Digital Commons Network^™

Similarity And Practice Schedules: Contextual Interference Variables In Speech Production, Elisabeth P. Kee

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Purpose: This study evaluated the influence of phonemic similarity as a variable that facilitates contextual interference (CI), a motor learning phenomenon where poor performance during training results in enhanced performance in transfer conditions. A CI effect was hypothesized: speech performance would be enhanced for nonwords with similar phonemes during the retention phase of motor learning, but only enhanced by nonwords with dissimilar phonemes in the transfer phase.;Method: Twenty-nine young adults with typical speech and hearing participated in a motor-learning study comprised of nonword repetition training followed by an immediate retention and transfer task for nonwords with similar and dissimilar phonemes. …

Ius Soli, Ius Sanguinis, Ius Linguae, Or Ius Mundi: Living, Understanding, And Building Transnational Citizenship In A Transnational Multilingual Family In The U.S, Natalya Kuznetsova

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Through the case of a multilingual Estonian family of sojourners in the U.S., this ethnographic study examines the ways in which a multilingual family lives, understands, and constructs their transnational experiences, negotiating their language practices and identities in the context of their family space and globally. With an intention to respond to and to reflect the complexity of the phenomenon of language ecology in a multilingual transnational family, the study draws on and merges three conceptual frameworks: language socialization, family language policy, and transnational social spaces. Through the analysis of ethnographic observations, recordings of naturally occurring conversations, interviews with family …

Jurors' Perceptions Of Child Witnesses With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Victoria A. Disciullo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of the current study is to examine the effects of child witnesses with autism spectrum disorder on jurors' perceptions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five experimental conditions displaying scenarios varying the characteristics (autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and typically developing) of a 6-year-old female child who alleged sexual maltreatment. Participants were asked to provide a series of ratings regarding the child's credibility, "accuracy, suggestibility, and ability to testify based on facts" (Orcutt et al., 2001, p. 346; see also Thomas & Krackow, 2016), as well as defendant guilt (Tessier & Krackow, 2013). Overall, the data suggest …

Uav Modeling And Simulation At Normal And Abnormal Conditions, Mofetoluwa Fagbemi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The main objective of this thesis is to develop new capabilities within the West Virginia University (WVU) unmanned aerial systems (UAS) simulation environment for the design and analysis of fault tolerant control laws on small sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). An aerodynamic model for an electric powered UAV is developed using a vortex lattice method implemented within the computational design package Tornado. One-dimensional look-up tables are developed for the main stability and control derivatives, which are then used to calculate linear aerodynamic forces and moments for the nonlinear aircraft equations of motion. Flight data are used for model verification and …

Growing Up Between Two Worlds: A Portrait Of Second-Generation American A Multimedia Project, Dalia Ahmed Elsaid

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This professional project is a multimedia project focusing on stories of three second-generation Americans in West Virginia. The project is disseminated using a website. It includes content curated by the project author (photos, videos, written stories, data visualization) and information selected by the participants themselves. The content will add to the information available on different cultural communities in West Virginia in general, and on second-generation Americans in particular. It is hoped the project, through its portrayals of these individuals and their immigrant families, will help to dispel and counter some of the stereotypical depictions of immigrants. With this goal in …

How To Plan A Successful Tedx Conference At West Virginia University, Shannon Lee Cunningham

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research paper and the coinciding booklet offer pertinent information to help one plan and organize a successful TEDx conference at West Virginia University. It describes all of the details and explains factors that are unique to this specific event. The information contained in these documents was gathered from planning the first ever TEDxWVU event, which took place on Friday, March 2, 2018 at the Media Innovation Center on the fourth floor of the Evansdale Crossing building. This first event was scheduled to be an all-day event with nine speakers.

