Digital Commons Network^™

Development And Use Of An Environmental Dna Tool To Monitor Recovery Of The Critically Endangered Smalltooth Sawfish, Pristis Pectinata, In The Northwest Atlantic, Ryan N. Lehman

Master's Theses

The Critically Endangered Smalltooth Sawfish, Pristis pectinata, was once common in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean; however, following global declines in range and abundance over the past century, individuals were restricted to the waters of south and southwest Florida (SWFL) by about the 1980’s. Recently, public encounter reports have emerged in historically occupied habitats in United States waters, suggesting individuals are present in, or re-occupying, these areas, although the status of P. pectinata outside of SWFL is not currently well understood. Targeted environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys were chosen to assess the occurrence of P …

Nutrition At Tipu: A Comparative Analysis Of Juvenile Health In Maya Populations, Sydnie A. Bianchi

Master's Theses

The site of Tipu in west central Belize provided a foothold for Spanish missionaries in the 17^th century. The effects of contact on adults among the 550 burials recovered in the cemetery there have been well studied, but the children have received less attention. Therefore, this study examined juvenile health through four markers: Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH), a non-specific marker of health disruptions; Porotic Hyperostosis (PH), an indicator of anemia; and Periostitis, an indicator of infection. Some 131 individuals were evaluated using criteria developed by Steckel, Sciulli, and Rose (2002). The results were compared to Late Classic Copán (Storey, …

Assessment Of Genetic Diversity In Largetooth Sawfish, Pristis Pristis, Populations Over The 20th Century, Ann Fearing

Master's Theses

The Critically Endangered Largetooth Sawfish, Pristis pristis, experienced global declines in range and abundance over the past century and Australia is now their last stronghold. This research aimed to understand whether these declines have been accompanied by a reduction in levels of genetic diversity. Using P. pristis tissue samples sourced from natural history specimens, three fragments (616-bp, 386-bp, 141-bp) in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region were PCR-amplified. At each fragment, significant genetic structure was found in P. pristis overall (Φ_ST=0.946, N=9; 0.813, N=54; 0.771, N=99). The Indo-West Pacific and Atlantic/Eastern Pacific each harbor genetically distinct lineages of …

Diagonalization Of 1-D Schrodinger Operators With Piecewise Constant Potentials, Sarah Wright

Master's Theses

In today's world our lives are very layered. My research is meant to adapt current inefficient numerical methods to more accurately model the complex situations we encounter. This project focuses on a specific equation that is used to model sound speed in the ocean. As depth increases, the sound speed changes. This means the variable related to the sound speed is not constant. We will modify this variable so that it is piecewise constant. The specific operator in this equation also makes current time-stepping methods not practical. The method used here will apply an eigenfunction expansion technique used in previous …

​Burned Out But Barely Begun: A Qualitative Study On Newer Clergy And Communication Surrounding Emotional Labor And Personal Well-Being In South Mississippi, Lauren Noll

Master's Theses

This study provides an overview of the concepts surrounding clergy burnout,

organizational culture, and emotional labor theory. Furthermore, it explains the need

for  clearer understanding of clergy perceptions of their own personal

experiences with burnout and their emotional wellbeing in relation to their organizational environment and careers as clergy members. The methodology of qualitative interviews sought to understand the narratives and experiences of clergy members from their own words and worldviews rather than from a statistical basis or analysis.

This research found answers to key questions involving communication about burnout in the context of organizational culture and emotional labor, including …

Navigating Hate: The Public Deliberation Of Matthew Shepard And Hate Crime Legislation, Abigail Barnes

Master's Theses

Since Matthew Shepard’s murder in 1998, his narrative has been recirculated to justify a federal hate crime statute and Shepard has been used as a symbol for the demand for hate crime legislation. This study seeks to evaluate how Shepard is used in public deliberation, the role of private organizations in the public deliberation of hate crime legislation, and the discursive history of the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009. Through a rhetorical criticism, this study finds that the nuances of Shepard’s narrative are abandoned in order to construct him as a “permissible” symbol for LGBTQ+ protections. However, if …

Predicting Personality Type From Writing Style, Tanay Gottigundala

Master's Theses

The study of personality types gained traction in the early 20th century, when Carl Jung's theory of psychological types attempted to categorize individual differences into the first modern personality typology. Iterating on Jung's theories, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tried to categorize each individual into one of sixteen types, with the theory that an individual's personality type manifests in virtually all aspects of their life. This study explores the relationship between an individual's MBTI type and various aspects of their writing style. Using a MBTI-labeled dataset of user posts on a personality forum, three ensemble classifiers were created to predict …

Attentional Parsing Networks, Marcus Karr

Master's Theses

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have dominated the computer vision field since the early 2010s, when deep learning largely replaced previous approaches like hand-crafted feature engineering and hierarchical image parsing. Meanwhile transformer architectures have attained preeminence in natural language processing, and have even begun to supplant CNNs as the state of the art for some computer vision tasks.

