Digital Commons Network^™

Fair And Diverse Group Formation Based On Multidimensional Features, Mohammed Saad A Alqahtani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of group formation is to build a team to accomplish a specific task. Algorithms are being developed to improve the team's effectiveness so formed and the efficiency of the group selection process. However, there is concern that team formation algorithms could be biased against minorities due to the algorithms themselves or the data on which they are trained. Hence, it is essential to build fair team formation systems that incorporate demographic information into the process of building the group. Although there has been extensive work on modeling individuals’ expertise for expert recommendation and/or team formation, there has been …

Investigation Of Optical And Structural Properties Of Gesn Heterostructures, Oluwatobi Gabriel Olorunsola

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Silicon (Si)-based optoelectronics have gained traction due to its primed versatility at developing light-based technologies. Si, however, features indirect bandgap characteristics and suffers relegated optical properties compared to its III-V counterparts. III-Vs have also been hybridized to Si platforms but the resulting technologies are expensive and incompatible with standard complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor processes. Germanium (Ge), on the other hand, have been engineered to behave like direct bandgap material through tensile strain interventions but are well short of attaining extensive wavelength coverage. To create a competitive material that evades these challenges, transitional amounts of Sn can be incorporated into Ge matrix to form …

Screening For Our Fathers: Representations Of Native American Masculinity In American Film, Jeromy Duane Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, I examine representation of Native American masculinity in the American film industry. The American film industry began just over a century ago, and one of its earliest subjects was the Native American. Throughout its history, the American film industry has maintained a steady trajectory of exploitation and erasure of Native American men and their subsequent masculine qualities. While there are notable historical outliers and critical exceptions in the 21st century, Native American men in film have been continually reduced to corpses, devoid of significant social presence, and denied meaningful explorations of their sexuality and interpersonal identity. The …

Recombinant Production And Purification Of Green Fluorescent Protein (Gfp)-Fused Metal Binding Protein For Palladium Nanoparticle Synthesis, Shadrach Ibinola

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In lieu of chemical and physical methods, biologically guided synthesis is increasingly used as a cost-effective medium for the fabrication of nanoparticles (NP). Recently, a palladium metal binding sequence Pd4 (TSNAVHPTLRHL) has been demonstrated to be instrumental in the production of palladium (Pd) nanoparticles. Although, by eliminating the additional cost of purification of the protein, the crude lysate of E. coli containing Pd specific protein has been proven to be a viable cost-effective means for the synthesis of Pd NP, studies have not be done to ascertain the comparative catalytic activity of nanoparticles synthesized from both clarified lysate and pure …

Enzymatic Degradation Of Microcystin-Lr By Microcystinase (Mlra), Faisal Alqhtani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Microcystin-LR (MC-LR) is affecting the water supply worldwide. Hence, a way to eliminate this toxin is an essential target. In this study, successful cloning of the mlrA gene and producing MlrA enzyme that can degrade the cyclic MC-LR to linearized MC-LR was done. MlrA protein was expressed in Escherichia coli BL-21 (E. coli). Also, enhancing the MlrA yield by adding nickel to LB media was a success in producing more MlrA enzyme from the same volume. Even though the enzyme showed no activity after adding Ni, the enzyme was expressed at a higher yield. Furthermore, it was to investigate adding …

Badnaam Women Of Bollywood: The Combative Sexual Politics Of Item Songs In India, Ketaki Deshpande

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the controversial Bollywood convention “item number,” a vampy song with suggestive lyrics and hypersexualized imagery of dancing women, as a crucial cultural artefact reflecting the gender and sexual uneasiness in India. Sex avoidance is a common theme in Bollywood films and in the country, where media and people are heavily censored and policed by anti-Romeo squads under the Modi administration. The item girl breaks the sexual tension with a mega hit song and hook step that fuels the economy of dance and desire in India. While the song is completely unrelated to the narrative of the film, …

The Impact Of Corporal Punishment For Timorese High School Graduates, Veronica Godinho Pereira

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the impacts of corporal punishment for Timorese high school graduates. Physical punishment is a pervasive method of disciplining students and children used in Timor-Leste because it has been such a tradition (UNICEF 2017). Few researchers have attempted to analyze the negative impacts of corporal punishment and possible gender differences; there is no known research on the impacts of corporal punishment in Timor-Leste. This study uses an in-depth interview method, where data were collected from 26 Timorese high school graduates composed of both men and women from both private and public schools in Timor-Leste. The ages of the …

Yumiko Ōshima’S The Star Of Cottonland: A Translation, Sheena Woods

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a translation of Volume 1 of Yumiko Ōshima’s The Star of Cottonland.

