Digital Commons Network^™

On The Right Track: Exploring Influences Contributing To Successful Track-Switching Of Indians Working For A U.S. Company, Rose-Marie Speck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore how Indian managers assessed the influences leading to their transition from technician to manager when working for a company in the U.S. This study was based on interviews with fifteen Indian managers who had track-switched from a technical job to a management position in the U.S. in a U.S. company. The interviewees were asked five questions about what they believed made them successful in track-switching, and the consensus among interviewees was that for a technician to track-switch effectively, the technician had to have excellent technical skills. In addition to technical skills, the …

Statements In Stone: The Politics Of Architecture In Charlemagne's Aachen, Mary Katherine Tipton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Statements in Stone is an intersectional and preliminary study of the architecture and Social aspects of the palatine complex of Aachen Germany during the reign of Charlemagne approximately spanning from the 790s to 814CE. The interplay between built space and its Social uses inform the larger Social understandings and interpretations of power and authority. Court poetry written by contemporaries and courtiers of Charlemagne allow readers to glimpse the court as it moved through and interacted with the built environment. Architectural precedents inform the connotations associated with the spaces of Aachen, while spatial theory will provide a framework for understanding the …

An Analysis Of Material Support Of Terrorism And Violent Plots: Scale And Success, Ian David Brecht

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, material support of terrorism charges have served as a cornerstone in the U.S. Government’s fight against terrorism. However, empirical research looking at the usage of material support charges is lacking. The primary focus of this study is to determine if material support charges are related to increases in terrorist attack success and scale. Using the American Terrorism Study (ATS), 177 post-9/11 Islamic Extremist-linked court cases including material support charges and 140 terrorist incidents were coded and analyzed using chi-square, logistical regression, and linear regression models. Results revealed that material support charges are related …

Utilizing The Nsse To Examine Behavior And Characteristic Differences Between First-Year Students Who Persisted With First-Year Students Who Did Not Persist, Alice Ruth Griffin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the differences between first-year students who persisted with first-year students who did not persist to the second year at a mid-size, doctorate-granting, public, research university in the mid-south. Specifically, the study utilized the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to compare the level of student-faculty interaction, experiences with the campus environment, and engagement in collaborative learning. Additionally, the study examined whether the differences in the three student engagement behaviors varied by gender, race/ethnicity, and first-generation college student status. Three theoretical frameworks were used as the foundation for the study including Tinto’s model of institutional action, Astin’s theory …

Use Of The Silver-Level Arkansas Career Readiness Certificate As A Pre-Hire Screening Tool, Bentley E. Wallace

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At a statewide level in Arkansas, the Arkansas Career Readiness Certificate (ACRC) is marketed as a means for assessing and exhibiting individual worker skill levels and as an additional aggregate credential to be presented alongside high school and college degree attainment levels. Employers from multiple sectors use the ACRC as a pre-hire screening tool and to determine incumbent worker eligibility for advancement.

Despite having been in place in the state for nearly a decade with over 65,000 Arkansans earning an ACRC, prior to this study no research had been conducted to determine the effectiveness of the ACRC as a pre-hire …

Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, And Colonial Patriarchy, Megan E. Vallowe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, and Colonial Patriarchy,” interrogates the Western Hemisphere’s spatial construction by settler-states, Indigenous nations, and activists groups. In this project, I assert that Indigenous/Settler contact zones are significantly more convoluted than current scholarship’s use of contact zones in that the distinctions between Indigenous actors and settler-colonial ones are often blurred. These hybrid contact zones sometimes contain negative outcomes for all participants and often include undercurrents of insidious power dynamics within and across settler-states and Indigenous peoples alike. Using critical cartographic theory and deconstruction methods, this project first illustrates how empires ascribed a racialized patriarchy onto the …

To Create A More Contented Family And Community Life: Home Demonstration Work In Arkansas, 1912 - 1952, Erin Turner Hogue

