Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Age, Gender, And Gender Role Ideology On Adolescents' Social Perspective-Taking Ability And Tendency, Kaitlin M. Flannery

Master's Theses

The current research examined gender and age differences in adolescents’ social perspective-taking (SPT), or the social-cognitive ability to infer another person’s thoughts and feelings. This study aimed to demonstrate that SPT Ability and SPT Tendency are distinct constructs that should be considered separately. The influence of youths’ gender role ideologies on SPT also was considered. In a sample of adolescents ranging from ages 12 to 17 (N=158), participants reported their tendency to take the perspective of a specific same-age, same-gender friend, and also were assessed in their ability to use SPT in a hypothetical context. The results indicated …

Differences In Parental Spoken Language Input, Gesture, And Emotional Sensitivity Between Hearing Parents Of Deaf Children And Hearing Parents Of Hearing Children, Molly A. Nowels

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Trauma, Internalized Hiv Stigma, Social Support, And Sexual Risk Behavior Among Hiv-Positive Men Who Have Sex With Men Who Seek Sex Partners Online, Kaylee E. Burnham

Master's Theses

Men who have sex with men (MSM) remain the highest risk group for HIV infection. One reason suggested for the increase in incidence in recent years, despite knowledge about HIV prevention, is the use of the Internet to meet potential sex partners. Meeting sex partners online has been associated with greater sexual risk behavior. To date, few studies have investigated psychosocial predictors of sexual risk behavior among men seeking sex partners online. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationships between trauma symptoms, internalized HIV stigma, and social support on sexual risk behavior among MSM who seek …

Three-Dimensional Evaluation Of Root And Alveolar Ridge Width Of Maxillary Lateral Incisors In Patients With Unilateral Agenesis, Sharifah Alrushaid

Master's Theses

Introduction: The objective of this study was to measure the maxillary lateral incisor root dimensions and quantify the labial and palatal bone in patients with unilateral maxillary lateral incisor agenesis (MLIA) and compare them to non-agenesis controls using cone beam computed tomography. Methods: The labiopalatal and mesiodistal root dimension and labiopalatal bone width of maxillary lateral incisors were assessed on pre-treatment and post-treatment cone beam computed tomography scans of 23 subjects (mean age 14.5 years, 17 females and 6 males) with maxillary lateral incisor agenesis and 23 gender-matched subjects (mean age 13.5 years, 17 females and 6 males) with no …

Immediate Versus Delayed Loading Of Two Unsplinted Implants Supporting A Locator™ Retained Mandibular Overdenture. A Randomized Controlled Study, Satoko O. Rubin

Master's Theses

Background: Implant supported mandibular overdentures (OVD) have been proposed as the gold standard for the treatment of edentulous mandibles. In addition, the use of immediate loading may reduce the treatment time and improve the patient comfort without jeopardizing implant success. Limited information is available on the clinical success of immediate loading of 2 unsplinted implants supporting a mandibular OVD. The purpose of this study was to evaluate clinically and radiographically the performance of 2 unsplinted implants supporting a mandibular OVD 12 months post surgical placement, using either an immediate or a delayed loading protocol.

Methods: Each patient received 2 implants …

"Story Goodness" In Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Allison R. Canfield

Master's Theses

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by pragmatic language deficits, as difficulties with social communication are a universal deficit across the wide presentation the autism spectrum. The current studies examined narrative production as a measure of pragmatic language in adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA), “optimal outcomes” (OO; i.e. individuals who have lost their previous diagnosis of ASD), and typical development (TD) using the informative “story goodness” coding system and real-world narrative quality ratings. In Study 1, adolescents with HFA and TD (mean age of 15) were compared on these measures of narrative quality. While the groups were similar …

Neural Substrates Of Affective Language Processing And The Role Of Autism-Like Traits In Sensitivity To Affective Language Cues, Brian Castelluccio

Master's Theses

Emotions are conveyed primarily through two channels in language: semantics and prosody. Language comprehension relies on the ability to both decode the intended semantic meaning of a phrase and to go beyond its literal meaning to understand the emotional state of a speaker. While many studies confirm the role of a left hemisphere network in processing semantic emotion, there has been debate in the field over the role of the right hemisphere in processing prosodic emotion. Some evidence suggests a preferential role for the right hemisphere, and other evidence supports a bilateral model. The relative contributions of each channel to …

Procedural Music Generation And Adaptation Based On Game State, Timothey Andrew Adam

Master's Theses

Video game developers attempt to convey moods to emphasize their game's narrative. Events that occur within the game usually convey success or failure in some way meaningful to the story's progress. Ideally, when these events occur, the intended change in mood should be perceivable to the player. One way of doing so is to change the music. This requires musical tracks to represent many possible moods, states and game events. This can be very taxing on composers, and encoding the control flow (when to transition) of the tracks can prove to be tricky as well.

