Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of A Hek293 Cell Line To Show Inhibition Of Tau Aggregation, Justin Ray Shady

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intracellular deposition of aggregated tau is the hallmark of several different tauopathies, the most widespread of these being Alzheimer's disease. Tau is a highly soluble, intrinsically disordered, microtubule associated protein. Tau's native function is to stabilize microtubule formation in the axons of neurons. Post translational modification such as hyperphosphorylation as well as several familial mutations allow tau to nucleate and form fibrils. These fibrils can recruit healthy monomers onto their ends in a fashion described as template-assisted growth. Tau has 6 isoforms that vary by the inclusion or exclusion of two N-terminal repeats and the inclusion or exclusion of the …

Applied Machine Learning For Classification Of Musculoskeletal Inference Using Neural Networks And Component Analysis, Shaswat Sharma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is acquiring more recognition than ever by researchers and machine learning practitioners. AI has found significance in many applications like biomedical research for cancer diagnosis using image analysis, pharmaceutical research, and, diagnosis and prognosis of diseases based on knowledge about patients' previous conditions. Due to the increased computational power of modern computers implementing AI, there has been an increase in the feasibility of performing more complex research.

Within the field of orthopedic biomechanics, this research considers complex time-series dataset of the "sit-to-stand" motion of 48 Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) patients that was collected by the Human Dynamics …

"Stretched Thin": Pregnancy And Motherhood In Clinical And Counseling Psychology Doctoral Programs, Kimberlee Yalango

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Given that women now earn the majority of psychology doctoral degrees in the United States (Aud et al., 2012), there needs to be consideration of unique social and systemic difficulties that women may face during their studies. One particular issue of importance is women's choice to become pregnant and start families during their graduate education. Despite the challenges of becoming pregnant during a doctoral program and balancing the roles of mother and student, there has been limited research that examines this phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of women who become pregnant during their time …

Preparing The Saudi Educational System To Serve The 2030 Vision: A Comparative Analysis Study, Wala'a Bunaiyan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Saudi Arabia's 2030 Vision (2019) aims to solidify the kingdom's influence in the Middle East while also diversifying the economy and increasing quality of life and access to opportunity for Saudis. One critical component of preparing Saudis for the job market is addressing low English language proficiency among students in the public school system (Rugh, 2002a, 2002b; Habbash, 2011; Elyas & Picard, 2011; Alrashidi & Phan, 2015). This study reviews existing literature on the Saudi Arabian educational system, the controversy surrounding English language instruction, and the importance of English for economic opportunity. Then, using transformative leadership (Shields, 2010) as the …

Evaluation Of A Sexual Health Training For Child Welfare Workers, Katie Massey Comsb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Elevated rates of early pregnancy and parenting among youth in foster care (YFC) are well documented. Training child welfare workers to provide sexual health information and resources is stated throughout the extant literature as a pressing need in efforts to prevent unintended pregnancy among YFC. However, few child welfare agencies offer such training to their workers, and little is known about the extent to which conversations about sexual and reproductive health already occur between child welfare workers and youth. Thus, this study aimed to: a) assess baseline attitudes, knowledge, and communication among child welfare workers regarding sexual health of …

Show Me A Sign: How Signs Embedded Within Social Media Shape And Influence Outdoor Recreational Tourists' Decision-Making Processes At Colorado State Parks, Sarah Marie Norlin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to determine the ways in which signs within social media posts on Instagram and Facebook frame the way that outdoor recreational tourists make decisions about Colorado state parks' locations, services and activities. Surveys were conducted at 6 Colorado state parks in the 2018 spring, summer, and fall months. These surveys asked respondents to answer multiple choice and open ended questions about their social media habits, their outdoor recreation habits, and their opinions about images displayed on Colorado Parks and Wildlife's social media pages.

A total of 93 surveys were collected during the research period. …

The Use Of Clinical Judgment In Differentiating Symptoms Of Autism Spectrum Disorder From Those Of Other Childhood Conditions: A Delphi Study, Staci Jordan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

More and more, due to long waiting lists at diagnostic clinics and access barriers for certain segments of the population, schools are often the first environment in which children are evaluated for ASD (Sullivan, 2013). And while accurate identification of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is essential for proper treatment and service provision, large percentages of school and community-based identifications of ASD are overturned when children are re-evaluated with strict clinical criteria (Wiggins et al., 2015). In part, challenges faced in accurately differentiating ASD from other conditions may be contributed to the diagnostic complexities of the condition itself. Clinical expertise is …

