Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of A Novel Psychological Screening Tool For Young Children In Educational And Childcare Settings, Diana Tinsley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Young children experience psychological difficulties at comparable rates to school-aged children (Egger & Angold, 2006; Bufferd et al., 2011; Fuchs et al., 2013), yet few screening tools are available for this age range. Childcare and preschool settings present a unique opportunity to increase early screening efforts, particularly in terms of observing children among their peers. The current study presents initial steps toward the development of a new psychological screening tool for young children ages 1.5 – 5 years in childcare and educational settings. The aim of the study was to develop a brief and broad psychological screening tool that can …

Enhancing Student Engagement: Regional Campus Students’ Access To High Impact Practices And Co-Curricular Organizations, Angela Kristina Austin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Regional campuses serve a vital role in today's higher education landscape, extending access to college education for underserved locations and populations. The University of Mississippi’s university system has five regional campuses. The students at a regional campus, like their traditional main campus counterparts, aspire to attain bachelor's or graduate degrees. However, regional campus students often exhibit characteristics more akin to community college or non-traditional students.

While literature on regional campuses is limited, ample research supports the positive impact of student involvement in higher education. Even more limited is research on participation levels of non-traditional students in co-curricular organizations and high-impact …

Saudi Perspective On Using Efl Resources To Improve Their English Pronunciation In Saudi Public Institutions, Khadija Abdullah Alzahrani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to the lack of a pronunciation curriculum and materials in Saudi universities, EFL students individually select use different resources to help with their English pronunciation difficulties. Therefore, this study aims to describe (a) Saudi students' perspectives and attitudes toward pronunciation resources that may help with their pronunciation (b) if they use them to help with their weaknesses, and (c) the teachers’ perspectives on their students' pronunciation difficulties, their knowledge of the resources the universities provide, and what they use to help the students' pronunciation learning and development. This study investigates what Saudi students think they need to learn pronunciation, …

Formulation Development And Targeted Delivery For Bcs Ii Drugs Using Hot Melt Extrusion Technology, Ahmed Almotairy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hot-melt extrusion (HME) is one of the approaches to formulate an amorphous solid dispersion (ASD) and has gained popularity within the pharmaceutical industry over the past three decades. Additionally, HME has the ability to produce several versatile formulations and its ability to tailor processing materials through modifications in the screw design and mixing and shearing forces or by controlling the material feed rate; additionally, HME allows processing at multiple temperatures and screw speeds. HME has advantages over traditional pharmaceutical processing techniques, including its ability for continuous operation and ability to implement quality by design (QbD) and process analytical technology (PAT) …

Solubility Enhancement Of Atorvastatin Calcium Using Cyclodextrin, Karthik Abburi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study is intended to increase the solubility and dissolution rate of Atorvastatin calcium (ATN Ca) by formulating the drug- hydroxy-propyl-beta cyclodextrin (HPBCD) complexes using solvent-assisted extrusion (SAE) using a twin-screw extruder. Various studies on ATN Ca saturation solubility in water and other pH mediums revealed a pH-dependent solubility with a difference. Thus, the saturation solubility for ATN Ca and Solvent Assisted Extruded complex was conducted in water and different pH mediums in this study. Phase solubility studies between ATN Ca and CDs revealed an AL-type solubility profile exhibiting a linear increase with HPBCD. Drug-HPBCD complexes were made using …

Level Of Pj (Peace Journalism) Awareness Among Journalists From Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Ayidh J. Alqahtani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to ascertain whether Saudi Arabian journalists know peace journalism. According to the peace journalism model and the framing theory, journalists' practices are supposed to foster peace rather than fuel violence. As a result, journalists can shed light on the social and underlying causes of violence with the noble goal of demoting violence and promoting peace. In that sense, 100 journalists from Saudi Arabia made up the sample population of this study. The mixed-method approach was used to collect data; Consequently, the researcher provided the participants with a questionnaire to elicit the level of awareness of peace journalism …

Computational Investigation Of The Structures And Vibrational Spectra Of Isolated And Hydrated Ions, Kayleigh R. Barlow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High-accuracy electronic structure theory methods are important in the field of chemistry for probing molecular properties of chemically relevant systems that are often difficult to obtain experimentally. This work focuses primarily on using robust computational techniques to characterize not only small triatomic anions but also anion-water clusters in addition to investigating their vibrational frequencies near the complete basis set (CBS) limit. The MP2 and CCSD(T) ab initio methods are used with second-order vibrational perturbation theory (VPT2) and vibrational configuration interaction (VCI) theory in this work to compute the fundamental vibrational frequencies of small anions. Due it being arduous to experimental …