This thesis presents AUD.js, a …

Consumer Evaluation Of Cheese: Linking Hedonics, Emotions And Perception Of Product Attributes, Kristine Patricia Martinez

Master's Theses

As the food industry continues to grow and the marketplace becomes saturated with similar products, consumer researchers and sensory scientists are looking to dig deeper into the minds of consumers to reveal greater distinctions between products and ultimately deliver multi-dimensionally desirable products to consumers. Concurrently, rates of adult and childhood obesity have been increasing nationwide. Food companies are now facing a paradigm shift as health initiatives and consumers are beginning to demand healthier alternatives to commonly consumed food products. With this in mind, it has become imperative to identify product attributes that drive consumption so they can be replicated in …

Predicting Music Genre Preferences Based On Online Comments, Andrew J. Sinclair

Master's Theses

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) states that individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors. This adaptation is called “convergence.” In this work we explore the convergence of writing styles of users of the online music distribution plat- form SoundCloud.com. In order to evaluate our system we created a corpus of over 38,000 comments retrieved from SoundCloud in April 2014. The corpus represents comments from 8 distinct musical genres: Classical, Electronic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Country, Metal, Folk, and World. Our corpus contains: short comments, frequent misspellings, little sentence struc- ture, hashtags, emoticons, and URLs. We adapt techniques used by researchers analyzing other …

A Proof Of Concept For Crowdsourcing Color Perception Experiments, Ryan Nathaniel Mcleod

Master's Theses

Accurately quantifying the human perception of color is an unsolved prob- lem. There are dozens of numerical systems for quantifying colors and how we as humans perceive them, but as a whole, they are far from perfect. The ability to accurately measure color for reproduction and verification is critical to indus- tries that work with textiles, paints, food and beverages, displays, and media compression algorithms. Because the science of color deals with the body, mind, and the subjective study of perception, building models of color requires largely empirical data over pure analytical science. Much of this data is extremely dated, …

Integrated Senior Housing, Kyungok Ha

Master's Theses

It is difficult to have an integrated population throughout all age strata in a society. Especially if one considers the growing percentage of the aged population and their feeling alienated in their current physical surroundings. In order to solve imminent problems with the growing elderly population, a primary task should be considering how to improve the housing of senior citizens. Furthermore, bringing the youth and elderly together would produce a functioning self-help system. It engenders interaction strategies by employing the strengths of one generation to serve another generation’s needs. This idea was introduced by the systemic family therapist Gerhard Schiele. …

Studies And Research Regarding Sound Reduction Materials With The Purpose Of Reducing Sound Pollution, Timothy G. Hawkins

Master's Theses

Noise can be defined as unwanted sound. There are many cases and applications that reducing noise level is of great importance. Loss of hearing is only one of the effects of continuous exposure to excessive noise levels. Noise can interfere with sleep and speech, and cause discomfort and other non-auditory effects. High level noise and vibration lead to structural failures as well as reduction in life span. The importance of noise issue could be well understood by looking at regulations that have been passed by governments to restrict noise production in society. Industrial machinery, air/surface transportation and construction activities are …

Oceano Community Health Plan, Eugene Phillip Brennan

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Oceano Community Health Plan

Phillip Brennan

Recent, mounting research shows that chronic disease, the leading causes of death and primary driver of health care costs, cannot be effectively addressed through education or preventative health alone. A physical environment that promotes health—through access to healthy food, opportunities for physical activity, quality housing, transportation options, and safe schools—is an integral part of making our communities healthier. This research and accompanying Healthy Community Plans will serve as a way for the County to begin looking in-depth at the ways the built environment (our streets, parks, and neighborhoods) contribute or detract from the …