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Home demonstration work in Arkansas altered the farm woman’s role within the household, community, and farm economy. By raising the standard of living in rural homes, progressive reforms sought to make domestic life more comfortable and healthy for family members, as well as reduce demands for them. However, rural women used these programs to improve their living conditions while remaining effective producers on the farm. In this respect, home demonstration programs were more than a means of social control aimed at rural America; they were a resource for rural women. Analyzing how women responded and utilized the skills learned from …

A Study Of Innovation In Model Project Design: Addressing Mental Health Symptoms Among Co-Occurring Substance Use And Mentally Ill Clients Who Are Homeless In A Local Community Clinic Setting, Isis Dian Martel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Homeless persons with co-occurring substance use combined with mental illness constitute a particularly vulnerable subgroup with complex service needs. Unfortunately, the capacity to deliver critical treatment services has been extremely limited causing many from this population to remain untreated. Untreated co-occurring disorders can lead to a host of difficulties for both the individual and the community (Bouchery, Harwood, Sacks, Simon, & Brewer, 2011). Developing community based intervention services in Arkansas is a key activity necessary in strategically addressing this problem (Barbee, Gonzales, & Shelor, 2016). In partnership with the Arkansas Division of Behavioral Health Services, a local community treatment provider …

A Social Marketing Plan For 7hills Homeless Center, Kendra Labri Williams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

7hills Homeless Center is located in Fayetteville, Arkansas and is committed to ending homelessness in Northwest Arkansas by developing and implementing innovative services to equip the near-homeless and homeless in leading healthy and productive lives through strategic community partnerships with citizens, business, and government agencies. This thesis offers 7hills Homeless Center a comprehensive social marketing plan. The goal is to increase awareness of homelessness in Northwest Arkansas and to increase donor and volunteer involvement with 7hills. In order to accomplish these goals, a social marketing plan was developed by researching target volunteer and donor audiences, homelessness, and successful campaigns from …

Exploiting Hardware Abstraction For Parallel Programming Framework: Platform And Multitasking, Hongyuan Ding

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the help of the parallelism provided by the fine-grained architecture, hardware accelerators on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) can significantly improve the performance of many applications. However, designers are required to have excellent hardware programming skills and unique optimization techniques to explore the potential of FPGA resources fully. Intermediate frameworks above hardware circuits are proposed to improve either performance or productivity by leveraging parallel programming models beyond the multi-core era.

In this work, we propose the PolyPC (Polymorphic Parallel Computing) framework, which targets enhancing productivity without losing performance. It helps designers develop parallelized applications and implement them on FPGAs. …

Characteristics And Behaviors Of School Board Members In "Grade A" Arkansas Public School Districts, Bridget Lynn Polk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to describe characteristics and behaviors of school board members in Arkansas school districts where 50% or more of their campuses earned a letter grade of “A” on the 2014 Arkansas School Performance Report (Arkansas Department of Education [ADE], 2015). This purpose was achieved through analysis of artifacts from selected school districts including: achievement patterns; board minutes; and board member professional development records. A web-based survey of school board members was also utilized to gather demographic and background information. Finally, personal interviews were completed with a small group of board members to collect …

Examining The Phenomenon Of Dropping Out Of High School Through The Perspectives And Experiences Of The African American Male, John L. Colbert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We expect all students to achieve and succeed in school, yet current data shows that 23.6% of African American students in Arkansas drop out of school (Bailey & Dziko, 2008). The African American male high school dropouts are much higher than the number of male dropouts from other ethnic groups. As the researcher reviewed the current data about African American dropouts, it was the impetus behind this study. Although many have discussed and written about African American male dropouts in educational forums, essays, short stories, dissertations, and even movies, few have captured the experiences of the African American males in …

Controlled Synthesis And Utilization Of Metal And Oxide Hybrid Nanoparticles, Cameron Cowgur Crane

