Digital Commons Network^™

Rice From Paddy To Pantry To Plate: Mitigating Rice Blast Disease With Saponins Of Medicago, Improving Shelf Life With Crispr, And Exploring Global Cuisine Through Text Analysis, Kathryn Haydon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice is the staple food for more than half the world’s population, with nearly 500 million metric tons of rice consumed globally every year. Any risk of loss due to disease, waste, or spoilage is therefore noteworthy. This dissertation explores the passage of rice from paddy to pantry to plate, with special attention given to disease and storage life. The most important disease of rice is blast, caused by the ascomycete Magnaporthe oryzae, which can cause losses of ~30% every year. This study found that saponin-enriched root extracts of Medicago truncatula effectively kill fungal spores in vitro and reduce moderate …

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 …

The Effect Of A Mindfulness-Based Intervention On Attention And Cognitive Control As A Function Of Smartphone Notifications., Joshua D. Upshaw

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Barriers to accessing mobile technology, particularly smartphones, have decreased substantially since the iPhone’s release in 2007, resulting in increased ownership and usage across all ages, genders, and races. Despite their ubiquity in our society, relatively little empirical work has investigated the influence of smartphones on our higher order executive functioning. Prior work has linked smartphone use with impaired cognitive control during cognitively demanding tasks, especially in heavier smartphone users. The goals of the current study were twofold. First, the study aimed to examine the effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control and attention. And second, to determine the effects of …

Nanomaterial-Based Biosensors For Detection Of Salmonella Typhimurium And Avian Influenza Virus H5n1 In Poultry, Xinge Xi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research focused on developing biosensing method and biosensing device for rapid detection of pathogens in poultry: Salmonella Typhimurium and avian influenza virus H5N1. The first part of the dissertation reports an original research on the development of a portable biosensing device for Salmonella detection. The device was designed and constructed based on a previously developed optical biosensing method, using immuno-magnetic nanoparticles to specifically capture target bacteria, and immuno-quantum dot beads to label the target bacteria for fluorescence detection. All the actions of sample mixing, magnetic separation, and fluorescence detection were controlled automatically in a disposable microfluidic chip in the …

Negative Urgency's Influence On State-Level, Emotion-Based Changes In Alcohol-Related Cognitions, Noah Wolkowicz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project expanded on the Acquired Preparedness Model of Risk (APMR) by examining how Negative Urgency (NU), the tendency to act rashly in negative emotional states, affects emotion-based changes in alcohol cognitions to produce risk for alcohol use. The APMR prioritizes the role of outcome expectancies as the means through which traits such as NU, convey alcohol use risk. However, this model treats these cognitions as static and often fails to assess their valence; further, alcohol-cognitions fluctuate in response to negative emotions and may become more salient during these states. Therefore, this study examined: 1) how NU impacts negative emotion-based, …

Synthesis And Performance Testing Of Ecm Fiber Scaffolds, Cassandra Reed

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The progression of regenerative medicine has advanced the treatment of multiple illnesses and injuries throughout the years. A good example of the benefits of this research is the work that has gone into volumetric muscle loss (VML), where more than 20% of the muscle is loss. Skeletal muscle makes up 40% of the human body so a loss of that size greatly diminishes the strength, the flexibility, physiology, and quality of life of the injured individual. For that reason, various techniques are used to counteract the loss of structure and innate cellular signaling in order to circumvent that from happening. …

Privacy-Preserving Cloud-Assisted Data Analytics, Wei Bao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays industries are collecting a massive and exponentially growing amount of data that can be utilized to extract useful insights for improving various aspects of our life. Data analytics (e.g., via the use of machine learning) has been extensively applied to make important decisions in various real world applications. However, it is challenging for resource-limited clients to analyze their data in an efficient way when its scale is large. Additionally, the data resources are increasingly distributed among different owners. Nonetheless, users' data may contain private information that needs to be protected.