Cayucos Community Health Plan, Jennifer Joyce Franich

Master's Theses

Recent, mounting research shows that chronic disease, the leading causes of death and primary driver of health care costs, cannot be effectively addressed through education or preventative health alone. A physical environment that promotes health—through access to healthy food, opportunities for physical activity, quality housing, transportation options, and safe schools—is an integral part of making our communities healthier. This research and accompanying Healthy Community Plans will serve as a way for the County to begin looking in-depth at the ways the built environment (our streets, parks, and neighborhoods) contribute or detract from the health of the community. Though the creation …

Juiciness In Citizen Science Computer Games: Analysis Of A Prototypical Game, Eric D. Ebucktha Buckthal

Master's Theses

Incorporating the collective problem-solving skills of non-experts could ac- celerate the advancement of scientific research. Citizen science games leverage puzzles to present computationally difficult problems to players. Such games typ- ically map the scientific problem to game mechanics and visual feed-back helps players improve their solutions. Like games for entertainment, citizen science games intend to capture and retain player attention. “Juicy” game design refers to augmented visual feedback systems that give a game personality without modi- fying fundamental game mechanics. A “juicy” game feels alive and polished. This thesis explores the use of “juicy” game design applied to the citizen …

Latino Rhythms In Downtown Los Angeles: A Case Study Of The Social, Physical, And Economic Environment Of "La Broadway", Ulises Antonio Gonzalez

Master's Theses

In an attempt to practice inclusive planning, this research project explores whether Broadway Avenue functions as an ethnic commercial strip and identifies social, physical, and economic components that contribute to the Latino neighborhood/ barrio. Using pilot studies Loukaitou-Sideris (2000), Loukaitou-Sideris (2002), Rojas (1993), Manzumdar et al. (2000), Main (2007), and Fernando (2007) as a foundation, this research uses a single case study in addition to several research methods: 42 random surveys, literature review and analysis, site observations/pictures, and land use survey.

Various scholars write that barrios have unique physical, social, economic, and political attributes. A new aesthetic, art, symbols, …

Cooperative Construction In Schools In California, John Mauck Donley

Master's Theses

Cooperative Construction in Schools in California

John M. Donley

The construction industry has lost efficiency since 1964, while becoming increasingly more litigious. Schools in California can ill afford the time to allow the construction industry time to fully evolve. It may take years or decades to fully improve the efficiency of, and reduce the conflict within the construction industry.

At the same time, the construction industry has developed new processes to improve efficiency and reduce conflict. These processes are beginning to be broadly embraced by the industry. They all contain cooperative elements. Taken together they represent a new organizing principle …

Integrating Solar Energy And Local Government Resilience Planning, Stephan Wayne Schmidt

Master's Theses

Resilience and solar energy are separately growing in popularity for urban planners and similar professionals. This project links the two discrete terms together and examines the extent to which solar energy can improve local government resilience efforts. It includes a detailed literature review of both topics, as well as the methodology and findings related to a survey and interviews of local government officials and key stakeholders across the country related to hazard mitigation and energy assurance planning.

This research finds that integrating the use of solar energy can improve local government resilience efforts related to mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery …

Adapting The Job Demand/Control Model To A Team Level, Clark Calabrese

Master's Theses

A better understanding of sources of stress within a teamwork context might be gained by applying the Job Demands/Control Model of stress (Karasek and Theorell, 1990) to teams as the unit of analysis rather than only to individuals as it is conventionally done. Team performance is frequently treated as a shared team-level outcome; it seems reasonable to assume that shared team characteristics are likely to have effects on stress as well. In particular, teams are unique in their requirement for coordination between team members. Therefore, the present study proposes an adapted Team Job Demands/Control Model of team-level stress phenomena in …

Directional Selective Neurons In Awake Lgn: Response Properties And Modulation By Brain State, Xiaojuan Hei

Master's Theses

Directionally selective (DS) neurons are found in the retina and lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of rabbits and rodents. In rabbits, LGN DS cells project to primary visual cortex. Here, we compare visual response properties of LGN DS neurons with those of layer 4 simple cells, most of which show strong direction/orientation selectivity. The response properties of these populations differed dramatically, suggesting that DS cells may not contribute significantly to the synthesis of simple receptive fields: (a) whereas the F1/F0 ratios of LGN DS cells are strongly nonlinear, those of simple cells are strongly linear, (b) whereas LGN DS cells have …

Social And Environmental Risk Factors For Anemia And Malnutrition Among Adolescent Girls In Mumbai, India, Dylan E. Graetz

