Digital Commons Network^™

Perceptions Of Equality And National Identity Amongst Young British South Asian Muslims In Bradford, England, Simon J. Reid

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of urban riots and terror attacks in the United Kingdom, British public debate and policy have focused on the nation's immigrant communities. These debates have commonly called into question whether immigrant communities in Britain are sufficiently integrated into "mainstream" society and included in the nation. These questions have been particularly focused on the country's immigrant Muslim communities because they have, over the years, been accused of segregating themselves from, and within, British society. This study explored the local and national identities of young British South Asian Muslims in Bradford, which is one of the largest Muslim communities …

A Solar-Powered And Multi-Tiered Mesh Node For A Portable In Situ Emergency Response System, Adam Matthews

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aftermath of a natural disaster is typically characterized by lack of a reliable medium for dissemination of information to survivors. Current state-of-the-art emergency response systems rely on satellite radio-enabled devices, but survivors, unlike first responders, do not have access to such devices. To mitigate this problem, we present PERPETUU a solar-powered portable GIS microserver. The microserver node can be deployed in a disaster scene, and can serve maps to survivors viewable on browsers of off-the-shelf mobile systems. A key innovation in the design of the PERPETUU node is a multi-tiered hardware architecture-the system combines a low-power micro-controller, a medium-power …

Development Of Novel Subunit Vaccine Against H5n1 Influenza, Lu Zhang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Influenza is a common infectious disease resulting from a frequently mutated RNA virus. Vaccination is currently the most effective method to prevent people from seasonal or pandemic influenza. The production of traditional egg-based influenza vaccine is time-consuming and provides limited effect against new strains. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a rapid method to produce influenza vaccines. We proposed a novel influenza vaccine based on the E.coli expression system. Hemagglutinin (HA) is the major target surface protein of influenza virus for vaccine development. In this study, we sub-cloned the HAs encoding gene into an E. coli expression vector; the signal …

The Role Of Histone H3 And H4 In Centromere Function And Genome Integrity, Payel Chaudhuri

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Histone H2A plays an important role in chromosomal segregation among parent and daughter cells during mitosis. While it is established that this histone is important in maintaining chromosome number in cell, further work is carried out to explore the role of other histones like H3 and H4 for similar effects. A systematic study is initiated by screening a library based on mutation of different amino acid residues in these histones. This detailed screening identified specific regions within H3 and H4, which are critically important for centromeric function. These histones residing near the DNA entry/exit region of nucleosome effects the functionality …

Molecular And Biochemical Mechanisms Of Pathogenesis In The Maize Foliar Pathogen Cercospora Zeae-Maydis, Winfred-Peck Dorleku

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

GLS is a serious foliar disease of maize, a major staple crop grown commercially in the USA for both human and animal feed production, and increasingly, for ethanol production. The disease is caused by two Cercospora species, C. zeae-maydis and C. zeina, both of which infect maize in the USA and in other parts of the world, with yield losses potentially greater than 50%, depending on local conditions. In culture, C. zeae-maydis produces a phytotoxic, host non-specific perylenequinone, cercosporin, and abscisic acid (ABA), for which there is no known pathological or physiological function in the fungus. Experimental evidence indicates …

Electrostatic Spray Application Of Food-Grade Organic Acids And Plant Extracts To Decrease Escherichia Coli O157:H7 And Salmonella Typhimurium On Select Produce, Leighanna Maeree Massey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both consumers and suppliers have been negatively affected by an increase in foodborne pathogens contaminating fruits. Consequently, there is a need for the development of more efficient antimicrobials and application techniques to decrease contamination. Natural preservatives such as organic acids and plant extracts have demonstrated promising results in decontaminating produce. In addition, the effectiveness of such preservatives may be enhanced by the use of an electrostatic sprayer. The objective of this research was to determine the combinations and concentrations of organic acids and plant extract that were able to reduce Salmonella Typhimurium (ST) and Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EC) inoculated fruits …

The Mechanisms Of Interpersonal Privacy In Social Networking Websites: A Study Of Subconscious Processes, Social Network Analysis, And Fear Of Social Exclusion, Bryan I. Hammer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With increasing usage of Social networking sites like Facebook there is a need to study privacy. Previous research has placed more emphasis on outcome-oriented contexts, such as e-commerce sites. In process-oriented contexts, like Facebook, privacy has become a source of conflict for users. The majority of architectural privacy (e.g. privacy policies, website mechanisms) enables the relationship between a user and business, focusing on the institutional privacy concern and trust; however, architectural privacy mechanisms that enables relationships between and among users is lacking. This leaves users the responsibility to manage privacy for their interpersonal relationships. This research focuses on the following …