"It's My Job:" Graduate Student Socialization And Career Choice, Megan Black

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of planning this evaluation is to explore perspectives of graduate student socialization to practitioner careers in students’ fields of study. Socialization in graduate programs refers to the process by which students learn and adapt to the norms and expectations of their anticipated career fields, and the activities within programs that provide related information and practice. Higher education in the United States has been undergoing a long-term change in which full-time, tenured faculty positions are becoming increasingly rare, with many new doctoral graduates relegated to non-tenure track adjunct positions. Also of note is the growing number of doctoral students …

Academic Medical Center Governance: A Study Focused On The University Of Mississippi Medical Center, Jacob Daniels

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) face many challenges, which can lead to financial constraints. For AMCs to remain sustainable in today’s healthcare system, the literature presents a compelling case for expansion to mitigate their financial burdens. Expansion often requires quick decision-making, and as a result, scholars repeatedly discuss the importance of AMC governance being both nimble and efficient. The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) substantially impacts Mississippians, and the institution must remain a thriving center for education, research, and healthcare for the state. Given the importance of efficient and nimble governance in the institution’s sustainability, this Dissertation in Practice (DiP) …

The Role Of Social Responsibility On Insurers’ Investments And On Suppliers, And The Role Of Internal Capital Markets On Market Entrance And Exit, Patrick Cho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay, we provide a new perspective on the socially responsible investment (SRI) puzzle by examining whether a motive behind investing in socially responsible stocks is to hedge against non-financial income exposure. We examine U.S. Property-Liability (P/L) insurers’ equity portfolios to investigate the probability and extent of investments in socially responsible firms. We focus on one aspect of social responsibility - litigation risk. The level of litigation risk is a direct measure of social responsibility and the observable impact of litigation on P/L insurers’ underwriting portfolios allows us to examine the hedging motive. We find that P/L insurers …

Adolescent Health And Maladaptive Coping: Assessing The Relationship Between Poor Physical Health And Underage Drinking, Shelby Gilbreath

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adolescents endure various stressors throughout their lives, making them one of the most vulnerable populations in the United States. Among those life stressors are physical health issues, including physical illness and disabilities. Physical health challenges may serve as a strain that fosters deviant behavior, such as underage drinking. However, prior research has failed to investigate this relationship. The current study uses publicly available data from the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the impact of physical health challenges on underage drinking.

L2 Perception Of The S-Aspirated Phone In Spanish, Raúl A. Gamboa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with the perception of the aspirated coda /s/ by Spanish L2 learners. Second language research, with some exceptions, focuses on whether L1English–L2 Spanish learners can perceive the aspirated variant, showing that only advanced learners with time spent in s-weakening regions succeed at the task. L2 studies about s-aspiration have yet to investigate the perception of the aspirated coda /s/ in different environments across actual phrases and sentences. This study focuses on the intelligibility of pairs of ambiguous phrases and sentences perceptually differentiated only by the aspirated coda /s/. Additionally, it investigates the prosodic stress´ influence on the …

Designing A Flexible Framework For Developing Acoustic Array Systems, Charles Fulton Gilliland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, research conducted by the Applied Acoustics group at the NationalCenter for Physical Acoustics has involved the use of microphone arrays to study the propagation of sound through outdoor environments. In such research, there is need for data acquisition systems which can be reconfigured in both hardware and software. This work is an effort to develop a modular acoustic data acquisition framework which can be configured to accommodate a wide variety of acoustic array applications. In hardware, the framework provides modularity with a generic mainboard which uses a common interface to collect data from application-specific microphone boards. In …

Ground Level: Poems, Margaret Graber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Ground Level” is a full-length poetry collection situated at the intersection of ecopoetics and psychology, where the theme of “grounding” one’s self continually emerges in the midst of personal geographical changes and experiences of collective social trauma during a period of prolonged immersion in the natural world. By exploring through an array of poetic forms, structures, and experimentations including golden shovels, contrapuntals, haikus, an abecedarian, a sestina, grounding exercises, poems featuring 20th century children’s television host Fred Rogers, and a sonnet crown which also explores queerness in the 21st century Southeast, the speaker engages with a number of different methods …

"Dug Way To Liberty": Newspapers, Prison, And Jim Crow In Georgia In The Early 1900s, Avery Elise Gross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On April 15, 1907, twelve Black and white convicts escaped from the Durham Mines prison camp located on Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Over the next month, newspapers throughout Georgia and in neighboring states reported the escape and discussed the recapture events. Within five days of the prison break, the local white community recaptured all nine Black convicts. None of the white convicts were caught. As this thesis investigates the lives, crimes, and recapture of all twelve prisoners, it connects the convict lease prison system with the newspaper media to understand the impact of white supremacy ideology and the repressive systems that …