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reports the development of synthetic methods concerning rationally-designed, hybrid, and multifunctional nanomaterials. These methods are based on a wet chemical, solution phase approach that utilizes the knowledge of synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry to generate building blocks in solution for the growth of nanocrystals and hybrid nanostructures. This work builds on the prior knowledge of shape-controlled synthesis of noble metal nanocrystals and expands into the challenging realm of the more reactive first row transition metals. Specifically, a microemulsion sol-gel method was developed to synthesize Au-SiO2 dimers as precursors for the synthesis of segmented heterostructures of noble metals that …

Where In The World Are Pallas's Fish Eagles? Migration And Ecology Of Haliaeetus Leucoryphus In Asia, Marla Lynn Steele

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pallas’s Fish Eagle (Haliaeetus leucoryphus) is the Northern Hemisphere’s least understood eagle species. Virtually nothing is known concerning the species’ ecology. Historically, Pallas’s Fish Eagles were expected to breed in three separate populations in Mongolia, China, and India and was considered one of the most common raptors in Asia prior to the 1900’s. However, by 1960’s major declines were observed. The species is currently listed as “globally vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The current study examined over a century of Pallas’s Fish Eagle observation data to determine occupancy and detection rates throughout …

(Social) Media Priming: The Role Of Social Media In Priming Biases And Aggression In Online News Readership, Thomas Stallbaumer Ii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is aimed at better understanding the role of media priming in biases and aggression while using social media platforms to consume news. Priming theory holds that exposure to media can have short-term impacts on people’s subsequent behaviors or judgments. (Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2009)

Research in priming theory has shown that there are primes for aggressive behavior, the information and criteria we use in making judgments of the president, and various stereotypes. (Chang and Hitchon, 2004; Dixon and Maddox, 2005; Josephson, 1987; Valentino, 1999; )

This study will discuss the ways in which biases and aggression can be more …

Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction Of Gender Binaries In Yxta Maya Murray's Locas And Denise Chavez's Loving Pedro Infante, Stephanie Tangman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language labels and defines in order to enhance meaning and communication, but through these labels and definitions speakers are also conditioned to associate certain connotations with words and, therefore, their referents. While often harmless, linguistic conditioning can at times create unsavory associations with these referents. One of these instances occurs in gendered labels and conceptions of male and female bodies and purpose. Both Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas and Denise Chavez’s Loving Pedro Infante can be read through a lens that applies linguistic conditioning with gender theory in order to examine the reinterpretation of female archetypes in the Chicana imagination. It …

A Hybrid Partially Reconfigurable Overlay Supporting Just-In-Time Assembly Of Custom Accelerators On Fpgas, Zeyad Tariq Aklah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The state of the art in design and development flows for FPGAs are not sufficiently mature to allow programmers to implement their applications through traditional software development flows. The stipulation of synthesis as well as the requirement of background knowledge on the FPGAs' low-level physical hardware structure are major challenges that prevent programmers from using FPGAs. The reconfigurable computing community is seeking solutions to raise the level of design abstraction at which programmers must operate, and move the synthesis process out of the programmers' path through the use of overlays. A recent approach, Just-In-Time Assembly (JITA), was proposed that enables …

Applications Of Krylov Subspace And Balanced Truncation Model Order Reduction In Power Systems, Sebastian Emanuel Garrido

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic representations of power systems usually result in the order of hundreds or even thousands of buses. Therefore, reduction of these dynamic representations is convenient. Two applications of model order reduction in power systems are discussed in this thesis. First, Krylov subspace-based method is applied to the IEEE-123 Node Test Feeder in the context of distribution-level power systems simulation. Second, a Balanced Truncation-based model reduction is implemented in the 3-Machine 9-Bus system for designing a power system controller in the context of generation- and transmission-level power systems.