This study proposes a novel transformer-based architecture, the attentional parsing network, that reconciles the deep learning and hierarchical image parsing approaches to computer vision. We recast unsupervised image representation as a sequence-to-sequence translation problem where image patches are mapped to successive layers …

A Novel Method To Commercialize Medical Devices Initially Developed At California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, Christina Grigorian

Master's Theses

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo is a university that encourages students to approach learning hands-on. As such, there is cutting-edge technology being developed by students in all departments on campus. Being that the university possesses an outstanding biomedical engineering department, there are groundbreaking medical devices that students are creating at Cal Poly SLO. These are devices that can better the lives of individuals suffering from ailments or fulfill needs in the medical industry. Subsequently, it is vital that these devices make it out of campus laboratories and into the hands of consumers. In order to move a product …

A Protocol For Achieving Adherent Cell Culture Within A Microfluidic Device, Tarra Danielle Sanders

Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to design a protocol for the adherent cell culture within a novel microfluidic device. Microscale cell culture protocols were developed for loading cells using poly-L-lysine to enhance adherent cell culture of murine derived NIH 3T3 fibroblasts. This work sought to develop a method for adherent microculture by examining various sterilization, surface treatment, and seeding techniques. Using a vacuum suction loading technique, air plasma treatment and a poly-L-lysine surface treatment adherent cell culture was observed within the device. The work presented here is part of a collaborative effort that aims to develop protocols for the …

Impact Of Soil Properties On Removal Of Emerging Contaminants From Wastewater Effluent During Soil Aquifer Treatment, Lauren N. Riley

Master's Theses

This study evaluates soil properties that impact the effectiveness of soil aquifer treatment (SAT) as a polishing step to the remove two classes of ECs from wastewater effluent: pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), and engineering nanomaterials (ENMs). In recent years, it has been determined that elevated levels of emerging contaminants (ECs) are being released into the environment with wastewater effluent. ECs are proven to cause adverse environmental and health effects as a result of long-term exposure. It is important to evaluate sustainable solutions to improve the current methods of wastewater treatment to address these ECs.

Soil aquifer treatment (SAT) …

Eelgrass (Zostera Marina) Population Decline In Morro Bay, Ca: A Meta-Analysis Of Herbicide Application In San Luis Obispo County And Morro Bay Watershed, Tyler King Sinnott

Master's Theses

The endemic eelgrass (Zostera marina) community of Morro Bay Estuary, located on the central coast of California, has experienced an estimated decline of 95% in occupied area (reduction of 344 acres to 20 acres) from 2008 to 2017 for reasons that are not yet definitively clear. One possible driver of degradation that has yet to be investigated is the role of herbicides from agricultural fields in the watershed that feeds into the estuary. Thus, the primary research goal of this project was to better understand temporal and spatial trends of herbicide use within the context of San Luis …

Professional Development For Student Employees Of Color, Monica Duran

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to conduct a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project with undergraduate student employees at a large research institution in order to reimagine the career and leadership development programs so that they are responsive to, and supportive of, students who identify as people of color. This would be done using a framework of Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth theory (2005). The participants of this study were five undergraduate student employees who worked within a single department in a division of Student Affairs. The methodology used was Participatory Action Research, which is a methodology in which the researcher …

Hate Speech, Habitus, And Identity Signaling On 4chan’S Politically Incorrect Board, Jonathon Geiger

Master's Theses

Websites, such as 4chan, have provided a place for extremism and hate speech to flourish through anonymous discourse. One group that has been especially important to this growth has been the alt-right. The alt-right is a far-right white nationalist movement that is known for engaging in trolling, creating memes, and generating conspiracy theories. Past research has focused on the amounts of hate speech and characterizing content on the website. However, past studies have not looked at the experience of using the website through the combination of participant observation and content analysis. Here I show that the extensive use of hate …

Exposing Evil: My Lai, The Media, And American Atrocities In Asia, 1941-1975, Joshua Caleb Greer

Master's Theses

In both the Pacific War against Japan from 1941 to 1945 and the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, United States combat troops—emboldened by a combat culture of dehumanization through racism and a military that enacted policies of attrition— committed atrocities against Asian soldiers and civilians. This trend continued into the Vietnam War unabated beginning in 1965. Incidents of atrocities committed by American troops overseas were not publicly discussed until the My Lai Massacre of 1968 was revealed to the American people in 1969. Once the massacre became a national news story published in outlets all over the country, American …

The Moderating Effect Of Leadership Adaptability On The Relationship Between Employee Adaptability And Job Performance, Justine Davis

