Digital Commons Network^™

Dadaab’S Hidden Ties: How Colonial Legacies And Informal Economies Contribute To Protracted Refugee Situations, Katherine Landberg

Master's Theses

Protracted Refugee Situations (PRS) persist despite the founding intentions of the international refugee regime. Explanations behind PRS typically focus on international law, human rights, and security concerns, while the conventional media narrative presents an oversimplification that erases complex contextual nuances. Using the case of the Dadaab refugee camp, I explore (1) historical colonial legacies of social control and domination in Kenya, and (2) Dadaab as an informal economic power center, as two ‘hidden ties’ that contribute to Dadaab’s persistence. By identifying and exploring hidden ties that contribute to PRS, policy-makers and power brokers gain a deeper understanding of the realities …

Undocumented Students’ Access To Higher Education In San Francisco, Bay Area, Sandra Miklosic

Master's Theses

This paper will explore the question: “in what ways does DACA status influence undocumented students’ ability to access higher education in San Francisco and Bay Area, California?” Even though DACA does not encompass any direct policies regarding access to education, there is a very strong correlation between having DACA status and accessing higher education for the undocumented students. In this research, I highlight the voices of undocumented students through the method of testimonio. Each participant reflects on their personal experiences with DACA while accessing postsecondary education. In this research, I explore how testimonio, as a methodology and a theoretical framework, …

Articulated Indigeneity And Tourism In HawaiʻI, Erika Nielsen

Master's Theses

The guiding research question for this thesis asks how Hawaiian indigeneity and self-determination are articulated within tourism spaces in Hawaiʻi. This thesis research works to uncover the nuanced ways that Hawaiian indigeneity is employed to manage and regulate tourism activities in Hawaiʻi. I seek to question the narrative that Hawaiians consent to, and prosper from, the largely unregulated mass tourism complex that has become a focal point of the post-colonial state. Native Hawaiians have actively resisted the erosion of their culture, lands, and nation through strategies that employ multiple understandings of indigeneity. We should not assume that the tourism industry …

Higher Education As A Development Tool: An Impact Assessment In Dzaleka Malawi, Emily Golike

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of accredited online diploma programs within refugee camps. When individuals are confined to camps and unable to work and travel in search of economic opportunity, does completing an accredited diploma program improve their quality of life and contribute to their human capital? Can higher education in refugee camps produce sustainable social service projects that benefit residents? There is a demonstrated value in a liberal arts education, but which aspects of this learning schema are most beneficial in the refugee camp context have yet to be explored.

The study conducted in …

The Chinese Cultural Influence On Filipino Cuisine, Brandon Chase Lantrip

Master's Theses

This paper illustrates the impact of the Chinese cultural influence upon the Philippines with the primary focus being on Filipino cuisine. It examines how the Chinese cultural influence not only contributed to the development of Filipino cuisine, but how Chinese culture has also influenced the everyday life and culture of the Philippines through language and customary practices for over a millennium. The first section of the paper analyzes the cultural connection between China and the Philippines. The second section illustrates the Chinese language influence and it’s effect upon Filipino cuisine and culture. The third section explores the contested origins of …

Migrant Ridesharing Drivers In San Francisco: A Case Of Blocked Mobility?, Shireen Tofig

Master's Theses

Migrants have long turned to self-employment in host country labor markets due to not only racial and ethnic prejudices, but also issues of local language proficiency and lack of recognition of the academic degree from the sending country. The taxi industry, one particular occupational niche dominated by migrants, has long been studied by scholars. However, the industry has evolved into a newer and understudied form of transportation: ridesharing. This study argues that in the case of the ridesharing industry, drivers did indeed turn to the occupation because of factors such as insufficient English language level and foreign academic degrees, but …

Planning Cities, Economically Or Communally: A Comparative Study Of Amsterdam And San Francisco, Raina Dawn Whittekiend

Master's Theses

Globalization has spun “community” off its axis. What once defined community is no longer the current state of the community. Increased economic transactions have led to the instability of communities that once depended on one another at the local level. These communities are now dependent on systems that do not know nor understand their actors. This lack of relationship between development and subject is witnessed and highly scrutinized in developing countries all over the world and has been intensely researched in academic literature. This thesis intends to better understand why in modernized global cities these same processes of development and …

Japan's Employment 'Catch-22': The Impact Of Working Conditions For Women In Japan On Japan's Demographic Population Crisis, Mary Perkins

Master's Theses

This thesis examines Japan’s aging population crisis and gender inequalities in the workplace. This topic presents an interesting and challenging phenomenon for Japan, as Japan’s economy and technology have developed more rapidly than almost any other country, establishing Japan as one of the Group of Seven industrialized nations. Yet Japan still significantly lags behind other industrialized nations when it comes to women’s rights and opportunities for advancement in the workplace. This is in turn hampering efforts for Japan to address a population crisis, with an older population growth rate far outpacing the growth of demographic groups that would support the …