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Stress Response To An Acute Heavy Resistance Exercise Protocol, Adam J. Sterczala

Master's Theses

Exercise has been shown to induce significant stress and a subsequent inflammatory response characterized by changes in circulating leukocyte populations and inflammatory cytokines and has been well documented following aerobic exercise. Research in regards to the effects of resistance exercise on the stress induced inflammatory response is less prevalent and has shown divergent results, likely due to differences in the exercise protocols used, the time points measured and the subjects involved. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was to analyze the stress response to an acute heavy resistance exercise protocol (AHREP) in resistance-trained men. Specifically, we examined effects on circulating …

Infants May Be Sensitive To Asynchronous Audiovisual Speech, Kathleen E. Shaw

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Natural Disaster Exposure On Prosocial Preferences And Public Goods Provision: Evidence From The Solomon Islands, Heather Belfor

Master's Theses

Natural disaster exposure can impact prosocial preferences, which indicate the level of social capital, as well as create a shift in investments from public to private goods. Both are important mechanisms to study in order to create optimal climate change adaptation policies. This study evaluates the impact of natural disaster exposure on prosocial preferences and public goods provision in the evaluated communities. The data used in this research comes from a process evaluation that was carried out in the Solomon Islands on the Rural Development Program (RDP) and a Structured Community Activity (SCA) experiment, which took place in 80 villages …

Typhoons And Temperature Impact Crime Rates: Evidence From The Philippines, Emily Wetherley

Master's Theses

This study assesses the impact of typhoons and temperature on interpersonal, property, and non-index crime rates using a novel data set from the Philippines. Distributed lag OLS regression analysis shows that in the concurrent year of increased precipitation, theft rates decrease, but in the year following high average wind-speeds, theft rates increase again. The only significant result of impacts crimes against persons is the rate of physical injury which decreases in years of higher precipitation. These results are defended by interview and focus group information. This study also shows that higher average temperatures cause significantly higher rates of murder, index …

The Effects Of A Division I Men's Ice Hockey Season On Strength And Power, Emily T. Webster

Master's Theses

Measures of strength and power were taken during a pre-season training segment in Divison I men’s ice hockey as well as two weeks post-season in order to determine the changes that occurred in a twenty-one week season of play. All subjects performed a concurrent resistance training protocol that aimed to develop power, strength, and minimize the risk for potential injury that led to missed game-playing time. The men’s ice hockey athletes were practicing an average of four days a week with the sport coaches in addition to the resistance training sessions with the primary strength and conditioning coach. The mean …

An Exploration Of Short-Term Vehicle Usage Decisions, Jaime R. Angueira

Master's Theses

Vehicle choice decisions are Important to consider because they have implications on fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Much research has been done in the past regarding the types of vehicles that people own and how much they use each vehicle on annual basis. However, these are all long-term vehicle choice decision, and very little research has been done to explore short-term decisions. Short-term decisions provide information about how much vehicles in the household are being used at a day-level. In addition to the capturing the role of socio-demographics and economic factors on the short-term vehicle choices, the fine scale …

The Effects Of An Injury Prevention Program In An Aquatic Environment On Landing Technique, Samantha E. Scarneo

Master's Theses

The Effects of an Injury Prevention Program in an Aquatic Environment on Landing Technique Samantha E. Scarneo, University of Connecticut Context: Musculoskeletal and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries have accounted for a majority of sports and recreational related injuries and are of major concern to the physically active population. Injury prevention programs (IPP) have proven to improve landing technique, decreasing vertical ground reaction forces (VGRF) resulting in injury risk reduction. Injury prevention programs in an aquatic-based environment may potentially elicit the same improvements as land-based programs. Objective: To examine the effects of a six week aquatic-based IPP on Landing Error …

Physical Activity And Nutritional Behavior Of Overweight College Students Trying To Lose Weight 2014, Santino Vallejos M.S.

Master's Theses

Although there are numerous benefits to increased physical activity and proper dietary behaviors, the decreased participation in physical activity and poor dietary behaviors has emerged as a significant problem within the college student population. The focus of this research study was to identify the relationship between physical activity and dietary behavior to weight loss behaviors within an undergraduate student sample of a small, comprehensive northeastern university. College-aged students (age range: 17 to 27 years old) completed the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) National College Health Assessment II (NCHA) during the years 2009 and 2012. According to the results, there were …