Interplay Between The Lattice And Spin Degrees Of Freedom In Magnetoelectric And Magnetic Materials, Temuujin Bayaraa

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains several investigations on the cross-coupling between structural and spin degrees of freedom in multiferroic and ferrimagnetic compounds by means of first-principles calculations and ab-initio-based Monte-Carlo simulations. We start with the reviews of magnetoelectricity, ferrimagnetism, strain engineering, followed by a brief introduction to first-principles computational methods, magnetic effective Hamiltonians, and other techniques that are utilized here. The results section of the dissertation can be divided into two parts. The first half focuses on magnetoelectric effects arising from different sources, while the second half is about the ferrimagnetic nature of materials. In the first part, we examine the epitaxial …

Role Of Sex Differences On Cancer Cachexia Progression And Fibrosis During Cancer Cachexia Development, Wesley Haynie

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer cachexia is a multifactorial wasting syndrome characterized by losses in bodymass >5% and occurs in approximately 80% of all cancer patients. Chronic inflammation and fibrosis play roles in cancer cachexia and a greater understanding of these contributing pathways to this pathology will pave the way for potential therapeutic avenues. While inflammation and fibrosis have been researched in various models of cancer cachexia, little to no studies have been performed in both sexes as most previous studies focus on males. PURPOSE The purpose of these studies is to investigate the role of fibrosis on cancer cachexia development as well as …

Queering The Metanarrative Of Domesticity: Chosen Families In Late Nineteenth- Century American Women's Literature, Sharla Rosenbaum

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My primary purpose in this project is to dispel the notion that the white, bourgeois, patriarchal, nuclear family believed by millions of US citizens to have once monopolized the United States’s cultural landscape through an examination of how women authors in the United States constructed families in literature immediately following the Civil War. Not only do the novels under examination reflect diverse representations of families, but they also reflect those images from diverse perspectives. I will use a Marxist lens to explore class and ideologic interpellation; a renegade global feminist lens to explore failure and differential consciousness; a queer and …

Does Whispering Improve Children’S Memory? Comparing Auditory Vigilance And Salience Hypotheses, Christina M. Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oral communication is one of the primary tools children use to learn new information and speech registers can deliver additional meaning to the words someone uses. Cirillo’s (2004) vigilance hypothesis states “Whispering can affect the psychobiological state of recipients, and in particular raise their auditory vigilance” (Cirillo, 2004, p. 76). Building on this theory, the current study investigates the role of whispering and children’s memory by examining a whispering vigilance, whispering salience which focused on the changes between normal and whisper registers, and combined vigilance and salience hypotheses to determine if whispering contributes to the recall of information. Using video …

Longitudinal Monitoring Of Tumor Response To Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Using Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy, Joel Isaac Rodriguez Troncoso

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Immune checkpoint drugs have completely changed the way people treat metastatic melanoma and non-small-cell lung cancer. While the impacts of these immunological checkpoints and their suppression on T cell function are well characterized, their consequences on the tumor microenvironment are not. In a CT26 mouse colorectal cancer model, we employed diffuse reflectance spectroscopy to track in vivo tumor microenvironmental alterations in response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. On three separate days, animals bearing CT26 tumor xenografts were given anti-PD-L1, anti-CTLA-4, a combination of both inhibitors, and isotype control. Within the first 6 days, monotherapy with either anti-PD-L1 or anti-CTLA-4 resulted in …

Development And Evaluation Of Models For Hatchery-Mediated Infection Of Neonatal Broiler Chicks, Brittany Danielle Graham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Formaldehyde fumigation has been used to control the microbial load in commercial hatch cabinets. The hatch cabinet environment promotes replication and dissemination of both apathogenic and pathogenic microorganisms. As the microbial load increases during the hatching phase, formaldehyde eliminates airborne microorganisms circulating in the hatch cabinet environment. Due to the hazardous properties of formaldehyde, non-toxic alternatives to formaldehyde fumigation to control the microbial bloom in hatch cabinets are needed. The objectives of the present dissertation were to develop challenge models using singular or multiple microorganisms associated with the microbial bloom to simulate contamination that occurs in commercial hatch cabinets. Initially, …

Preliminary Development Of The Dialysis-Membrane-Based Passive Biocide Delivery System For Spacecraft Water Recovery Units, Rogelio Elias Garcia Fernandez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation is to explore the capabilities of a dialysis-membrane-based system for the in-line dosing of silver ions to treated water in spacecraft water recovery units. The spacecraft environmental control and life support system community (ECLSS) are interested in adopting silver ions as a biocide in future spacecraft water recovery processes since silver ions are effective biocide at concentrations that humans can safely consume. The system has been designed following the configuration of the Water Processor Assembly (WPA) aboard the International Space Station. In this configuration, silver ions have to be added at the last step in …