Life Being An International Student In The United States: Acculturation, Culture Shock, And Identity Transformation, Lai Yan Vivyan Lam

Master's Theses

The population of international students at community colleges in the United States has increased significantly over the past decade. International students play a big role in building the cultural diversity on campus by bringing over different cultures and sharing their global perspective to the local community. However, they often face challenges adapting into American culture due to cultural differences in education system, language, lifestyle, etc. By looking into the acculturation process of international students to analyze the culture shock and cultural identity changes they experienced, this paper intends to seek ways to help this group of students to ease their …

Afro-Latinx Transnational Identities: Adults In The San Francisco Bay And Los Angeles Area, Koby Heramil

Master's Theses

This paper examines the identity construction of Afro-Latinas/os/x in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles Area. Marginalized communities predominately Black and Latina/ o/x concentrated are at the epicenter of disenfranchisement caused by the globalization of neoliberalism. Neoliberal reforms to education restrain the various nuances of pluralistic teaching, focusing only on the performance of standardized tests thus pressuring schools to center their interest in securing funding. This has greater implications for low-income communities of color where multicultural pedagogy is limited. More importantly, this association of neoliberalism reforms to education affects Afro-Latinx individuals, because they are maligned in the conversation about …

The Resisters: Contemporary Ethiopia Through A Feminist Lens, Eldana Mathias Temesgen

Master's Theses

Based on the recent mass protests in Ethiopia, there is a strong indication that the Oromo people of Ethiopia, who are at the forefront of these protests, have been placed in a position of marginal importance, influence and power in their society. Due to the power and agency wielded by the government, some ethnic groups in Ethiopia, including the Oromo ethnic group, claim to be underrepresented on a political, economic, and social scale, which has led to conflict.

The nuances of ethnic based conflict, such as the situation in Ethiopia, have been tackled through several disciplines and examined through different …

Oxygen Isotopic Composition Of Nitrate Produced By Freshwater Nitrification, Danielle Boshers

Master's Theses

Identifying sources of nitrate (NO₃^-) in the environment is important to elucidate causes of water quality impairment and eutrophication. Measurements of naturally occurring stable isotope ratios of nitrogen (¹⁵N/¹⁴N) and oxygen (¹⁸O/¹⁶O) in NO₃^-, can be used to determine the sources, dispersal, and fate of natural and contaminant NO₃^- in aquatic environments. To this end, it is necessary to know how NO₃^- isotopologues are modified by biological reactions, as heavy and light isotopes have different reaction rates. One important microbial reaction that …

The Timecourse Of Phonological Competition In Spoken Word Recognition: A Comparison Of Adults And Very Young Children, Elizabeth Schoen Simmons

Master's Theses

Spoken word recognition (SWR) is the mapping of speech sounds to words from many potential candidates in one’s lexicon. In adults, words that are phonetically similar, of high frequency, or semantically related compete for recognition. An ongoing debate in the literature is whether or not very young children encode spoken words with fine-grained temporal and phonetic detail. Specifically, whether they represent words wholistically or as smaller phonetic units similar to that of adults. The adult literature demonstrates that words that are phonetically similar at onset (cohorts) and offset (rhymes) compete for recognition. As it happens, rhymes have the potential to …

Genealogy Extraction And Tree Generation From Free Form Text, Timothy Sui-Tim Chu

Master's Theses

Genealogical records play a crucial role in helping people to discover their lineage and to understand where they come from. They provide a way for people to celebrate their heritage and to possibly reconnect with family they had never considered. However, genealogical records are hard to come by for ordinary people since their information is not always well established in known databases. There often is free form text that describes a person’s life, but this must be manually read in order to extract the relevant genealogical information. In addition, multiple texts may have to be read in order to create …

Sd-Mcan: A Software-Defined Solution For Ip Mobility In Campus Area Networks, Adam Chase Calabrigo

Master's Theses

Campus Area Networks (CANs) are a subset of enterprise networks, comprised of a network core connecting multiple Local Area Networks (LANs) across a college campus. Traditionally, hosts connect to the CAN via a single point of attachment; however, the past decade has seen the employment of mobile computing rise dramatically. Mobile devices must obtain new Internet Protocol (IP) addresses at each LAN as they migrate, wasting address space and disrupting host services. To prevent these issues, modern CANs should support IP mobility: allowing devices to keep a single IP address as they migrate between LANs with low-latency handoffs. Traditional approaches …