Cloud computing has become more and more popular in …

Efficacy Of Conditional And Constitutive Crispr/Cas9 In Rice Genome, Zahra Alizada

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Constitutive expression of Cas9 leads to a higher editing efficiency; however, it also increases the chances of off-target mutations. Thus, transient expression of Cas9 is a desirable approach to achieve higher targeting efficiency and to curb the off-target effects. It was previously shown that heat-inducible expression of Cas9 had an editing efficiency of 45% as compared to the strong constitutive expression, and the heat-shock induced mutations were inherited by the next generation. In this study, cold-inducible promoter, AtRD29a, was used for driving Cas9 expression, and evaluated for its editing efficiency upon cold-treatment on the GUS transgene loci. The expression analysis …

Characteristics Of Face-To-Face Communications In Agriculture Marketing And Customer Service, Ashlyn Ussery

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As communication forms evolve, it is important for business leaders to not only follow the trends, but to be data-driven and make calculated decisions that are beneficial for their businesses. In this qualitative study, the researcher sought to describe how Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation used face-to-face and computer-mediated communication methods to communicate as an organization and the value their employees and members place on each communication method. Uses and Gratifications theory was used to guide this research and evaluate the results. This theory is unique in that it does not describe the effect media has on people, like many human …

A Time-Course Characterization Of Muscle Function And Mitochondrial Markers During Colorectal Cancer-Induced Cachexia In Tumor-Bearing Male Mice, Ana Cabrera Ayuso

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cachexia is a multisystemic and multifactorial syndrome prevalent in cancer patients. It is clinically defined by involuntary loss of >5% weight in a six-month window, despite nutritional interventions. A negative energy balance characterizes cancer cachexia (CC), it is associated with weakness and fatigue in skeletal muscle. Impaired muscle function is associated with lower quality of life in cancer patients. Defects in mitochondrial function are strongly associated with muscle wasting. This study explored muscular contractile function and mitochondrial quality control (MQC) markers in soleus, gastrocnemius, and tibialis anterior (TA) muscles of C26-induced male tumor-bearing mice during a 25-day time course. It …

Rethinking Immigration Justice: Mexican Community Activism While Serving Migrants In Transit., Angélica Villagrana

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research study focuses on the externalization of migration control and its effects on staffmembers of community organizations that serve Central American migrants in transit. While literature on migration enforcement places emphasis on border control and internal removals, research on new forms of migration enforcement has paid little attention to the extension of border control beyond physical borders. This study employed an ethnographic approach to address the overarching question of how community organizers have responded to the adoption of US practices on extraterritorial migration control by the Mexican government while serving migrants in transit. Data collected provide empirical evidence contextual …

Directed Genome Evolution To Identify Genes For Macrophage Survival By Staphylococcus Agnetis, Sonali Lakshika Anne Lenaduwe Lokuge

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bacterial Chondronecrosis with Osteomyelitis (BCO) is a debilitating infection that negatively impacts animal welfare and costs the broiler industry billions of dollars annually. We have previously isolated Staphylococcus agnetis 908 from BCO samples obtained from broilers at the University of Arkansas research farm. This isolate can induce BCO lameness at greater than 50% in broilers exposed to the pathogen in drinking water. We found that S. agnetis 908 is capable of surviving and escaping macrophages compared to a closely related cattle isolate,1379. Through Directed Genome Evolution (DGE) we identified that this difference is at least partially associated with an alanine …

Preferred Methods Of Communication Of Millennial Alumni Of The University Of Arkansas’ Agricultural Education, Communications And Technology Department And The Impact Of Brand Community On Potential Philanthropy, Wells William Clark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Higher education institutions depend upon alumni support (Gaier, 2005). Understanding how those institutions communicate with alumni about methods of financial giving is necessary in securing their support. The concept of brand community, an idea formed through social relationships amongst consumers of a common brand, regardless of location, who acknowledge their overlapping interests and share traditions and a sense of duty related to the brand (McAlexander et al., 2006; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001), can contribute to desired behaviors such as donations and engagement in alumni groups. Exploration of this concept was conducted in relation to young alumni (those graduating from 2008-2018).The …

A Machine Learning Approach To Understanding Emerging Markets, Namita Balani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Logistic providers have learned to efficiently serve their existing customer bases with optimized routes and transportation resource allocation. The problem arises when there is potential for logistics growth in an emerging market with no previous data. The purpose of this work is to use industry data for previously known and well-documented markets to apply data analytic techniques such as machine learning to investigate the uncertainty in a new market. The thesis looks into machine learning techniques to predict miles per stop given historical data. It mainly focuses on Random Forest Regression Analysis, but concludes that additional techniques, such as Polynomial …

