Digital Commons Network^™

Use Of Performance Information By Local Government Administrators: Evidence From Florida, Tamara Dimitrijevska-Markoski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the factors that facilitate and hinder the use of performance information by public administrators in local governments in Florida. Acknowledging the incompleteness of many theoretical and conceptual models in previous performance management studies and the absence of theory on the use of performance information; this study utilizes a grounded theory approach to develop and test a model analyzing the use of performance information. The research focuses on cities and counties, members of the Florida Benchmarking Consortium (FBC), and surveys public administrators whose tasks are related with the collection and/or reporting of performance information. The study examines three …

Blood Moon, Brendan Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Blood Moon is a collection of short stories that explore friendship, addiction, and punk subculture. Centered around a hardcore band called Dead Phoenix, the three members—Eliot, Noah, and Josh—go on tour, live in a punk house, and plunge headfirst into opioid addiction. The stories explore their lives before they played together in the band, while touring with the band, and after the band's controversial breakup. These stories attempt to show that music, identity, and temporary bonds forever alter the trajectory of a person's life.

(In)Tangible Things, Ryan Skaryd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

(In)Tangible Things is a collection of memoir essays and poems that examines loss, pain, and identity. Many pieces explore familial ties through separation, secrecy, and divorce, while other stories and poems observe the author's connection to drag culture, sexuality, eating disorders, and time itself. Using techniques such as framing devices, backwards storytelling, and delineated narrative, the author invites the reader to experience memories and moments from his past that show consistency and change, betrayal and forgiveness.

Because You Are Beautiful And Dead, Yvonne Amey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The poems in Because You Are Beautiful and Dead deal with dysfunctional people, substance abuse, loss, and death and dying. The poems also highlight the struggle of the poet/speaker finding her place in a hideous world, which, paradoxically, she really doesn't want to belong. The poems are influenced by the playful and sad imagery and subject matter of poet Matthew Dickman. These poems, like Dickman's, are assessable and quirky. Michael Earl Craig and Terrance Hayes are two other influences. Hayes' work is artistic and experimental. Michael Earl Craig's poems have a brilliance that isn't fueled in its complex or radical …

Mechanism Of Actin Bundle Assembly, Mechanics And Structure By Ion Interaction, Nicholas Castaneda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The assembly of actin filaments into bundles plays an essential role in mechanical strength and dynamic reorganization of cytoskeleton. Divalent counterions at high concentrations promote bundle formation through electrostatic attraction between charged filaments. Although it has been hypothesized that specific cation interactions may contribute to salt-induced bundling, molecular mechanisms of how salt modulates bundle assembly and mechanics are not well established. Here we determine the mechanical and dynamic properties of actin bundles with physiologically relevant cations. Using total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, we measure the bending stiffness of actin bundles determined by persistence length analysis. We characterize real-time formation …

Some Girls, Sabrina Napolitano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This novel in stories explores the viewpoint of an unnamed, agender narrator as they navigate their life from childhood into early adulthood. Through the narrator's unique lens, the stories explore gender, sexuality, mental illness, family, and loneliness. The narrator's struggles with belonging and overarching feelings of abandonment intertwine with the sometimes isolating and dangerous landscape of Florida. From their interactions with both Florida and the people who pass through their life, the narrator begins to learn how to accept who are they are, without apology.

The Modern Church Communicates: Rhetoric And Hypertext In Church Website Design, Edward Palmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Internet and the World Wide Web have supplanted many paper-based information systems. People turn to the web to locate local services in the same way they find ecommerce sites such as Amazon. Churches of all sizes must develop effective and attractive websites to attract new members and inform existing members. These two groups form distinct audiences that must be correctly targeted by the website content. Other churches may visit to gather ideas for their programs; they are a third group of site visitors. Organization of hypertext on the web requires skills that are different than writing for print. Technical …

Securing Whose Peace? The Effects Of Peace-Agreement Provisions On Physical Integrity Rights After Civil War, Melvin R. Korsmo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When civil wars are resolved via negotiated settlement, peace-agreement provisions like power-sharing agreements and third-party security guarantees often are advocated for their purported benefits of ensuring a long-lasting and durable peace. Although scholars have explored the effects of peace-agreement provisions on enhancing the security of states, their influence on shaping individual security outcomes is largely unknown. The strong potential exists that these same provisions that improve a government's ability to deter future violence also increase that government's violation of its citizens' physical integrity rights as a means of coercion and governance. Also rare in the power-sharing literature is exploration of …

