Digital Commons Network^™

Flow Separation In Rotating Channels, Devika Vipul Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Direct numerical simulations are carried out to study the flow separation in a channel flow rotating about the spanwise axis. A bump is introduced on one side of the channel by an immersed boundary method. The numerical schemes are studied, the solver is validated, and the computational domain and grid resolution requirements are determined. The characteristics of the separating flow behind the bump are described by comparing the flow at rotation numbers Ro = 0, 0.42, and 1.0. The bulk Reynolds number of the channel is 2,500. Both clockwise and counterclockwise rotations at these two rates are examined. The bump …

Using Ab Initio Quantum Mechanical Methods For The Characterization And Isomerization Of Novel Compounds, Kimberley N. Poland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computational quantum chemistry is the branch of chemistry derived from quantum mechanics to calculate structures and properties of molecules utilizing rigorous mathematical equations and approximations. This work focuses on utilizing wavefunction based methods to compute molecular properties such as optimized geometries, harmonic and anharmonic vibrational frequencies, dipole moments, strain energy, and isomerization channels with high degrees of accuracy, allowing for a direct comparison with previous work and experiment. Electronic structure modeling using various \textit{ab intio} methods can provide insight into the characterization and behavior of molecules otherwise unobserved, including, but not limited to, detection in the interestellar medium.

Building Rapport Via Telepractice: The Perceptions And Strategies Used By Speech-Language Pathologists In Speech-Language Telepractice Sessions, Jaret Webb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Telepractice has been increasingly used in the field of speech-language pathology. Within this study, we aimed to explore the perceptions and strategies speech-language pathologists (SLPs) use to build rapport with their clients via telepractice. Two populations were considered to evaluate their influences, children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In addition, two age groups were also studied within these disorder populations, including children ages 0-3 and children ages 4-8.

Acceptability And Feasibility Of Healthcare Communication Considerations For Altering Perceptions Towards Influenza Vaccine: A Qualitative Study, Saumil Jadhav

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background

Influenza (influenza) is a contagious disease, causing thousands of deaths every year. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends routine annual influenza vaccination for all people over 6 months of age who do not have contraindications, yet the vaccination coverage for 2018-19 season was 49.2%, around 20% less than the goal set by Healthy People 2030 of 70% coverage. The national foundation of infectious diseases survey showed that 51% of respondents do not think the flu vaccine works, 34% are concerned with the side effects from the vaccine, and 22% are concerned about getting flu from the vaccine. …

Development Of Hollow Vaginal Device Using Stereolithography (Sla) 3d Printing For Intravaginal Drug Delivery, Preethi Lakkala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vulvovaginal candidiasis is a condition caused by the polymorphic opportunistic fungus Candida albicans, which involves the first-line treatment with antifungal agents comprising azole groups. An intravaginal drug delivery device is an alternate approach to conventional therapy that transcend multiple daily administrations and systemic side effects associated with oral medications and offers effective drug concentrations at the target site for a sustained period. This study reports, for the first time, the development of a novel hollow vaginal device by exploiting stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing technology to achieve localized and extended delivery of Itraconazole. These devices were fabricated using a shape memory …

Scan Stack: A Search-Based Concurrent Stack For Gpu, Noah Brennen South

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Concurrent data structures play a critical role in the overall performance of GPGPU applications. Stack is one of the basic data structures and finds numerous applications where data is processed in a Last In First Out (LIFO) fashion. Although concurrent stack is well researched for multi-core CPUs, there is little research pointing to the conversion of CPU stacks into a GPU-friendly form. In this paper, we propose a concurrent search-based GPU stack named "Scan Stack." The proposed stack is designed to take advantage of GPU memory access patterns, memory coalescence, and thread structures (i.e., warps) to increase throughput. Our experiments …

The Effects Of A Blended Learning Environment On Students' Discourse In A Secondary Mathematics Classroom, Brandi Blake

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To prepare students for college and careers, the Common Core Mathematical Practice Standards propose teachers engage students in classroom discourse where they make sense of mathematics by working collaboratively and communicating their thinking. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore the relationship between a blended learning environment and the discourse students produce while in an AP Calculus AP course. Participants in this study are members of a large high school enrolled in either hybrid or virtual learning environments. Data were collected through recorded observations, coded using the Mathematics Classroom Observation Practices Protocol (MCOP2) and analyzed using statistical …