Gender, Social Networks, And Labor Disputes: Household Archaeology At The Industrial Mine Camp, Laura Gwynne Vernon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Industrial Mine at Superior, operating from 1895 to 1945, was one of many coal mines situated within a region known as the Colorado Northern Coal fields. It is exceptional only in that it was one of the largest coal producers in the area and because it was the sole mine in the region with both a company town and company store. Through comparative analysis with the previously investigated mine camp in the southern Colorado coal fields at Berwind, this thesis examines how camp housing structured the lives of women living at the Industrial Mine, as well as how women's …

Exploring The Moderation Mechanisms Of The Association Between Acculturative Stress And Social Self-Efficacy Among Asian International Students, Jinzhao Zhao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Asian international students account for 70% of international students in the U.S., which makes 4.3% of total population enrolled in American universities and colleges. They experience stress related to adapting to mainstream culture in the U.S. (i.e., acculturative stress), which negatively impacts their mental health and view of self. The negative impacts also include willingness and ability to perform social behaviors and to maintain interpersonal relationships (i.e., social self-efficacy). Previous acculturation studies proposed from a theoretical perspective that several factors may alleviate the negative impact of acculturative stress and enhance Asian international students' social self-efficacy. These factors include acculturation orientation …

Commitment And Romantic Alternative Monitoring, Lane Laurel Ritchie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines cognitive and behavioral factors involved in the management of potential alternative partners. Two studies are described here, each in a separate paper. The first study investigates perceptions of potential alternative partners as presented in an experimental paradigm (Study 1) and the second study examines links between alternative monitoring and relationship outcomes, measured longitudinally in survey research (Study 2). In the first study, Perceptual Downgrading and Relationship Commitment, I use a well-established paradigm to test a novel series of questions: Do individuals in committed relationships perceive attractive others as less attractive than single people do? This phenomenon …

Defining The Relationship: Intentional Decision-Making And Sexual Risk In Adolescent And Young Adult Romantic Relationships, Kayla Knopp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents three manuscripts addressing different sets of findings related to the "defining the relationship" (DTR) talk in adolescents' and young adults' romantic relationships. Paper 1 describes descriptive results from two studies, one utilizing a college undergraduate young adult sample (N = 341) and the other using a nationwide online sample of 15 to 17-year-old adolescents (N = 248). Key findings from Paper 1 indicate that DTR talks were used frequently in the relationships of young people, and were associated with relationship commitment and sexual behaviors. Paper 2 describes more in-depth analyses testing associations between having a …

Paving The Way For Multidisciplinary Smart Campus Infrastructure: Leveraging Du's Unique Campus For The Advancement Of Smart Campus Culture, Camerron T. Mismash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Institutions are embracing smart technologies to reap their benefits while simultaneously innovating new uses. From localized renewable energy generation to health monitoring and everything in between, academic campuses globally are paving the way for smart technology application. Eight primary categories have been identified in which institutions are applying smart technologies. Energy development is on the forefront of these smart initiatives. The University of Denver has begun its Smart Campus Initiative by implementing a revolving fund to invest in campus improvements related to the offset of carbon. By comparing how institutions are investing in smart campus initiatives and analyzing costs associated …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Goal Setting In Group Treatment In A Correctional Institution, Marisa Kostiuk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Incarcerated offenders represent a large proportion of the American population. Additionally, incarcerated offenders also have high rates of mental health disorders and psychological distress. Given that a significant number of incarcerated offenders also struggle with mental health concerns, providing effective treatment is crucial. However, the examination of outcome-based research has lagged considerably with this particularly vulnerable population. One notable aspect of an individual's adaptive and healthy functioning is the development and implementation of prosocial goals. Despite the well-developed literature base on the beneficial impacts of goal setting, the use of goal setting as a treatment intervention has been largely overlooked …

A Comparative Study Of Electoral Systems: Majoritarian Rules And Electoral Violence In Africa, Gavin M. Kiger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An increasing trend of violent elections is undermining the former optimism over multi-party elections in Africa. Electoral systems are frequently associated with election violence, but the effects of different systems are relatively unknown. This study addresses this gap and assesses whether conditions for electoral violence are greater under certain electoral systems compared to others. Using a new time-series cross sectional (TSCS) dataset, I conduct an analysis of election violence in sub-Saharan Africa from 1995-2013. Overall, I find evidence for the violence-permitting nature of majoritarian systems, and the violence-constraining nature of proportional representation systems. These findings remain after controlling for the …

Changing The Rules Of The Game: Can Voicing For Social Responsibility Influence Market Behavior Toward Greater Inclusiveness In Economic Development?, Eileen M. Hoffmann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines social responsibility within a capitalist economy by investigating socially responsible investing and, tangentially, corporate social responsibility. These concepts have been at the heart of economic and legal debates for hundreds of years, with no clearly defined consensus regarding how to account for multi-stakeholder welfare inside the market system. This point is brought to life by analyzing two dominant twentieth-century economic periods, 1945-1975/79 and post-1980, through the deliberations of Keynesian economics and Milton Friedman.