“Mississippi’S Greatest Minister”: A Historical Study Of Cornelius W. Grafton’S 61-Year Pastorate, 1873-1934, David Thomas Irving

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cornelius W. Grafton (b.1846, d.1934) pastored two Presbyterian churches in Southwest Mississippi for 61 consecutive years (1873-1934). He moderated the Presbyterian Church, U.S. General Assembly in 1916 and wrote a 658-page unpublished History of Presbyterianism in Mississippi. This dissertation studies Grafton’s ministry—his student years at the University of Mississippi and Columbia Theological Seminary, his sermons, his public opposition to lynching, and his periodical and historical writings—to understand how white Christians in the South thought of and responded to their context from Reconstruction through the Progressive Era and into the 1930’s. Many of the priorities of Grafton’s ministry corresponded to those …

Effects And Mechanisms Of Cognitive Impairment During Vigorous-Intensity Exercise, Myungjin Jung

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent research indicates that vigorous-intensity exercise concurrent with a prefrontal cortex (PFC)-dependent cognitive task can temporarily deactivate the PFC, leading to impaired cognition. Shifting attentional focus from a cognitive task to exercise or vice versa during exercise may also affect cognitive performance. However, the underlying mechanisms of this effect remain unclear. Therefore, this dissertation aimed to evaluate whether changes in attention and PFC oxygenation mediate cognitive impairment during vigorous-intensity exercise. Seventy-five young healthy adults (37 males, 38 females; 20.3 ± 1.6 years) completed three visits. The initial visit consisted of a max cycle test to measure VO2max via indirect calorimetry. …

Formulation Development And Characterization Of Dual Drug Loaded Hot-Melt Extruded Inserts For Better Ocular Therapeutic Outcomes: Sulfacetamide/Prednisolone, Indrajeet Karnik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this investigation was to formulate, characterize, and evaluate a bioadhesive, hot-melt extruded (HME), immediate- and extended-release ophthalmic inserts containing a fixed-dose combination of Prednisolone Sodium Phosphate (PSP) and Sulfacetamide Sodium (SA) to improve the treatment outcomes of multiple ocular bacterial infections. The HME inserts were prepared using FDA-authorized biocompatible polymers including Polyox WSR N10 LEO NF (polyethylene oxide; PEO), Klucel™ HF (hydroxypropyl cellulose; HPC-HF), and Ethocel™ (Ethylcellulose; EC). The inserts were then assessed for physicochemical characteristics, weight variation, surface pH, uniformity of thickness, drug content, swelling index, thermal analysis, drug–excipient compatibility, moisture uptake and loss, surface morphology, …

Mathematics And Special Education Co-Teaching In The Middle School: How Teachers Make Sense Of Their Partnership, Bethany Lavalley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Co-teaching is the practice of general educators and special educators sharing instruction in a general education setting to deliberately meet the needs of students with and without disabilities. Co-teacher research tends to focus on the processes of co-teaching, and little is known about how teachers go about creating a system of interconnected professional expertise that flexibly meets the diverse learning needs of students. This comparative case study examines the interpersonal and professional relationships of two co-teaching teams who were supported by their respective administration, who shared common planning time, co-instructed together in the mathematics classroom, and were engaged in a …

Fte2: An Exploration Of Full-Time Employed, Full-Time Enrolled Undergraduate Student Perceptions Regarding The Impact Of Support Systems On Their Ability To Persist, Victoria Lauren Mccord

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Full-time enrolled students participating in full-time employment is a growing trend on college campuses. This dissertation serves to explore the perceptions of full-time employed, full-time enrolled graduate students’ perceptions on the impact of their support systems on their ability to persist. The proposed study utilizes Laura Perna’s Conceptual Model for College Access and Choice (2006), along with Cabrera, Nora, and Castenada’s Integrated Model for Student Retention (1993) to the following research questions: (1) What factors, support systems or resources do students utilize? (2) What formal or informal support systems and/or resources aid in student persistence, if any? This dissertation addresses …

The Combined Effects Of Context And Importance On Prospective Memory, Gage Owens Regier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prospective memory is memory for activities to be performed in the future. These tasks vary in importance – such as remembering to pick up your medicine on the way home versus buying milk for the next morning – and vary in the amount of contextual information available, where contextual information allows an individual to predict when the intended action might be completed. While importance and context have been studied individually, their combined effects have not been explored. This experiment’s goal was to examine this unexplored interaction using established manipulations and tasks to facilitate comparison to previous work. In doing so, …

Galvanizing Parental Involvement In Early Childhood Education To Promote Student Attendance, Marquita Robertson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This applied research study aimed to increase parental involvement to improve kindergarten attendance. The need to increase parental participation arose from low academic achievement ratings and high chronic absenteeism rates among young students. This applied research study used three elements to increase kindergarten attendance. The researcher used surveys, interviews, and kindergarten attendance data to complete the study. Using the abovementioned instruments and the school leadership team's collaborative involvement, findings support that improving parental involvement can lead to improved kindergarten attendance and shared organizational learning.

