Yellowstone Exodus, a novella, is a reminder of society's fragility in the wake of naturally occurring catastrophes. The first of three parts, Yellowstone Exodus is book one in a trilogy of novellas intended to entertain, inspire, and forewarn its reader. Beginning in Denver, Colorado, this story redefines brotherhood and friendship as two best friends, Clayton Rudd and Raymond Montero, set out on a journey to reach the Montero family home in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Obstacles awaiting them include a nightmarish environment caused by the Yellowstone super-volcanic eruption, hostile enforcement of state borders in a nation stripped of its federal government, …

Hunting Down Pigs, Anna-Lisa Astudillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hunting Down Pigs is a hybrid collection of personal essays, ranging from lyrical to braided, which more often than not defy labeling. The essays explore themes of loss, faith, and self-reliance. Growing up Mormon, with all its strictures, and losing her dad at a young age, made faith an issue that the narrator grappled with continuously throughout her life. The narrator questions the validity and purpose of religion in essays like "Possibilities" and "Going to Church." Specifically, the narrator explores the doctrine of the Mormon church and the effects of such a strict upbringing. When divine intervention fails, the narrator …

Pearl Necklaces, Jordan Redmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pearl Necklaces aims to excavate raw moments of connection and find beauty in the depravity of self and situation. Set in the Deep South, this collection of poems thrives on lusty nights, hard love, and the twinge of memory. The voices within range from youthful to jaded as they speak across pages, flowing into one another to create a pain-body which ultimately seeks closure in relationships with objects, family, drugs, lovers, body parts, heroes, and setting. Tuned to the lyrical voices of poets Kim Addonizio, Lynn Emanuel, and Dorianne Laux, poems such as "Learning Shapes," "Things that Make Me Feel …

Go Ahead, Daytona, John Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Go Ahead, Daytona is a collection of essays meant to explore the experiences and lessons learned through law enforcement. It juxtaposes hope with cynicism and encourages the reader to explore his or her own biases through the lens of a narrator believing police work is something to be lived down, rather than up. The essays depict struggles with hypocrisy, sex, homelessness, violence, moral ambiguity, and self-awareness.

The Clockman Movement, Allison Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a genre of Neo-Victorian fiction, Steampunk is largely identified by Victorian aesthetics and technology centering on clockwork and steam power. The novel The Clockman Movement seeks to emphasize the "punk" in "steampunk" by exploring the social concerns of colonialism, including sexism, racism, and classism, while embracing the more fantastic and entertaining aspects of steampunk. Before all other labels—Nordlunder, daughter, woman—Eve Traugott is a machinist. Or she would be, if one of the machinists in the capital would hire her as an apprentice. She thought it would be simple to find a machinist willing to take a chance on her …

The Role Of Occupational Branding In The Professionalization Of Technical Communication, Chelsea Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between professional identity and professional status by exploring the quest for professionalization within technical communication. An established professional identity is crucial to an occupation's professionalization process, as it enables members of a given field to create a common sense of being and facilitates a recognizable personal and collective identity. Such recognition is vital to an occupation's rise to professional status, as it creates a distilled image of the ideal practitioner for outsiders and forms the basis upon which claims of expertise may be made. By constructing the meaning surrounding their profession, members are able to …

The Gasoline Tree, Brianne Manning

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In exploration of Millennial anxieties and the power of dreaming, The Gasoline Tree imagines a soundtrack for the revelations, defeats, and curiosities of leaving childhood behind. This is a collection of 40 poems that examines eating disorders, gender roles, physical abuse, sex, infidelity, loneliness, and the fear of losing one's parents. This collection also contemplates the brutalities and muted delights of what drives us all: love, in all of its forms. "The Gasoline Tree," "Wolf of Chocorua," and many other poems construct New England landscapes that pay homage to the pastoral uniqueness of Maxine Kumin and Galway Kinnell, while poems …

Unseen America, Jeffrey Shuster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unseen America is a glimpse into the lives of what American society considers to be low status men. "Kumbaya" involves a Cub Scout dealing with the fallout from a neglectful father and an alcoholic mother. "Devil's Tower" is about an overweight boy trying to prove himself in front of his peers. In "True Patriots," we see two displaced working class men forced to come to terms with an America that doesn't belong to them anymore or need them anymore. "Zippo Heart" deals with a recently divorced young woman spurring on the advances of a loser coworker while dealing with her …

The Missing Middle: Understanding The Effects Of Social Enterprise On Nonprofit Performance, Angela White-Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The 2008 financial recession has seen increased poverty, job loss, and homelessness as well as decreased spending in health care, education, sanitation, and housing. These factors can lead to tensions across a number of sectors and underscore the need for innovation in for-profit, nonprofit and government organizations. One area of innovation in the nonprofit sector to supplement revenues is by adding social enterprise activity. Social enterprise is the pursuit of earned income activities for an organization that is driven by a community mission or value. Because financial and social problems are becoming increasingly intertwined, this study seeks to understand the …

Neuroprotection Comparison Of Different Nutraceutical Compounds Against Mechanistically Distinct Cell Death Inducing Agents, Faten I. Taram

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), include the progressive loss of structure and function of neurons leading to neuronal death. All of these diseases are fatal, as there is no cure for them. The causes of these diseases are unknown; however, there are many proposed mechanisms that lead to neurodegenerative diseases. Oxidative stress is the leading cause of cell death in neurodegenerative diseases, in addition to other mechanisms including endoplasmic reticulum stress, proteasome inhibition, nitrosative stress, inflammation and excitotoxicity. More understanding of the death mechanisms at work in neurodegeneration is necessary to …

