Digital Commons Network^™

How Speech-Language Pathologists Account For Self-Determination Across The Progression Of Dementia, Emilee Mcgahee

Master's Theses

Dementia diagnoses are continuing to increase, with the number of diagnoses expected to reach 231 million globally by 2050 (World Alzheimer’s Report, 2019). With this comes a greater need for Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) who are able to best treat those who are diagnosed. Providing person-centered and strengths-based treatment approaches for people with dementia (PWD) has been proven to increase positive engagement responses while decreasing negative engagement responses (Skrainer et al., 2007). The primary objective of this research study was to assess treatment approaches used by SLPs in dementia care setting, along with how SLPs provide person-centered dementia treatment throughout the …

Outside Influence And Troop Deployment, Cara Wilson

Master's Theses

This paper examines the role that the President, the public, and the media played in troop deployment during the Afghanistan War. I hypothesized that each variable would influence troop deployment. Using a linear regression, I found that there is a positive relationship between the media and troop deployment. I concluded that media coverage did not influence troop deployment, but highlighted what was happening in Afghanistan. With the public, there is a negative relationship between the public and troop deployment. While troops increased, the public decreased in their support for the war. I conclude that the public did not have a …

Gestalt Language Processing In Accredited Communication Sciences And Disorders Programs, William Harris

Master's Theses

The language development and usage of autistic individuals has become a controversial topic in many of the disciplines and professions providing support to these individuals. As a result, two theories of language processing have been proposed. Analytical language processing suggests that children process and develop language from its most simple form, a phoneme, to its most complex form, a word or phrase. However, the theory of gestalt language processing proposes that some children may instead extract larger, more complex language such as whole words and phrases first and break it down to the simpler language. Gestalt language processing is often …

The Impact Of Target Sex Typicality On Participant's Willingness To Engage In Prosocial Behaviors, Olajuwon Olagbegi

Master's Theses

One’s decision to engage in prosocial behavior relies on various pieces of social information. The physical attractiveness of a social target could inform a perceiver’s subsequent intentions. In identifying which aspect of physical attractiveness could inform these decisions, it could be possible that prosocial decisions are heightened among those with sex-typical facial structures. This study explored the extent to which sex-typical facial structures informed perceivers’ interest in the context of social activism. Participants imagined themselves as responding to a request from a social target, deciding how behavior with high-cost and low-cost options. The male or female social target was manipulated …

Assessing The Independent Role Of Moral Foundations In Attitudes Toward Various Justifications For Abortion, Saba Shahid

Master's Theses

Although many states have legal frameworks that restrict abortion to certain situations, largely associated with health risks to the mother, child or both, other factors, such as financial stability, emotional readiness, and partner's presence, are not covered by existing laws, though they may be critical factors contributing to abortion decisions. To assess the role of these factors, participants (N= 302) were recruited online via Prolific Academic and randomly assigned on a between participants basis to view a single vignette that manipulated abortion justification category (financial, emotional, partner) and the presence/absence of justification. They reported the extent to which …

Effects Of Identity And Competency-Based Rejection And Acceptance On Online Versus Face To Face Reaffiliation Preferences In Adults, August Namuth

Master's Theses

Humans are social animals, resulting in notable sensitivity to experiences of acceptance and rejection. This study extends existing research by considering whether rejection or acceptance based on identity uniquely influences reaffiliation interests. Participants recalled either an inclusionary or exclusionary experience (or a control state), which would have been based on their competency or identity. Following this experience, they indicated their interest in participating in virtual and in-person social activities. I hypothesized that identity-based rejection would foster an interest in reaffiliation through online activities due to the greater availability to join likeminded groups online compared to in person. Conversely, I hypothesized …

The Role Of Attachment And Childhood Trauma For Men Parenting During The Reentry Phase: A Mixed Methods Secondary Analysis, Lily A. Hoerner

Master's Theses

Mass incarceration is a major problem in the U.S., with people of color being the ones most affected by it. Most of the people who are incarcerated are men, and a stark number of these men are parents. Reentry is a critical period for people released where they return home to their communities and families and have to reintegrate into life outside of prison. The recidivism rate in the U.S. is the highest of any other nation, making reentry an important area of focus to help repair the harms caused by mass incarceration. Many men who return home from incarceration …

Building Software At Scale: Understanding Productivity As A Product Of Software Engineering Intrinsic Factors, Gauthier Ingende Wa Boway

Master's Theses

During our education at KSU, we have learned about various factors that affect productivity such as schedule, budget, and risks, but those are often controlled outside of what we could learn as software engineering principles, patterns, or practices. On top of that, other off-work factors such as health conditions, emotional distress, or political climate, just to name a few, could drastically affect the productivity of a software engineering team. We see a demarcation between those factors that affect productivity in software engineering but are not inherent to the discipline itself, which we call resistance factors, and the factors that are …