Towards A Large-Scale Intelligent Mobile-Argumentation And Discovering Arguments, Controversial Topics And Topic-Oriented Focal Sets In Cyber-Argumentation, Najla Althuniyan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

User-generated content (UGC) platforms host different forms of information, such as audio, video, pictures, and text. They have many online applications, such as social media, blogs, photo and video sharing, customer reviews, debate, and deliberation platforms. Usually, the content of these platforms is provided and consumed by users. Most of these platforms, mainly social media and blogs, are often used for online discussion. These platforms offer tools for users to share and express opinions. Commonly, people from different backgrounds and origins discuss opinions about various issues over the Internet. Furthermore, discussions among users contain substantial information from which knowledge about …

Design And Development Of Techniques To Ensure Integrity In Fog Computing Based Databases, Abdulwahab Fahad S. Alazeb

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advancement of information technology in coming years will bring significant changes to the way sensitive data is processed. But the volume of generated data is rapidly growing worldwide. Technologies such as cloud computing, fog computing, and the Internet of things (IoT) will offer business service providers and consumers opportunities to obtain effective and efficient services as well as enhance their experiences and services; increased availability and higher-quality services via real-time data processing augment the potential for technology to add value to everyday experiences. This improves human life quality and easiness. As promising as these technological innovations, they are prone …

Overcoming Learning Anxiety In Workplace Learning: A Study Of Best Practices And Training Accommodations That Improve Workplace Learning, Ann-Marie Piscitelli

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. and affect 40 million adults, or 18.1% of the population each year. Anxiety plays an essential role in encouraging productive learning outcomes; however, uncontrolled anxiety could result in heightened emotions that create barriers to learning. Employees who have anxiety disorders may experience these barriers to learning when in traditional training programs and may require support or accommodations to boost their unique learning needs for development in the workplace. Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals’ challenge is how best to intervene when an employee exhibits behaviors of learning anxiety to nurture …

An Automated Method To Enrich And Expand Consumer Health Vocabularies Using Glove Word Embeddings, Mohammed Ibrahim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clear language makes communication easier between any two parties. However, a layman may have difficulty communicating with a professional due to not understanding the specialized terms common to the domain. In healthcare, it is rare to find a layman knowledgeable in medical jargon, which can lead to poor understanding of their condition and/or treatment. To bridge this gap, several professional vocabularies and ontologies have been created to map laymen medical terms to professional medical terms and vice versa. Many of the presented vocabularies are built manually or semi-automatically requiring large investments of time and human effort and consequently the slow …

Promoting Diversity In Academic Research Communities Through Multivariate Expert Recommendation, Omar Salman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Expert recommendation is the process of identifying individuals who have the appropriate knowledge and skills to achieve a specific task. It has been widely used in the educational environment mainly in the hiring process, paper-reviewer assignment, and assembling conference program committees. In this research, we highlight the problem of diversity and fair representation of underrepresented groups in expertise recommendation, factors that current expertise recommendation systems rarely consider. We introduce a novel way to model experts in academia by considering demographic attributes in addition to skills. We use the h-index score to quantify skills for a researcher and we identify five …

Automated Privacy Protection For Mobile Device Users And Bystanders In Public Spaces, David Darling

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As smartphones have gained popularity over recent years, they have provided usersconvenient access to services and integrated sensors that were previously only available through larger, stationary computing devices. This trend of ubiquitous, mobile devices provides unparalleled convenience and productivity for users who wish to perform everyday actions such as taking photos, participating in social media, reading emails, or checking online banking transactions. However, the increasing use of mobile devices in public spaces by users has negative implications for their own privacy and, in some cases, that of bystanders around them.