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential moderating effect of leadership adaptability on the relationship between employee adaptability and employee job performance. Previous research explored leadership adaptability as a mediator; however, there was a significant gap exploring leadership adaptability as a moderator. Participants were recruited via online social and personal networks. 125 participants completed a self-report survey consisting of items measuring employee adaptability, perceived manager adaptability and job performance. Results did not show perceived manager adaptability as a moderator of the relationship between employee adaptability and job performance. The results indicated that there were significant relationships between …

Inducing The Overview Effect Using Virtual Reality, Nhat Quang Le

Master's Theses

Astronauts who return from space missions have reported and demonstrated a significant increase in their feelings of connection to humanity and the planet. This shift towards a more humanistic, global perspective in astronauts was termed the “overview effect” by White (2014). There is a lack of research on the overview effect despite the significant, positive changes in those who have experienced it. This study aims to provide empirical evidence of and a possible induction method for the overview effect. We hypothesized that it might be possible to induce the overview effect using virtual reality (VR). In the current study, 81 …

Using Kinetics And Small Angle X-Ray Scattering To Elucidate The Allosteric Regulation Of Sirt1, Christiane Cabreros

Master's Theses

SIRT1 is an NAD+ dependent deacetylase that has been implicated in many important cellular functions such as neurodegeneration and aging. SIRT1 has also been studied with resveratrol which was shown to modulate activity. While the mechanism of SIRT1 has been studied extensively, exact details are still not known, specifically the allosteric regulation by the N-terminal domain. We wanted to see if there is a correlation between the activity of SIRT1 and the distance of the N-terminal domain relative to the catalytic core. First we examined the kinetic parameters (kcat and KM) of SIRT1 with peptide substrates with and without resveratrol. …

Parental Influences On Adolescents' Risky Media Usage, Dahyeon Jung

Master's Theses

The present study investigated how parenting styles influence adolescents’ risky media usage and how these associations vary according to media-specific parenting practices and adolescent characteristics. Participants included 315 adolescents aged 13-18 in the United States, who completed questionnaires on parenting styles (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, permissive), media-specific parenting practices (i.e., active conversational practices, coercive monitoring, preventive practices), and their depression, self-esteem, and risky media usage. Findings indicated all three parenting styles were associated with adolescent exposure to risk through media, but only authoritarian and permissive were related to internet addiction. Across parenting styles, adolescents with parents who engaged in high compared …

The Moderating Role Of Agreeableness And Conscientiousness On The Relationships Between Burnout And Withdrawal Behaviors, Nikoo Samee

Master's Theses

It has been shown that employees who experience burnout are more likely to engage in withdrawal behaviors, which are behaviors that harm the morale of employees and the bottom line of an organization. There has been some research on the moderating effect of situational variables (e.g., leadership style) on the relationship between burnout and withdrawal behaviors, but there is a lack of research on how personal characteristics may play a role in such relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of agreeableness and conscientiousness on the relationship between burnout and three withdrawal behaviors: lateness, absenteeism, …

Dairy Manure Flushwater Treatment By Algae Raceway Ponds And Aerated Biofilm Reactors, Darin Son

Master's Theses

Nitrogen removal technologies can help dairy industries meet their nutrient management needs. This thesis investigated two separate treatment technologies for total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) removal: algae raceway ponds and aerated biofilm reactors. Six 1000- liter algae raceway ponds and four 1000-liter tote tanks, each equipped with 10 sheets of nonwoven geotextile (i.e., thermally bonded or needle-punched) biofilm substrate, were used to treat the effluent from a flush dairy in central coastal California (TAN = 251 mg/L, cBOD5 = 204 mg/L). For the algae raceway ponds (TAN loading rate = 7 - 35 g/m³-day among 7-, 10- and 14-day hydraulic residence …

Development Of Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks For Enhancing Post-Combustion Co2 Capture, Dustin Lee

Master's Theses

Post-combustion CO₂ capture is a promising approach for complementing other strategies to mitigate climate change. Liquid absorption is currently used to capture CO₂ from post-combustion flue gases. However, the high energy cost required to regenerate the liquid absorbents is a major drawback for this process. As a result, solid sorbents have been investigated extensively in recent years as alternative media to capture CO₂ from flue gases. For example, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are nanoporous materials that have high surface areas, large pore volumes, and flexible designs. A large number of MOFs, however, suffer from 1) low CO …

Rheological Studies Of Fully-Formulated Coatings Thickened With Heur: Effects Of Surfactants, Brandon M. Bonilla

