Digital Commons Network^™

Examining The Moderating Effect Of Life Satisfaction On The Relationship Between Perceived Underemployment And Job Attitudes Among Millennials, Savannah M. Trakes

Master's Theses

Underemployment has been associated with negative attitudes and behaviors. However, little research attention has been paid to identify variables that might moderate the relationship between underemployment and job attitudes. Given that Millennials are one of the groups most susceptible to underemployment, I examined the relationship between perceived underemployment and job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, intent to remain) using life satisfaction as a moderator among Millennial employees. Based on survey data from 552 Millennial employees across various sectors, results showed that perceived underemployment was negatively related to job satisfaction, intent to remain, and life satisfaction. Inconsistent with the prediction, life satisfaction …

Geometric Control Theory: Nonlinear Dynamics And Applications, Geoffrey A. Zoehfeld

Master's Theses

We survey the basic theory, results, and applications of geometric control theory. A control system is a dynamical system with parameters called controls or inputs. A control trajectory is a trajectory of the control system for a particular choice of the inputs. A control system is called controllable if every two points of the underlying space can be connected by a control trajectory. Two fundamental problems of control theory include:

1) Is the control system controllable?

2) If it is controllable, how can we construct an input to obtain a particular control trajectory? We shall investigate the first problem exclusively …

Effects Of Zoledronate During Simulated Weightlessness On Bone Structure And Mechanics, Ryan T. Scott

Master's Theses

Spaceflight causes astronauts to experience an unbalanced level of bone remodeling favoring resorption. The combination of an antiresorptive drug and weightlessness may have negative effects on the mechanical and structural properties of bone by increasing elastic stiffness but diminishing plasticity. At 16 weeks of age, skeletally postpubescent male mice (n = 32, C57BL/6) were evenly divided and subcutaneously given either zoledronate (45 µg/kg) or vehicle (saline, same volume). Three days postinjection, half of each group were divided to undergo 3 weeks of hindlimb unloading or act as a control undergoing normal ambulation (n = 8 for each of the 4 …

Women Business Leaders In Biotech And Hi-Tech, And Related Industry Cluster Factors, Jessica White

Master's Theses

Women entrepreneurs are on the rise and their numbers have grown at one and a half times the rate of small enterprises generally over the last 15 years. In spite of this, women are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Women face additional barriers when forging careers within these fields and obtaining startup capital. This study examines female business ownership within the fields of hi-tech and biotech, and the factors that support startups by women throughout the state of California. As both of these industry sectors are known to cluster geographically around sources of venture …

The Impact Of Climate Change On Coastal Fog Hours Of California's Central Coast, Chrissy Rogers

Master's Theses

This study used observations and downscaled model output from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 to investigate diurnal temperature differences and their relationship to the number of fog hours in the future along California’s central coast. The study area extended north-south from Bodega Bay to the Santa Lucia Range and east-west from the coast of California to the western flank of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Analyses of Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 showed that most of California’s central coast will likely see minimal changes in the number of fog hours per day through the turn of the …

Good Grief, Alexandra Deabler

Master's Theses

Good Grief is a novel that follows one family as they move through the five stages of grief. The purpose of the creative work is to focus on the complicated relationships of a blended family, and further complicate that with the added pressure of mourning a loved one, while still fulfilling familial and societal obligations. It is a meditation on the different ways people handle emotional trauma. Grief is a universal concept, but often mistreated or misunderstood. Grief, as a process, takes several different forms, some of which—expressing pain through joviality or sensuality—are shrouded in shame. My thesis challenges the …

Exposure Assessment Of Asthma And Modeling Of Pm2.5 During The 2007 Southern California Wildfires, Areana Flores

Master's Theses

A three-year study (1 Jan 07 to 31 Dec 09) was conducted for Los Angeles and Riverside counties to validate current findings on impacts of wildfires on respiratory health. A dataset developed from multiple sources containing daily rates of air pollution (O3, NO2, CO, and PM2.5) and meteorological variables (temperature, dew point, wind speed, and inversion height) was correlated with asthma emergency department (ED) visits. A second correlation was calculated for a modified dataset that excludes all episodes of wildfire events within the study period. The difference in correlations between both datasets was computed. PM2.5 was positively associated with asthma …

Testing Camera Trap Density Estimates From The Spatial Capture Model And Calibrated Capture Rate Indices Against Kangaroo Rat (Dipodomys Spp.) Live Trapping Data, Timothy A. Walker

Master's Theses

Camera trapping studies often focus on estimating population density, which is critical for managing wild populations. Density estimators typically require unique markers such as stripe patterns to identify individuals but most animals do not have such markings. The spatial capture model (SC model; Chandler & Royle, 2013) estimates density without individual identification but lacks sufficient field testing. Here, both the SC model and calibrated capture rate indices were compared against ten sessions of live trapping data on kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spp). These camera and live trapping data were combined in a joint-likelihood model to further compare the two methods. From …