We Call It Pulling A Thread: Deconstructing Femininity At The Molly Brown House Museum, Emily J. Starck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite making up around half of the global population, women are consistently underrepresented in museums. Where women's experiences are present in exhibitions and programming, they are often misrepresented within an entrenched heteronormative and patriarchal framework. Through this thesis, I show how Denver's Molly Brown House Museum works to upset traditional narratives through their dynamic interpretation of the life of their namesake, Margaret Tobin Brown. Using new museology, feminist anthropology, and performance theory, I analyze data from staff interviews and tour participant observation to explore how the museum deconstructs popular understandings of historical femininity. Through visitor surveys, I measure the extent …

The Potential Of Green Care Interventions To Promote Positive Youth Development With A One Health Lens, Hagit Brandes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The first part of this study is making a conceptual tie between three distinct bodies of knowledge: Green Care, Positive Youth Development (PYD), and One Health. Green Care is an organizing construct for various interventions that use nature as a framework. I suggest that a nature-based program which incorporates Animal-assisted and horticulture interventions have the potential to promote positive youth developmental outcomes. The two major tenets of the PYD model are the mutually influential and bi-directional relationship between an individual and their context, and this relationship characteristic of plasticity, the potential for change (Lerner, 2006). Plasticity is viewed as an …

Family Engagement In Postsecondary And Workforce Readiness In A Suburban School District: An Exploratory Study, Keisha Kayon Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the focus on graduating all students and preparing them for postsecondary pursuits increases, schools are examining their practices in supporting how students are successfully prepared (Gutmann, & Ben-Porath, 1987; Guilfoyle, 2013). This study examined how the diversity of the family structure that now permeates modern day society can be used as a true partnership that embraces inclusivity and as a credible component to the postsecondary pursuits of students. Through the lens of the existing literature and a new theoretical framework, The Model of Family Engagement in Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness (FEPWR), the researcher identified the intersections between family engagement …

Analyzing Electricity Use Of Low Income Weatherization Program Participants Using Propensity Score Analysis And A Hierarchical Linear Growth Model, Ksenia Polson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This evaluation utilized propensity score matching methods and a longitudinal hierarchical linear growth model to determine the effect of residential energy efficiency upgrade(s) on household electricity use for the low-income community over the course of a year in the City and County of Denver, Colorado. Propensity score analysis with risk set matching was performed at each month under analysis applying nearest neighbor and nearest neighbor with caliper approaches by balancing covariates across the treatment and control groups. Following the completion of propensity score analysis, the data were aggregated to form a data set that was used in a hierarchical linear …

The Responsible Project, Shannon N. Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to create a public relations campaign consisting of a series of promotional videos filmed specifically for Patagonia, the outdoors sportswear company, emphasizing their corporate social responsibility for viewing on their social media and web-based platforms. The commercials will feature three Colorado non-profit organizations tied to Patagonia through Patagonia's Growing Grassroots Grant program.

"The Sudden Thrill Of That Change": Framing George Eliot's Social Vision, Cyrus Seaberry Frost

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although scholarly commentary of the last decade has engaged more intensively than ever with the content of George Eliot's ideas concerning nineteenth-century British culture, the devices and techniques Eliot employs in the transmission of those ideas remain less explored. Consequently, room exists for a study as attentive to the formal characteristics of Eliot's messages as recent scholars have been to the content of those messages. This dissertation seeks to elucidate the ways in which specific formal techniques that characterize Eliot's fictional work evince her engagement with the thinking of social theorists, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach. The project contends that Eliot internalizes …

Margarita As Supernatural Woman: Bulgakov's Subversion Of The Superfluous Man In The Master And Margarita, Jana Marie Domanico

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The paper explores the shifting definitions of the superfluous man through Russian history through the 19th century up until the Soviet era. The paper then examines Mikhail Bulgakov's subversion of the character trope in The Master and Margarita through his creation of Margarita, the supernatural woman. The author critiques Bulgakov's character Margarita through a feminist lens and then proceeds to examine work from Russian female writers who are historically undervalued. By comparing The Master and Margarita to the work of Teffi and Tatyana Tolstaya, the author hopes to reveal that in their use of Russian folklore and magical realism, the …

