Digital Commons Network^™

Identifying, Monitoring, Quantifying And Converting Algae To Bio-Fuels In Bio-Reactors, Alice C. Jernigan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Growing algae as a source for bio-fuels has become an area of interest due to concerns about global warming and the reliability and ecology of the production of fossil fuels. Dried algae harvested from a pilot water quality improvement technology at the Rockaway Wastewater Treatment Facility in New York were examined as a source of carbohydrates and lipids for the production of bio-fuels in bio-reactors. The length of storage time, storage conditions, sugar and lipid extraction processes, and fuel production were studied. The results show that if the algae is stored dry (0.015 g/g algae even after a year in …

"Beirut Speaks": New Graffiti Sub-Cultures Of Beirut, Lebanon, Jaime Alyss Holland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern graffiti is an ever-present part of urban space. It has become globalized and has adapted to different environments and social contexts. Today in Beirut, Lebanon a phenomenal street art movement is infiltrating public space. This particular movement questions the common understandings that have constructed Western graffiti artists and graffiti culture for so long. A new group of street artists is working to make the art form more inclusive of Beirut's many communities by writing messages that speak to the whole of Lebanon. They are making their work known in the presence of law enforcement, different sects, and generations. How …

A Content And Visual Analysis Of Promotional Pieces Used To Promote The Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board, Amy Hughes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A communications campaign was developed for a commodity promotion board in the southern region of the United States with promotional pieces produced and disseminated by a third-party communications group to reach the general public, soybean producers, and animal agriculture producers target audiences through key themes and messages. A systematic, content-driven approach assessed the potential impact on perceptions of individuals. This study utilized a content and visual analysis based on semiotic theory to analyze creative pieces and focus groups to assess content quality and impact.

Many of the creative pieces displayed too many themes, and the themes did not accurately represent …

Knowledge, Perceptions, And Outcomes Of Agricultural Communications Curriculum In Arkansas Secondary Agricultural Classrooms, Carley Payne Calico

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed method study was to assess the effectiveness of agricultural communications curriculum developed and incorporated into a semester-long agricultural leadership and communications course for secondary agricultural education programs in Arkansas. This study was comprised of three parts including a pilot test, teacher training assessment, and a descriptive field test over a two-year period. For the pilot test portion of the study, students (N = 297) participated in newly developed instructional modules (careers, writing, design, and multimedia) predetermined by a committee of agricultural education and communications faculty at the University of Arkansas. The pilot test indicated students' …

The Impact Of Intolerance Of Uncertainty On International Students' Intercultural And Intracultural Conflict Management, Yekaterina Syrtsova

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the role of intolerance of uncertainty in international students' conflict management in intracultural and intercultural settings. International students at a large U.S. university were surveyed and their responses were analyzed using quantitative methods. Analyses indicated that the higher the intolerance of uncertainty scores, the higher the use of dominating and avoiding strategies. The results in this study also revealed that when controlling for sex, the higher the individuals' intolerance of uncertainty score, the lower their preference for integrating-compromising strategy. Finally, there were limited differences between the ways international students handle conflict with conflict partners from their own …

Properties Of Multiferroic Bifeo3 From First Principles, Dovran Rahmedov

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a first-principle-based approach is developed to study magnetoelectric effect in multiferoic materials. Such approach has a significant predictive power and might serve as a guide to new experimental works. As we will discuss in the course of this work, it also gives an important insight to the underlying physics behind the experimentally observed phenomena.

We start by applying our method to investigate properties of a generic multiferroic material. We observe how magnetic susceptibility of such materials evolves with temperature and compare this evolution with the characteristic behavior of magnetic susceptibility for pure magnetic systems. Then we focus …

Vocabulary Instruction Practices Of Highly Effective Kindergarten Teachers, Huda Alenezi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate vocabulary instruction in kindergarten classrooms by exploring and describing highly effective kindergarten teachers' practices. The fundamental question that guided this study was how do highly effective kindergarten teachers teach vocabulary? The study focused on five areas: teachers' methods, techniques to select vocabulary, assessment approaches, use of technology and whether their practices in the previous four areas were consistent with recent research. The study involved nine highly effective kindergarten teachers from nine elementary schools within one school district in Northwest Arkansas. The sample teachers were selected based on principals' recommendations, using specific …

The Efficacy Of Probiotic Bacterial Isolates In Reducing Cecal Camylobacter Colonization In Broiler Chickens, Komala Arsi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Campylobacter is the leading cause of foodborne illness worldwide and human illnesses are often associated with consumption of poultry or poultry products. Many strategies have been tried to eliminate Campylobacter from poultry with limited success. One of the strategies to reduce Campylobacter colonization in poultry is by use of probiotics. We conducted 2 separate studies to evaluate the efficacy of probiotics against Campylobacter in broiler chickens. For our first study, GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) bacteria were isolated from healthy chickens and tested their efficacy against Campylobacter in vitro. Twenty six isolates with in vitro anti-Campylobacter activity were …