This thesis postulates that since the 2008 global financial crisis, a new (i.e. third) economic period is taking shape, ushered in by both the …

Dominating The Disease: A Transnational Feminist Perspective Of U.S. Health Coloniality, Jessica Ann Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

HIV has been a pandemic since the 1980s with 70 million people infected since the beginning, about 35 million people have died of complications resulting from HIV, and an estimated 36.9 million people living with HIV in 2017 (WHO, "HIV and AIDS"). Many organizations around the world have tried to tackle this issue, however most of these organizations are based in the West or have Western organizations holding the majority of power and control. People in these organizations have the intention of ending the spread of HIV, but they also sometimes spread Western ideology.

This work brings together communication scholarship …

Behind The Mask Of Morality: (E)Urochristian Bioethics And The Colonial-Racial Discourse, Jennifer L. Mccurdy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The discipline of bioethics is insufficient and ineffective in addressing the persistent issues of racism and racial inequalities in healthcare. A minority of bioethicists are indeed attentive to issues such as implicit bias, structural racism, power inequalities, and the social determinants of health. Yet, these efforts do not consider the colonial-racial discourse -- that racism is an instrument of eurochristian colonialism, and bioethics is a product of that same colonial worldview. Exposing mainstream bioethicists to the work of anti-colonial scholars and activists would provide bioethicists a framework through which they would be better equipped to address issues of race through: …

Gramscian Perspectives On Populism, Luke William Mooberry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasingly liberal states are facing challenges from populist movements. This paper argues that the prison writings of Antonio Gramsci can provide important insights into the phenomenon and how to counteract it. The first two sections outline a set of Gramscian analytical tools: hegemony, non-hegemony, passive revolution, and Caesarism. These theoretical tools are then applied to different periods of the Third Republic of France, 1870-1940. This paper looks at this French example because it features unique relationships between populism, ideology, and the experience of liberalism prior to World War II. The third section demonstrates the implications of non-hegemony within international society, …

Application Of Retrograde Analysis To Fighting Games, Kristen Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of the fighting game AI competition, there has been recent interest in two-player fighting games. Monte-Carlo Tree-Search approaches currently dominate the competition, but it is unclear if this is the best approach for all fighting games. In this thesis we study the design of two-player fighting games and the consequences of the game design on the types of AI that should be used for playing the game, as well as formally define the state space that fighting games are based on. Additionally, we also characterize how AI can solve the game given a simultaneous action game model, …

Photoassisted Synthesis Of Complex Polyheterocycles Via Esipt-Driven Dearomative Intramolecular Cycloadditions, Dmitry Kuznetsov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is focused on the development of novel photoassisted synthetic methodologies that provide straightforward access to complex and diverse libraries of polyheterocycles from modularly assembled precursors. All methods are based on the dearomative cycloadditions between two components: (i) o-azaxylylenes, generated by the excited-state intramolecular proton transfer, and (ii) tethered arene groups.

We have demonstrated the synthetic utility of four new photoinduced processes that yield complex products amenable for post-photochemical modifications:

• [4+4] Cycloaddition of o-azaxylylenes to 1,3,4-oxadiazoles with subsequent dinitrogen extrusion. This reaction furnishes compounds outfitted with epoxide fragments, which undergo ring-openings with various nucleophiles; furthermore, the oxidized products …

Mechanistic Insight Into Tau Fibril Cross-Seeding Barriers: Structural Order And Disorder, Hilary Ann Weismiller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Filamentous deposition of microtubule-associated protein tau is a hallmark for a number of neurodegenerative diseases collectively termed tauopathies. While tau fibrils are directly linked to the etiology and pathogenesis of these diseases, fibril morphology and their phenotypic presentation can be quite disparate. Alternative splicing of tau results in two main isoform groups, four-repeat (4R) tau and three-repeat (3R), identified by their number of microtubule binding repeats. Some diseases show deposition of both 4R and 3R isoforms, while others show preferential deposition of only one type. The conformational templated growth scheme and trans-synaptic spreading of fibrils is influenced by fibril conformation. …

When Do Ties Bind? Foreign Fighters, Social Embeddedness, And Combatant Repertoires Of Behavior During Civil War, Pauline Luz Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How does the extent to which rebel organizations are embedded into local conflict contexts - i.e. the extent to which they "fit in" or "stand out" from local populations - affect their behavior on and off the battlefield during civil war? This dissertation examines why rebel group propensities to engage in governance and violence during war vary at the macro and microlevels of analysis and uses as its point of departure the presence of foreign fighters in the ranks of rebel groups engaged in civil war. I employ a cross-national analysis of insurgencies from 1989-2011, and also conduct a theory-testing …