First, for the IEEE-123 Node Test Feeder, a two-sided Arnoldi algorithm is proposed …

Dpweka: Achieving Differential Privacy In Weka, Srinidhi Katla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Organizations belonging to the government, commercial, and non-profit industries collect and store large amounts of sensitive data, which include medical, financial, and personal information. They use data mining methods to formulate business strategies that yield high long-term and short-term financial benefits. While analyzing such data, the private information of the individuals present in the data must be protected for moral and legal reasons. Current practices such as redacting sensitive attributes, releasing only the aggregate values, and query auditing do not provide sufficient protection against an adversary armed with auxiliary information. In the presence of additional background information, the privacy protection …

Phenology, Habitat Use, And The Impacts Of Wetland Management On Autumn Migrating Rails In Missouri, Auriel M.V. Fournier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rails (Family: Rallidae) are among the least studied birds in North America, in large part due to their elusive nature. As a wetland-dependent species, understanding the timing of their migration and their habitat needs during migration is especially important since management needs to be timed to balance the needs of many species. I developed and verified a new distance sampling based nocturnal ATV spotlight survey because traditional call-broadcast surveys are not effective during autumn migration because of the drop off in call rate after the breeding season. These surveys allow us to ask point-level questions about what habitats rails select …

Reconnection Group For Individuals Who Have Experienced Interpersonal Trauma: An Explanatory Case Study, Megan Little

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Interpersonal traumas are becoming more common to the general public and the need for services to assist the mental and emotional well-being of survivors is increasing. However, due to the complicated impacts of trauma on the mind, body, and spirit there can be a challenge in finding effective treatment options that are long lasting for trauma symptoms. The purpose of this study was to understand the elements of a trauma group treatment (Reconnection group) modality that utilizes psychodrama as the primary treatment option and incorporates mindfulness and yoga as adjunctive treatments with individuals who have experienced interpersonal trauma. Findings suggest …

Assessing Organizational Health Literacy At An Academic Health Center: A Quantitative Research Study, Latrina Y. Prince

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Inadequate health literacy is a national health problem that affects about 90 million Americans. Health literacy is the degree to which a person is able to make good health decisions based on his/her ability to read, understand, and use health information and services. Organizational Health Literacy (OHL) is the degree to which an organization considers and promotes the health literacy of patients by providing easy to read, understand, and use health information and services. Since it is difficult to determine which patients have inadequate health literacy, a recommended intervention for addressing health literacy is to use OHL practices at all …

Measuring Racial Competence In Athletic Academic Support Staffs, Aquasia Thornhill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Critical Race Theory, a theoretical framework that has been gaining much recognition in sport literature, is a useful and beneficial tool in discussing race and racism. To better understand the context in which academic support staff appreciate the functionality and significance of race, the present study measures the racial competence of athletic academic support staffs. This research study explores the need to integrate a model such as Critical Race Theory that promotes “racial competency” among academic support staffs working closely with student-athletes of color, and measures Color-Blind Racial Attitudes that may have effects on the types of interactions individuals are …

Development Of An Oxygen Saturation Monitoring System By Embedded Electronics, Manikandan Venkatesan Gomathy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Measuring Oxygenation of blood (SaO2) plays a vital role in patient’s health monitoring. This is often measured by pulse oximeter, which is standard measure during anesthesia, asthma, operative and post-operative recoveries. Despite all, monitoring Oxygen level is necessary for infants with respiratory problems, old people, and pregnant women and in other critical situations.