Deconstructing Exploitative Systems And Restoring A Balanced Biosphere: An Ecofeminist Posthumanist Reading Of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres And Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, Aubrey A. Laughlin

Master's Theses

Although many scholarly articles have provided ecofeminist insights and

critiques of A Thousand Acres that connect the abuse of women to the abuse of the land, few have dealt specifically with the link between the treatment of women and the treatment of nonhuman animals. In the first chapter of this paper, I argue that associations between women and nonhuman animals in A Thousand Acres sustain the constructed reality of patriarchal communities. Similarly, Prodigal Summer’s narratives center around females and nonhuman animals, but also provide a broader focus that emphasizes the interconnectivity of the entire biotic pyramid and optimistically holds that …

Directed Self-Assembly Of High-Χ Block Copolymers For Advanced Patterning Applications, Gabriela Alva

Master's Theses

High-χ block copolymers (BCP) have gained interest to be used as an alternative to currently used multiple patterning techniques for obtaining sub-lithographic features due to their ability to self-assemble at the nanoscale. However, there is a challenge in controlling the orientation of high-χ BCPs at the air interface. This work describes the use of a formulation-based approach wherein different surface active polymers (SAP) were added as additives to control the orientation of poly(styrene-b-methyl carbonate) (PS-b-PMeCAR) lamellae at the air interface. The resulting thin films made from these formulations showed successful formation of perpendicular lamellae on neutral underlayer substrates upon thermal …

Crying Wolf: An Analysis Of The Use Of Sensational Content Within The Media And The Desensitizing Effects It Has On Audiences, Lindsey Lowe

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the development and use of sensational media content to analyze this growing phenomenon and the effects that it has had on audiences. This research focuses primarily on specific examples of sensational media content including: The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, The Great Train Robbery, the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, the Hindenburg disaster, footage of the Vietnam War, Apollo 11 and the first moon landing, and The Day After. These examples were chosen to chronicle the development and use of sensationalism and to illustrate that media audiences of today are desensitized to sensational content because …

Evaluation Of A Silica Hydride-Based Undecynoic Acid Stationary Phase For High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Veena Menon Kozhikote

Master's Theses

Undecynoic acid (UDA) attached to a silica hydride surface has been found to exhibit weak cationic exchange properties and an aqueous normal phase (ANP) type of retention. ANP is a mechanism similar to normal phase chromatographic retention, except for the use of a polar solvent such as water in the mobile phase. In ANP, the retention of a polar molecule is increased with a higher concentration of the non-polar mobile phase solvent (usually acetonitrile). Non-polar molecules exhibit retention behavior as in reverse phase (RP) chromatography. The goal of this research was to characterize the chromatographic retention pattern of an undecynoic …

Design And Analysis Of A Low-Power 8-Bit 500 Ks/S Sar Adc For Bio-Medical Implant Devices, Ehsan Mazidi

Master's Theses

This thesis project involves the design and analysis of an 8-bit Successive Approximation Register (SAR) Analog to Digital Convertor (ADC), designed for low- power applications such as bio-medical implants. The sampling rate for this ADC is 500 KS/s. The power consumption for the whole SAR ADC system was measured to be 2.1 uW. The novelty of this project is the proposal of an extremely energy efficient comparator architecture. The result is the design of a final ADC with reasonable sampling speed, accuracy and low power consumption. In this project, all the different subsystems have been designed at the transistor level …

Structure-Function Relationship Between Quercetin, Its Methylated Derivatives And Cytotoxicity In Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Jyoti Phatak

Master's Theses

Quercetin is a member of the flavonoid family, found in fruits and vegetables, and has

shown cytotoxic effects on many cancers, including breast cancer. Quercetin’s methylated derivatives, 3-O-methyl quercetin, pentamethyl quercetin, isorhamnetin, and tamarixetin, differ in their substitution patterns of the methyl capping at the 5-hydroxyl groups. Cell death assays performed on MDA-MB-231 cells showed increased cytotoxicity with quercetin and all its methylated derivatives, except pentamethyl quercetin, after 72 hours of treatment. Loss of the mitochondrial outer membrane potential (MOMP) was seen using a JC-1 assay after 15 min incubation with compounds, except for pentamethyl quercetin. We saw no change …

Data Reduction Of A Shake-Table Experimental Study Of Architectural Precast Concrete Cladding, Kanotha Charles Kamau-Devers