The Development Of A Traumatic Brain Injury Bioreactor, Zachery Heller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Approximately 1.7 million Americans experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. Concussive injuries are a subset of TBI in which blows to the head cause the brain to collide against the interior of the skull. Damage to the neurons, supporting cells, and surrounding extra cellular matrix resulting from these collisions can lead to permanent physical, cognitive, and psychological impairment. We believe the prevalence and clinical significance of concussive injures warrants research investment. To study brain injury following TBI, in vivo models have been the gold standard for TBI experiments. Although a valuable research alternative, animals are expensive, raise ethical …

Steady-State Switching And Dispersion/Absorption Spectroscopy Of Multistate Atoms Inside An Optical Ring Cavity, Jiteng Sheng

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis mainly focuses on the experimental investigations of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) related phenomena in various systems involving multilevel atoms inside an optical ring cavity. Semiclassical methods, e.g. density-matrix equations, are used through out this thesis to simulate the experimental results. First, the cavity transmission spectrum can be significantly modified when multilevel atoms are placed inside an optical ring cavity. Such coupled atom-cavity systems are well explained by the intracavity dispersion/absorption properties. Specifically, three-level lambda-type, four-level N-type and double-lambda-type atoms inside an optical ring cavity are investigated by examining their cavity transmission spectra. Second, optical multistability (OM) has been …

Tin Sensitization For Electroless Plating, Xingfei Wei

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The tin sensitization process has been used in electroless plating since 1940s Brenner and Riddell developed the electroless plating for surface metallization method. It was found to be an interesting topic to study tin sensitization for chemically controlling metal deposition on different substrates, because the tin sensitization process had critical effects on the electroless plated metal thin films. Nowadays electroless plating metal deposition is still an important method for depositing metals. It has a few advantages over the vapor deposition and electrodeposition method, such as work in an ambient condition, on nonconductive substrates, and without extra power input. Applying electroless …

Identifying Emerging Researchers Using Social Network Analysis, Syed Masum Billah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Finding rising stars in academia early in their careers has many implications when hiring new faculty, applying for promotion, and/or requesting grants. Typically, the impact and productivity of a researcher are assessed by a popular measurement called the h-index that grows linearly with the academic age of a researcher. Therefore, h-indices of researchers in the early stages of their careers are almost uniformly low, making it difficult to identify those who will, in future, emerge as influential leaders in their field. To overcome this problem, we make use of Social network analysis to identify young researchers most likely to become …

Political Motive And Bail: The Effect Of Prosecutorial Strategies On Pretrial Decisions In Federal Terrorism Trials, Michael John Clanton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand how prosecutorial strategies affect pretrial decisions in U.S. terrorism trials and how pretrial decisions in turn affect the disposition of those trials. This research builds off of the work of Smith and Damphousse (1996) which compared terrorism indictees to traditional federal offenders. They found that the use of explicit politicality as a prosecution strategy was a significant predictor of both disposition and the sentence length in terrorism trials. This study focuses on the question of whether the use of an explicitly political prosecution strategy impacts pretrial decisions in terrorism cases and whether …

Phenotypic, Physiological And Growth Interactions Among Salmonella Serovars, Juliany Rivera Calo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of four research parts: a literature review that covers Salmonella spp., one of the more prominent foodborne pathogens that represents a major risk to humans (chapter 1). Understanding the growth of Salmonella serovars and strains is an important basis for more in depth research. In this case we studied a) the aerobic and anaerobic growth responses of multiple strains from six different serovars, b) how the spent media from different serovars, more importantly S. Heidelberg, affect the growth of S. Typhimurium, and c) determined whether or not two different serovars undergo competitive interactions when they were …

Consumer Adoption Of Health Information Systems, Sankara Subramanian Srinivasan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At nearly 18 percent of the country's GDP, the U.S. healthcare industry continues to wrestle with growing cost and a quality of care that does not match the increased spending. The dominant focus to date has been on promoting Health IT (HIT) system implementation and digitizing health records at the provider's end, with scant attention to the role of the patient in the healthcare process. The source of inefficiency in the healthcare system is not only on account of shortcomings at the provider's end but also due to non-compliance (such as failing to adhere to medication advice and follow-up visits) …

Effect Of Electrostatic Spraying Of Food-Grade Organic And Inorganic Acids, And Grape Seed Extract On Salmonella Typhimurium And Escherichia Coli O157:H7 On Spinach And Iceberg Lettuce, Vijayalakshmi Ganesh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The safety of fresh produce is often challenged by the sporadic incidences of outbreaks owing to Salmonella Typhimurium (S.T.) and Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E.c.). Washing and current disinfection strategies do not completely decontaminate leafy greens such as spinach and iceberg lettuce. Therefore, more effective treatments are essential to ensure the microbial safety of the produce at the selling point. Here, a multiple hurdle approach was applied: (1) Natural antimicrobials - organic acids (malic, lactic and tartaric acids; MA, LA, TA, respectively) and plant extract (grape seed extract, GSE) and (2) Application method - Electrostatic spraying, was …

Analysis Of Social Networks In A Virtual World, Gregory Thomas Stafford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As three-dimensional virtual environments become both more prevalent and more fragmented, studying how users are connected via their avatars and how they benefit from the virtual world community has become a significant area of research. An in-depth analysis of virtual world Social networks is needed to evaluate how users interact in virtual worlds, to better understand the impact of avatar Social networks on the virtual worlds, and to improve future online Social networks.

