Digital Commons Network^™

Consensus-Based Active And Reactive Power Control And Management Of Microgrids, Shruti Singh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microgrids incorporating distributed generation and renewable energy sources offer potential solutions to the energy crisis while modernizing traditional grids. Despite cost-effectiveness in some technologies, financial support remains crucial for expensive ones like PV, fuel cells, and storage technologies. Microgrids bring economic benefits, efficiency, reduced emissions, and improved power quality. Their success hinges on cost reductions in renewables, storage, reliability, and energy management systems, enabling operation both with and without the utility grid.

Economic Dispatch optimizes system costs, considering all constraints. Various methods tackle this problem, including quadratic convex functions, Lagrangian relaxation, and quadratic programming. For microgrids with distributed generators, seamless …

Queer Interethnic Relationships: Couple-Level Minority Stress And Resilience For Intersectionally Marginalized Partners, Sree Sinha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interethnic relationships and same-sex relationships continue to increase in the U.S. While LGBQ and heterosexual people are equally likely to be in romantic relationships, LGBQ individuals are more likely than their straight peers to be in an interracial or interethnic romantic relationship. The present work aims to expand intersectional investigations regarding queer people of color (QPOC), including accounting for their individual as well as relational well-being, by use of the couple-level minority stress (CLMS) paradigm. CLMS theory speaks to the unique stressors experienced as a result of being in a relationship that is societally marginalized, impacting both dyadic and individual …

Exploring The Intersectional Higher Education Experiences Of Latinx Students, Miguel A. Trujillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intersectional experiences of Latinx students in higher education have largely gone underexplored in the literature, particularly when it comes to Latino men. The current literature treats the experiences of the Latinx community as a monolith, when there are multiple potentially impactful intersectional aspects of identity that could influence our lived experiences, such as generational status, documentation status, country of origin, and gender. This three-manuscript dissertation addresses these gaps in the literature by both conducting research that is more descriptive of our respective within-group community and by focusing on the impact that gender may play in the experiences of Latinx …

Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …

Controllable Language Generation Using Deep Learning, Rohola Zandie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The advent of deep neural networks has sparked a revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI), notably with the creation of Transformer models like GPT-X and ChatGPT. These models have surpassed previous methods in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. As the NLP field evolves, there is a need to further understand and question the capabilities of these models. Text generation, a crucial part of NLP, remains an area where our comprehension is limited while being critical in research.

This dissertation focuses on the challenging problem of controlling the general behaviors of language models such as sentiment, topical focus, and logical reasoning. …

Do-It-Together: Informal Transformative Sustainability Education, Derek Brannon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Climate Crisis is an urgent and inescapable reality students are thrust into. Learners must be prepared adequately for their futures, not only for their sakes but also because collective and transformative change is required. Transformative sustainability education provides one pathway to this transformation and focuses on radically altering students’ perceptions about the world and their agency in effecting change on ecological issues. The field of transformative sustainability education is emergent and thus is still fragmented, leaving gaps in the literature. Little research has been conducted on how informal and nonformal university spaces can be used to create transformative experiences …

Building Teachers’ Capacity To Implement Equitable Family, School, And Community Partnerships Through School Psychologists’ Consultation: The Partnership Capacity Building Consultation Model And Case Study, Bryanna S. Fatigate

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The urgency to prioritize equity-driven policies is amplified by the disproportionate education and health outcomes that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eradicating inequity demands the prioritization of robust family, school, and community partnerships (FSCP). For decades, research has highlighted the benefits of FSCP, which may include improvements in student academic achievement, behavior, ratings of school climate, and attendance; furthermore, FSCP is associated with higher guardian involvement, mentor opportunities, career development, and a reduced need for more intensive services such as special education (Adelman & Taylor, 2015; Anderson- Butcher & Anderson, 2018; Constantino, 2016). To reap the benefits of such partnerships, …

Terrain And Adversary-Aware Autonomous Robot Navigation, Aniekan Ufot Inyang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In autonomous robot navigation, the robot is able to understand the environment around it for intelligent navigation. From its world model of this environment, it generates a global plan for navigation from a position to a goal based on different factors. This research aims to implement autonomous robot navigation by learning terrain affordances: traversability (moving quickly) and concealment (staying hidden from an adversary) using the Preference-based Inverse Reward Learning (PbIRL) methodology. The PbIRL methodology reduces the barrier of generating initial demonstration data to learn the terrain affordances by using a human expert’s preferences to learn individual weights over the terrain …

