Digital Commons Network^™

Teaching And Learning Of Proof In The College Curriculum, Maja Derek

Master's Theses

Mathematical proof, as an essential part of mathematics,

is as difficult to learn as it is to teach. In this thesis, we

provide a short overview of how mathematical proof is understood

by students in K-16. Furthermore, we answer questions about

mistakes students usually make in the transition period from high

school to college in understanding mathematics and mathematical

proof. Through a case study, we learned that deduction mistakes

characteristic for early mathematical education, such as arguing

from an example, can be abandoned very easily as students begin to

understand the inadequacy of one, or finitely many, examples when

arguing …

The Impact Of Instructor-Provided Lecture Notes And Learning Interventions On Student Note Taking And Generative Processing, Karen Lynn Gee

Master's Theses

While the review (memory storage) function of student lecture notes is well established, research findings on the learning benefits of actually taking these notes (memory encoding) has been mixed. The current study provided all students with a complete content outline for use in studying, so the effects of taking personal notes could be isolated. Students who received the complete outline before the lecture took significantly fewer personal notes than did students who received the outline after lecture, though both groups performed similarly on factual and application tests. Students who were directed to generate novel examples for each topic also performed …

Social Support And Gender Effects On Academic Confidence In Foster Youth, Carolyn Suzanne Gillard

Master's Theses

Finding the predictors for academic success is critical for foster youth to become productive citizens as adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of social support in the academic confidence of transitional foster youth. Because the literature suggests men and women benefit from social support differentially, I also examined gender as the moderating variable for social support and academic confidence. A sample of 82 foster youth (15-18 years old) from San Joaquin County's Human Service Agency volunteered to participate. Participants were given the Student Perceived Availability of Social Support Questionnaire (SPASSQ) to assess their perceptions of …

Problem Solving With Geographic Networks In The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Steven Hong

Master's Theses

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) serves as the crossroads for many geographic networks that crisscross California. These include a conveyance network for drinking water, a biological network for delta smelt, and a transportation network for roads. As a result, local Delta issues concerning flooding and endangered fish hold implications for the entire state. This thesis explores these underlying network structures that pass through the Delta as a means for solving subsets of these most difficult challenges.

Recognition of these larger networks enable the transformation of the Delta's convoluted maze of waterways and islands into a series of nodes and segments. …

The Environmental Impact Of The Retail Photoprocessing Industry In Santa Clara County: 1996 Vs. 2006, Benoit Delaveau

Master's Theses

Consumer digital cameras appeared on the market in 1994. Consequently, the photoprocessing industry experienced a downturn beginning in 2000, with a sudden drop in activity. This study focuses on the evolution of the retail photoprocessing industry between 1996 and 2006 and evaluates its four major environmental impacts: (1) energy use, (2) associated greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), (3) silver discharge, and (4) water consumption. The main method used for data analysis is based on the ISO 14040 standard for Life Cycle Assessment. The study utilizes data from: (a) impact quantification for two photoprocessing labs in Santa Clara County, and (b) a …

The Impact Of Hurricane Katrina On Gulf Coast Libraries And Their Disaster Planning, Jeffrey Frank

Master's Theses

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast, becoming infamous for the destruction it wrought to communities from Louisiana to Alabama. Most notably, it caused massive flooding in New Orleans and surrounding parishes by breaching the levee system. The storm's impact on the region's population, buildings, and collective psyche is impossible to measure. As was the case with other Gulf Coast institutions in the path of Hurricane Katrina, the region's libraries also suffered extensively.

Through examination of the available literature and first-hand accounts of library professionals, this thesis examines the impact that Hurricane Katrina had on libraries …

Dangerous Decor: Consumer Knowledge Of Health Risks Within Interior Spaces, Kaitlin Keith

Master's Theses

Interior décor is an ever-present part of people's daily lives. The furnishings and finishes with which people surround themselves are part of their personal expression, but these components in people's homes and work spaces can negatively affect their health. Products such as furniture and paints can contain harmful chemicals, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) so toxic they are pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. With the rise in the "green" movement, healthy and environmentally safe alternatives such as low or zero-VOC paints are becoming more available. This study assessed how aware consumers and design professionals are of environmentally …

Reducing Disturbances To Marine Mammals By Kayakers In The Monterey Bay, Megan Maye Gunvalson

Master's Theses

Team OCEAN is a kayaker-outreach program located in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary under the direction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose goal is to reduce disturbances to marine mammals by kayakers. This study documented the interactions between kayakers and resting harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) and southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis) at Team OCEAN's two outreach sites, Cannery Row and Elkhorn Slough, to determine if outreach was effective in reducing disturbances to harbor seals and sea otters.