Our current efforts are focused on building and exploring the Social network aspects of virtual worlds. In this thesis, we build a Social network of avatars based …

Successful Marketing Strategies For Promoting Event Destinations, Evease Iniece Tucker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Travel and tourism has been recognized as being an important driver of jobs, growth and economic recovery in the United States. Meetings, events and incentive travel contribute $98.7 billion of the direct spending, $15.0 billion in taxes and 859,000 jobs. As a result, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in the United States are taking advantage of this impact for growth in their destinations. As a destination marketing organization's main job responsibility is to promote their destination to attract visitors, which requires superior marketing strategies to achieve these goals.

This research investigates the marketing strategies of DMOs in the United States. The …

Examining The Relations Among Trauma, Distress, Resilience, And Physical Health, Kathryn Elizabeth Chaisson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the role of traumatic distress as a mediator in the relation between trauma exposure and somatic malaise and healthcare utilization. Resilience was examined as a moderator between trauma exposure and somatic malaise and healthcare utilization, then between trauma exposure and traumatic distress. A total of 206 female participants recruited from an obstetrics and gynecology specialty practice completed measures of trauma exposure, traumatic distress, resilience, somatic malaise, and healthcare utilization. Multiple hierarchical regressions were performed to test the hypothesized relations. Results indicated that trauma exposure was a significant predictor of traumatic distress and resilience, and of somatic malaise …

"There Were High Hopes And High Projections:" Examining The Social Construction Of Target Populations In The Policy Design Of The Arkansas Lottery Legislation, Kristopher D. Copeland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lottery policies have been created by many states to generate additional funds to support public initiatives, such as higher education scholarships. In 2009, Arkansas adopted a lottery to generate higher education scholarships. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the Arkansas state lottery policy design process to better understand how the Social construction of higher education students and other citizens became embedded within the policy. The Social construction of target populations theory (Ingram & Schneider, 1993), guided three research questions regarding how policy actors in Arkansas Socially constructed citizens while designing lottery legislation, how these Social constructions …

Perceived Impact Of Character Education Program At A Midwest Rural Middle School: A Case Study, Sandra Jean Goss

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today there exist a concern for the safety and success of students in the public education system. Families, educators, and community members are concerned with the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of students in an environment where incidents of violence are growing. Events like the school shootings at Jonesboro, Arkansas, and at Columbine High School left our nation concerned with the problems within the school system. Many believe that character education can be an effective solution. The purposes of this study are to describe key elements of one school's character education program, and to determine the impact that this program …

Spatial Distributions Of Rhizoctonia Species In Soybean Fields Undergoing Annual Rotations With Rice, Terry Neil Spurlock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aerial blight is caused by Rhizoctonia solani AG1-IA. This pathogen also causes sheath blight of rice. In Arkansas, many soybean and rice fields undergo an annual rotation of these two crops which facilitates a continuous source of inoculum from one year to the next. Aerial blight is a two stage disease in that R. solani AG1-IA colonizes the plant during the early vegetative growth stages and then aerial blight develops after the soybean canopy closes in the later reproductive stages of development. As a result of the upper portion of the canopy often being asymptomatic, significant yield loss can occur …

The Material Culture Of Migrant Life At The U.S./México Border, Consuelo Helen Cano Crow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Material culture is the aggregate of physical objects or artifacts used by or discarded by a past culture or society. Contemporary unauthorized migration at the U.S./México border has left thousands of pounds of migrant goods in what are referred to by United States Border Patrol as "lay-up sites". Since the late 1990's, undocumented migrants attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona have been exposed to a distinctive set of material culture. This rapidly-evolving material culture is specific to the phenomenon of border-crossing, and it reflects and shapes the experience of migrants attempting the crossing. Migrants Stations, also known as …

Caught In The Net--The Development And Production Of An Original Playscript, Prince Duren