Violations Of Protection Orders: Characteristics Of Offenders And Criminal Justice Responses, Kelly Eileen Henderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Criminal justice research often finds gender-based differences with regard to both perpetration and responses to offending. These data indicate that, overall, women's crime rates are far below those of their male counterparts and that women commit less serious offenses. That is there are distinct patterns of offending across sex. In addition, justice responses tend to favor women, in that female offenders fare better than men particular in areas of arrest, prosecution, and sentencing. While previous research explores patterns of crime between male and female offenders, focusing primarily on drug or violent crimes such as homicide, there has been very little …

Impact Of Healthy Lifestyle Choices On Smoking Behavior Among College Students Who Smoke Cigarettes, Mitchell Jenkins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the impact certain healthy lifestyle choices had on smoking behavior among college students who smoke cigarettes. Even with continued reduction in prevalence, cigarette smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in America. With that in mind, it is important to continue to identify factors that relate to decreased tobacco usage. Secondary data from the American College Health Association's bi-yearly National College Health Assessment was used for this study. This assessment/survey encompasses college students' habits, behaviors, and perceptions regarding prevalent health topics. The sample for this study consisted of 14,515 college students who identified themselves as …

Lobbying On Behalf Of The Faithful: Three Mainline Protestant Denominations And Their Advocacy Efforts On Capitol Hill During The 110th Congress, Julia Ann Summers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A number of mainline Protestant denominations engage in direct lobbying and grassroots advocacy efforts with Congress on behalf of the poor and other marginalized groups. This study explores the work of three specific denominations the Presbyterian Church [PC(USA)], the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the United Methodist Church (UMC), as religious special interests. Specifically, the study explores how they facilitated their policy agendas on Capitol Hill during the 110th Congress (2007-2008). This question is answered primarily through interviews with and surveys of the professional staff engaged in this work during that session. Results indicate that each denomination works extensively …

Web Accessibility Of The Higher Education Institute Websites Based On The World Wide Web Consortium And Section 508 Of The Rehabilitation Act, Najma Habib Alam

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem observed in this study is the low level of compliance of higher education website accessibility with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The literature supports the non-compliance of websites with the federal policy in general. Studies were performed to analyze the accessibility of fifty-four sample web pages using automated testing via auto-validation tools and using manual testing via assistive technology, followed by a comparative analysis of the findings of the auto validation tools. The auto-validation tools utilized on the sample web pages were comprised of three W3C validation tools. The results showed that two-thirds of the …

Hope, Faith And Trust: Conversations With Tibetans In Exile, William Lukas Gramlich

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of Hope, Faith and Trust: Conversations with Tibetans in Exile was to create a documentary to serve as a platform for Tibetan refugees living in India to tell, in their own words, the story of the Tibetan peoples' political struggles since the Chinese government occupied Tibet in the 1950s. To achieve this goal, this project utilized oral-history interviews with Tibetan exiles, gathered as part of the University of Arkansas TEXT Program. The TEXT Program, short for Tibetans in Exile Today, is a study abroad oral-history project in which undergraduate students conduct interviews with Tibetans living in India. The …

Comparing Virus Ultrafiltration Of Bacteriophages With Filtration Of Minute Virus Of Mice, Kent Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Industrial production of protein therapeutics demand rigorous testing and clearance of viruses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration dictate the purity of pharmaceuticals with regards to viral contamination. As this testing is time consuming and expensive using mammalian cells and viruses, bacteriophages may provide a faster and cheaper alternative for membrane filtration processes. We used ultrafiltration membranes to filter protein solutions with viruses. Two bacteriophages were tested against membranes with two different pore sizes. These membranes were then tested by inverting the membrane's orientation. Flux measurements and log virus removal data were taken. Flux and log virus removal were seen …

Chitosan Reduces Enteric Colonization Of Campylobacter In Young Chickens, But Not On Post-Harvest Chicken Skin Samples, Hanna Royce Arambel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Worldwide, Campylobacter is one of the leading causes of foodborne bacterial gastroenteritis causing an estimated 1.3 million infections in the United States alone. Consumption and/or cross-contamination of raw or undercooked poultry products have been linked as the most common source of Campylobacter infection, making the poultry industry a target for Campylobacter reduction strategies. Campylobacter is prevalent in most poultry flocks in the United States, with as many as 90% of flocks Campylobacter-positive at the time of slaughter. It is estimated that a reduction of Campylobacter in poultry would greatly reduce the risk of campylobacteriosis in humans. Unfortunately, there are …