A Mixed Methods Examination Of Pregnancy Attitudes And Hiv Risk Behaviors Among Homeless Youth: The Role Of Social Network Norms And Social Support, Stephanie J. Begun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Homeless young women become pregnant at exceptionally high rates, and such pregnancies often pose serious emotional, social, and physical health concerns. Perhaps surprisingly, many homeless youth intentionally seek to become pregnant or involved in pregnancy, as pregnancy and parenthood are viewed as conduits toward accessing social services and meaningful social connections to others that this group often lacks. However, most prevention efforts focus solely on young females' pregnancy attitudes and behaviors at the individual level. Such approaches fail to acknowledge contextual factors, such as desired pregnancy and pregnancy ambivalence, the influence of youths' social networks and perceived social norms regarding …

Points Of Leverage: Interrupting The Intergenerational Transmission Of Adversity, Lisa Schlueter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Early life stressors, such as abuse and neglect, have been associated with poor physical and mental health outcomes in adulthood. Moreover, animal models suggest that caregivers' early life stress can have intergenerational effects that then impact the health and well-being of their offspring. Although animal models are compelling, and inter-generationally transmitted and co-occurring risks are well-documented, proximal mechanistic explanations for how caregiver's history of childhood adversity can result in changes to their child's stress physiology and outcomes have not yet been systematically tested in humans. Thus, among a sample of low-income, predominantly Latino families participating in Early Head Start (EHS), …

Advancing Sylvia Wynter's Reimagination Of The Human And Counter-Poetics: A Critique Of Contemporary Western Science Discourse In Cosmos—A Spacetime Odyssey, With Host Neil Degrasse Tyson, Claire E. Slattery-Quintanilla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the entanglements of "modernity/coloniality," Western conceptualizations of time and space, and questions of the "human" as they are situated in contemporary Western science discourse and thought. Through a textual analysis of the 2014 science television documentary series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey presented by famous black astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, I argue Tyson refuses to discuss race as it relates to Western science on three levels in Cosmos: the racialized logic inherent in Western science, the sociohistorical relationship between European colonial racial subjugation and the emergence of contemporary Western science, and Tyson's experience as a black man …

Seeing The God Of New Mexico: Mary Austin's Starry Adventure And The Optic Of Enchantment, Olivia Jayne Mann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines 20th century American writer Mary Austin's last novel, Starry Adventure (1931), a work unjustly ignored by most Austin scholars, yet touted by the photographer Ansel Adams (in a letter to Austin) as "the greatest thing I have ever read." This thesis will be particularly concerned with the concept of vision in the novel and the connections between Austin's fiction and the New Mexican modernism/primitivism movement in the visual arts. I explore what I call Austin's "optic of enchantment," a visual experience of divinity that is uniquely tied to the New Mexican landscape. I break down this optic …

An Evaluation Of Critical Realignment Theory: Comparing Bayesian And Frequentist Approaches, Tara A. Rhodes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prior to this study, critical realignment theory, which presupposes eras of substantial and sustained swings in American political party dominance, had only been evaluated using the classical, frequentist approach to modeling. However, potential for more information concerning these electoral phenomena exists given a shift in the design and approach to realigning elections. This study sought to explore those options through one particular alternative to the classical approach to statistics--in this particular case, the Bayesian approach to statistics. Bayesian methods differ from the frequentist approach in three main ways: the treatment of probability, the treatment of parameters, and the treatment of …

Pre-College Sources Of Influence For Traditionally Underrepresented Students Attending College: A Social Network Analysis Approach, Rebekah Kester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined a variety of sources of influence for traditionally underrepresented students at a primarily White institution of higher education. The sources of influence ranged from 2-way communications in high school to 2-way communications in the community, and from 1-way communication influences in the school such as AP courses, to 1-way communication influences outside of the school such as social media. The data were collected via an online survey distributed to first time in college freshmen in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. The survey results were analyzed using ANOVA and social network …

Optimized Trajectory Generation For Car-Like Robots On A Closed Loop Track, Tyler Friedl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a method for generating an optimized path through a given track. The path is generated by choosing waypoints throughout the track then iteratively optimizing the position of these waypoints. The waypoints are then connected by optimized paths represented by curvature polynomials. The end result is a path through the track represented as a spline of curvature polynomials. This method is applied to multiple simulated tracks and the results are presented. By generating and representing the paths in the continuous domain, the method has improved computational efficiency from many of the discrete methods used to generate an optimal …

Computer-Aided Cancer Diagnosis And Grading Via Sparse Directional Image Representations, Hadi Rezaeilouyeh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prostate cancer and breast cancer are the second cause of death among cancers in males and females, respectively. If not diagnosed, prostate and breast cancers can spread and metastasize to other organs and bones and make it impossible for treatment. Hence, early diagnosis of cancer is vital for patient survival. Histopathological evaluation of the tissue is used for cancer diagnosis. The tissue is taken during biopsies and stained using hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stain. Then a pathologist looks for abnormal changes in the tissue to diagnose and grade the cancer. This process can be time-consuming and subjective. A reliable and …