Flexible High-Density Puzzle Storage Systems, Ehsan Shirazi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In a traditional storage system, when one of the mechanical or electrical parts or the software fails to operate correctly, it may lead to the failure of the entire system imposing huge costs to the system (Gue et al., 2014). However, in a grid storage network, if a grid fails to operate, the system continues to operate. Therefore, failure of a system component will not jeopardize the whole system functionality. As such, reliability is one of the key advantages of grid storage networks. Another benefit of grid storage systems is flexibility. Various systems such as GridFlow, GridPick, GridStore, are developed …

Energy Efficiency Effectiveness Of Smart Thermostat Based Bems, Koushik Mandlem

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Building Energy Management System (BEMS) is a computer-based system that can control, monitor and optimize energy consumption of the buildings. Though there are many advancements in this technology, many residential users who plan to install this technology are unaware of its economic feasibility. To determine the economic feasibility, the user should know the energy costs associated with the current HVAC system and the proposed HVAC system after installing BEMS and the implementation costs associated with the installation of the system. The work that is being proposed here is to develop a software that allows the user to observe the estimated …

Competitive Aggressiveness, Anger, And The Experience Of Provocation In Collegiate Athletes, Michael E. Berrebi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In sport, aggressive behavior is a potentially harmful byproduct of uncontrolled anger. In addition, it is known that provocation can lead to both anger and aggressive retaliation. However, despite the potential consequences of aggressive behavior, little is known about levels of competitive anger and aggressiveness in athletes, and it is unclear if differences exist by gender or type of sport. Little research has also explored intervention approaches to help athletes better manage anger and aggression. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore competitive aggressiveness, anger, and the experience of provocation among collegiate athletes. Participants were 243 male and …

Walking Upright: An Actor's Blueprint Of Process And Character Development In Exit, Pursued By A Bear By Lauren Gunderson, Imani R. Berry

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

There has been an increased emphasis for college instruction to incorporate more active and collaborative involvement of students in the learning process. These views have been asserted by The Association of American Colleges (AAC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and The National Research Counsel (NRC), which are advocating for the modification of traditional instructional techniques to allow students the opportunity to be more cooperative (Task Group on General Education, 1988). This has guided educators and facilitators into shifting teaching paradigms from a teacher centered to a more student-centered curriculum. The present study investigated achievement outcomes and attitudes of learners in …

Best Practices For Sepsis Patients: A Quality Improvement Project, Kevin Mark Smith Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Sepsis is a complication caused by the overwhelming and life-threatening response of the body to an infection. Sepsis can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016). Sepsis is the leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals. Mortality from sepsis increases 8% for every hour that treatment is delayed. Each year, 258,000 people die from sepsis in the U.S. As many as 80% of sepsis deaths could be prevented with rapid diagnosis and treatment (Sepsis Alliance, 2016). This project seeks to improve the ability of the transfer unit to screen patients, improve early …

Application Of Machine Learning On Fracture Interference, Dennis Wayne Chamberlain Jr.

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A method has been developed that locates and determines well-to-well hydraulic fracture interference (frac-hit) in shale plays using hard data. This method uses Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) with designated parameters and target outputs in conjunction with graphs of gas flowrate, tubing pressure, and cumulative gas prediction. The method was created to address the significant increase in frac-hit occurrences due to the infill wells being completed in shale plays. The production data of the well is first cleaned to eliminate outliers in the initial timeframe of the well and periods of no production so that the ANN model can be accurately …

An Evaluation Of Preliminary Outcomes And Characteristics Of Peer Support Within A Community Based Weight Management Program, John Spencer Ingels

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

Automated Cleaning Of Identity Label Noise In A Large-Scale Face Dataset Using A Face Image Quality Control, Mohamad Al Jazaery

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

For face recognition, some very large-scale datasets are publicly available in recent years which are usually collected from the internet using search engines, and thus have many faces with wrong identity labels (outliers). Additionally, the face images in these datasets have different qualities. Since the low quality face images are hard to identify, current automated identity label cleaning methods are not able to detect the identity label error in the low quality faces. Therefore, we propose a novel approach for cleaning the identity label error more low quality faces. Our face identity labels cleaned by our method can train better …

Cyber Threats And Healthcare Organizations: A Public Health Preparedness Perspective, Lauren Elizabeth Branch

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Healthcare in the United States, heavily reliant on digital technology in service provision, has recently seen an increase risk of cyberattacks. Coordinated electronic medical records, imaging, pharmaceutical services, lab services and even treatment devices all rely on electronic connectivity and represent critical services that must be secured from cyber threats. Hospitals have become increasingly complex systems, and this often makes the organization more vulnerable to failure. Planning for these events is often hard for hospitals because their main charge is to provide life-saving care to patients as they need it. This is a relatively new threat to healthcare organizations, and …

Applications Of Cellular Components In Engineered Environments, Xiao Hu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Manipulation of cellular components in synthetic environment has attracted interest for applications ranging from sensors to nanelectronics and from catalysis to biomedical devices. In such applications, biological-based processes such as specific recognition and self-assembly direct the formation of hierarchical structures, all at minimum energetic costs, with high efficiency and reliability.