This paper discusses the process of calculating the level of oxygen in blood and heart-rate detection using a non-invasive photo plethysmography also called as pulsoximeter using the MSP430FG437 microcontroller (MCU). The probe uses infrared lights to measure and should be in physical contact with any peripheral points …

The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generally thought of as a yearning for recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia is seen as a sentiment that impairs living in the present. And in case of immigrants, nostalgia is thought of as a debilitating form of escapism and an inability to adapt to change and mobility. In this dissertation, contesting against the prevalent concept, I argue that immigrant nostalgia is neither a colored memory (Dyson 117) nor a romance with one’s own fantasy (Boym xiii); rather, immigrant nostalgia has a socio-economic and political underpinning. By exploring the various nuances of immigrant experience delineated in the literary works of South …

Characterization Of Candidate Compound For Control Of Barnyardgrass And Other Troublesome Weeds In Rice, Michael Ryan Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Barnyardgrass remains one of the most difficult weeds to manage in rice. As herbicide resistance in this species, as well as others, continues to increase new control options are needed. Dow AgroSciences recently discovered and is developing a new herbicide for rice which is the primary focus of this research. Experiments were conducted to characterize this new herbicide for its use and effectiveness in midsouthern U.S. rice systems. The research conducted herein covers various aspects of herbicide characterization including: barnyardgrass dose response, accession testing, spectrum of control and tank-mix capability, application optimization, soil carryover and plant back determination, drift onto …

Friedrich Schelling: Soteriological Redemption And Ontological Renewal In The Intellectual Intuition Of The Life Of Life, Thomas Christopher Seay

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Schelling calls for the restoration of originary revelation by the true philosopher and, for the successful anagogue, the creation of a philosophical-religion; in so summoning man back to his innermost beginnings in the Absolute prius, the life of life, this paper claims that Schelling revalorizes and retranslates the ancient Orphico-Pythagorean and Platonic traditions and Hellenic mystery teachings onto European soil. Accordingly, drawing on correspondences and concordances with and insights from traditionalist philosophy, the German Pietist reform movement and the antique contemplative tradition, this paper reads the Schellingian project as an initiatic mystagogy to intellectual intuition, in which the anagogic traveler …

Evaluation Of Safening Effects To Herbicides Conferred Via Insecticide Seed Treatments In Soybean (Glycine Max) And Grain Sorghum (Sorghum Bicolor), Nicholas Robert Steppig

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Interactions between herbicides and insecticides in crop production have been documented for a number of years. Research has shown that applications of some organophosphate insecticides at planting can reduce cotton injury following applications of the soil-applied herbicide clomazone. Additionally, recent research has shown that, when applied as seed treatments prior to planting, some neonicotinoid insecticides can safen rice to drift from both glyphosate and imazethapyr. Since insecticide seed treatments are commonly used in many crop production systems throughout the Midsouth, exploring their ability to reduce injury from herbicides in other crops besides rice is of great interest. Presently no research …

Exploring Thermoresponsive Affinity Agents To Enhance Microdialysis Sampling Efficiency Of Proteins, Thaddeus Vasicek

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Affinity agents increase microdialysis protein relative recovery, yet they have not seen widespread use within the microdialysis community due to their additional instrumentation requirements and prohibitive cost. This dissertation describes new affinity agents for microdialysis that require no additional instrumentation to use, have nearly 100% particle recovery, are 7 times more cost efficient than alternatives, and have low specificity enabling their use for a wide variety of proteins. Initially gold nanoparticles were chosen as an affinity ligand support due to their high surface area/volume ratio and colloidal stability. Poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) was immobilized to the gold nanoparticles, which served to sterically …

Evaluation Of Benzobicyclon For Use In Midsouthern Rice (Oryza Sativa) Systems, Mason Luke Young

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A new herbicide site of action (SOA) is needed by rice (Oryza sativa L.) producers in the Midsouth for the control of problematic and herbicide-resistant weeds. Currently, six problematic weeds are relevant to Midsouthern rice producers because of resistance to at least one SOA, if not more. Gowan Company is in the process of commercializing benzobicyclon for use in Midsouthern rice systems. Benzobicyclon, a Group 27 post-flood herbicide, controls a broad spectrum of aquatics, broadleaves, grasses, and sedges, including those currently resistant to Group 2 herbicides. This will be the first 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD)-inhibiting herbicide commercially available in US rice …