Master's Theses

Two full-scale architectural precast concrete (APC) panels were tested in 2011 on a full-scale five-story steel frame building at the E-Defense shake table facility in Miki, Japan. The panels were designed according to common U.S. practice. The main issues evaluated were: 1) the effect of acceleration on the APC panels, and 2) the effectiveness of the current slotted-bolt sliding connection to allow for inter-story earthquake motion. The testing represented one type of standard US APC façade design where the APC panel is designed to accommodate inter-story drift through rocking. Instrumentation measured the acceleration of the panels and floors as well …

A Fully Automated Solver For Multiple Square Jigsaw Puzzles Using Hierarchical Clustering, Zayd Hammoudeh

Master's Theses

The square jigsaw puzzle is a variant of traditional jigsaw puzzles, wherein all pieces are equal-sized squares; these pieces must be placed adjacent to one another to reconstruct an original image. This thesis proposes an agglomerative hierarchical clustering based solver that can simultaneously reconstruct multiple square jigsaw puzzles. This solver requires no additional information beyond an input bag of puzzle pieces and significantly outperforms the current state of the art in terms of both the quality of the reconstructed outputs as well the number of input puzzles it supports. In addition, this thesis defines Enhanced Direct Accuracy Score (EDAS), Shiftable …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Silica Hydride-Based Pentynoic Acid Stationary Phase, Nasrin Syed

Master's Theses

High performance liquid chromatography is an important analytical technique used for the separation and identification of components in a mixture. The aim of this research project was to synthesize and characterize a silica hydride-based pentynoic acid stationary phase. Analytical techniques like elemental analysis and diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFT) were used to confirm the success of bonding between silica hydride and pentynoic acid moiety. The pentynoic acid Si-H column allows for retention of both polar and non-polar compounds by carefully selecting the concentration ratio of organic solvent to water in the mobile phase. The characterization of the column …

Egg Turning Behavior And Egg Temperature In Relation To Mercury Contamination Of Forster's Terns (Sterna Forsteri), Gregory T. Taylor

Master's Theses

Several avian species exhibit reduced hatching success as a result of mercury contamination, but the mechanism by which this occurs is unknown. We examined egg turning rates and egg temperatures, two important determinants of egg hatchability, in relation to egg mercury contamination of Forster’s terns (Sterna forsteri) in San Francisco Bay. Here, we used artificial eggs containing a data logger with a 3-D accelerometer, a magnetometer, and a temperature thermistor to monitor parental incubation behavior (sampled at 1 Hz) of 186 tern nests. Overall, adults turned their eggs an average of 3.8 ± 0.8 SD turns h^(-1), which is nearly …

Environmental Drivers Of Benthic-Interior Exchange Events Over The Continental Shelf Of Monterey Bay, California, Ben Yair Raanan

Master's Theses

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of oceanographic data collected by an automated profiling mooring and fixed instrumentation platforms deployed over the mud belt on the southern continental shelf of Monterey Bay, California at 70 m depth during the fall of 2012. Physical and optical measurements taken at the study site documented the frequent occurrence of suspended particulate matter (SPM) layers in the mid-water column, the majority of which were detached from the seafloor and overlaid clearer water. This study examines the temporal and spatial variations of these detached SPM layers using time series analysis and modeling methods, and investigates …

Structure, Construction, And Emplacement Of The Late Cretaceous Sonora Pass Intrusive Suite: Central Sierra Nevada Batholith, California, Monika B. Leopold

Master's Theses

The >1000 km2, ~95-88 Ma Sonora Pass intrusive suite is the oldest and most northern of the four voluminous, normally-zoned Late Cretaceous suites of the Sierra Nevada batholith. It consists of the older, marginal, equigranular Kinney Lakes hornblende-biotite granodiorite and the inner, porphyritic to megacrystic Topaz Lake biotite granodiorite. The suite intruded the ~109 Ma Bummers Flat biotite granodiorite, Jurassic diorites, and Pre-Cambrian to Cambrian metasedimentary rocks of the Snow Lake pendant. The Topaz Lake granodiorite records evidence of the development of a sizable magma chamber. The Bummers Flat and Kinney Lakes granodiorites were likely constructed by many increments, were …

A Framing Analysis Of Latinos In The Facebook Pages Of News Organizations, Juliana Zapata Acosta

Master's Theses

This study of the Facebook pages of six legacy media organizations extended framing theory to apply to social media. In the study of 557 articles, four new frames and 10 new subframes were identified. The immigration frame and its two subframes, deportation and undocumented, dominated the coverage of Latinos during the period of the study. The politics frame was the second most dominant frame. This study updated the old data and found that no progress has been made, with the exception of a lesser use of the criminal frame. This improvement could be because the study included six months of …

Structure And Volcanic Evolution Of The Northern Highland Range, Colorado River Extensional Corridor, Clark County, Nevada, Ryan A. Mckee