Smart Dc/Dc Wall Plug Design For The Dc House Project, Richard Sinclair Liu

Master's Theses

The present day duplex wall receptacle in the United States provides 120Vrms AC at 60Hz, which comes from a standard set for AC loads by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. With a DC system, such as what is used in the DC House project currently being developed at Cal Poly, providing DC power to DC loads presents a technical challenge due to the different required DC operating voltages of the loads. This thesis entails the design and construction of a Smart DC/DC Wall Plug, which can automatically adjust its output voltage to match any required DC load voltages. In the …

Influences Of Anthropogenic Noise On Flight Initiation Distance, Foraging Behavior, And Feeder Community Structure Of Wild Birds, Alissa R. Petrelli

Master's Theses

Throughout the world, birds represent the primary type of wildlife that people experience on a daily basis. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that alterations to the acoustic environment can negatively affect birds as well as humans in a variety of ways, and altered acoustics from noise pollution has the potential to influence human interactions with wild birds. In this thesis, I investigated how anthropogenic noise impacts daily behavior as well as community structure of wild birds. In the first component of this thesis, I assessed the distance at which a bird initiates flight or escape behavior (i.e., flight …

Computer-Aided Diagnoses (Cad) System: An Artificial Neural Network Approach To Mri Analysis And Diagnosis Of Alzheimer's Disease (Ad), Berizohar Padilla Cerezo

Master's Theses

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic and progressive, irreversible syndrome that deteriorates the cognitive functions. Official death certificates of 2013 reported 84,767 deaths from Alzheimer’s disease, making it the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. The rate of AD is estimated to double by 2050. The neurodegeneration of AD occurs decades before symptoms of dementia are evident. Therefore, having an efficient methodology for the early and proper diagnosis can lead to more effective treatments.

Neuroimaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can detect changes in the brain of living subjects. Moreover, medical imaging techniques are the …

A Comparison Study Of Composite Laminated Plates With Holes Under Tension, Joun S. Kim

Master's Theses

A Comparison Study of Composite Laminated Plates with Holes under Tension

A study was conducted to quantify the accuracy of numerical approximations to deem sufficiency in validating structural composite design, thus minimizing, or even eliminating the need for experimental test. Error values for stress and strain were compared between Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and analytical (Classical Laminated Plate Theory), and FEA and experimental tensile test for two composite plate designs under tension: a cross-ply composite plate design of [(0/90)4]s, and a quasi-isotropic layup design of [02/+45/-45/902]s, each with a single, centered hole of 1/8” diameter, and 1/4" diameter (four sets …

Rf Front End For An Integrated Silhouette Capture And Boundary Detection Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Ultra-Wideband Radar System For The Extension Of Independent Living, Adrian Smet

Master's Theses

Limitations of current eldercare monitoring systems leave a need for new solutions. A monitoring system based on a frequency modulated continuous wave ultra-wideband short-range radar is proposed for this application. The complete proposed monitoring system is comprised of four blocks: boundary detection, silhouette capture, human identification, and data transmission. This paper develops the RF front end hardware for the silhouette capture subsystem.

System requirements are derived for the silhouette capture subsystem. An architecture for the RF front end is designed, and required individual component specifications are determined. Components are selected off the shelf or custom designed for each socket. Full …

The Value Of Choice: An Exploratory Case Study On The Intrinsic Motivation Of Dance Students Within The Creative Process, Jenna M. Gonsalves

Master's Theses

This exploratory case study was designed to analyze the impact choice making has on the intrinsic motivation of middle school dance students including self determination theory’s basic needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Data were collected using multiple sources including observation rubrics and semi-structured pre- and post- group interviews. Two groups of students ages 11-14 created dances for performance. One group participated in a collaborative approach to the creative process and had the opportunity to make choices. The other group participated in a teacher-led creative process and did not have the opportunity to make choices. A thematic content analysis of …

Building The More Confident Student Choreographer Through Writing: The Use Of Prompts To Guide The Choreographic Process, Yvette Bennett

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research was to implement specific writing prompts into a high-school curriculum that aids in the choreographic process in an effort to bring about confident student choreographers. This research evaluated the choreographic process using a series of writing prompts to support participants with the goal of producing successful student choreographed dance works throughout a semester long high school dance course. The researcher posed the following three essential questions: How does the writing prompt aid in the choreographic process? What did the participants learn about the choreographic process by using writing prompts? Do the participants feel a sense …

Let's Dance! Designing And Assessing Dance-Integrated Lessons In The Fifth Grade Language Arts Class, Emily Lorraine Hoch

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to design movement and dance-integrated lessons that would complement a poetry unit in a fifth grade language arts class at a public charter school. This quantitative and qualitative study sought to discover how the use of creative movement and dance could improve students’ ability to communicate through writing, and revise their work, as well as assess how this approach to teaching would effect their ability to think critically. These integrated lessons aligned with Colorado State Core Standards and 21st Century skills, as dance integration promotes the use of creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration …

