Digital Commons Network^™

Housing Prefabrication And Resource Optimization, Megan Scherpereel

Honors Theses

Enclosure during construction is often time-consuming, expensive, and at the mercy of the weather. By introducing methods for manufacturing prefabricated enclosure components such as wall panels and roof sections, the impact of the three major variables is reduced. Designs for trusses, roof sections, wall sections, and foundations were developed and selected using civil engineering principles; and manufacturing and logistical processes were optimized using engineering and project management skill sets. These multi-disciplinary efforts were combined to create an accessible and versatile set of designs and instructions that can improve the effectiveness of both a skilled and non-skilled volunteer workforce. By creating …

Blenny Territoriality At Oyster Landing, North Inlet Estuary, South Carolina: Seasonal Patterns And Ecological Factors, Sydney Davis, Juliana Harding

Honors Theses

Temperate oyster reef blennies use oyster shells that are still articulated as habitat year round. During the breeding season when water temperatures are > 18-20°C, many species of blenny males use the oyster valves as nesting sites. Male blennies exhibit territorial behavior when guarding their nesting sites and can interact differently with conspecific and transient species. Striped blenny (Chasmodes bosquianus) and freckled blenny (Hypsoblennius ionthas) behavior was described from April 2020 to August 2020 at Oyster Landing, North Inlet estuary, South Carolina to quantify typical blenny behavior, general presence or absence of residents, and potential environmental parameters …

Infaunal Bivalve Density And Richness In North Inlet Estuary, South Carolina: Seasonal Patterns And Ecological Factors, Valerie M. Knowles, Juliana Harding

Honors Theses

Estuarine bivalves recruit to benthic habitats after the larvae are in the planktonic stage. The observed infaunal bivalve density relates to larval supply from adult reproduction during warmer months as well as larval and juvenile mortality post-recruitment. The purpose of this research was to examine annual and seasonal patterns of infaunal bivalve density and richness in the context of habitat water temperature and salinity. Cores were collected biweekly from Bly Creek in North Inlet estuary between January 2019 and February 2020. Temperatures ranged from 9-30 ºC and salinity ranged from ~17-36 psu. Bivalves were sieved out of the cores, counted, …

Diabolus Ex Machina? A Comparative Case Study To Test Whether Automatic Weapons Can Disproportionately Benefit Irregular Forces, Harrison Durland

Honors Theses

Researchers in the field of irregular conflict have observed that irregular forces such as insurgents and guerrillas have been victorious or forced draws in a greater percentage of conflicts over the past century compared with the century prior. More generally, researchers and practitioners have sought to better understand why seemingly weaker, irregular forces are able to win some wars against enemies who have significant material and other conventional advantages. This thesis engages with some of the literature in this field and focuses on what appears to be a particularly understudied issue: the potential role of shifts/innovations in military technology. Specifically, …

"Foreign" Language: Examining Systemic Attitudes, Xenophobia, And Foreign Language Anxiety, Olivia Jennings

Honors Theses

With the focus on the systemic attitudes, this study examines previous background in foreign language, attitudes about language in general, and the relation of language to identity. This study stresses the defining process in the making of American as a national and cultural identity, and how it has changed over the years. It examines the role of xenophobia and xenoglossophobia in the context of American identity, and through its evolution in past and current sociopolitical believes impacting an overall disinterest in foreign language. The disinterest in foreign language is investigated to discover the reasons why foreign language programs are being …

Senior Recital, Kenneth Kressin

Honors Theses

Kenny Kressin started to study the cello in 2001 at the age of four with Patty Hicks in Orange, California. Kenny spent about 11 years studying the Suzuki method under Ms. Hicks until he switched cello teachers when he started to attend Orange County High School of the Arts. Starting in 2012, Kenny studied under Laszlo Mezo in Irvine, California. Throughout the years, Kenny has grown as a soloist, orchestral musician, and chamber musician. As an orchestral musician, he has been a part of the Orange County School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra and the Pacific Symphony Santiago Strings Orchestra. …

Using Agile Methodology To Create A Working Software Application, Aaron Cuadras

Honors Theses

This thesis explains the importance of Agile in the process of writing a web application. A team of three developers worked for sixteen weeks to create a booking site able to hold important information related to customers and hotel owners. The framework used for the project is Ruby on Rails and we stress the importance of the Models-View-Controller pattern and its relation with the Agile methodology, the problem of creating a new application is the pace in which everything should be written as well as the ability to write features independent from one another. The results that we expect are …

Documenting A Personal And National History: Echoes Of The Urban-Rural Divide In The Works Of Helga Gamboa, Sonja Gelin