Among such cellular machines, microtubules and kinesins have attracted special interest. Inside the cells, microtubules are giving structural integrity while serving as regular and uniform tracks for transport of vesicles or organelles. Kinesin uses a microtubule track in vivo to progress to specific locations with processive and coordinated steps, all …

Coaching Life Skills Through Sport: An Application Of The Teaching Personal And Social Responsibility Model To Youth Sport In Eswatini, Zenzi Huysmans

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Adolescence is a formative developmental period where youth learn the life skills and values needed to become compassionate and civically-engaged young people and navigate increasingly challenging global environments. Youth in eSwatini face major context-specific challenges that impede their healthy development as well as limited engagement with government initiatives intended to support their development. This feasibility study aimed to employ youth sport as a creative and engaging context to facilitate life skills development in underprivileged youth in eSwatini. Specifically, this study explored the youth participation experiences, positive youth outcomes, and implementation successes and challenges of a sport program for underprivileged youth …

Optimal Anteroposterior Position Of Maxillary Incisors In Caucasian Males Viewed From A Smiling Profile, Amer Shammaa

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Background and Objectives: Anteroposterior (AP) position of the maxillary incisors affects the harmony of a facial profile. Different methods have been suggested to evaluate the maxillary incisor AP position, including cephalometric analysis and soft-tissue analysis. Andrews suggested using a lateral smiling profile to evaluate the AP position of the maxillary incisors. The objective of this study was to investigate the optimal AP position of maxillary incisors in Caucasian males using Glabella Vertical (GV), a coronal plane tangent to soft tissue Glabella, as a reference line. In addition, an attempt was made to determine if there are differences in judged facial …

Recruiting And Engaging Generation Z: An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan For West Virginia University Visitors Center, Kathryn (Kallie) Priscilla Nealis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this professional project is to provide a guide of marketing and communication strategies for organizations to implement in an effort to succeed in their goals involving improving overall success and awareness of the organization. The main component of this professional project is an integrated marketing communications (IMC) plan designed on behalf of the WVU Visitors Center and their IMC goals. Examined and outlined in this IMC plan is the target audience (Generation Z), as well as overall campaign objectives, creative strategies, media objectives and evaluation procedures that are grounded in and seek to expand upon the theoretical …

Exploring The Use Of Sport As A Platform For Health Promotion With Youth In Africa: A Scoping Review., Adam H. Hansell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

According to the World Health Organization, Africa has the highest rates of disease and child mortality in the world. Previous research suggests that sport may be an effective vehicle to enhance health knowledge and behaviors among at-risk youth. The primary purpose of this review was to analyze and synthesize published interventions exploring the use of sport or physical activity for health promotion with children and youth in Africa. A total of 916 articles were retrieved from ten electronic bibliographic databases with 28 meeting inclusion criteria. Targeted health outcomes in sport-based interventions included HIV-related knowledge and behaviors, essential health practices, physical …

Canal Transportation After Instrumentation Utilizing Different Endodontic Access Design; A Comparative Study With Micro-Ct., Travis Moore

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Introduction Access cavity design is known to affect theefficiency of instrumentation. Canal transportation occurs primarily in the apical region and to the outside of curvature when dentin is removed in a single direction. The goal of all cleaning and shaping procedures is to preserve the original root canal anatomy while removing sufficient amounts of injured pulp tissue, microorganisms, toxins and instrumentation byproducts. It is understood that the desired shape of the finished root canal is a continuous tapering funnel from the coronal to the apex. The aim of this study is to construct detailed three-dimensional images of root canal systems …

From Service Member To Student: Predictors Of Psychological Help-Seeking Attitudes In Student Servicemembers And Veterans, Melissa A Noble