The Evolution Of Defeaters: A Taxonomy, Erica Nicolas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has been widely argued that reasons for a belief come in degrees but not much literature has focused on the idea that defeaters for justification toward those beliefs also come in degrees. The aim of this paper is to explore epistemic defeasibility and construct a taxonomy for epistemic defeaters. This paper argues that epistemic defeaters undergo an evolutionary process before becoming what they are commonly labeled, such as rebutting and undercutting. I argue that within some stages of this process, there can be different degrees of defeat. This paper focuses on defeaters for justification, expands on the account of …

Just Benjamin, Paige R. Murphy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This documentary short film is about a now 30-year-old transgender man telling his story of growing up queer in a small Arkansas town, from being outed as a lesbian in high school, to ultimately being accepted as a trans man by members of his military and biological families. Benjamin “Benji” Davis grew up in the small town of Friendship, Arkansas, enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after high school and served for six years, then came back to Arkansas and primarily lived in Little Rock until he moved to Denver, Colorado this fall. The documentary is structured linearly both with …

Experimental And Computational Studies Of Electron Rich Alkenes, Alexa May

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thermal homolysis is one of the most fundamental reactions in organic chemistry. Free radical reactions are generally initiated by light or a radical initiator to generate the first radical, which can then propagate or terminate the reaction. Direct thermal homolysis requires no chemical initiators, just an increase in temperature depending on the homolysis energy.There are few studies of direct radical homolysis in complex systems or under mild conditions. The reactions involving C-N homolysis under mild conditions are reported in Chapter 1. Though the authors do not all propose a radical mechanism, we believe they can all be explained by a …

Site-Specific Effects Of Lysine Acetylation On Aminoacyl-Trna Synthetase, Hao Chen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (AARSs) are an ancient and highly conserved family of enzymes which can catalyze a two-steps aminoacylation reaction to charge tRNAs with their cognate amino acids, thus playing crucial roles in ribosomal protein synthesis. Naturally, the accurate amino acids and tRNA recognition of these synthetases are essential to the fidelity of translation process. To assure the correct recognition, some of these synthetases have evolved with an editing function to help remove the mischarged tRNAs. In addition to these functions, AARSs are also involved in various biological processes ranging from transcription to translation. Currently, a series of proteomic studies have …

Efficacy Of Selected Powdered Floor Treatments And Turmeric Rhizome Powder Against Salmonella, E. Coli, And L. Monocytogenes On Polyurethane-Concrete Flooring Material Carriers, Robert Sidney Fuller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The flooring in a food processing environment can become contaminated with pathogenic bacteria in many ways including foot and equipment traffic, incoming materials, and drain backups. Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) rhizome powder and seventeen other commercially available powdered floor treatments with a variety of active ingredients including quaternary ammonium compounds (QAC), sodium percarbonate and similar perhydrates (SPC), urea, and borax, were investigated for reducing the levels of pathogens on flooring thereby reducing the risk of cross-contamination from the floor to food contact surfaces. Some of the commercially available floor treatments were Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered antimicrobials while others were …

Investigation Of Iron-Nickel Films Based Catalysts: Controlling Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (Her) Through An Electrode-Electrolyte Engineering Approach, Sergio Ivan Perez Bakovic

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electrochemical energy conversion technologies need to be economically viable in order to be adopted. Earth-abundant transition metals (i.e., Fe, Co, and Ni) have attracted attention due to their high availability, low cost, and catalytic characteristics that are in many cases found in and exploited by nature. Herein, we synthesize FexNi100-xOy electrocatalyst films and study how the electrocatalyst-electrolyte interactions alter the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).In this work, FexNi100-xOy films were synthesized to study the composition, chemical state, and morphology. Characterization results provided a well-established electrocatalyst film platform to then proceed with electrochemical evaluations. The effects of the electrode composition and electrochemically …

Evapotranspiration In Mid-South Rice Production, Colby Wade Reavis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice provides much needed sustenance to a large portion of the global population, particularly in the developing world. With stress placed on food production systems under the reality of climate change and an increasing global population, rice production systems require solutions to a number of issues, including a limited water supply. As producers explore new strategies for conserving local water resources to continue to maintain yields, new irrigation strategies and technologies are being developed and validated for use at commercial production scales. Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is an irrigation practice that provides water savings through the capture of rainfall …