Honors Theses

This paper analyzes a series of vessels created by artist Helga Gamboa from 2003-2008. Gamboa, an Angolan artist, based in the United Kingdom, uses her work to recount the experiences of rural women during the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002) and her own experience growing up in the capital during the final years of the Salazar-Caetano regime. Gamboa’s syncretic approach incorporates European tin-glazing and indigenous African hand-building techniques. Early Modern Portuguese and traditional Southern Angolan material culture also guide the artist. The resulting works document a lasting urban-rural divide among Angolan women, dating back to colonial policy, liberation struggles, and civil …

Diversification Using International Exchange-Traded Funds, Alese K. Jones

Honors Theses

Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) are diversified portfolios of assets which trade like stocks and track a benchmark index. This manuscript looks at the diversification and return benefits a U.S. investor would receive by investing in Emerging market (EEM) and Total World (DGT) ETFs over the period of June 2003 to July 2019. We use S&P 500 ETF IVV as a proxy for U.S. market. EEM had the highest absolute return but also the highest risk. However, the U.S. ETF IVV had the greatest risk-adjusted return and the lowest tracking error. International ETFs were also highly correlated with the S&P 500. Overall, …

Racial Threat, Economic Resources, And Politics: How Local Structural Conditions Influence The Adoption Of Restrictionist Immigration Policy, Mario Marset Ehrle

Honors Theses

ICE has used their 287(g) program to target immigration enforcement at the county level. This program authorizes local police officers to carry out federal immigration work to meet arrest and deportation quotas. This has eroded civil rights and led to the criminalization of minorities, particularly Latinos. While previous research has examined the theories behind local anti-immigration work and the social factors affecting anti-immigrant policy adoption more generally, no large-scale quantitative analyses have been conducted as to why some counties adopted 287(g) while others chose not to do so. Addressing this gap in the literature, the following study uses a newly …

A Look Into The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status And Health, Hunter L. Howell

Honors Theses

Disparities in health have always been present, and major steps have been made to narrow this gap in healthcare. With that said, socioeconomic status still plays a significant role in access to healthcare. This study looks into how socioeconomic factors such as age, race, and income affect access to healthcare while also studying avenues as to why these disparities exist.

College Students’ Perceptions Of Instructors Whose Primary Language Is Not English, Takiyah A. Clay

Honors Theses

It is common to see instructors at universities in America who are foreign born and, as a result, have a foreign accent. Since foreign accents can influence the perceptions of people, the researcher designed this study to discover any perceptions that college students may have toward instructors with foreign accents. In addition, the researcher wanted to discover if those perceptions influenced the students’ actions in class. In order to reveal these perceptions, the researcher surveyed 205 students both in-person and online. The researcher determined that although a majority of the participants had difficulty comprehending the lectures of instructors with foreign …

What's In A Name? An Assessment Of Degradation Of Women In The Name Of Climbing Routes, Raiza Barahona

Honors Theses

Gendered behavior is reinforced at an early age. In media, women are usually portrayed following gender stereotypical behaviors and are often sexualized, meaning that their worth is often determined by their body shape and clothing type and as such women are often wearing revealing clothing, following gender stereotypical behaviors, and portraying unrealistic body proportions (e.g., Gentlemen’s Quarterly Magazine; Collins, 2011). The representation of women in climbing media is similar to that of the general media. The present study focused on route names within the climbing community and presents a qualitative analysis on the sexism and other derogatory (i.e., overtly sexual) …

Global Privacy Concerns Of Facial Recognition Big Data, Myranda Westbrook

Honors Theses

Facial recognition technology is a system of automatic acknowledgement that recognizes individuals by categorizing specific features of their facial structure to link the scanned information to stored data. Within the past few decades facial recognition technology has been implemented on a large scale to increase the security measures needed to access personal information. This has been specifically used in surveillance systems, social media platforms, and mobile device access control. The extensive use of facial recognition systems has created challenges as it relates to biometric information control and privacy concerns. This concern raises the cost and benefit analysis of an individual’s …

Politicized Prayer: How Thoughts And Prayers Hinder Gun Legislation, Hope Cody

Honors Theses

Thoughts and prayers are a strategic rhetorical tool, rather than a religious sentiment, when it comes to gun reform in the US. I confirm my three hypotheses: that the rhetorical use of thoughts and prayers do rise sharply after a mass shooting, that the use is centered in the gun rights coalition, and the use of thoughts and prayers is intentional. This establishes a direct link between the sending of thoughts and prayers and the lack of measurable gun reform laws in the United States.