The Treasury Of Stories: Policy Narratives Of Anti-Illicit Finance, Paul Christopher Kemp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how the US government identifies and responds to the problem of illicit finance, specifically, why the US Treasury utilizes certain approaches over others. I employ a comparative case study of three relatively recent, non-traditional approaches in the Treasury’s anti-illicit finance repertoire: targeted financial sanctions (a case of strong policy action), anti-money laundering in real estate (a case of tentative policy action), and the proposed demonetization of high denomination notes (a case of policy inaction). While considering a wide range of plausible explanations for this variation in policy action, I argue that the Treasury’s decision to either …

Not Too Scared To Enter: Understanding The Uppsala Model’S Complexity As Sme Decision Makers Enter High-Risk Countries, Andrew Kindfuller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Johanson and Vahlne’s Uppsala internationalization model is a framework for understanding sequential internationalization, experiential learning, and the commitment decision processes designed to answer the question: “Why and how do firms internationalize?” Each potential market is distinctive due to dissimilar languages, cultures, religions, ethics, political systems, laws, business norms, etc. – all these perceptual differences, which can potentially block the free flow of information between markets, are called “psychic distance.” By completing 34 detailed, semi-structured interviews with executives who have recently made significant financial or resource commitments to enter 28 different challenging countries, this is the first study to focus with …

Historical Narrative In The Music Of Sid Meier’S Civilization Vi, Alec Larner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is a 2016 strategy video game in which the player leads a historical civilization from 4000 BC to the present. The Civilization series is the subject of much scholarly writing, especially its representation of history and non- Western cultures. My work builds on Karen Cook’s research (2014) on the technological progress and American hegemonic identity signaled by Civilization IV’s soundtrack. I argue that the music in Civilization VI contributes to a Eurocentric teleological progress narrative of history inherent in the structure of the game: the idea that history is a story of inevitable and positive …

Risky Behavior As Motivated Emotion Regulation: A Mixed-Method Approach, Lyneé A. Herrera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Engaging in risky health behaviors is a ubiquitous human experience that often marks developmental progression from adolescence into adulthood. While much previous research has framed risky behaviors in terms of negative legal, social, and public health consequences, less empirical work has been done on potential benefits of their engagement. A growing body of research has identified emotion regulation deficits as a significant driver of risky behavior engagement, suggesting that these behaviors may offer perceived emotional benefits when other regulation strategies are less accessible. Previous research has shown that emotional outcomes can be influenced by the regulation strategies one chooses to …

International Doctoral Student Experiences In Educational Administration Programs In The United States: A Phenomenological Study, Ping Robert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: In recent years, more international students are enrolling in Educational Administration (EA) programs in the United States. While EA programs wish to recruit and retain international students, more research is needed on supporting international graduate students in graduate education programs and EA programs specifically. Purpose: The present phenomenological study aims to understand the experience of international doctoral students in U.S. EA programs. The present research was guided by the question: “What is the essence of international postgraduate student experiences in EA programs in the United States?” Methodology: The present study used hermeneutic phenomenology to describe and interpret data from …

The Gender And Race Intersectional Disproportionality-Tool (Grid-T): An Exploration Of Practitioners’ Access To And Use Of High-Quality Data For Special Education Placement, Audrey J. Ford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Disproportionality in special education (SPED) is upheld by systems and individuals, policies, and practices that both reflect and shape the local communities within which it exists. Even with many proposed solutions for disproportionality, it persists. This two-manuscript dissertation explores two characteristics that make disproportionality difficult to solve (e.g., inconsistent findings and persistence) and proposes a tool to inform data-based decision making in interventions for disproportionality in SPED.

Manuscript One (M1) includes a literature review and development of the Gender and Race Intersectionality Disproportionality- Tool (GRID-T). Based on the findings of the literature review about inconsistence and persistence, I crafted three …

Experience Matters: Exploring How Firms Build Dynamic Capabilities Through Execution Of The M&A Transaction Process, Chauntel R. Graves

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Existing M&A and organizational learning theory research suggests the firm can develop expertise in M&A process execution with each successive M&A transaction experience. The ability to align, assimilate and exploit this learning to build acquisition capability over time aligns with the dynamic capabilities theory. This study inductively explores how the firm learns from previous acquisition experience and continuously improves its M&A process capability. While there are three dimensions of dynamic capabilities, this study focuses on the Sensing dimension – identifying opportunities and threats meeting the demands of an ever-evolving business environment. Experienced M&A professionals suggest essential factors considered consequential to …

The Struggle Is Real: Constructing Liberative Meaning Making That Facilitates Black Student’S Authentic Identity Formation And Navigation Through Predominately White Institutions, Felicia Marie George