No difference was observed in the percentage of kayaks causing disturbances to resting harbor seals when comparing days Team OCEAN …

Post-Fire Analysis Of Sequoia Sempervirens Forests On The Central Coast Of California, Rachel Anne Lazzeri-Aerts

Master's Theses

The public perception of wildfire is that it destroys forests and that all fires should be quickly extinguished. However, fire plays a central role in determining structure, composition, and recruitment in many forest types. In coast redwood forests, the role of fire is not well understood, particularly in the southern part of the range. Observational data suggest that redwoods are relatively unaffected by fire. The sites of three 2008 and 2009 fires were sampled for this study: the Martin Fire in Bonny Doon, California, the Whitehurst Fire near Gilroy, California, and the Lockheed Fire near Swanton, California. Randomly selected ten-meter …

Modeling Of The Impact Of Electrical Stressors On The Degradation Process Of Power Mosfets, Shompa Shohiny Mahiuddin

Master's Theses

This research focused on building a model based on collection of experimental data acquired with high electrical stressors at the gate of the power MOSFET under an isothermal condition to analyze certain deviations of intrinsic properties leading to degradation. The primary indicators were threshold shift, deviation in switching characteristics, and significant expansion of the Miller Plateau due to accelerated stressing of the device from the pristine condition. The intrinsic mechanism associated with the threshold shift and changes in the parasitic capacitances were observed and analyzed with mathematical precision and device parameter simulation. It was seen that, in addition to altered …

Dialectical Tensions: Drunk Driving-Related Loss Among Emerging Adult Siblings, Krista Nilsen

Master's Theses

The longest relationship many of us will share in our lifetime is that with our siblings. Siblings sometimes experience the loss of their brothers and sisters to drunk drivers. Despite the risks associated with drinking and driving, this behavior continues to occur. This study explores drunk driving, sibling loss, and loss during emerging adulthood. This study explores the ways in which dialectical tensions and liminality take shape across educational and professional contexts when emergent adults lose her/his siblings to drunk drivers.

Two dialectical tensions emerged in this work: openness-closedness and connectedness-autonomy. Surviving siblings engage in four patterns of praxis in …

Development Of A Chemically Reacting Flow Solver On The Graphic Processing Units, Hai Le

Master's Theses

The focus of the current research is to develop a numerical framework on the Graphic Processing Units (GPU) capable of modeling chemically reacting flow. The framework incorporates a high-order finite volume method coupled with an implicit solver for the chemical kinetics. Both the fluid solver and the kinetics solver are designed to take advantage of the GPU architecture to achieve high performance. The structure of the numerical framework is shown, detailing different aspects of the optimization implemented on the solver. The mathematical formulation of the core algorithms is presented along with a series of standard test cases, including both nonreactive …

African American Community College Student Perceptions Of Mathematics Instructor Immediacy Behaviors And Perceived Cognitive Learning, Georgia Lynne Toland

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine what instructor immediacy behaviors are perceived to most positively affect the perceived cognitive learning of African American community college mathematics students. Data were provided via voluntary student surveys collected in various mathematics classrooms at two community colleges. The survey instrument was modeled from the works of Gorham (1988) and Sanders and Wiseman (1990) and included an experimental survey method of direct questioning. The perceptions of African American community college students regarding the behaviors of their mathematics instructors, along with their stated preferred instructor behaviors, produced a subset of effective strategies similar to …

Can't Sing, Can't Dance, Can't Draw: How Leisure Constraints And Negotiations Impact Midlife Women's Participation In The Creative Arts, Debra Ann Ullmann

Master's Theses

This qualitative, exploratory study involving semi-structured interviews of 12 midlife women, ages 45 to 65, sought insight into how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural constraints, constraint negotiations, and motivations facilitate or impede midlife women's active participation in the creative arts. The data were analyzed within a socio-cultural context using grounded theory. Findings indicate that dynamic interactions involving social comparison result in judgment by others, of others, and of self. This spiraling effect is often initiated in childhood or adolescence. Once a woman internalizes the notion that she "can't sing, can't dance, can"t draw," there is seldom any attempt to negotiate constraints …

John Bell Hood: Extracting Truth From History, Thomas John Brown

Master's Theses

The year 2011 brings us the Sesquicentennial celebration of the American Civil War. Surprisingly, one hundred and fifty years later, students continue to find themselves asking many of the same questions about the great national tragedy faced during the Centennial in 1961. For example, did slavery cause the great conflict, or did constitutional questions act as the catalyst? Does the Battle of Gettysburg represent the turning point of the War, or did that occur elsewhere?

