Digital Commons Network^™

Lactobacillus Metabolite-Mediated Induction Of Bacteriophage, Taylor Miller-Ensminger

Master's Theses

Once considered sterile in the absence of an infection, the female urinary tract is home to a diverse community (microbiota) of bacterial species and bacteriophage (phage), viruses that infect bacteria A dominant member of the female urinary microbiota is the bacterial genus Lactobacillus. Several Lactobacillus species are even associated with urinary health. Phage infectious of bacteria in the urinary tract tend to replicate through one of two life cycles: the lytic (active) life cycle or the lysogenic (dormant) life cycle. Temperate phage can switch from the lysogenic life cycle to the lytic life cycle in the presence of an environmental …

Stigmatization Of In Transit Migration And The Devaluation Of Humanitarian Aid Resource Labor, Gabriela Perez Laurent

Master's Theses

This analysis aims to gain insight into migrant stigmatization and the devaluation of humanitarian aid labor. Building off previous feminist scholarship on unpaid labor, this thesis seeks to add to our understanding of the dynamics of gendered devaluation of not only humanitarian volunteer labor, but also humanitarian aid support to stigmatized populations. The analysis expands on the production of illegalization and highlights the effects of stigmatization highlights the effects of stigmatization upon in transit populations on Tohono O'odham lands. Erin Hatton's framework of devaluation is applied to humanitarian aid distribution to analyze the devaluation of their labor due to proximity …

The Effect Of Gonadal Steroids Following Repeat Mild Traumatic Brain Injury On Anxiety-Like Behaviors In Rats, Trevor Nykamp

Master's Theses

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects millions of people in the U.S. each year. This thesis worked to address anxiety, a common emotional symptom following TBI, by utilizing a five-hit repeat mild TBI (rmTBI) experimental model. First, changes in gonadal status following injury and the severity of anxiety symptoms experienced were investigated. Our data revealed that suppressed testosterone levels following rmTBI resulted in significantly more anxiety-like behaviors across several observational variables. Even more, some of these behaviors were reduced by providing testosterone supplementation immediately following injury.Another goal of this work was to investigate the role of mitochondrial dysfunction, measured by COX4i1 …

Kinship Involvement And Strength Development In The Child Welfare System, Nicole Amper Hodgkinson

Master's Theses

For youth involved in the Child Welfare System (CWS), maltreatment and ecological losses pose enormous challenges to healthy development. Kin and fictive kin involvement, a current CWS priority, may have the potential to aid in strength development; however, little is known about its role in this process. The current study explored the following aims: (1) identify the role of kin and fictive kin in strength development (2) investigate the impact of maltreatment on initial strength levels and their development over time and (3) examine the extent to which kinship involvement interacts with prior maltreatment to buffer the impact of maltreatment …

A Fair Share: How Awareness Of Inequality, Allocation Method, And System Justification Affect Perceptions Of Distributive Fairness, David Thomas Igliozzi

Master's Theses

In considering the different ways people view inequality and various proposed solutions,this study draws on classic psychological theories of distributive justice which outline three modes of allocation strategies: equality, equity, and need. While Deustch’s (1975) work on these three allocation alternatives laid the groundwork for years of distributive justice research that would follow, little empirical work has actually experimentally evaluated the conditions under which people might be more or less willing to support equity, equality, or need-based strategies. There is evidence that certain individual difference measures can predict support for redistribution. That is—those who rate highly on system justification, political …

Anthropogenic Litter In Illinois Streams: Monitoring, Distribution, And Relationship To Biological Indicators Of Stream Health, Lauren Wisbrock

Master's Theses

Anthropogenic litter (i.e., trash; AL) is increasing in aquatic ecosystems worldwide. AL shows a patchy, uneven distribution in lotic ecosystems due to heterogeneity in its sources, how it moves, and mechanisms of retention. In addition, the diversity of material types, size, and mobility makes developing techniques to measure AL assemblage in rivers a challenge. In rivers, watershed land-use and riparian features likely impact AL abundance and composition, but this impact is not fully understood. Measuring AL can be time consuming and labor intensive, so rapid assessments are needed for ecosystem managers to quantify the level of AL impairment in a …

Do Conditional Cash Transfers Increase School Enrollment? Evidence From Brazil, Jeanette L. Silvernale

Master's Theses

Conditional cash transfer programs have been widely deployed across the globe. They seek to bolster human capital by providing benefits contingent upon a variety of actions such as school attendance and regular health checkups. Bolsa Familia is the most extensive conditional cash transfer program, serving 46 million Brazilian citizens. Despite its expansive size, there have been seldom large-scale micro evaluations of the program. Limited data has resulted in small sample sizes drawn from a single point in time. Our study diverges from the rest and utilizes a novel administrative dataset with an overall sample of nearly 60 million and a …