Kinetic And Kinematic Effect Of Flag-Carrying On Referee Agility And Sprinting Performance, William Reed

Master's Theses

Within competitive soccer, assistant referees are expected to keep up with the top speed of players on the field, despite being hindered mechanically by a flag held down at their side. This ability to keep up with speed-of-play can determine effectiveness of calls on the field, yet while being tested, referees are not required to replicate the game-like state of flag-carrying. The purpose of this study was to examine kinetic and kinematic effects of flag-carrying within sprinting and change-of-direction performance in assistant referees to better inform training programs and testing protocols. 18 male referees (mean age 32.11 ± 9.08 years) …

Implementing Writing Activities In A Postsecondary Tutoring Program For Students With Intellectual Disabilities, Milya Maxfield

Master's Theses

Peer mentors who work with students with intellectual disabilities at the post-secondary level are uniquely situated in their roles both as students and as tutors to assist their students not only with their academic work but also in modeling learning strategies one-on-one. This brief study, including both quantitative and qualitative survey data, establishes a baseline for tutors’ self-confidence when it comes to their own writing and tutoring their students in writing. It further examines the impact of a professional development learning opportunity on tutors’ ability to potentially practice and model a writing strategy in their sessions with their student population. …

Comparison Of Scanning Electron Microscopy And Confocal Laser Microscopy For Tissue Surface Roughness Characterization, Tarnvir Dhaliwal

Master's Theses

It was found that the measurements captured by confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy had a statistically significant difference for bovine tissue. There was not a statistically significant for porcine and poultry tissue.

The intent of the study is to perform a comparative study to examine efficacy of two distinct technologies for a singular purpose: tissue surface roughness characterization. The two technologies compared are a confocal reflectance microscope and a scanning electron microscope. The comparison was made by comparing two surface roughness parameters [Ra and Rq] within ImageJ.

The study examined three different animal species [porcine, bovine, and poultry] to …

Development Of An In Vitro 3-Dimensional Co-Culture Human Colorectal Cancer Model In Microfluidic Devices, Abby Jens

Master's Theses

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, with the relative 5-year survival rate for distant stage cancer being only 14%. The most common treatment for colorectal cancer is with chemotherapeutic drugs; however, the discovery of these drugs is costly, time-consuming, and often requires the use of animal models that do not yield results that translate to clinical trials. Due to these shortcomings, researchers seek to develop physiologically relevant in vitro tumor models that more accurately mimic the tumor microenvironment for cheaper and faster high-throughput drug screening. The aim of this research was …

Development Of Electrical Impedance Tomography Data Acquisition System And Deep Learning-Based Reconstruction Algorithms For Spatial Damage Detection, Damond Michael Li

Master's Theses

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-destructive, non-invasive, and non-radioactive imaging technique used for reconstructing the internal conductivity distribution of a sensing domain. Performing EIT often requires large, stationary benchtop equipment that can be expensive and impractical. Other researchers have attempted to make portable EIT systems, but they all rely on external computation for image reconstruction/data analysis. This study outlines the development of a low-cost, portable, and wireless EIT data acquisition (DAQ) system that is capable of independently performing image reconstructions on-board. With the proposed system, EIT can be performed on carbon fiber reinforced polymers to spatially locate damages. Since …

A Sindy Hardware Accelerator For Efficient System Identification On Edge Devices, Michael Sean Gallagher

Master's Theses

The SINDy (Sparse Identification of Non-linear Dynamics) algorithm is a method of turning a set of data representing non-linear dynamics into a much smaller set of equations comprised of non-linear functions summed together. This provides a human readable system model the represents the dynamic system analyzed. The SINDy algorithm is important for a variety of applications, including high precision industrial and robotic applications. A Hardware Accelerator was designed to decrease the time spent doing calculations. This thesis proposes an efficient hardware accelerator approach for a broad range of applications that use SINDy and similar system identification algorithms. The accelerator is …

Effects Of Anthropogenic Noise On The Provisioning Behavior Of Western Bluebirds And Artificial Light At Night On Nestling Development, Kerstin H. Ozkan

Master's Theses

Sensory environments are rapidly changing due to increased human activity in urban and non-urban areas alike. For instance, background sounds can interfere with parent-offspring communication and mask cues reflective of predation risk, resulting in elevated vigilance at the cost of provisioning. In chapter 1, we studied nestling provisioning behavior among Western Bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) in response to short-term (1 hr) and long-term (continuous exposure throughout nesting period) noise exposure. Provisioning rates were lower at nests exposed to short-term experimental traffic noise compared to exposure to ambient background sounds. Trial order strongly influenced provisioning behavior, with the decline in …

A Comparison Of Western And Eastern Soft Systems Approaches, John L. Anaya, John L. Anaya, John L. Anaya