In connection with the last question, Lost Cause advocates, those great pro-Confederacy propagandists, found convenient villains to blame for the southern defeat. One of these, …

Diet Of The Gopher Rockfish (Sebastes Carnatus) Inside And Outside Of Marine Protected Areas In Central California, Erin Kimberly Loury

Master's Theses

Marine protected areas (MPAs) can potentially impact food web dynamics by increasing the density of predatory fishes within their borders. Such increases in density can cause shifts in the prey use of generalist predators. This study investigated the effects of increased conspecific density on the diet of Gopher Rockfish (Sebastes carnatus) at a 35-year-old MPA at Point Lobos and four newly established central California MPAs at Año Nuevo, Point Lobos, Piedras Blancas, and Point Buchon. Analysis of 710 stomachs collected in 2007-2009 indicated the most important overall prey were crabs, especially of the family Pisidae and the genus Cancer, as …

Can The Fear Of Death Inspire Creativity?, Michelle Murphy

Master's Theses

The current study examined whether participant's creative performance changed after they became aware of their mortality. The main hypotheses predicted that (1) participants who have highly creative personalities would show an increase in creative performance following mortality salience, (2) participants with less creative personalities would show a decrease in creative performance following mortality salience. Highly creative individuals were distinguished from less creative individuals based on their personality composition. The Consequences Test (Guilford, 1970) was used to measure creative performance. To examine whether creative performance changed after mortality salience, participants completed Form 1A of the Consequences Test, a mortality salience manipulation, …

Construction And Simplicity Of The Large Mathieu Groups, Robert Peter Hansen

Master's Theses

In this thesis, we describe the construction of the Mathieu group M₂₄ given by Ernst Witt in 1938, a construction whose geometry was examined by Jacques Tits in 1964. This construction is achieved by extending the projective semilinear group PΓL₃(F₄) and its action on the projective plane P²(F₄). P²(F₄) is the projective plane over the field of 4 elements, with 21 points and 21 lines, and PΓL₃(F₄) is the largest group sending lines to lines in P²(F₄).This plane has 168 6-point subsets, hexads, with the …

Polytasking And Job Stress Across Cultures, Ashwini Palekar

Master's Theses

The current study explored the relationship between country of origin and personal and organizational polytasking in relation to stressors and strains. The study also investigated how temporal incongruence could be a source of stress. A total of 440 surveys were collected from full-time employees, including Asian Indians in the USA (n= 67), Asian Indians in India (n=253), and non-Asian Indians in the USA (n= 120). Results indicate that non-Asian Indians in the USA perceive significantly greater levels of personal and organizational polytasking than Asian Indians. There were no significant differences in perceptions of personal and organizational polytasking for Asian Indians …

Understanding The Relationship Between Hyper-Violence And Educational Disparity: Listening To The Voices Of Latina Youth From Oakland, Yanira Madrigal-Garcia

Master's Theses

The hyper-violence that exists in Oakland, California, has persistently made national headlines. When examining the violence that exists in low-income urban cities, studies usually overemphasize the male experience. The studies that center on female experience usually focus on extreme cases such as gang-involved and incarcerated girls. This study foregrounds the experiences of Latina high school girls from Oakland who are "in the middle," neither gang-involved nor academic high-achievers.

The purpose of this study was to investigate: 1) how the participants make sense of and understand the violence that is present in their communities; 2) how violence impacts their everyday lives …

Dynamics Of Bottom Boundary Layer Thickness In Monterey Bay Canyon, Katherine Jane Morrice

Master's Theses

Submarine canyons serve an important role as conduits for exchange, funneling sediment and nutrients between shallow shelf waters and the open ocean. The steep and sloping topography intensifies internal waves that dissipate energy directly by friction at the boundary and indirectly when they are reflected and break distant from the boundary. Although bottom boundary layers (BBL) on continental slopes and abyssal regions have been described, deep continental boundary layers are poorly understood. This study examined along-canyon variability in BBL thicknesses and whether BBL heights were related to previously identified regions of high energy dissipation. Temporal variations in BBL thickness were …

Optimizing Energy Savings From "Direct-Dc" In U.S. Residential Buildings, Evangelos Vossos

Master's Theses

An increasing number of energy-efficient appliances operate on direct current (DC) internally, offering the potential to use DC power from renewable energy systems directly and avoiding the losses inherent in converting power to alternating current (AC) and back. This paper investigates that potential for net-metered residences with on-site photovoltaics (PV) by modeling the net power draw of the "direct-DC house" with respect to today's typical configuration, assuming identical DC-internal loads. The power draws were modeled for houses in 14 U.S. cities using hourly simulated PV-system output and residential loads. The latter were adjusted to reflect a 35% load reduction representative …