Temperature Effects On Prevalence Of Sexually Transmitted Infections Among At-Risk Female Sex Workers In India, Rajshri Suresh

Master's Theses

Vulnerability to climate change varies depending on the baseline climate, sensitivity to given exposure, and the presence of social, political, cultural, and institutional inequalities that influence access to essential resources of livelihood, particularly among informal labor market participants. Within the risky informal labor market, the transient nature of sex work implies that sex workers suffer disproportional losses in health, income, protection, and other aspects of general well-being as a result of the effects of climate anomalies. In this paper, I investigate the effect of temperature on the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections in a high-risk population of female sex workers …

Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Lithium-Ion Batteries Operating In California's Electrical Grid In 2019, Peter J. Hilkene

Master's Theses

This work examines the impact on greenhouse gas emissions of energy storage devices operating on the California electrical grid during the year 2019. As solar power gains a greater share in California’s energy production, tools for storing the intermittent energy produced from solar and other variable generation sources become important in continuing their growth. In this study, the impact of the deployment of energy storage capacity in California was determined using three charging and discharging strategies. The first, meeting peak net-demand with solar, looked at battery charging when solar production was highest and discharging when net-demand is highest. The second …

An Efficient Design Methodology For Complex Sequential Asynchronous Digital Circuits, Tomasz Chadzynski

Master's Theses

Asynchronous digital logic as a design alternative offers a smaller circuit area and lower power consumption but suffers from increased complexity and difficulties related to logic hazards and elements synchronization. The presented work proposes a design methodology based on the speed-independent sequential logic theory, oriented toward asynchronous hardware implementation of complex multi-step algorithms. Targeting controller-centric devices that perform data-driven non-linear execution, the methodology offers a CSP language-based controller workflow description approach and the specification of a project implementation template supported by a two-stage design process. First, the CSP layer describes complex speed-independent controller behavior offering better scalability and maintainability than …

Influence Of Social Circles On User Recommendations, Chaitanya Krishna Kasaraneni

Master's Theses

Recommender systems are powerful tools that filter and recommend content relevant to a user. One of the most popular techniques used in recommender systems is collaborative filtering. Collaborative filtering has been successfully incorporated in many applications. However, these recommendation systems require a minimum number of users, items, and ratings in order to provide effective recommendations. This results in the infamous cold start problem where the system is not able to produce effective recommendations for new users. In recent times, with escalation in the popularity and usage of social networks, people tend to share their experiences in the form of reviews …

A Meta-Analysis Of Fmri Studies On Emotion Processing In Major Depressive Disorder, Madison Morocco

Master's Theses

The processing of an emotional stimulus involves a multi-step process that includes appraising and identifying a stimulus as well as producing an affective state in response. Many individuals with depressive disorders such as major depressive disorder (MDD) experience impairments related to emotion processing, likely caused by changes in the structure and function of brain regions important for emotion processing. However, the precise neural differences underlying emotion processing impairments in MDD remain unclear given conflicting findings in the neuroimaging literature. This lack of clarity has hindered the development of novel neurostimulation treatments for MDD, which require targeting of specific brain areas. …

Transfer Learning For Hyperspectral Images Utilizing Channel Selection Techniques And Ensemble Methods, Scott Daniel Vogel

Master's Theses

Hyperspectral images contain information from a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum than natural images which gives them potential for better classification ability. However, hyperspectral datasets are typically small due to the expensive equipment needed to obtain the images, which can limit classification performance. One solution to this problem is transfer learning, in which a model trained on one dataset is reused for a separate dataset. Research has shown that transfer learning between hyperspectral datasets can give improved performance over models without transfer learning when training data are limited. Since extra hyperspectral data are not always available, the solution proposed …

A Silicon Valley Life: A Silicon Valley Love Story, Sharon Simonson

Master's Theses

In the last three decades, Silicon Valley has become one of the world’s most watched and imitated communities. Daily news reporters, long-form journalists, cinema and television-programming producers have crafted a public image, but it represents nothing of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Valley residents. These fabrications obscure and diminish our complex human profile and reduce our uniquely beautiful geography to a place to generate financial profits, with all the damaging disregard such attitudes foster. The essays of A Silicon Valley Life: A Silicon Valley Love Story seek to show our true self: our rich mix of people drawn …

“In The University But Not Of The University”: Examining Institutionalized Counterspaces Through A Staff Perspective, Omar A. Ramirez