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on how Black students’ use of navigational capital reflects a quest for complex subjectivity that facilitates authentic identity formation and navigation through a private, predominantly white, four-year, R1 institution (PWI’s). A qualitative study that used portraiture methodology was conducted to collect stories of the lived experience and perceptions of two Black senior undergraduate students who attended a PWI. Their stories provided the foundation for constructing liberative meaning making (LMM), an ethic of praxis that uses a hermeneutics of listening to heighten students’ awareness of and living from interiority. The concept engages De La Torre’s theory of liberative …

Polar Body Membrane Breakdown Occurs Independent Of Macroautophagy In C. Elegans, Shruti Kolli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Failure to digest cell corpses can lead to lupus-like autoimmune disorders in mammals. To better understand if LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP) drives cell corpse breakdown in phagolysosomes, we studied the clearance of the C. elegans polar body during embryonic development. ATG16L1 has separable roles in regulating LC3 recruitment during macroautophagy and LAP. We demonstrated that the ATG16L1 C. elegans orthologs, ATG-16.1 and ATG-16.2, function redundantly to promote polar body membrane breakdown. We also discovered that truncating the LAP-specific WD40 domain of ATG-16.2 unexpectedly disrupts autophagy. Furthermore, we confirmed that polar body membrane breakdown occurs independent of macroautophagy. We also showed that …

Risk And Promotive Factors For Perinatal Mental Health Problems: Adverse And Benevolent Childhood Experiences And Contemporaneous Support And Stress, Jillian S. Merrick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite a growing body of research on childhood risk and promotive factors for perinatal mental health, as well as extensive research on adulthood risk and promotive factors for these problems, little research considers childhood and adulthood experiences alongside one another. The current study addressed this gap by examining childhood experiences, both adverse and benevolent, alongside contemporaneous sociodemographic stress and social support as predictors of depression and PTSD symptoms during pregnancy and at 3-4 months postnatal.

Participants were 175 ethnically-diverse women (M = 28.07 years, SD = 5.68, range = 18-40; 38.9% White, 25.7% Latina, 16.6% Black, 12.0% biracial/multiracial, 6.8% …

Childhood Maltreatment And Romantic Relationship Functioning During Pregnancy: Women’S Narrative Coherence About Partners And Couples’ Conflict Communication And Recovery, Laura M. River

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with difficulties in romantic relationships in adulthood, including conflict, less support, and difficulties in communication. However, little is known about the impact of CM on romantic relationship functioning in the context of pregnancy, during which time romantic relationships are highly influential for family well-being. Additionally, very limited research has been conducted on fathers’ relationship experiences after a history of CM. In a set of two papers, this dissertation examined the effects of CM on 1) pregnant women’s narrative coherence about their romantic partners and 2) couples’ (pregnant women and babies’ fathers) observed conflict communication and …

The Post-Wwii American Picaro As Prophet Of Human Dignity: A Study Of Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man, Flannery O’Connor’S The Violent Bear It Away, And Saul Bellow’S Henderson The Rain King, Elijah Clayton Null

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The picaro, a rascal or rogue who tells his or her life story, is an important but understudied figure in midcentury American letters. Critics of the 1960s, such as R.W.B. Lewis, often discussed the picaro and the picaresque, but recent American scholarship has not revisited the role and importance of this figure and genre.

This study employs the methodologies of historicism, formalism, and intellectual history to explain how American authors in the period after WWII used the picaro and picaresque, a figure and genre that originated in 16th century Spain, as vehicles for their explorations of the question of human …

Anxiety As A Compensatory Factor For Executive Functioning Abilities And Later Adhd Symptoms In Youth With Adhd, Rebecca Slomowitz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Higher ADHD symptoms have been associated with reduced executive functioning (EF) performance in children. However, an emerging body of research has suggested that in children with higher ADHD symptoms, higher levels of anxiety symptoms may contribute to buffered executive functioning (EF) performance, termed a compensatory interaction. However, results investigating this hypothesis have been mixed, possibly due to the use of smaller sample sizes, cross-sectional datasets, and infrequent testing of compensatory interaction effects between ADHD and anxiety symptoms. The current study expands upon the previous literature by testing for compensatory interactions between anxiety symptoms and ADHD symptoms (e.g., inattention and hyperactive-impulsive …

“Long Live Ear X-Tacy!”: An Oral History Study Of Rhetorics Of Nostalgia And Place., Aubrie Warner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to explore rhetorical placemaking through how people understand and construct narratives around places that no longer exist. In doing so, it examines the relationship between nostalgia and place — how rhetorical construction of place is influenced and/or informed by rhetorics of nostalgia, how our experiences influence our sense of place (past and present), and how we create continuity for ourselves in the construction and maintenance of particular narratives. This study contributes to the emerging field of rhetorics of nostalgia and places it in direct conversation with rhetorics of place and unpacks how these two are more connected …