Specifically, digital photography trends in public have negative implications for …

On The Epistemic Significance Of Expert Conversion, Dax R. Bennington

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much of our knowledge of the world depends on the testimony of experts. Experts sometimes change their minds and disagree with each other. What ought a novice do when an expert changes their mind? This dissertation provides an account of when expert conversion is epistemically significant and how the novice ought to rationally defer to expert conversion. In answering when expert conversion is epistemically significant, I provide a diagnostic tool that emphasizes that epistemically significant expert conversion seems to be evidence-based and that there is an absence of cognitive biases on the part of the converting expert. In answering how …

The Persistence Of Human Norovirus Surrogate In Leafy Greens Production System, Wenjun Deng

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since mostly consumed raw, foodborne pathogen contamination of leafy greens has led to a large number of foodborne disease outbreaks and illnesses each year in the United States. Human noroviruses (hNoV) are the most common viral pathogen transmitted by leafy greens. In this dissertation, the persistence of the hNoV surrogate Tulane virus (TV) on pre-harvest lettuce and microgreens was investigated. Lettuces are the most studied leafy green model, while previous hNoV research has mainly focused on the post-harvest stage of production. Here, pre-harvest hydroponically grown lettuce were used to determine TV persistence on leafy greens. After inoculation on leaves at …

Combating Conspiracy Theories: An Attitudes-Based Approach, Marie Altgilbers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The prevalence of conspiracy theories is a topic of increasing concern among researchers. Much of the research in this area has been focused on why people endorse conspiracy theories, and relatively little attention has been paid to how they may be mitigated. What research has been done focused primarily on interventions with arguments based in cognitive, fact-based appeals, with mixed success. The present research draws on findings from the attitudes and persuasion literature to test the hypothesis that conspiracy theory endorsement is more effectively reduced by affectively-based arguments than by cognitively-based arguments. Two affectively-based interventions were tested against a cognitively-based …

Live The Local: Exploring The Relationship Between Local News Media And Cities Undergoing Downtown Revitalization, Allison Wise

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rise in suburban development has caused many downtowns across the United States to lose residents, businesses, attractions and community engagement. City officials and planners work to create policies, designs and urban development that help to revitalize downtowns. However, how do we bring people into our downtowns to live, work and play? That is where local news coverage can have an impact. The question arises: What can city officials, event organizers, business leaders do to foster a vibrant downtown? News outlets (e.g., television, print, digital) and their corresponding social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, can act as " …

Weather Permitting, Acadia Kandora

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Weather Permitting is an exhibition of objects and printed matter, primarily in the form of publicationsthat examine my relationship to nature and the idea of nature as both sanctuary and armor. At a young age, my parents would take my on a hike every Sunday instead of going to church. The hikes acted as a weekly pilgrimage deep into the woods and a ritual instilling the idea of nature being a place of spiritual refuge and retreat. A sanctuary - of course, weather permitting.

As I grew up and experienced hardship, my first instinct has always been to go hide …

Turning Tides, Lauren Whitmore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Synthesizing personal narrative, sociological phenomenon, and art historical analysis, Turning Tides examines the relationship between power dynamics and sexual assault. Inequities and injustices with regard to the handling of sexual assault, and the norms that allow this issue to be pervasive, are woven throughout the cultural fabric of the United States. Feminists and feminist activist artists in the 1970s brought the matters women, and other marginalized groups, were facing to the forefront of political and social dialogue. The resulting work left an indelible mark on public perceptions and allowed for other activists and artists to build upon the foundations; creating …

Optimistic And A Little Flawed, Christian Schultz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accompanying exhibition to this paper, Optimistic and Flawed is a body of drawings and objects that explores the liminal space between playful and intended actions. Inspired by the landscape of the yard and the actions that take place within, the goalless play of a child and the laborious maintenance of an adult. The value of play exists within labor and labor exists within play. The drawings observe this through the theoretical framework of telic and paratelic motivational states as they relate to drawing. Abstracted yards and landscapes provide a space for the labor of the hand. A history of …

Heartwork, Lance Taylor Loftin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Heartwork is a collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that explore the many ways identity is shaped by familial histories and personal memory. Focusing on my time growing up on a pine tree farm in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 90s, Heartwork explores gender, religion, regional traditions, family, and art. Through conversations and collaborations with my family, painting acts as an impetus for strengthening relationships. By reevaluating the past, I am able to create a web of interconnected narratives that inform and shift my understanding of the present.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.