21st Century Radicalization: The Role Of The Internet User And Nonuser In Terrorist Outcomes, David Wayne Woodring

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines differences between users and nonusers of information communication technologies (ICTs) within the pre-incident planning processes for domestic terrorist movements operating within the United States. In addition, this study is the first quantitative exploration of the prevalence, types, and purposes of ICT use within terrorist movements, specifically environmental, far-right, and Islamic extremist movements. Using "officially designated" federal terrorism investigations from the American Terrorism Study (ATS), we analyzed extracted evidence of ICT usage among individuals (n =331) engaged in the pre-incident planning processes as members of terrorist movements between 1995-2011. While we find significant differences in terrorist ICT use …

Friction And Wear Of Polytetrafluoroethylene/Graphene Oxide Composite Thin Films, Justin Kyle Carter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a commonly used solid lubricant due to its low coefficient of friction and chemical inertness. As a polymer, PTFE suffers from high wear and low adhesion to substrates limiting its use as a thin film. Thin PTFE films are ideal candidates for solid lubrication in micro-machines and bearing applications. The main goal of this work is to enhance the durability of thin PTFE films through the addition of few layered graphene oxide (GO) as filler. In order to address adhesion issues, the addition of an adhesive layer of polydopamine (PDA) between stainless steel substrates and thin PTFE …

From Temporary Incentive To Perpetual Entitlement: Historical Perspective On The Evolving Nature Of Copyright In America, Evan Boyd Billingsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The original purpose of copyright legislation was to grant a temporary economic monopoly to an author of a creative work. This monopoly is meant to incentivize authors to contribute to the public good with works that promote progress in science and art. However, increases in the scope and duration of copyright terms grant overly broad protections and controls for copyright owners, while advances in technology have provided the public with the potential for near-limitless access to information. This creates a conflict between proprietary interest in creative works versus the public's right and ability to access same. Efforts to balance these …

The Birth Of A Playwright Through The Evolution Of The One-Act Play Stripped, Bear; The Film Stripped, Bear; And The Full-Length Play American Bear, Larry Michael Mitchell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Birth of a Playwright through the Evolution of the One-act Play Stripped, Bear; the film Stripped, Bear; and the Full-Length Play American Bear follows the inception, birth, and evolution of a ten-minute, one-act, film, and full-length play: three major iterations of the same source material. Through this exploration, the reader will not only see how the work was changed through outside forces such as form and function but internal struggles within a young playwright as he struggles to find a final form for his first major work while attempting to establish himself as a playwright both within the field …

The Development Of An In Vivo Microdialysis Collection Method Of Cytokines From Brain Tissue, Anthony W. Herbaugh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, different methods to improve the microdialysis collection procedure for cytokines from brain tissue are presented. The first method was based on stopped flow and results indicating that no significant difference in relative recovery between stopped flow and continuous flow are shown. The second method is an antibody bead-based enhancement method. With the antibody bead-based method, a 3.5 fold increase in the collected concentrations of Chemokine (C-C motif) Ligand 2 (CCL2) were observed. However, there was no significant increase in the in vivo collection efficiency of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) using the antibody enhancement. Finally the development of an in-house …

An Open Source, Line Rate Datagram Protocol Facilitating Message Resiliency Over An Imperfect Channel, Christina Marie Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is the transfer of data into buffers between two compute nodes that does not require the involvement of a CPU or Operating System (OS). The idea is borrowed from Direct Memory Access (DMA) which allows memory within a compute node to be transferred without transiting through the CPU. RDMA is termed a zero-copy protocol as it eliminates the need to copy data between buffers within the protocol stack. Because of this and other features, RDMA promotes reliable, high throughput and low latency transfer for packet-switched networking. While the benefits of RMDA are well known and …

Investigation Of The Effects Of Rapid Thermal Annealing On Mbe Grown Gaasbi/Gaas Heterostructures For Optoelectronic Devices, Perry C. Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High efficiency optoelectronic devices rely on high quality materials making up the device structure. The scope of this thesis investigates the effectiveness of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at improving the material quality of GaAsBi/GaAs heterostructures. During the fabrication of a device, the contacts of the device had the rapid thermal annealing process accomplished to produce ohmic contacts and this research explored if this annealing treatment degraded the quantum wells that made up the active region of a device. To investigate these effects, a system to measure the photoluminescence of the material system was constructed utilizing Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. The …

The Relationships Between `Push' And `Pull' Factors Of Millennial Generation Tourists To Heritage Tourism Destinations: Antebellum And Civil War Sites In The State Of Arkansas, Kayla Diane Kesterson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated `push' and `pull' motivational factors which influence Millennial Generation tourists' decisions to visit heritage tourism destinations and their knowledge of Civil War and Antebellum heritage sites within the state of Arkansas. A descriptive, six-section survey was distributed to Millennial students from varying degree fields at three universities within Arkansas. Four hundred twenty-four participants completed the questionnaire with measures of demographic information, visitation and frequency to heritage tourism sites, push factors, pull factors, heritage tourism sites in Arkansas, and historic preservation participation.