Master's Theses

Soft System Approaches have been developed worldwide to help problem-solvers and decision-makers develop solutions to complex problems, such as aerospace systems. Soft System Approaches were designed to help lower the disorder of developing a complex system by increasing understanding of a situation. Four Soft System Approaches were investigated, two from the West and two from the East. Within the context of the paper, the West refers to thought patterns associated with thinkers and scientists in Europe and North America, and the East refers to those from and around China. The two from the West are Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology …

Coralai: Emergent Ecosystems Of Neural Cellular Automata, Aidan A. Barbieux, Aidan A. Barbieux

Master's Theses

Artificial intelligence has traditionally been approached through centralized architectures and optimization of specific metrics on large datasets. However, the frontiers of fields spanning cognitive science, biology, physics, and computer science suggest that intelligence is better understood as a multi-scale, decentralized, emergent phenomenon. As such, scaling up approaches that mirror the natural world may be one of the next big advances in AI. This thesis presents Coralai, a framework for efficiently simulating the emergence of diverse artificial life ecosystems integrated with modular physics. The key innovations of Coralai include: 1) Hosting diverse Neural Cellular Automata organisms in the same simulation that …

Improving Automatic Transcription Using Natural Language Processing, Anna Kiefer

Master's Theses

Digital Democracy is a CalMatters and California Polytechnic State University initia-
tive to promote transparency in state government by increasing access to the Califor-
nia legislature. While Digital Democracy is made up of many resources, one founda-
tional step of the project is obtaining accurate, timely transcripts of California Senate
and Assembly hearings. The information extracted from these transcripts provides
crucial data for subsequent steps in the pipeline. In the context of Digital Democracy,
upleveling is when humans verify, correct, and annotate the transcript results after
the legislative hearings have been automatically transcribed. The upleveling process
is done with the …

Design And Analysis Of Zero Voltage Switching Hybrid Voltage Divider, Stephen Ulysses Alvarado Estrada

Master's Theses

This work explores the design, construction, and analysis of a novel DC-DC converter which incorporates combinations of switching capacitors and inductors to achieve an integer voltage divider function, without the need for a feedback loop controller to achieve the desired output voltage. The proposed Hybrid Voltage Divider additionally provides zero voltage switching (ZVS) at turn on transitions which yields improved overall efficiency of the converter. Besides a proof-of-concept via computer simulations, another primary goal of this thesis is to demonstrate the functionalities of the proposed Zero Voltage Switching Hybrid Voltage Divider (ZVS-HVD) through hardware prototyping. The proposed ZVS-HVD was designed …

Effects Of Temperature On Economic Preferences: A Cross-Cultural Laboratory Study Of Prosocial Behavior, Nikita Tkachenko

Master's Theses

In light of the pressing issue of climate change, our study investigates the implications of rising temperatures on social and economic behaviors through a laboratory experiment conducted among students at university sites in Mexico, India, Kenya, Colombia, and the United States. This paper examines the influence of temperature differences and exposure length on economic decision-making among students at university sites in Mexico, Kenya, and the United States. Analyzing data from the dictator game, we explored how temperature, both ambient and wet bulb, and session length affect prosocial behavior. Our results suggest a link between temperature measures and prosocial behavior, with …

Habitat Characterization Of American Badgers (Taxidea Taxus) Of Northern California, Mitchell Victoria

Master's Theses

American badgers (Taxidea taxus) are a semi fossorial mammal that lives in grassland and open prairie ecosystems as well as coastal prairies, agricultural fields, deserts, and deforested habitats. Many researchers have published work on badgers, but we still require more information on their ecology. The American badger is a semi fossorial, solitary, predatory mammal of grassland ecosystems. They are classified as mesopredators when compared to larger apex predators such as brown bears, wolves, and pumas. However, when larger carnivores are absent, Badgers become apex predators of their ecosystems. Los Vaqueros Watershed in Brentwood, California, was my study site because badgers …

Data-Driven Control Of Acoustic Waves Using Movable And Flexible Scatterers, Noam Smilovich

Master's Theses

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) serve as fundamental tools in scientific and engineering disciplines, modeling phenomena ranging from material design to climate dynamics. Developing robotic systems capable of controlling PDE-governed systems, particularly when these phenomena are only partially observable, has the potential to drive significant technological advancements. This work presents a framework that leverages physics-informed machine learning (ML) for the control of PDEs. At the core of this approach is an agent equipped with sensors that generate a low-dimensional, physics-informed representation of the environment, enabling the derivation of optimal sparse control policies for the agent’s actuators. The focus is on manipulating …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Non-Traditional Climate Change Communication Tools In The City Of Santa Cruz, Saara Ranabhat