Improving Engineering Education Through Cyber-Physical Systems: Instrumentation And Control Of A Unit Operations Laboratory, Shelby Musselman

Honors Theses

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a network of physical devices that are monitored or controlled by computer-based algorithms. A key enabler for future technology developments, CPS is an interdisciplinary research area that engages a broad spectrum of disciplines and could bring about revolutionary changes in domains such as energy, environment, and healthcare [1, 2] Using CPS to develop smart, connected products through hierarchies such as internet of things (IoT) allows for integration of systems and provides open access to data subsets for digital service applications. This technology has the potential to transform our everyday lives (e.g., smartphones, activity trackers), our …

Envisioning Success: A Naturalistic Investigation Into Prospective Memory Performance, Reminder Use, And Memory Strategies In An Academic Context, John Whittemore

Honors Theses

Prospective memory encompasses the ability to remember to carry out future intentions. Prospective memory performance is essential for students. College students are expected to remember and complete a variety of assignments on a daily basis. In these naturalistic experiments taking place before and after COVID-19, college students were required to set academic goals for themselves for three consecutive days following specific guidelines. Each day, the participant identified a time specific academic goal and a non-time specific academic goal. Participants were randomizing assigned experimental or control condition. The experimental group performed an episodic future thinking exercise during encoding. Additionally, each time …

Starting A Residential Real Estate Business, Caelan Shurina

Honors Theses

Hello fellow entrepreneur! It seems you have set your heart on residential real estate. Great! This guide explores the steps you will need to take to turn this interest into a profitable business in real estate investing. By laying out the discoveries I made while creating my own real estate management business in downtown Chattanooga, I’ve created a step by step guide to help you streamline the process from evaluating the market before you buy to selling the property after renovations are complete.

The Design And Validation Of A Qpcr-Based Approach To Cell Quantification Of Fungal-Algal Symbioses, Isabelle Katherine Garlotte

Honors Theses

Symbiotic relationships are extremely common in virtually all species. These relationships between organisms, particularly mutualistic symbioses, can have an incredibly large impact and can greatly affect the evolution of the species involved. Of particular interest is the suspected mutualistic relationship between green algae and fungi that may hold key evidence of how terrestrial plants evolved. In this experiment we established a method of quantifying the cells of each species involved in these symbioses through qPCR analysis to determine if the relationships are truly mutualistic. We developed a system for using DNA copies as a proxy for cell count in co-cultures …

Making And Characterizing Semiconducting Polymer For Organic Electronics, Jessica Bone

Honors Theses

Advances in organic electronics are limited by the need for materials that effectively conduct both electrons and ions while also meeting other design criteria (cheap, flexible, stable, etc.) Conducting polymers are exciting candidates for platforms requiring mixed ionic-electronic conduction as they have a wide range of possibilities due to the ability to synthetically control the monomer unit. However, it is difficult to predict how the monomer properties influence the polymer film properties. In order to make functional materials, we need to better understand how the properties of the monomer (size, shape, functional groups, frontier orbital energies) will influence the resulting …

Search For Antibiotic-Producing Microorganisms In Sites Affected By Acid Mine Drainage, Hannah A. Bussell

Honors Theses

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria are an escalating problem. Little is known about the potential of microorganisms in sites affected by acid mine drainage (AMD) to be sources of new antibiotics. Sediments from AMD sites in Letcher County, Kentucky, were collected and microorganisms isolated. These samples were screened for their capacity to produce antimicrobial compounds active against known bacteria E. coli and S. aureus. The results showed no antimicrobial activity. This could be due to sample death, incorrect pH of media, or antibiotic resistance already present in the AMD site.

A Nuclear Option: An Assessment Of U.S. Preparedness For Modern Nuclear Conflict, Carter P. Stovall

Honors Theses

This paper serves to explore the current state of preparedness for nuclear war that is held by the United States. This research project seeks to answer two main questions: what preparedness for nuclear war is, as well as if the United States is prepared. This case study considered preparedness to be a combination of multiple factors: the state of the nuclear arsenals of the U.S> and potential adversaries, the attitude towards the use of nuclear weapons, the global threat environment, nuclear conflict theory, and the defensive capabilities of the United States to detect and intercept nuclear projectiles targeting their assets …

Rethinking Rural Homelessness: A Comparison Of The Causes, Solutions, And Services For Persons Experiencing Homelessness In Appalachia Versus Urban Areas In The United States, Casey Frommeyer