Down The Stream: The Evolution Of Queer Stream-Of-Consciousness Novels Through The Works Of Virginia Woolf And Ali Smith, Turner Nat Byrd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to understand the evolution of the stream-of-consciousness genre as it applies to, is written by, or centers queer people. Through generous Marxist-feminist readings of the works of Virginia Woolf and Ali Smith—used in this project as exemplars of the genre—it attempts to understand the differences within both the formal and philosophical/political outlook of the two authors. Specifically looking at Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and Smith’s Hotel World, The Accidental, and Girl Meets Boy, this project posits that Smith, intentionally or not, has effectively re-written the basic narratives and re-visited the same themes as Woolf, …

Bridging The Gap Between Journalism 273 And Graduation, And Beyond, Mackenzie Slate Ross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While Journalism 273: Creative Visual Thinking is a requirement for all undergraduate students majoring in Integrated Marketing Communications and some students majoring in Journalism, there are students who end up graduating from the University of Mississippi with a desire for more knowledge of graphic design. Feedback from current students in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi as well as alumni of the program was gathered in two surveys to understand better how Journalism 273 benefits them and pinpoints opportunities for improvement. One hundred nineteen students who took Journalism 273 and were enrolled in the …

Value-Directed Remembering: Evidence For Distinctive Processing Of High Value Items, Donald Skinner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A large body of literature has found that when participants are instructed to maximize their score, they reliably demonstrate better memory for information assigned high relative to low-values. This value-directed remembering effect has been replicated numerous times throughout nearly three decades of research. The most current theoretical explanation posits that high-value items disproportionately benefit from semantic processing relative to low-value items; however, this does not explain how this additional processing supports better memory for high-value items. Prior research suggests that semantic processing may benefit memory through item-specific processing or the processing of unique aspects of meaning. To this extent, the …

The Queer And Trans Ecologies Of Shakespeare's Ocean, Elijah Two Bears

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis squarely approaches the overlooked theoretical nexus of early modern blue ecologies and LGBTQIA2S+ studies to argue that Shakespeare's ocean is a deeply queer space that inspires both queer and trans effects in his characters, plays, and audiences across time. I argue you can’t fully process Shakespeare’s aquatic environments, and the broader range of his more watery plays, without accounting for the queer destabilization and trans self-fashioning that is inextricably linked with encountering the ocean, whether it is through shipwreck, ship travel, or near-drownings. This project recreates a lost world using whatever small gems of textual and historical evidence …

The Ability Of Mississippi School Personnel To Recognize And Act On Internalizing Disorders In Students, Madison Varner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Childhood internalizing disorders traditionally do not garner much attention in academic settings; however, previous research has found that 1 in 4 public school students in Mississippi experiences some form of an internalizing disorder. These disorders strongly affect both behavior (e.g. bullying, school attendance, and social performance) and academic performance (e.g. literacy, mathematical learning). Under several existing pieces of legislature, public schools should already be providing treatment for these disorders; however, few schools have any provisions for the numerous students silently struggling. The primary objective of this study was to investigate teachers’ understanding of internalizing disorders and their frequency in school …

Willingness To Use Hiv Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (Prep) And Preferences For A Pharmacy-Based Prep Program Among Men Who Have Sex With Men, Swarnali Goswami

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to: 1) estimate willingness to use PrEP (WTUP) among men who have sex with men (MSM) using meta-analysis; 2) to assess patterns of minority stressors, HIV/AIDS acquisition stress and PrEP stigma among MSM and evaluate the association of such patterns with WTUP, using latent profile analysis; and 3) to elicit MSM’s preferences for a community pharmacy-based PrEP delivery program, using a discrete choice experiment.

First, a meta-analysis using a random-effects model revealed a moderate pooled prevalence proportion for WTUP of 0.58 (95% CI: 0.54-0.61) (or 58 out of 100) among PrEP naïve MSM estimated …

Karaites & Reformers: Two Failed Cases Of Coherent Interpretation, Menashe Chaim Roberts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are two groups which claim that proper textual interpretation does not require extratextual information. They posit that the meaning of texts is discoverable from the words of the text and/or an individual's reason alone. Thus, no extratextual information is required to arrive at a cogent and coherent interpretation. The medieval Karaites reject the notion that there is any such thing as interpretive precedent and everyone's interpretation, when guided by reason, is as valid and coherent as anyone else's. Early Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther argue that all one needs to interpret the Bible is the …

The Current State Of School Culture In Elementary Schools In Mississippi During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Rodney Harrison Hurt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the Spring of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic changed not only the way in which our daily lives were carried out, but it also drastically effected the way schools operated. Many if not all school districts in the state of Mississippi began operating in some type of remote fashion during the spring of 2020. Some school districts switched to an online format while others operated using a hybrid model which may have included work packets being completed at home or a combination of the two. The type of model by which each school operated often depended on the resources available …