Valley Of The Fuckdolls, Kimberly Ridley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Valley of the Fuckdolls is a work of fiction that explores a near future dystopian world in which quasi sentient sex dolls are available for sale. The work is written from the perspective of the robots and explores themes of isolation and disconnectedness brought on by society's increasing reliance on technology and addictions to pornography and social media.

Dear God The Light, Suado Abdirahman Sheikhhassan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis contains original poetry by Suado Sheikhassan.

Formulation Development And Evaluation Of Cannabidiol Hot Melt Extruded Solid Self-Emulsifying Drug Delivery System For Oral Applications, Kavish Dilip Sanil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a highly lipophilic compound with poor oral bioavailability, due to poor aqueous solubility and extensive pre-systemic metabolism. The aim of this study was to explore the potential of employing Hot Melt Extrusion (HME) technology for the continuous production of Self Emulsifying Drug Delivery Systems (SEDDS) to improve the solubility and in vitro dissolution performance of CBD. Accordingly, different placebos were processed through HME in order to obtain a lead CBD loaded solid SEDDS. Two SEDDS were prepared with sesame oil, Poloxamer 188, Gelucire®59/14, PEO N80 and Soluplus®. Moreover, Vitamin E was added as an antioxidant. Both SEDDS …

A Care Ethical Defense Of Intergenerational Obligations, Owen Spalding

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that an ethic of care can justify an obligation or set of obligations to future generations. To do this, I analyze a comparable project by Thomas Randall and while ultimately agreeing with his basic conclusion, I show that he needlessly rejects arguments that would help to establish this obligation. Specifically, I defend against his critiques of Nel Noddings and Anca Gheaus. From here, I move on to show that an ethic of care centered on needs is more effective for making policy decisions than the sufficientarian model established by Randall.

Quitting: A Phenomenological Study On The Factors Contributing To Mississippi Teacher Exits During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Krystal R. Cormack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This transcendental phenomenological study focused on determining the factors contributing to teacher exits from Mississippi schools during and since the global COVID-19 pandemic. Developing a more robust understanding of the teacher labor market and teacher exits is vital to ensuring that students can access a high-quality education. Participants identified the COVID-19–related factors that influenced their decision to exit the classroom and factors unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants felt the COVID-19 pandemic worsened their teaching experience and created additional work. One educator exited due to complications from long COVID disease. Three major findings unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic emerged …

Prevalence Of Meeting 24-Hour Movement Guidelines And Sociodemographic Correlates Among U.S. Adults, Samantha Cohen-Winans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Much evidence exists for the health benefits associated with individual movement behaviors, which include light-intensity physical activity (LPA), moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. However, individual movement behaviors are codependent in nature and exist within a finite period of 24-hours, further underlying the importance of examining the integration of movement behaviors. Despite the absence of 24-hour movement guidelines in the U.S., the benefits of adhering to such guidelines outweigh the potential harms, such as with various levels of physical activity intensity. Moreover, many intervention studies focus on one individual movement behavior underscoring the need for studies to examine intervention …

Impact Of Graphene Nano-Platelets On Calcium Silicate Hydrate Formation, Weam Elmahmoud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Calcium-silicate-hydrate (C-S-H) is a vital component in cementitious materials, providing strength and durability. It forms during the hydration process of cement, where calcium ions react with silica-rich compounds to form a gel-like structure. The nanocrystalline units within C-S-H contribute to its unique properties and serve as a binding agent in the hardened cement paste. However, the mechanisms and impacts of nanomaterials, such as graphene nanoplatelets (GnPs), on C-S-H at the nanoscale level are not fully understood.

Incorporating GnPs into cement-based composites has shown promise in enhancing C-S-H formation and properties. GnPs possess exceptional mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties, making them …

Black Hole Entropy In The Causal Set Approach, Ayush Dhital

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Einstein’s field equations delineate the intricate dance between the geometry of spacetime and the energy-momentum. It is astonishing to realize how spacetime geometry is influenced by the presence of matter and energy and how this in turn affects the dynamics of matter in the spacetime background. Matter and energy are quantum mechanical in nature but the geometry of spacetime is a mathematical theory of a 4-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold. Causal set theory is one of the approaches to reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity (an emergent property of spacetime geometry), and therefore it is an approach to quantum gravity. In this approach, …