Engaging The Brave And The Bold: Exploring The Discourses Of Disability Through Life Stories, Brian L. Grewe Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the meaning making of having an acquired physical disability still remains a mystery today. With more than 20 percent of our total population experiencing some form of disability, this study explores discourses of disability that emerge from participants' life stories. This study interviewed 20 participants using a modified version of McAdams' (1993) Life Story Interview Protocol. Utilizing Relational Dialectics Theory and a thematic discourse analysis, two primary discourses emerged from participant talk. (1) the biomedical discourse of disability and (2) the disability discourse of normalcy. The latter discourse can be broken down even further into (1) the sociolinguistic discourse …

Development Of The Ableist Microaggression Scale And Assessing The Relationship Of Ableist Microaggressions With The Mental Health Of Disabled Adults, Shanna Katz Kattari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Approximately 20% of U.S. residents are currently living with a disability. Ableism values a specific type of physical, mental and/or emotional capital as well as supports socially constructed expectations of ability, valuing these expectations over different types of ability and disability. One way in which ableism is perpetuated is through microaggressions, at the more interpersonal, or micro level. Microaggressions are everyday interactions that perpetuate inequalities and stereotypes against people who belong to marginalized communities. Experiencing multiple microaggressions has been referred to as death by a thousand paper cuts, indicating the severity of the sum total of these casual types of …

Quantification Of Airborne Fungal Spores Comparing Molecular Tracers Via Ion Chromatography And Uv-Lif Methods, Marie Ila Gosselin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fungal spores represent an understudied subcategory of bioaerosols that can impact human health as pathogenic and allergenic particles. Fungal spores also have been shown to act as effective ice nuclei and giant cloud condensation nuclei in some cases. This has implications on the hydrological cycle on local and regional scales by impacting the formation and evolution of clouds and precipitation. The quantification of fungal spores has been limited in the past due to methods that were costly and that suffered from poor time resolution. The most commonly applied methods for airborne fungal spore analysis have traditionally included microscopy and culturing, …

Catholic Girls All Grown Up: A Practical Theological Exploration Of Sexuality Formation In Young Adult Women, Emily Susanne Kahm

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Roman Catholic Church promotes exacting norms about the sexual behavior expected of Catholics, but prior qualitative and quantitative studies have shown a mixed effect on the decisions made by young adult Catholics, especially women. This qualitative study interviewed young adult women who were raised Catholic and sought to determine both what they were taught about sex and sexuality while growing up Catholic and how they think those teachings affected their lives and decision-making as young adults. Analysis of their responses indicated an anxious climate in their childhood educational experiences where adults were hesitant to answer questions or engage in …

Employment Discrimination Of Chinese Unmarried Women, Jifan Huang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Employment discrimination has been existed through the history and gender discrimination is one of the most common one. The discrimination against women is the most discussed one but the discrimination against unmarried women is easily ignored. While comparing women and men, marital status is considered as one of the factors that decreases women's competitiveness. However, the marital status, as some people complain, turns into a potential advantage while comparing two equally qualified women. This study focuses on main questions: 1) Does the discrimination against unmarried women while comparing with married women really exist, or is it just reasonable selection? 2) …

Factor Invariance Of The Standard Achievement Admission Test By Gender And School Types, Mohammed Alqabbaa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the factorial structure of the SAAT with exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Specifically, a CFA of a four-factor model (the hypothesized model) was tested to see if the model had good fit as well as a model generated from an EFA. The EFA showed that the SAAT test only measured two factors (biology and chemistry), not the four posited by the test developers. The CFA provided good fit to a two-factor model; however, a CFA showed that the hypothesized four-factor model also fit the data well and so the hypothesized model was selected …

Data-Centric Situational Awareness And Management In Intelligent Power Systems, Xiaoxiao Dai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rapid development of technology and society has made the current power system a much more complicated system than ever. The request for big data based situation awareness and management becomes urgent today. In this dissertation, to respond to the grand challenge, two data-centric power system situation awareness and management approaches are proposed to address the security problems in the transmission/distribution grids and social benefits augmentation problem at the distribution-customer lever, respectively.

To address the security problem in the transmission/distribution grids utilizing big data, the first approach provides a fault analysis solution based on characterization and analytics of the synchrophasor …