Dance For Special Needs Students: Building Confidence And Motor Skills, Jennifer Monique Dabalsa

Master's Theses

Participating in a dance class is influential in the development of young people’s creative, imaginative, individual, and communicative skills. The use of dance within a classroom increases physical fitness, enriches motor skills, coordination, and enhances social skills. Dance also increases muscular endurance, builds balance, as well as encourages teamwork and group skills. Most, if not all individuals crave to be socially accepted on some level. Many individuals with special needs are limited in verbal communication, or they are completely non-verbal. Connecting to individuals with these types of limitations proves to be challenging in comparison with a typical abled bodied individual. …

Creation, Negotiation, Equality: Empowering Young Women Through Dance Improvisation, Marlene Catherine Strang

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore whether a dance improvisation curriculum could help young women strengthen their negotiating skills. Research identifies skills such as confidence, problem solving, creativity, listening, and collaboration as necessary to successful negotiation. This project examined whether students could learn these critical negotiation skills through dance improvisation. More broadly, it assessed the benefits of a dance improvisation practice and how those benefits can apply to everyday life outside of the dance classroom. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze data in this study. The following instrumentation resulted in data that were analyzed qualitatively: …

Tongs: Tldr; Opinion Network Guide System, Andrew Jen Wang

Master's Theses

In the modern world, huge amounts of text are being generated every minute. For example, Twitter users post their current emotions in tweets, while Facebook users vent about their experience in posts. In just one minute, Twitter users upload 350,000 tweets, and Facebook users post anywhere from 2.5 million to 3 million posts. To keep up with this growth in data, almost all of this information goes through automated text processing. To extract features such as the opinion and subjectivity in text, sentiment analysis is applied to the corpus. In this thesis, we present the TONGS library for conducting sentiment …

Lois Lenski, A Friend To Children: An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of A Children's Book Author, Stephanie Evans Thomas

Master's Theses

In her lifetime, Lois Lenski wrote, illustrated, and otherwise contributed to more than one hundred books for children and preteens. This study focuses on Lenski’s regional books for preteens, novels that Lenski claimed were written from real life. Using interpretive narrative analysis, this study evaluates two of Lenski’s regional novels: Strawberry Girl (1945), the 1946 Newbery award-winner and second installment in the American Regional series, and High-Rise Secret (1966), the eleventh installment in the Roundabout America series, focusing specifically on Lenski’s creative process. The analysis of Lenski’s works was contextualized using literature focusing on the concepts of character representation, authority, …

The Utility Of Foraminifera In Documenting Sediment Provenance For Overwash Deposits: A Case Study Using Sediments Deposited By Tropical Cyclone Pam In Vanuatu, Thomas Kosciuch

Master's Theses

Tropical cyclone inundation is a major threat to the highly exposed islands of the South Pacific. This vulnerability was highlighted in March 2015 when Tropical Cyclone (TC) Pam made landfall on Vanuatu as a Category 5 storm, impacting coastlines with storm surges that produced high water marks up to 7 m above MSL and deposited sediments up to 400 m inland. We examined the foraminiferal assemblages contained within TC Pam sediments at two locations in Vanuatu: a mixed-carbonate embayment (Manuro), and a volcaniclastic beach (Port Resolution Bay; PRB). At Manuro, the TC Pam sediments were up to 10 cm thick …

What Do Work Value Differentiation And Profile Elevation Predict?, Jinhao Chi

Master's Theses

Using a sample of 251 college students, it was found that 1) when differentiation (D) of work values was calculated using three indices, high-low D, Iachan D, and variance D, only Iachan D positively related to indecision but high-low D and variance D did not, 2) none of the three indices of D related to career maturity, 3) work values profile elevation (PE) positively related to extraversion, openness, and negatively related to depressive symptoms and career indecision but was unrelated to career certainty and neuroticism and 4) work values PE moderated the relationship between Iachan D and career indecision. The …

Development Of An Improved Synthesis Of S-D-Ribosyl-L-Homocysteine (Srh) And Progress Toward Srh Analogs Modified At The C3 Position, Emily Rouse

Master's Theses

Quorum sensing is a system that facilitates bacteria turning on and off gene expression depending on population density. System 2 quorum sensing is utilized by both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria, and the quorum sensing molecule used in this system is AI-2. AI-2 is biosynthesized by the enzyme LuxS from the precursor SRH. This thesis describes an improved synthesis of SRH through the exploration of different protecting group strategies. The knowledge gained from the improved synthesis of SRH is then applied toward the synthesis of SRH analogues with increased steric bulk installed through use of a stereoselective anti-Mannich reaction. …