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Drama at the University of Arkansas provides students with the opportunity to take part in classes, workshops, stage readings, and productions as part of its new play development process. The purpose of this thesis document is to clearly and concisely track the process of developing, rehearsing, and producing the world premiere of Caught in the Net, a play involving an African American woman whose life is forever changed when she enters into an online relationship. The document also includes research information, the play's most recent draft, and production photos. The play was presented by the University Theatre …

Traveltant: Social Interaction Based Personalized Recommendation System, Sultan Dawood Alfarhood

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Trip planning is a time consuming task that most people do before going to any destination. Traveltant is an intelligent system that analyzes a user's Social network and suggests a complete trip plan detailed for every single day based on the user's interests extracted from the Social network. Traveltant also considers the interests of friends the user interacts with most by building a ranked friends list of interactivity, and then uses the interests of those people in this list to enrich the recommendation results. Traveltant provides a smooth user interface through a Windows Phone 7 application while doing most of …

Using Oral Reading To Self To Improve Oral Fluency Of English Language Learners, Suwanna Klomjit

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to study the effect of oral reading-to-self on adult English Language Learners' oral fluency and their perception toward oral reading-to-self. This experimental study used a pretest-posttest design. The participants (N = 63) were recruited and randomly assigned to a control group (n = 30) and an experimental group (n = 33). The speaking test: Klomjit Lincoln Measure of Spoken English (KLMSE), developed by the researcher, was administered as both pre and posttest. The treatment was an assignment to read out loud-to-self. The Evaluation of Using Oral Reading to Improve Oral Fluency, a quantitative scale …

Distribution And Control Of Glyphosate-Resistant Johnsongrass (Sorghum Halepense) In Arkansas Soybean, Dennis Brent Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Johnsongrass, once the most persistent and troublesome grass weed of row crops throughout the southern U.S., has previously been confirmed resistant to the acetolactate synthase (ALS) and acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase-inhibiting herbicides in the Midsouth and has recently evolved resistance to glyphosate in Arkansas. The goal of this research was to establish the geographical distribution of herbicide-resistant johnsongrass in Arkansas and to develop herbicide programs for controlling glyphosate-resistant johnsongrass in Arkansas soybean. Johnsongrass accessions were collected from 14 counties in the Mississippi River Delta region of Arkansas and screened for resistance to four of the most commonly used postemergence herbicides for …

Visual And Linguistic Influences On Public Perceptions Of Swine Confinement, Arthur Leal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to analyze the visual and linguistic characteristics of online (YouTube) videos and electronic newspapers, identifying relationships with positive, negative, and neutral attitudes toward swine confinement.

This study followed a content analysis design. Two coders, trained to an acceptable level of agreement (κ = .68), examined online videos and electronic newspapers, assessing linguistic and visual images used in relation to attitudes toward swine confinement. A series of search terms deemed suitable for this study's objectives were employed in multiple search engines, and 48 articles and 157 videos were coded for content.

Results from this study showed that …

High School Seniors' Financial Knowledge: The Impact Of Financial Literacy Classes And Developmental Assets, Kathy Ngoc Nguyen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Low levels of financial literacy among high school students are a growing concern in the United States. High school students lack the financial knowledge to make important financial decisions. Financial literacy and money management skills are important for high school students as they transition into an ever-changing economy. High school students, who are financially literate, are likely to develop positive financial behaviors and make positive financial decisions. Previous studies show that financial literacy classes can increase financial knowledge.

The present study has three objectives. First, this study examined whether the Money Management Skills for Young Adults Class increased high school …

Development Of Rapid Detection Methods And Novel Control Measures For Salmonella In Poultry, Si Hong Park

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three research parts: 1) development of rapid detection methods for foodborne pathogens; 2) immune response of chicken cells against Salmonella and bacteriophage P22; 3) evaluation of novel control measures for poultry productions. In order to develop rapid and accurate detection methods for foodborne pathogens, two types of PCR assays were utilized. Three foodborne pathogens included Campylobacter, Escherichia coli and Salmonella in watershed were qualitatively and quantitatively detected by multiplex PCR and qPCR (chapter 2). Since Salmonella species are commonly present in poultry and poultry products as well as most popular foodborne pathogen in …

Characterization And Quantification Of Monomers, Oligomers, And By-Products From Switchgrass Hemicelluloses During Biomass Pretreatment, Kris Allan Bunnell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Production of fuels and chemicals from biomass is contingent upon economical release of carbohydrates from biomass. Carbohydrates can then be used for production of bio-based products using a biochemical conversion process. Pretreatment, the first step of the biochemical conversion process, has been suggested to be the most costly step of the conversion process. Thus, better understanding the behavior of biomass during pretreatment is imperative for an economically viable production of biofuels and chemicals. Elucidating the physicochemical properties of biomass and developing an understanding the depolymerization patterns of biomass during pretreatment will help progress towards this goal.

In this study, July- …