Master's Theses

Rheology modifiers such as hydrophobically-modified ethoxylated urethane (HEUR)thickeners are included in waterborne latex coatings to optimize shear-rate dependent viscosity and other rheological properties. While these HEUR polymers are commonly used in industry, the complex chemical interactions that contribute to rheological properties are still not completely understood. Prior work in this area has focused on understanding latex-HEUR and latex-surfactant-HEUR interactions that affect rheological properties. Additionally, studies have been previously conducted to understand the relaxation mechanisms of complex interactions present in HEUR-thickened waterborne latex coatings under various dynamic conditions. The objective of this work is to extend the experimental work to fully-formulated …

An Investigation Of Antenna, Ligand Side-Chain, And Metal Ion Effects On The Optical And Mri Properties Of Bimodal Lanthanide (Iii) Complexes, Marisa Poveda

Master's Theses

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a leading anatomical imaging modality for disease diagnosis. With the aid of Gd³⁺ based contrast agents, high resolution images of biological structures can be obtained. However, there is an increased need for contrast agents that are responsive to specific analytes and chemical environments. Paramagnetic Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (PARACEST) agents that utilize a paramagnetic lanthanide ion chelated with a ligand have shown great promise in this area. Lanthanide ions also possess luminescence properties that do not suffer from common limitations of conventional optical imaging agents such as autofluorescence and photobleaching. The projects described in …

High Pressure Combustor Flame And Wall Conjugate Radiative Heat Transfer, Andressa Johnson

Master's Theses

Efficient aeronautical engines operate at higher pressure ratios and temperature, creating challenges due to higher heat loads. Thermal radiation in aviation has conventionally been treated as correction factors or scaled from experimental data. The complexity of the radiative transfer equation (RTE) leads to computational costly solutions resulting in simplified treatment. The goal of this work is to extend knowledge of non-gray gas radiation modeling to gas-turbine combustor simulations under high-pressure conditions. A one-dimensional temperature solver for combustor liners with thermal barrier coating is developed first, and a non-gray wide-band spectral model for high-pressure conditions is constructed subsequently. Both retrieve spectral …

Evaluation Of Winter Weather Prediction During Extreme Snowfall Events And Analysis On Wind Gust Prediction For Non-Convective Rain And Wind Events, Michael Walters

Master's Theses

Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models are important tools used by federal agencies and the weather enterprise to inform and warn the public about extreme weather events. Snowstorm forecasts, which can be highly impactful throughout the Northeast United States, face challenges related to microphysical and initial and boundary layer processes that hinder the accuracy of forecasts. In addition, observations of mixed phase precipitation are very sparse spatially and temporally which causes an added challenge to validate predictions. This study presents an evaluation of 38 significant snowstorms and 18 rain/wind events from 2005 to 2020 using three NWP models. Each modeling system …

Electrospray Printing: An Advanced Technique For Processing Polymers Into Thin Films For Membrane Applications, Tulasi Ravindran

Master's Theses

This thesis deals with the scope and prospects of the novel technology for electrospray printing to process polymers for liquid filtration membrane applications. First, the ability to explore novel reaction media to tune polyamide properties was demonstrated. Aromatic polyamides for reverse osmosis membranes are made by interfacial polymerization. Conventionally, interfacial polymerization is an in situ polycondensation of a diamine and an acid chloride conducted on a porous support at the interface of two immiscible solvents. Using electrospray printing, different solvent media were used to print polyamides on to ultrafiltration support membranes. It was observed that polar protic solvents formed membranes …

Identification Of Residues Essential For Hsv Icp8 Mediated Annealing Of Ssdna, Jaliyah Ashante Peterson

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Replanting Our Roots: A Best Practices Analysis On How To Empower Arab Migrant Women And Develop Leadership Through Service Work, Linda Ereikat

Master's Theses

This research is focused on identifying the best practices and methods used by community service providers who serve Arab immigrant women, a heavily marginalized and isolated demographic. Specifically, this research seeks to answer, what are the best practices for community engagement, leadership, and empowerment in the lives of Arab migrant women in San Francisco? I examine the elements of community empowerment, engagement, leadership, and methods of providing services from the Asian Women’s Shelter, the Chinatown Community Development Center, and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. The methods used were personal interviews with key leaders of these organizations. The Arab Resource …

An Exploration Of Health Misinformation In A Facebook-Delivered Health Education Intervention, Kelsey Arroyo

Master's Theses

Background: Health misinformation is commonly shared on social media but little research has examined how misinformation is communicated and what health messages are most likely to receive misinformed responses on social media. Purpose: The purpose of this work is to explore the extent to which health misinformation was shared by participants in a private Facebook-delivered health education intervention moderated by a health counselor. Methods: We used engagement data from a randomized controlled trial of a yearlong Facebook-delivered health education intervention. We conducted a content analysis of 6,016 participant comments (including original posts and replies) to examine the nature of comments …