Adair Instrumental Genesis Inventory: Measuring Instrumental Genesis For Interactive Whiteboard Technology—An Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods Design, Mindy H. Adair

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The adoption of interactive whiteboard technology in the mathematics classroom has been reasonably explored in terms of effective use (Glover & Miller, 2009), student engagement (Morgan, 2008) and achievement (Lutz, 2010), pedagogy (G. Beauchamp & Kennewell, 2013), and learning environments (Yang, Wang, & Kao, 2012). However, there has been little research performed regarding how teachers actually become effective at orchestrating and managing the technology in the classroom in terms of their level of instrumental genesis attainment. In this study, I examined how a teacher develops instrumental genesis, the two-fold process involving instrumentation and instrumentalisation, with interactive whiteboard technology through an …

"Discursion And Excursion:" Poetry Of Bodies, Place, And Landscape In The Ecocritical Movement, Haley N. Littleton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis project focuses on the current literary field of Ecocriticism, its historical transmutations, and the correlation of the pastoral genre, as one begins to understand current human understandings of "nature." By applying a deeper understanding of the Deep Ecology movement, along with shifting understandings of the human and the non-human, specifically in our usage and attention to landscape and wilderness, I hope to explore the role that the aesthetic, and the function of the poem, can play a crucial role in the environmental movement. By building a foundational understanding of our cultural context and critical theories of Environmental criticism, …

The Entanglement Of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, And Interrelatedness, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project weaves together the theoretically rich and diverse work of ancient materialist philosophers, modern philosophy which advanced a theory of monism, and contemporary philosophies that further extends monism into new terrain, including 'new materialism.' While monism is a strand of this project, the core features of this project are materiality and bodies; these two concepts create the particular entanglement and central thrust of this project, which is becoming. While this project is conceptually organized around matter and bodies, and a particular notion of becoming traced from ancient through contemporary thought, this project, also, introduces the importance of Gloria Anzaldúa …

With Or Without Class: A Comparative Study Of Union-Worker Cooperative Relations In The U.S. And South Korea, Minsun Ji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines to what extent union-cooperative partnerships in the U.S. and S. Korea might revitalize labor movements and to what extent class-based narratives (or their absence) shape labor movements. Exploring competing labor ontologies, the dissertation analyzes how variants of traditional Marxism and poststructural thinking shape labor campaigns. Through a historical review of union and worker coop activism, and modern case studies of union-coop partnerships among taxi drivers and bus drivers, the dissertation analyzes the consequences of organizing "with" and "without" class narratives.

These labor histories and case studies lend support to the poststructural claim that class identity is constructed …

An Introduction To The Psychedelic Pastoral: Tracing Mind-Altering Plant Life Into The Modern Industrialized West, Amy Nicole Buck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My Masters thesis offers literary pastoralism as a viable entry into the conversation on psychedelic plants and their use in mind-alteration by the industrialized West. I will, first, establish that the ancient pastoral tradition can be related to the existence of psychedelic plants, and that the use of such plants has inspired a deeper communion with various levels of the natural world. Next, my analysis focuses on parallels between pastoral literature and accounts of psychedelic hallucinations, which are often comprised of ultra-pastoral visions of landscapes, arabesques, and even cosmic space. These similarities suggest that psychedelic plants initiate a peculiar and …

It's A Whole New Ball Game: The Mitchell Report, Performance Enhancing Drugs, And Professional Sports, Brian J. Schrader

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the findings of a congressional investigation into the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in Major League Baseball, known as the Mitchell Report. It analyzes the primary arguments presented in the report, the argument for integrity, role-models, and apology specifically, through the lens of governmentality and moral regulation. It argues that the report represents a distinct mode of governance that seeks to condemn PED use in a moralizing way. This mode of governance is characterized by its emergence from a variety of locations as opposed to the relatively simple use of the state and its legal apparatus. …

Panmixia Across The Range Of The Assortatively Mating Lesser Snow Goose, Brent B. Horowitz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Lesser Snow Goose has been shown to exhibit imprinted positive assortative mating on the basis of its color phases, blue and white, and it has been proposed that the geographic cline of the color phases reflects a historic allopatry of the phases. Using ddRAD-seq, thousands of SNPs were analyzed in both phases and in colonies across the range of the species to examine genetic evidence for separation of the color phases or along the two migratory pathways, which have also been hypothesized to be separate. These analyses did not reveal any genetic differentiation between the color phases nor by …

Identifying Spiritual Themes In Narratives Of Young Adults Who Have Aged Out Of Foster Care: A Qualitative Study, Kerri Jane Tokarski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Each year up to thirty thousand young adults age out of foster care in the United States. Historically research has focused on more tangible issues for this population (e.g., employment, education, etc.). Recent research addresses more intangible issues (e.g., quality of their relationships, resilience, etc.). This study reviews and then furthers such research by doing qualitative research to conduct nine loosely structured interviews with young adults who aged out of foster care to (1) discern if and how they made meaning of their experiences and (2) identify if there are spiritual themes within those narratives. This project used a qualitative …

Quinolines: Novel Synthesis And Derivatives Of Heterocyclic Bioactive Agents, Ginelle A. Ramann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tuberculosis is a pulmonary disease that has ravaged the world throughout history. Even today, many developed and developing countries are experiencing this plight, made worse by the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis's class II fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase presents an interesting target in the design of new therapies against this disease. Previous attempts to construct an inhibitor to this enzyme fell short due to poor selectivity or poor cellular uptake. However a new class of noncompetitive inhibitor based on 8-hydoxyquinoline-2-carboxylic acid presents a fresh approach. Preliminary studies indicate various modifications to this scaffold could be beneficial to its inhibitory efficacy.

Modifications …