Examining The Relationship Between Library Services Use And Fall-To-Fall Retention In Community College Libraries, Eric Deatherage

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community college libraries exist to support institutional outcomes. One such outcome is student retention. This study’s purpose was to fill the gap in the literature at the community college level, proposing that a model including all library service use types would explain variance in student retention beyond that explained by total library financial expenditure. Services included were numbers of physical materials circulated, digital books circulated, e-serials used, reference transactions, library presentations, attendees at presentations, gate counts, and interlibrary loan materials borrowed. Additionally, it was proposed that the relationship between gate counts of physical entry into the library and student retention …

Component Damage Source Identification For Critical Infrastructure Systems, Nathan Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are becoming increasingly prevalent for both Critical Infrastructure and the Industry 4.0 initiative. Bad values within components of the software portion of CPS, or the computer systems, have the potential to cause major damage if left unchecked, and so detection and locating of where these occur is vital. We further define features of these computer systems and create a use-based system topology. We then introduce a function to monitor system integrity and the presence of bad values as well as an algorithm to locate them. We then show an improved version, taking advantage of several system properties …

Material Detection With Thermal Imaging And Computer Vision: Potentials And Limitations, Jared Poe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of my masters thesis research is to develop an affordable and mobile infraredbased environmental sensoring system for the control of a servo motor based on material identification. While this sensing could be oriented towards different applications, my thesis is particularly interested in material detection due to the wide range of possible applications in mechanical engineering. Material detection using a thermal mobile camera could be used in manufacturing, recycling or autonomous robotics. For my research, the application that will be focused on is using this material detection to control a servo motor by identifying and sending control inputs based …

Age, Ty Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Age is a body of work that uses open ended, multi-directional narrative, economical craft, body positioning, and disorder to create situations for curiosity to take hold and rekindle a sense of naivety. Intentionally pedestrian material choice and playful, curious methodology work in tandem with the visual language of play to create a world building opportunity for the participating viewer. The objects are anchors or starting points with spaces in between for flexible narratives and imagined and reimagined worlds with no prescribed beginning or end point.

The exhibition and written thesis represent a conglomeration of connected-by-association ideas, a Rube Goldberg machine …

Assimilation Of Seasonal Moisture Variability In North America And Asia For The Last Millennium, Chang Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The seasonal tree-ring chronologies that recorded discrete moisture signal for warm and cool season have been used to reconstruct the North America Seasonal Precipitation Atlas (NASPA) by the point-by-point regression method, and the results indicated that they can fairly reproduce the seasonal precipitation variability in the past. Compared with reconstructions using only paleoclimate proxy data, the paleoclimate data assimilation (PDA) considers both proxy data and climate model output, so the PDA reconstructions are consistent with both the climate signals reflected by the proxy data and the physical mechanisms represented by climate models. Based on the tree rings with discrete seasonal …

2+2=Cake: A Book Of Conversations About Possibilities In Business And Art, Elizabeth Ann Alspach

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

2+2=CAKE is a toolkit for people interested in creating their own economic container to support their livelihood. Calling upon the entrepreneurial experience of artists and creatives who founded or run organizations, the book and accompanying workbook and motivational posters serve as an incubator, buoy, and affirming resource for those looking to build the economic container in which they make their livelihood.

Applications Of Masw And Mhvsr Techniques For Infrastructure Evaluation With A Focus On The Effects Of Different Transformation Techniques And Near-Field Effects On Derived Dispersion Data, Salman Rahimi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is aimed at understanding two aspects of active surface wave methods to improve the accuracy and reliability of this method. These include (1) the performance of four common wavefield transformation methods for the multichannel analysis of surface wave (MASW) data processing and (2) near-field effects. Toward this end, extensive field measurements were conducted considering different factors affecting these two topics. The MASW and microtremor horizontal to vertical spectral ratio (MHVSR) were then employed to examine their efficiency for infrastructure health monitoring.

Regarding the performance of the four common transformation techniques, it was observed that for sites with a …

Data-Driven Methods To Address Truck Parking Shortages For Long-Haul Commercial Truck Drivers, Sharif Mahmud

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Truck parking is a critical concern for both the trucking industry and the truck drivers. Long-haul commercial truck drivers rely on safe and adequate parking to support interstate commerce, which has become a challenge due to parking shortages. The recent electronic logging device (ELD) mandate, forcing a strict compliance to hours of service (HOS) regulations, are leading to higher demand for parking. A number of federal, regional, and local studies reveal that truck activity will increase and truck parking demand will outpace parking supply in the coming years. Such parking shortages likely disrupt freight flows and pose risks to truck …