Honors Theses

Although homelessness in urban areas has been analyzed extensively, there is little research and data on homelessness in rural areas, specifically in Appalachia. The goal of this research is to shed some light on rural homeless experiences by comparing them to their urban counterparts. Four people from organizations that work with persons experiencing homelessness were interviewed using a snowball sample and asked questions which compare the causes, services, and solutions for homelessness in rural and urban areas. Based on these interviews, it can be concluded that the issues people experiencing homelessness go through, such as mental health problems and stigma, …

Working As A Healthcare Professional On The Frontlines During A Pandemic, Lauren Hodlick

Honors Theses

The changes associated with the pandemic affected healthcare delivery, patient experiences in the healthcare system, and workflow for frontline workers. Pathophysiology, transmission, and infection control practices are reviewed connecting how the unique characteristics of COVID-19 influenced healthcare changes. This paper represents the basis for a video presentation on the lived experience in a Midwest U.S. hospital of a frontline healthcare worker during the summer of 2020. This lived experience video was developed to reinforce good infection control practices of first year nursing students.

An Analysis Of Natural Courts: How Vacancies And Replacements On The Supreme Court Best Determine The Ideological Shifts Of The Court And What Effect Longevity Has On Ideology., Lauren Moses

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to explore natural courts and ideology among members of the Supreme Court. Most studies of the Supreme Court allocate focus to the chief justice such that the justice and his ideology determines whether the Court will be described as liberal or conservative for the chief's tenure. However, this thesis questions this model of distinction for the highest court in the land. An analysis of natural courts from Marshall through Roberts specifically targets the highest and lowest ideological shifts between natural courts to understand how vacancies and replacements manipulate the ideology of the Court. In addition to the …

Lyme Disease In Kentucky: Prevalence, Awareness, And Diagnosis In A Conventionally Low-Endemic Area, Rachel L. Carden Ots

Honors Theses

Lyme Disease is the fastest-growing vector-borne illness in the United States – including in low-endemic states, such as Kentucky; given Kentucky’s low Lyme disease incidence in prior decades, it has since experienced an increase of cases despite a lack of discussion on the condition and its implications on patient health and wellbeing. To measure current levels of knowledge and awareness of Lyme disease in Kentucky residents, a survey was distributed to Microbiology and Honors Program students at Eastern Kentucky University, and its results were discussed. While Lyme disease cases do continue to rise, the general public of Kentucky lacks in …

A Topological Analysis Of Gene Co-Expression Networks From Brain Data, Mary Lee

Honors Theses

Gene expression data is a compilation of gene activity expressed in a certain tissue. This data has the potential to help uncover genes associated with some disease, stimulus, and treatment. The Allen Brain Atlas has made available gene expression data describing the activity of genes in individuals and tissues related to aging, dementia, traumatic brain injury, brain cancer, and many other brain-specific conditions. This project uses statistical and information-theoretic metrics like Pearson correlation and mutual information to build gene co-expression networks, which are represented by nodes on a graph that correspond to a gene. The nodes are connected when they …

Social Housing And The Affordability Crisis: A Study Of The Effectiveness Of French And American Social Housing Systems In Meeting The Increasing Demand For Affordable Housing, Claire Sullivan

Honors Theses

The demand for affordable housing across OECD countries has sky-rocketed as the number of those cost-burdened by housing continues to increase each year. Social housing has been the traditional means by which governments have provided affordable housing to citizens, however in recent years the social housing systems of many countries have been strained to meet the rising demand for affordable housing. While this has consistently been an area of concern for major metropolitan areas, areas outside of cities are being impacted by the lack of affordable housing, as well.

This study seeks to address the impact of social housing systems …

"Relentless": The Social Identity Of Chronic Illness And Disability, Mary Boujaoude

Honors Theses

Despite the steady growth of rights and acceptance of people from other minority groups, the significance of the issues faced by people with chronic illnesses and disabilities has not enjoyed the same public endorsement. This population has experienced disproportionate disadvantages that have prohibited them from realizing their full potential as active members of society. Much of the scholarship in the area of Disability Studies and research into the social issues faced by people with chronic illnesses and disability is academic in nature, while most advocacy work is non-academic in nature. Relentless is a book of essays that blends personal narrative …

Button Box: An Exploration Of Matriarchy And Material, Rozlin Opolka

Honors Theses

Rozlin Opolka’s Lee Honors College Thesis was completed in November 2020. Committee consisted of Vince Torano (thesis chair), Cat Crotchett, and Patrick Wilson. The thesis took form in a visual arts exhibition exploring the relationship of the artmaking material to the concept of matriarchy. The specific material explored in this exhibition is buttons. When the rich historical connotation of buttons paired with the personal aspect of the collection process of buttons in the artists own family the thesis came about in three large scale artworks. The following artist statement will detail the process and conceptual importance of combining buttons as …