Performing Asexuality Through Narratives Of Sexual Identity, Janet Sundrud

Master's Theses

This thesis explores the social construction of asexual identities through everyday narrative performances and critically examines the marginalizing effects of heteronormative discourses. This thesis posits narrative performance as a framework for understanding asexual identities within a heteronormative society. Drawing upon oral history and ethnographic methodologies, this thesis examines the narrative performances of three self-identified asexuals and explores four themes within each narrative: 1) the breach of heteronormative expectations, 2) the creation of commonality among individuals within the asexual community, 3) the negotiation of heteronormative discourses within the family, and 4) the construction of future-oriented liminoid narratives of asexuality. This thesis …

Public Awareness About Global Warming In Hyderabad, India, Vani Sarraju Rao

Master's Theses

This study addressed public perceptions and awareness about global warming in India through a survey of 851 subjects in the city of Hyderabad in the year 2007. A stratified sample of nine segments of society showed that, although people consider global warming a serious problem, they do not clearly understand its causes, impacts, and solutions. The data analyses using paired T-tests indicated differences in levels of awareness about global warming, across age and education. ANOVA and regression analysis suggested that levels of awareness among respondents varied according to their occupation. The degree of seriousness with which subjects viewed global warming …

The Relationship Between Diversity And Performance In Major League Baseball Teams: Conflict's Mediating Effect, Michelle Maureen Campion

Master's Theses

Diversity in the workplace is a growing reality around the world as the globalizing economy has prompted the growth of work teams comprised of individuals from diverse backgrounds with different values, experiences, knowledge, and skills. Researchers have been investigating the way diversity impacts organizational outcomes, including performance. However, it is not clearly understood how diversity impacts performance. Using data from 30 Major League Baseball teams over a two-year period, this research proposed that conflict might mediate the relationship between diversity and performance. Both diversity and performance were measured using multiple indicators. Although results did not indicate that conflict mediated the …

Exploring The Relationship Between Organizational Citizenship Behavior And Organizational Climates For Creativity, Michael Joseph Cilla

Master's Theses

Technology is growing exponentially, and there is no time to waste for organizations in designing and implementing a creative climate strategy. This study was conducted to explore the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and organizational climates that promote creativity. By collecting data from working undergraduate and MBA students (N=201), multiple significant positive relationships were found between several of the dimensions making up both of these constructs. The results of this study show that employee perceptions of creative climates are moderately related to pro-social behaviors. For employees, working in organizations that promote a creative climate relates to having supportive social-exchange …

Yig-Sphere-Based Phase Shifter For X-Band Phased Array Applications, Donald C. Benson

Master's Theses

A novel technique for effecting phase shift of X-band signals has been developed and analyzed for use with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) of signals in a phased array application, and the impact of this phase shifter on error vector magnitude (EVM) has been quantified. A commercially available filter consisting of yttrium iron garnet (YIG) spheres was characterized by means of a network analyzer. The gain and phase response was measured across a 25 MHz frequency band centered at 10 GHz, while the filter was tuned in frequency steps such that a 360° range of phase shifts was achieved. The S-parameters …

Getting By At The Benjamin Mays Black Branch: Library Access For African Americans In Jim Crow South Carolina, 1940-1971, Jamie Irene Cutter

Master's Theses

This thesis examines a chapter of South Carolina history that has been neglected in the historical record, namely segregated libraries of the twentieth century. Previous works have covered the history of black libraries in the entire South, but details of South Carolina's segregated libraries are incomplete. This study looks first at the broader context of segregated libraries in the American South and then reviews the history of African American libraries in South Carolina. Finally, this study provides a case study of the Benjamin Mays Library, a segregated, African American library in Greenwood, South Carolina. The case study uses primary source …

The Effects Of Self-Referencing On Mood And Information Processing, Michael Mehler

Master's Theses

Research in the area of attitude change has demonstrated that people can process a persuasive message in a systematic or heuristic manner. It has been shown that positive mood increases heuristic processing, whereas negative mood increases systematic processing. In the current study, we were interested in examining one factor that may increase happy people's ability or desire to systematically process a persuasive message, self-referencing. Self-referencing occurs when information is processed by relating it to oneself or one's personal experience. After a happy, neutral, or sad mood was induced, participants were exposed to a message with either self-referencing or no self-referencing …

Examination Of The Relationship Between User Participation And Technology Acceptance In Post-Implementation, Ekta Menghrajani Makhijani

Master's Theses

Implementing information technology (IT) systems to support organizational effectiveness and enhance efficiencies is increasingly costly, challenging, and has a low success rate. Many researchers have explored user technology acceptance as a key to successful implementation of IT systems. Research on characteristics inherent to the implementation process can aid interventions designed to enhance user technology acceptance. User participation is a process characteristic that has been linked to IT system success and user satisfaction before and during implementation.

Using data from 131 survey respondents, the current study investigated the relationship between user participation and technology acceptance in the post-implementation phase of an …