Master's Theses

Coastal cities face significant challenges from climate-induced coastal hazards. The City of Santa Cruz is a medium-sized municipality in Monterey Bay on California's Central Coast with over $1 billion worth of property and infrastructure at risk to climate-induced coastal hazards by 2100. However, city officials have noticed a lack of representation of climate-vulnerable communities in the development of various climate adaptation plans and policies. In order to remedy this problem, the City is experimenting with various climate change communication tools, such as virtual reality (VR), card games, murals, and comic books, in collaboration with different agencies. But limited understanding exists …

The Relationship Between Communication With Coworkers And Job Satisfaction Among Teleworkers: The Moderating Role Of Communication Modality, Madison L. Mariano

Master's Theses

Teleworking has become increasingly prevalent due to public health concerns and advancements in communication technologies. While organizations should take steps to promote job satisfaction among teleworkers, there is little research on the predictors of job satisfaction among full-time teleworkers. Specifically, few studies have focused on how coworker communication might impact job satisfaction among full-time teleworkers. This study focused on this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between the frequency of communication with coworkers and job satisfaction and the moderating role of communication modality. Communication modality refers to a form of communication technology available to teleworkers, ranging from rich …

Unveiling The Cognitive Impact: An Exploratory Study On Food Insecurity And Value-Driven Attentional Capture, Nichole S. Hogoboom

Master's Theses

Food insecurities have been shown to lead to serious negative health outcomes such as increased risk for diabetes and obesity in adulthood, food-related mental health and behavioral issues, all of which can have a crossover effect in many areas of a person’s life. This experiment explores whether previous history of food insecurity is associated with how people allocate attention to pictures of food; whether they are prioritizing or ignoring food stimuli in their environment. We hypothesized that the severity of food insecurity experienced in childhood would correlate with attentional bias towards food images, and that how hungry or thirsty participants …

Uncovering Weaknesses In Autonomous Driving: A Formal Approach To Adversarial Scenario Generation And Falsification, Carlos O. Hernandez

Master's Theses

Autonomous vehicles utilize advanced safety features like proactive driving assistance and pre-collision alerts to minimize the risk of accidents. However, evaluating the correct functionality of these systems is complex. First, safety systems are highly sophisticated, integrating software, networking, and hardware components, many of which rely on advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Second, an array of dynamic factors, including numerous actors and physical variables, can influence the performance of safety mechanisms during critical scenarios. Each actor’s unique behavior introduces unpredictability, making it difficult to anticipate future states and outcomes. This thesis presents a comprehensive framework for testing autonomous vehicle …

The Watchmen In The Song Of Songs: An Intertextual Study, Gabriel Xavier Del Valle

Master's Theses

Problem

The watchmen are a shocking feature in the Song of Songs that have received limited exploration and research. Their dual nature in the Song of Songs is illustrated by their two responses to the women in the song; benign indifference illustrated in Song of Songs 3:1-5 and hostility exemplified in Song of Songs 5:2-8. This has led to a myriad of interpretations regarding their function and identity; however, none have been subject to a thorough examination. The watchmen have not been previously investigated as a potential metaphorical or symbolic representation of the brothers related to the woman in the …

Posttraumatic Symptoms As Predictors Of Mobile App Engagement: An Evaluation Of Usage Data From Public Users Of An App For Military Sexual Trauma, Shilpa Hampole

Master's Theses

Veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma (MST) often face barriers to help-seeking. Mental health mobile applications (apps) such as Beyond MST, developed by the National Center for PTSD, can expand access to evidence-based coping tools, psychoeducation, and resources. However, user engagement is crucial for these apps to be effective. Researchers are exploring factors impacting app engagement, with emerging evidence suggesting that symptom severity may play a key role. This study examined whether the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and posttraumatic negative cognitions, as well as level of well-being, are associated with app engagement. Anonymous app usage data …

The Role Of Nature As A Protective Factor In Father-Child Relationships, Sarah J. Barker

Master's Theses

The present study strived to understand how fathers spend time with their children outdoors and how this shared time together may positively influence their relationship within the Family-Based Nature Activities Theoretical Framework. The objectives of this thesis are to understand more about (a) Why fathers participate in outdoor activities with their children; and (b) How spending time outdoors with their children influences their relationship. Participants included 26 fathers (M=40.6 years old) and their children between the ages of 5-12 years old. All urban fathers resided on the West Coast, while rural fathers lived in the southeast United States. Participants were …

Descriptive Study Of Adult Male Acheta Domesticus Phonotaxis, Dana Husana

Master's Theses

The phonotactic behavior of male Acheta domesticus has not been described at length. The present study evaluates the phonotactic responses of male A. domesticus in relation to age. Male crickets of different ages (young and old) were exposed to calls with attractive and non-attractive syllable periods for this species. Both age groups exhibited phonotaxis but did not show a preference towards the attractive call over the non-attractive ones. No significant relationship was found between age and phonotactic response. Additionally, no significant differences were observed between age and preferred syllable period. Acoustic responses were also observed in some of the older …