A History Of Freed Slaves' Homes In Northern Nigeria, 1900-1926, Ajibola A. Abdulrahman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is about the children rescued from slave traders by the British colonial government in Northern Nigeria in the early twentieth century. The children were first settled in state-owned Freed Slaves Homes located at Zungeru and Borno provinces in 1904. After the state-owned Homes were abolished in 1909, they were moved to the privately-owned Lucy Memorial Freed Slaves’ Home. The study focuses on the experiences of these liberated children within the premises of the Freed Slaves' Homes and in settings outside of these institutions in Northern Nigeria. Drawing on previously unused archival materials obtained from various parts of the …

The Truth Value Of Sentences With Legal Empty Terms., Jose Cubillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is an ongoing debate in philosophy about whether simple sentences containing fictional names are sometimes true, always false, or neither true nor false. Ordinarily, a simple sentence containing names is true if and only if the things designated by those names are the way they are ascribed as being, and false otherwise. For example, the sentence “Faulkner lived in Mississippi” is true because the person designated by ‘Faulkner’ lived in Mississippi whereas the sentence “Faulkner lived in Costa Rica” is false because that person did not reside there. However, this analysis clearly does not work for sentences such as …

"The Wild Asleep": A Cultural And Environmental History Of Ramps, Catherine Jessee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ramps, wild onions, or allium tricoccum are a variety of spring ephemeral, or a flowering plant that emerges for a brief period every spring. In working through stereotypical ideas about Appalachian regional identity, I interpret the environmental history of this plant. Incorporating memory, oral histories, and folklore, this thesis complicates wider conceptions of home, community, and boundary. Tapping into an archive of ramps knowledge as it is created, I ask, what can the future of ramps tell us about place, space, and belonging?

A Novel Crispr/Cas Gene Editing System For Plants Which Bypasses Genetic Transformation And Tissue Culture, Aastha Acharya

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

CRISPR/Cas system is a powerful gene-editing tool that has revolutionized gene editing in many ways. However, the current delivery methods for using CRISPR/Cas system inn plants have some drawbacks that have greatly limited their routine application in plant research and improvement. Specifically,, the methods heavily rely on either genetic transformation for delivering Cas and/or its gRNA coding sequences into the targeted cells or tissue culture, or both for recovering the whole edited plants. To overcome these drawbacks, we have developed a simple, easy to use yet effective system for CRISPR/Cas gene editing in plants that can bypass genetic transformation and …

The Efficacy Of The South Dakota State University Summer Jacks Leap Program, Tessa M. Sundermann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, several studies detail the continuing struggle many students have with college mathematics courses at universities across the United States. The South Dakota State University Summer Jacks LeaP program is a summer bridge mathematics program aimed at improving incoming students’ mathematics success. This analysis used a mixed methods research design to examine the efficacy of the Summer Jacks LeaP program. First, we analyzed the LeaP students’ homework averages, exam 1 scores, final exam scores, and overall grade scores to determine if they were finding success in their fall semester mathematics courses. We also used hypothesis testing to compare LeaP participants …

Beneficial Plant-Microbe Interactions To Improve Nutrient Uptake And Biotic Stress Response In Crops, Jaya Krishna Yakha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mutualism is a very common phenomenon among living organisms on earth. Legumes because of their high protein content, serve as a great nutrient resource for animals. This group of plants can form a mutualistic symbiosis with beneficial microbes. For example, Alfalfa (Medicago) and soybean (Glycine max) can get colonized with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and rhizobia bacteria simultaneously forming a complex tripartite interaction for nutrient benefits. Most of the previous research evaluated individual symbionts, either rhizobia bacteria or AMF, but not both. There are only a few reports which discuss the nutrient exchange mechanisms in a tripartite interaction. Thus, there …

Heuristic Algorithms For Transmission Switching To Reduce Load Shedding, Tanveer Hussain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

“By Following Them, I Was Able To Identify Things I Shared With Them” : Conceptualizing How Social Media Use Influences Genderqueer Identity Development, Margeaux Gaiani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among young genderqueer people, social media can be used as a tool for gender exploration, building support systems, and identity validation. However, literature on how these processes are linked together over time to curate a holistic sense of identity is limited. Using a grounded theory framework, this study seeks to construct a model explaining how gender identity development is linearly influenced by social media use among young genderqueer (transgender, non-binary, genderfluid, etc.) individuals. 20 indepth interviews were conducted with genderqueer participants ranging in age from 18- 26 years old. Participants were recruited through personal contact, referrals, and social media posts. …