False Memories Are Impacted By Semantic Pairing Of Drm Lists., Ryan Coleman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the DRM paradigm, experience of semantically related words leads to false memories of related words called critical lures. These false memories serve as evidence that the relationship between items in a DRM list contribute to an overall gist or central concept for the experience. The present studies aim to investigate whether the higher-order semantic relationship that exists between different DRM lists can also influence recognition memory. Study 1 compared memory confidence ratings for list items and critical lures to two metrics: “Temporal Contiguity”, how closely in time lists appeared to each other at encoding, and “Semantic Distance”, the semantic …

A Machine Learning Approach To Constructing Ramsey Graphs Leads To The Trahtenbrot-Zykov Problem., Emily Hawboldt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Attempts at approaching the well-known and difficult problem of constructing Ramsey graphs via machine learning lead to another difficult problem posed by Zykov in 1963 (now commonly referred to as the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem): For which graphs F does there exist some graph G such that the neighborhood of every vertex in G induces a subgraph isomorphic to F? Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to graph theory. Chapter 2 introduces Ramsey theory for graphs. Chapter 3 details a reinforcement learning implementation for Ramsey graph construction. The implementation is based on board game software, specifically the AlphaZero program and its …

Swallow, Breathing And Survival: Sex-Specific Effects Of Opioids., Michael Frazure

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a series of studies examining mechanisms of deglutition and respiration, and how these vital processes are impacted by opioids. The experiments in Chapter Two investigated the role of the upper esophagus in airway protection through systematic activation of pharyngeal and esophageal mechanoreceptors in a cat electromyography model. Chapter Three compared effects of opioid administration on breathing and swallowing between male and female rats, and found that females are more susceptible to opioid-induced depression of breathing and swallow than males. Findings from Chapters Two and Three led to the development of a translational model of opioid-induced dysphagia using …

Injury Induced Neuroplasticity And Cell Specific Targeting Of The Lumbar Enlargement For Gene Therapy., Brandon Lee Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an examination of spinal cord injury induced neuroplasticity and tests whether noninvasive gene therapy can successfully target neurons in the lumbar spinal cord. It begins with an overview of neural control of locomotion and a brief summary of therapeutics that are used and/or in development for treating spinal anatomically characterize s subset of neurons in the spinal cord, long ascending propriospinal neurons, that are involved in interlimb coordination. Characterization of these neurons allows for subsequent evaluation of their potential involvement in injury induced neuroplasticity. This dissertation is divided into five chapters, covering spinal cord injury and therapeutics. …

Public Space And Well-Being: An Empirical Study Of Central Park In Old Louisville., Maryam Entezam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urban green spaces have been receiving attention in urban planning and the health profession in the 21^st century as environmental elements that contribute to well-being. This dissertation explored the relationship between green space usage and individuals’ physical, mental, and social well-being. This empirical research focused on Central Park in Old Louisville to examine how residents use the park and whether it contributes to the well-being of residents. After exploring the existing literature, I identified four well-being indices: (1) perceived health (PHI), (2) health outcome (HOI), (3) mental well-being (MWI), and (4) social well-being (SWI). Frequent Park usage is expected …

Teachers And Administrators' Perceptions Of The Implementation Of District Student Conduct Procedures., Amy Ghibaudy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While there is a body of research about student conduct policies and procedures, there is a lack of research about how different role groups work together to implement these procedures and have a positive working interpersonal relationship. This sequential mixed methods case study design takes place in a large urban school district. In this study, I investigate the perceptions that educators have on the implementation of student conduct procedures in their school. I also explore how their perceptions of each other shape their interpersonal relationships. I used Normalization Process Theory (NPT) as my guiding theoretical framework. This study drew upon …

The Influence Of Power On Racial Identity And Social Power: Learning While A Minority In A Bullitt County High School In Kentucky., Michele Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to examine the influence of power on racial identity and social awareness of minority high schools’ students in Bullitt County, Kentucky. The research will come from the student perspective of those attending high school with students predominantly from another racial background. Using purposeful sampling, 12 students participated in semi-structured interviews, providing insight into three research questions regarding racial identity, social power, and social awareness. Student participants used their voice to share their lived educational experiences attending school with students from another racial background. Interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed using In Vivo and …

Perception Is Reality! How Perception Shapes Our World., Nicole Clay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the role different photography techniques play in how images are perceived. There have existed techniques for manipulating the perception of images since the creation of the camera. The techniques examined in this paper are editing, staging, and the use of captions. In recent years, perception has become a powerful tool for political parties to manipulate. This manipulation of perception has led to an increasing distrust in the images the media presents to the public. This paper does not seek to answer any questions but to encourage people to have a greater understanding of photography.