Master's Theses

Using a qualitative case study, this thesis examines a university counterspace that serves Students of Color through the perspective of the staff who work in that space. The case study aimed to explore four areas of investigation: the interviewees’ knowledge and perceptions of 1) the history of their counterspace; 2) the purpose of their counterspace; 3) the benefits of their counterspace; and 4) challenges of their counterspace. The counterspace was a program within a large, 4-year, public, R-1 research university. Five staff from the counterspace were interviewed. A thematic analysis of the data suggests that students were an essential part …

Constructed Borders In Higher Education: A Critical Policy Analysis Of Undocumented College Students' Access To Study Abroad, Louise K. Hon

Master's Theses

Abstract Between 2012 and 2017, undocumented youth in the United States with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status were able to apply for Advance Parole permissions to travel abroad for educational purposes. During this time, DACA students attending colleges and universities across the nation engaged in study abroad through established education abroad programs. This qualitative study examines undocumented students’ decision to pursue educational abroad opportunities during their undergraduate education in the context of national, state and institutional policies and climate and compares and contrasts the experiences of the undocumented college students who successfully studied abroad with those who either attempted …

Minority Student Food Insecurity In Higher Education, Joe Sevillano

Master's Theses

The minority student population in higher education has been affected by food insecurity at a disproportionate rate. Several studies have captured some of the issues associated with the material deficit but fail to identify more in-depth contributing factors. Using the theoretical framework of intersectionality, the researcher examines the experience, interpretation, and navigation of food insecurity in a medium-sized university located in a major city on the west coast. The researcher interviewed three students that self-identified as having multiple minority identities and experiencing some level of food insecurity while pursuing a degree. Findings from three rounds of interviews gave further context …

Professional Development And Care Planning, Maninder Deol

Master's Theses

The Covid-19 infection trend revealed to the Californian Prison healthcare system the importance of offering top-quality preventive and care services to control diseases. Irrespective of the understanding, there have been challenges in the transitional gap as older nurses are retiring and replaced by new ones. However, the lack of technical experience among the new nurses has exposed the patient population to human errors, which might be costly to amend. As a result, the initiative embarked on a project to train and empower nurses on preventive and care techniques.

Critical areas of concern include reporting, data collection, patient symptomology, results interpretation, …

#Younevertoldme: What Jewish American Children Learn About Palestinian Displacement During The Founding Of The State Of Israel, Nancy Sheftel-Gomes

Master's Theses

#YouNeverToldMe: What Jewish American Children Learn about Palestinian Displacement during the founding of the State of Israel examines how the education of Jewish American children in Jewish educational K-12 settings about the founding of the state of Israel omits details and events about the displacement of Palestinians and how knowledge gaps limit the possibility of dialogue among Jewish and Arab/Palestinian college students, and have a negative effect on Jewish identity. Within the methodological structure of Grounded Theory young adults, former students of the researcher, answer questions concerning their memories of what they learned about the founding of the state of …

Noted Mirrors, Dennis Spears

Master's Theses

Noted Mirrors seeks exploration, it seeks discovery it seeks experience. I think, like most of us, I’ve often had far more wonders than answers, but I often like it that way. Noted Mirrors tries to understand a romance that frightened, a friend taken away too soon that crippled. An unconditional love from grandparents and a mother that rescued. A relationship with an absent father that poisoned. Revelational relationships with familiar strangers that taught so much in the form of freeing. A fascination with Redwoods and Orcas that brought so much life into merely being. And a curiosity of the abstract …

Our Stories, Our Voices: The Lived Experiences Of Black Families With Young Children During Covid-19, Devalin Jackson

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of Black families raising young children during shelter in place orders and distance learning due to Covid-19. The study was conducted virtually through Zoom and Google form due to county shelter in place orders. Participants were recruited from the school in which the researcher worked. Through the use of virtual interviews, the five participants highlighted themes of reconnections, isolations, empowerment, family values and conversations. The families shared experiences of resilience and hope and brought thoughts of how these experiences could be highlighted in instructional and curriculum designs; especially during …

Human Trafficking And The Media, Samantha N. Blum

Master's Theses

This paper focuses on how the media can affect the publics knowledge about human trafficking. Specific attention is paid to what human trafficking is and what the different types of criteria that need to be met are. Of the criteria that is met, the paper looks at the overlapping of requirements between human trafficking and other offenses. More importantly throughout the paper is analyzations on police officers’ beliefs about knowing what human trafficking is, what still needs to be done, and their stance on the current definition. The research presented demonstrates the need for more positive psychological approaches when talking …