Evaluating Fungicide Timing, Efficacy, And Sensitivity As Well As Candidate Resistance Genes Against Fungi Causing Phomopsis Stem Canker In Sunflower, Ruchika Kashyap

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Phomopsis stem canker is one of the major diseases of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) caused by complex of Diaporthe spp., in the U.S. This disease became of economic importance after 2010 epidemic in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota and since then the prevalence of this diseases has increased due to increased average precipitation in these major sunflower growing regions of the U.S. The two important disease management strategies involve the use of fungicides and partially resistant hybrids. However, over the years, researchers and growers have seen varied results on Phomopsis stem canker disease severity reduction and yield gains, when …

An Examination Of Trust In News Mediums By College Students: A Comparison Of Egypt And The Usa, Karim Soliman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Polls have shown a decline in trust in the USA when it comes to trust in Media. This study looks at if trust in news mediums really does matter. The study also compares a sample from USA to Egypt. The study finds that American college students have more trust in traditional news media but use it less than newer forms such as social media. The Egyptian sample has high trust in social media and low trust in traditional news media that are normally under the influence of the Egyptian government. The frame works used are the uses and gratification theory, …

Deforming The Knight: Gawain's Descent Into Monstrosity In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Hannah Held

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sir Gawain has always been marked as a victim in the well-known poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but he is much more than that. Standing with the knights of the Round Table, he seems to be the perfect example of what chivalry should look like, especially with an adherence to the common religious beliefs. However, when put into the context of the manuscript in which it was found, Gawain seems to stand as an allegorical figure of the do-not’s of feudal and religious chivalry. Using the lens of Monster Theory via Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and David Williams, I …

Above-Ground Biomass Estimation In Oat Breeding Nurseries Using Uav-Based Multispectral Data, Rakshya Dhakal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conventional methods of phenotyping for above-ground biomass under field conditions are time consuming, costly, and labor intensive. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) offer a rapid and non-destructive approach for collecting high temporal and spatial resolution imagery of multiple field plots. Vegetation indices (VIs) can be derived from those imagery and have been used broadly for high-throughput biomass estimation, however, they suffer from spectrum saturation issues at high canopy density. In addition, VIs only reflect the canopy spectral information and fail to incorporate the 3-dimensional (3D) canopy structure and architecture information. It also ignores the spatial relationship of pixels to each other …

Gendered Negotiation Of Space: A Study On Gender And Mobility Among Transgender Persons In Pakistan, Sana Illahe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transgender persons, known as khwaja sira in Pakistan, have historically been marginalized and excluded from various spatial domains, as they do not fit the societal norms of binary gender. They are subject to gender discipline by the Pakistani society to coerce them into conforming to the social norms. This research study uses in-depth interviews and applies grounded theory in conjunction with Michel Foucault’s concept of discipline to explore how khwaja sira are subject to societal discipline in Pakistan. The discipline ranges from tacit to overt forms, including verbal and sexual harassment. Khwaja sira are disciplined within their families, in formal …

Pathogen Prevalence In Domestic Sheep In Western Nebraska: Implications For Bighorn Sheep Conservation And Coexistence On A Multi-Use Landscape, Kaytlin Bohr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) and domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are members of the same genus and thus share multiple pathogens that can be spread between them. One specific respiratory pathogen of concern is Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (M. ovipneumoniae), which has been linked to pneumonia epizootics in bighorn sheep that are often characterized by all age die offs upon initial exposure followed by years of low lamb recruitment. Domestic sheep have been identified as one carrier of M. ovipneumoniae with transmission between sheep species occurring when there is close contact on the landscape. To prevent this cross-species transmission, importance has been placed …

Preparation And Characterization Of Cellulose-Based Biodegradable Films From Switchgrass And Spent Coffee Grounds, Sajal Bhattarai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plastic packaging materials, which take more than 700 years to degrade, have polluted land, water, and the atmosphere. The consequent environmental and life hazards require attention to alleviate plastic concerns. Developing plastic-replacing materials could be a viable option. To this end, lignocellulosic fraction from inexpensive and widespread agricultural biomass switchgrass (SG) and biowaste spent coffee grounds (SCG) offer a possible solution, mainly to prepare biodegradable packaging films. Herein, lignocellulosic fraction from SG and SCG has been extracted, solubilized in ZnCl2 solution, and crosslinked through Ca2+ ions to prepare gels and cast biodegradable films. The SG was subjected to three extraction …