The results of this study showed that although Millennial students do not visit heritage sites frequently, …

Biochemical And Biophysical Studies Of Novel Features Of Ras-Related Protein Interactions, Kyla Marie Morinini Morris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Ras superfamily of G-proteins are of great research interest for structure-function relationships among proteins as they act as molecular switches in the regulation of various biochemical reactions in the cell. They are regulated by protein-protein interactions targeted to the highly flexible switch regions. Mutations in G-proteins or their effectors may cause alterations in structure and/or function that can lead to overactivity.

The Ras-related protein Cell division cycle 42 (Cdc42) is important in regulating cell-signaling processes. The T35A mutation in Cdc42 leads to a decrease in flexibility of the Switch I region responsible for effector binding. The kinetics of the …

Bacterially-Mediated Formation Of Rock Coatings In Kärkevagge, Swedish Lapland: A Mineralogical And Micro-Environmental Analog For Mars, Cassandra L. Marnocha

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The search for past or present life on Mars is, for now, limited to surface environments. An often neglected surface environment that could have served as an abode for life and could presently preserve evidence of that life is that of rock coatings. Rock coatings are mineral accretions on rock surfaces. On Earth, they are widespread and occur with considerable chemical diversity. There is growing evidence for a biotic role in their formation on Earth, particularly with respect to rock varnish. As a result, rock varnish has become a target of astrobiological interest on Mars, where varnish-like coatings have been …

An Experimental And Computational Evaluation Of The Importance Of Molecular Diffusion In Gas Gravity Currents, Jeremy Jac Herman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accidental release of hazardous, denser-than-air gases during their transport or manufacture is a vital area of study for process safety researchers. This project examines the importance of molecular diffusion on the developing concentration field of a gas gravity current released into a calm environment. Questions which arose from the unexpectedly severe explosion in 2005 at Buncefield, England were of particular interest. The accidental overfilling of a large tank with gasoline on a completely calm morning led to a massive open air explosion. Forensic evidence showed that at the time of ignition, a vapor cloud, most of which now appears …

Evaluation Of Shake Weight Protocol In Senior Populations, Isaac F. Cook

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Shake Weight® (SW®) is designed to improve muscular fitness in a quick and inexpensive way. This study aimed to determine if the SW® was an effective tool at improving muscular fitness, body composition, and bone mineral density (BMD) in post-menopausal women. Participants were 17 healthy, post-menopausal women from aMidwestern University and divided into two training (SW® and HIT) interventions that lasted 10 weeks. HIT participants performed three sets of 8 repetitions at 80% of their estimated 1RM for the chest press, leg press, lat pulldown, and seated row. SW® participants performed the exercises prescribed by the SW® manufacturer. Changes …

Love, Reason, And Romantic Relationships, Justin Leonard Clardy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The capacity to love is without a doubt one of the most prized features of our existence. However, love offers us a wide range of complex questions with very few answers. Yet, it is important that we get an accurate view of love because knowing what to love and how to live aids us in trying to manage our lives sensibly. In this paper, I plan to present a reasons-responsive account of romantic love that involves the valuing of qualities that the beloved has as well as the valuing of the relationship shared with the beloved. I will also show …

In Vitro Analysis Of Short Chain Fatty Acids And Human Fecal Microbiota Stimulated By Pectin Sources, Byungjick Min

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As interest increases for colonic health, various studies have been conducted to investigate functional ingredients for host health and prevention of chronic disease in humans such as colon cancer and Type 2 diabetes. In particular dietary fiber has been reported to have beneficial effects on colonic health. More recently, dietary fiber has been categorized based on its characteristics and numerous studies have been conducted to determine correlations with chronic diseases. Pectin is a naturally occurring biopolymer that has been used in various applications for purposes of pharmaceutical and biotechnology. Pectin is a soluble dietary fiber and can be entirely fermented …

Attitudes And Behaviors In Online Communities: Empirical Studies Of The Effects Of Social, Community, And Individual Characteristics, Richard Kumi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Online communities and communities of practice bring people together to promote and support shared goals and exchange information. Personal interactions are important to many of these communities and one of the important outcomes of personal interactions in online communities and communities of practice is user-generated content. The three essays in the current study examines behavior motivation in online communities and communities of practice to understand how Social and personal psychological factors, and user-generated influence attitudes, intentions and behaviors in online communities.

The first essay addresses two research questions. First, how does Social capital influence exchange and combination behaviors in online …