Operational Decision-Making In Healthcare Using Control Charts, Rohan More

Master's Theses

The primary objective of this thesis was to design a framework supplemented with guidelines for the healthcare managers to select an appropriate type of control chart for operational decision-making. A systematic literature review was conducted to gauge the extent to which control charts were being used in a healthcare setting for clinical decision making and operational decision-making purposes. The findings showed that the application of control charts was almost equal for the clinical decision-making sector and the operational decision-making sector. On further analysis, the ability of control charts to function as a standalone tool was affirmed by the vast majority …

Envrment: Investigating Experience In A Virtual User-Composed Environment, Matthew Key

Master's Theses

Virtual Reality is a technology that has long held society's interest, but has only recently began to reach a critical mass of everyday consumers. The idea of modern VR can be traced back decades, but because of the limitations of the technology (both hardware and software), we are only now exploring its potential. At present, VR can be used for tele-surgery, PTSD therapy, social training, professional meetings, conferences, and much more. It is no longer just an expensive gimmick to go on a momentary field trip; it is a tool, and as with the automobile, personal computer, and smartphone, it …

Study Of Plants Used Against Infections By California Native American Tribes, Maria J. Rojas

Master's Theses

The objectives of this research were to evaluate the antibacterial activity and to determine the chemical composition of a list of medicinal plants used by Native Americans in California. Artemisia californica, Mimulus aurantiacus, Equisetum telmateia, Equisetum hyemale, and Marah fabacea were selected from a list of plants reported as having been used for ailments related to infections by tribes located in California. The extracts obtained through steam distillation from E. telmateia, E. hyemale and M. fabacea were assayed for in vitro antibacterial activity against 16 Gram-negative and 6 Gram-positive bacteria using disk diffusion assays and measuring the diameters of inhibition …

Investigation On The Use Of Small Aperture Telescopes For Leo Satellite Orbit Determination, Luis R. Curiel Iii

Master's Theses

The following thesis regards the use of small aperture telescopes for space domain awareness efforts. The rapidly populating space domain was motivation for the development of a new operation scheme to conduct space domain awareness feasibility studies using small telescopes. Two 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescopes at the California Polytechnic State University and the Air Force Research Lab in Kirtland AFB, NM, in conjunction with a dedicated CCD camera and a commercial DSLR camera, were utilized to conduct optical observations on satellites in Earth orbit.

Satellites were imaged during August 2019, and from January 2020 to March 2020, resulting in the collection …

English Language Learners In The Dance Classroom: Building Bridges To Rigorous Language Acquisition, Breegan Kearney

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate several aspects of instructing English Learners (ELs) in the dance classroom. The researcher created three essential questions to guide her research: Q1 What specific strategies are currently being utilized by dance teachers to support English Learners in accessing dance-specific language? Q2 What are the opportunities for and barriers to incorporating these strategies? Q3 Does this teaching process have any effect on student engagement in dance class? Thirty dance educators discussed their experiences instructing English Learners in dance content in the form of a digital survey, and rated common strategies for ELs based …

From Concrete To The Classroom: A Street Dance Toolkit, Tarayjah Hoey-Gordon

Master's Theses

Minimal research exists in the way of successfully and appropriately incorporating the study of Hip-Hop culture into public education dance curriculum. Many of the available resources about this topic are not academic, standards based, or developed through research studies. The purpose of creating a Street Dance Toolkit was to analyze the ways in which access to an extended curriculum based on Hip-Hop culture can be used to expand a dance educator’s knowledge of Street Dance as a formal technique in a public school setting. The process of designing and analyzing the toolkit to establish a formalized street dance curriculum was …

Fostering Resilience: Integrating Positive Character Strengths With Dance Making Skills To Help Young Children Cope With Adversity, Laura Vormwald

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate how involvement in a choreography unit focused on positive character strengths could increase confidence in strengths that foster resilience. Research shows that building resilience is the key to helping children overcome adversity and trauma. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to answer the three research questions in this study. Q1 Does involvement in dance making build students’ character strengths? Q2 Which character strengths are best developed through dance making? Q3 Which inspirations for dance making relate most thoroughly to the selected character strengths? The research instruments used were a pre and …

Dataset And Evaluation Of Self-Supervised Learning For Panoramic Depth Estimation, Ryan Nett

Master's Theses

Depth detection is a very common computer vision problem. It shows up primarily in robotics, automation, or 3D visualization domains, as it is essential for converting images to point clouds. One of the poster child applications is self driving cars. Currently, the best methods for depth detection are either very expensive, like LIDAR, or require precise calibration, like stereo cameras. These costs have given rise to attempts to detect depth from a monocular camera (a single camera). While this is possible, it is harder than LIDAR or stereo methods since depth can't be measured from monocular images, it has to …