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of Students, Faculty, And Staff Concerning Visitation Dogs On College Campuses, Brieanna Hughes

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

Two Case Studies Of Middle School Parents And Their Engagement With Schools Who Participate In Positive Behavior Support, Kathryn Work-Poggi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Positive Behavior Support (PBS) promotes the importance of all staff, school locations, and instructional settings emulating and purposefully teaching the same targeted behavioral expectations. One way to achieve this is to decisively partner with parents and jointly teach positive behavioral conduct and cultivate consistent behavioral expectations across home and school. The purpose of this study was to determine degrees of parent involvement within the confines of a qualitative case study to assess the perceptual nuances that parents experience with their child's middle school using the PBS process. Six parents across two middle schools employing PBS voluntarily shared their perceptions of …

Tobacco Use, Number Of Serious Smoking Cessation Attempts, And Interest In Lung Screening In A Sample Of Adult Muslims In The United States, Omar F.S. Attarabeen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Muslims in the United States (US) exhibit higher rates of tobacco use in comparison with rest of the US population. As a result, US Muslims might be at a higher risk for negative health consequences of tobacco use such as lung cancer. Investigating factors that are associated with tobacco use, number of smoking cessation attempts, and interest in lung screening in adult US Muslims can facilitate future efforts aimed at improving health outcomes, essentially through reducing tobacco use rates and promoting preventive lung screening in this population. Therefore, the current dissertation aimed to investigate the association of Social Cognitive Theory …

Transforming Undergraduate Stem Education: Reforming Classrooms By Training Current And Future Faculty, Karen E. Bailey

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the absence of formal pedagogical training, educators tend to teach the way they were taught, using traditional lecturing. Numerous studies have shown that engaging students in active learning improves student learning and retention of knowledge. Reforming STEM education has become a national imperative. Since the turn of the millennium, many initiatives have sprung forth in response to a growing awareness of the need for reform in post-secondary biology education. The National Academies Summer Institutes (NASI) is one such initiative. The Summer Institutes provide training in evidence-based strategies for biology educators from primarily research universities where lecture-based teaching in large …

Using Incidental Teaching To Teach Mands To Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Katherine S. Robinson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Children with autism display deficits in three core areas; communication, social interaction, and restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Deficits in communication often manifest in the form of maladaptive behaviors that serve to have the individuals needs and wants met. Additionally, children with autism may have difficulty generalizing learned skills to novel environments and with novel items. Naturalistic teaching procedures, such as incidental teaching, can promote generalization through the use of naturally occurring learning opportunities and reinforcers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate an incidental teaching procedure on the acquisition of both rate of manding behavior as well as a …

To Treat Or To Teach: Comparing Strategies To Reduce Escape-Maintained Behavior, Lucie M. Romano

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Differential negative reinforcement of alternative behavior (DNRA) reduces escape-maintained challenging behavior, but can result in lost instructional time. Instructional time could be maintained through interventions like curricular revision (CR), but the efficacy of CR is less established. We compared DNRA and CR for 3 children with age-typical intellectual functioning whose challenging behavior was maintained by escape from academic tasks. During DNRA, we taught the child to appropriately request a different, mastered task. During CR, we broke the original task into simpler components until the child mastered each component, but still permitted escape following challenging behavior. Curricular revision resulted in less …

A Quality Improvement Project To Increase Hepatitis A And B Vaccination In Adults With Hepatitis C In A Federally Qualified Health Center, Virginia M. Selanik

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Problem Statement: Despite long-standing recommendations for vaccination against hepatitis A virus (HAV) and hepatitis B (HBV) in persons with chronic liver disease and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and the life-threatening complications suffered from cirrhosis and hepatocellular cancer (HCC), vaccination rates for HAV and HBV in adults are suboptimal in clinical practice.;Theoretical Framework: Based upon published clinical guidelines and performance measures for optimal care of HCV-infected persons, a quality improvement project was implemented guided by Kotter's eight-step change model. Strategies adopted from the 4 Pillars(TM) Practice Transformation Program, including staff/provider education, standing orders, immunization champions, open access/walk-in vaccination during office …

A Study Of The Judgment Accuracy Of Repeated /R/ Stimuli By Graduate Clinicians, Lauren Glover

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.