Master's Theses

A geologic map was drafted of the northern Highland Range (1:24,000 scale), rock units defined, and samples of the volcanic units were obtained and analyzed to produce a representative suite of chemical analyses to characterize the range of geochemical variability. The style, relative timing, and orientation of faults and dikes, and the magnitude and variability of stratal tilting was examined to evaluate the structural and magmatic evolution of the northern Highland Range in the context of models for the Colorado River Extensional Corridor and Black Mountains accommodation zone. Methods involved field mapping of the range scale structure and geometry of …

Studying Globular Clusters In The Dwarf Galaxy Ngc 247 Using Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Imaging, Vakini Santhanakrishnan

Master's Theses

While globular clusters (GCs) are among the most ancient stellar systems in the universe, there are still lingering questions about how and where they formed. There is relatively little known about GCs in spiral galaxies beyond the Milky Way. We analyzed confirmed GCs, examined putative GC candidates, and looked for new GCs around the nearby dwarf spiral galaxy NGC 247 at about 3.5 Mpc away in the Sculptor group, based on wide-field imaging data from the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), with a 1.5 degree field of view. The extremely wide-area coverage, depth, and image quality of HSC provide great potential …

Proactive Decision Support For Intelligent Routing Of Unmanned Aerial Systems In Dynamic And Uncertain Mission Environments, Bala Kishore Nadella

Master's Theses

Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) missions are executed by teams of operators with highly specialized training and roles; however, the task demands on each operator are highly variable, often resulting in uneven workloads among operators and sometimes in mishaps. Therefore, there is a need to develop anticipative and effective decision support algorithms that permit the evaluation of courses of action (COAs), while assuring that operators are attending to the right task at the right time and that task demands do not exceed the operator’s cognitive capabilities in dynamic multi-mission environments. Motivated by the need to assist UAS operators in efficiently managing …

Exploring The Relationship Between Commuting Stress, Job Strain And Safety Behaviors While Commuting: The Dual Role Of Work-Related Rumination, Katrina A. Burch

Master's Theses

For those who commute to and from work on a daily basis, this is an activity that requires attention to both what one is doing and the environment, in order for the commute to be done safely. Although research has shown that work can spill over into home and other non-work domains, very little attention has been paid to the impact that work may have on the transition time between one’s work and home domains. The present study sought to examine the impact of daily commuting stress and end-of-day job strain on the safety of one’s commute through the experience …

Learning Delays In A Mouse Model Of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Amanda R. Rendall

Master's Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder with core symptoms of atypical social interactions and repetitive behaviors. It has also been reported that individuals with ASD have difficulty with multisensory integration, and this may disrupt higher-order cognitive abilities such as learning and social communication. Impairments in the integration of sensory information could in turn reflect diminished cross-modal white matter connectivity. Moreover, the genetic contribution in ASD appears to be strong, with heritability estimates as high as 90%. However, no single gene has been identified, and over 100 risk genes have been reported. One of these genes -- contactin-associated-like-protein …

Authoritarian Member States In International Organizations, Matt Barg

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates under which conditions do authoritarian Member States exist in International Organizations that require democratic governance in their treaty law. The European Union is used as a case study along with two of its Member States that are in the process of transitioning to democracy from previous authoritarian regimes—Hungary and Romania. This thesis employs stealth authoritarian theory to analyze how a democratizing Member State may violate these laws and revert to authoritarian governance. It also critiques international enforcement mechanisms to consider their effectiveness to enforce their laws and norms as well as prevent an authoritarian reversal. Finally, cultural …

Thermal Transport And Melt Pool Geometry In Metallic Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing Processes For Various Novel Engineering Materials, John P. Romano Ii

Master's Theses

Laser and electron beam powder bed melting additive technologies are being rapidly adapted by industry. These technologies rely on the ability to produce defect free parts through a delicate control of the process. However, this process has not been attempted or has failed for many common metallic materials such as Aluminum. The objective of this thesis was to understand the thermal transport phenomenon in electron and laser beam powder melting technology through simulation and experiments and determine the suitable range of parameters that can be used for common metallic materials. A finite element model was developed using ANSYS APDL to …

Shared Space: Measuring The Boundaries And Assessing The Efficiencies, Benjamin W. Wargo

Master's Theses

Shared space is a design concept becoming increasingly common in European countries. It intentionally blurs pedestrian-driver boundaries in order to reduce vehicle speeds, create more walkable areas, and improve aesthetics and sense of place. What constitutes a shared space is not clearly defined in the existing literature. Steps toward a systematic method for assessing a space’s “level of sharedness” have been developed in this research to minimize the present ambiguity.

A paradox of shared space, suggested by numerous observers but little studied, is that while allowing freer pedestrian movement, shared space also appears to promote greater vehicle efficiency than conventional …

Spatial And Temporal Use Of Early Successional Habitat Patches By A Community Of Mammals In The Northeastern United States, Kelly M. O'Connor

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.