Reclaiming The Radical Economic Message Of Luke, David Dean Mimier King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Of the four canonical gospels of the New Testament, the one most concerned with poverty, wealth, and the ethics of possession is Luke. It contains more economic material and a sharper message than do Mark, Matthew, or John. A centuries-long debate rages over just how revolutionary Luke’s message is. This dissertation employs redactional, literary, statistical, historical, and theological methodologies to recover Luke’s radical economic message, to place it in its ancient context, and to tease out its prophetic implications for today. It argues that Luke has a radical message of good news for the poor and a call for resistance …

Using Repeat Photography To Examine Change In A U.S. National Park Gateway Community: A Case Study Of Estes Park, Colorado, Caitlin Lebeda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the creation of the National Park Service in the United States, tourists from around the world visiting America's national parks are served by gateway communities. Gateway communities are the towns and cities that border public lands and protected spaces. The impact of our visits on these gateway communities is considerable, with many gateways and their residents relying on consistent and ever-increasing visitation to national parks to spur economic growth and development. To better understand the impacts that national park designations have had on their gateway communities, it is important to determine what changes have occurred both physically and culturally …

Individual Adjustment As A Predictor Of Improvements In Romantic Relationship Quality From Adolescence To Adulthood, Jamie Novak Shoop

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous work suggests that individuals who experience a poor quality romantic relationship during adolescence are at heightened risk of experiencing poor quality romantic relationships in adulthood. However, this literature has not yet identified factors that may predict which individuals will go on to experience improved romantic relationship quality in adulthood, despite having experienced a poor quality romantic relationship during adolescence. The goal of the current study was to examine whether adolescents' psychosocial adjustment (internalizing and externalizing symptoms, substance use, and self-esteem) predicted improvements in the quality of their subsequent romantic relationships. Data were drawn from a community sample of 200 …

Automation And Adaptation: Information Technology, Work Practices, And Labor Demand At Three Firms, Spencer J. Rockwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of information and communication technology to automate routine tasks involves two types of innovation: technological and organizational. Together, improvements in technological capabilities and complementary changes made by firms in the way they organize work and implement work practices constitute the conditions under which machines substitute for or complement human workers. Building on the prevailing model of routine-biased technical change and recent insights into organizational complementarities, I conduct three qualitative case studies in health care and real estate to assess the relationship between technology and firm-level labor demand. Unique combinations of technological innovation, organizational complementarity, and decision-making at each …

Social Determinants Of Health Theory: Policy Entry Points For Healthcare Providers, Kiah R. Vandergrift

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a shifting paradigm in the U.S. healthcare system that will re-define the role that the healthcare provider plays in the production of health. It does this by first acknowledging two differing economic theories on the production of health: Human Capital Theory and Social Determinants of Health theory, and how both schools of thought have contributed to the paradigm that healthcare providers only play a role in the end stages of health production - to heal those who are already ill. However, policy, payment, and delivery system reforms have begun to force healthcare providers to re-think how they …

Restorative Injustice: A Study Of Failed Implementation Of Restorative Practices At An Urban High School, Paul Gerard Cama

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The restorative justice process utilizes various intervention strategies created by indigenous tribes throughout the world, as an alternative to procedural justice (Zehr, 2002). In modern education, restorative justice was incorporated into the public-school system, where it has evolved into a preemptive measure to combat punitive discipline policies that is often seen as both racially insensitive and detrimental to the learning of students. The purpose of this study was to examine the implementation process of a school based restorative justice program at an urban high school and focused on how these interventions were implemented, what resources were allocated, and how it …

Probabilistic Record Linkage With Elliptic Curve Operations, Shreya Dhiren Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Federated query processing for an electronic health record infrastructure enables large epidemiology studies using data integrated from geographically dispersed medical institutions. However, government imposed privacy regulations prohibit disclosure of patient's health record outside the context of clinical care, thereby making it difficult to determine which records correspond to the same entity in the process of query aggregation.

Privacy-preserving record linkage is an actively pursued research area to facilitate the linkage of database records under the constraints of regulations that do not allow the linkage agents to learn sensitive identities of record owners. In earlier works, scalability has been shown to …

Transgenerational Effects Of Maternal Age On Offspring Fitness In Crickets, Jacob D. Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Advanced parental age is an important aspect of parental condition that can have both positive and negative effects on offspring fitness, and thus, parental age can be considered a parental effect. As a parental effect, parental age may affect a variety of offspring traits and may cascade to influence several generations of offspring. Given the complexities of studying both paternal and maternal age, we studied the effects of maternal age only. Using the Pacific field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus, we asked 1) does maternal age have influences over several generations of offspring and 2) does maternal age influence the reproductive …