Digital Commons Network^™

Shifting The Stress Curve: Using "Stress Inoculation" And Exercise To Promote Resilience, Mikyung Kim

Master's Theses

Problem

Stress influences an organism’s physiological systems via an inverted u-shaped curve: An optimum amount of stress will optimize body functions, but too little stress or too much stress for long periods of time can impair body functions. Researchers have been very interested in exploring the mechanisms that may “delay the tipping point” between the positive and negative effects of stress. A rightward shift in the stress curve would allow one to maintain optimal performance even at higher or more prolonged stress levels. The molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie this rightward shift could result in resilience, clinically defined as …

Pace, Academic Progress, And The Antecedents Of Student Motivation, Aaron Randall Hiatt

Master's Theses

The research examined the impact of the pace requirement of the 2010 program integrity legislation at a single graduate institution to gauge its potential for fulfilling the legislation’s stated purpose of increased likelihood of student success. The study determined that there have been changes in registration behavior (particularly in course drop behavior that reduces the number of credits calculated as attempted each semester) since the case institution introduced the pace requirement in Fall 2011. An increase in course completion efficiency was also found. The doctoral candidacy qualifying phase was singled out for a more refined examination, which was loosely tracked …

Effects Of Acute Exercise, Mindfulness Meditation, And Mindfulness Meditation Neurofeedback On Stroop Performance, Claire Evelyn Balgemann

Master's Theses

Empirical research has demonstrated that acute aerobic physical exercise, neurofeedback, and mindfulness meditation independently have positive effects on executive performance. Technology has enabled a new intervention that combines neurofeedback and mindfulness meditation; however its effects on executive function are unknown. The aim in the present study was to understand how executive function may be enhanced in healthy individuals. Forty-two participants were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups: acute physical exercise, mindfulness meditation, or mindfulness meditation neurofeedback delivered via the Muse brain-sensing headband. Participants completed 50 trials of the Stroop task, a well-established measure of executive function. A statistically …

From Trauma To Trial: Proposing New Methods For Examining The Variability Of Sharp Force Trauma On Bone, Amanda Feldman

Master's Theses

Although sharp force trauma is not the most common form of homicide in the United States, it accounts for the majority of violent crimes committed in the United Kingdom, and the frequency of knife related crimes has been increasing over several decades. Despite the prevalence of sharp force trauma in forensic literature, there is still a large gap linking weapons to skeletal injuries. Although there have been forensic studies on the effects of fabric during decomposition, very little data exist on the effects of fabric and bodily coverings on wounds during stabbing events. In a significant number of homicide cases, …

The Role Of Pidd Protein In Adenoviral Induction Of Apoptosis, Iris Teresa Figueroa

Master's Theses

The Adenovirus E1A gene sensitizes cells to genetic insults and apoptosis, most notably in response to cytotoxic factors from innate immune cells. The mechanisms by which E1A sensitizes cells to apoptotic stressors have not been fully elucidated, however E1A actively represses NF-κB anti-apoptotic defenses, thereby sensitizing cells to alternative apoptotic cascades. Recent studies alternatively indicate that E1A also actively induces Caspase-2 activation and mitochondrial injury in the presence of certain cytotoxic injuries.

Caspase-2 is cleaved and activated in a large complex consisting of p53-inducible protein with a death domain (PIDD), an adaptor protein RAIDD, and pro-caspase 2. PIDD auto-proteolyzes into …

The Influence Of Backlash On Self-Sexualization And Cognitive Depletion, Mallory Helen Elizabeth Nurse Grembowski

Master's Theses

A woman who acts agentically in the workplace is more likely to be disliked and viewed as less competent than a woman who acts caring and communal. The negative consequences for acting outside of a cultural stereotype are called backlash. Cultural gender stereotypes for western society depict women as warm and communal while men are agentic and independent. Women in the workplace act outside of the cultural stereotype, and thus face backlash from their peers. This study examines the extent to which women utilize self-sexualization as a recovery strategy to cope with the fear of backlash, and ultimately how these …

Though My Gross Blood Be Stain'd: Bleeding Bodies And Power Dynamics In Shakespeare's The Tragedy Of Coriolanus And The Rape Of Lucrece, Lindsey Katherine Dee Wedow

Master's Theses

Early modern literature is replete with references to blood. These references appear in the contexts of class and gender distinction, medical information, religious significance, and more. Upon looking into the Galenic model of medicine utilized in early modern England, it becomes clear that blood, while one of the four humors of the body, held a place of special significance amongst the rest. Thus in reading the works of Shakespeare we are able to see how he often handles blood as a substance that holds special qualities and as such plays an important role in human lives. This paper examines two …

The Effects Of Acculturative Stress On Mental Health Outcomes Of African Immigrant And Refugee Youth: Coping As A Moderator, Emma-Lorraine Baaba Bart-Plange

Master's Theses

For immigrant and refugee adolescents, acculturative stress such as social and family conflict may be experienced as a result of the acculturation process (Berry, 2006; Mena, Padilla, & Maldonado, 1987). While research documents that these adolescents demonstrate patterns of associations between acculturative stress and internalizing symptoms, development of coping strategies may help youth to address adverse stressors (Oppedal, Roysamb, & Heyerdahl, 2005; Zimmer-Gembeck & Skinner, 2011). In addition to mainstream coping strategies, culturally-relevant coping strategies may be used by ethnic minorities, particularly those of African descent (Utsey, Brown, & Bolden, 2004). The purpose of the current study was to determine …

El Sufrimiento En La Literatura Y La Cinematografía Latinoamericanas: Un Análisis De Las Representaciones Y Las Experiencias De Sufrir, Adrian Xavier Cuevas

Master's Theses

Parece ser que existe un silencio crítico en cuanto a una definición a la experiencia del sufrimiento dentro de la teoría literaria y cinematográfica latinoamericana. Para mí, el sufrimiento es un estado cambiante, cuyo origen reside en lo físico o emocional, y la experiencia de sufrimiento que se representa en los textos, tiene un propósito específico al querer dar luz y concientizar de una realidad más grande. Mi propósito es profundizar una definición que demuestre que la experiencia del sufrimiento es traumática y que al hacer el sufrimiento visible, se exhibe una debilidad humana la cual nadie puede evitar. Al …

The American Student Abroad And The Perceived Impact In The Local Community, Emily Gaul

Master's Theses

The internationalization of higher education has contributed to the increase of American students studying abroad. Students studying abroad do have an impact the local host communities’ social, economic and cultural traditions. Although, students may or may not be aware of the consequences, both negative and positive, of their impact. This research sought to examine the perceived impact by both alumni and local faculty of a small program in Tanzania. Alumni were reflective on their experience in regards to how they wavered between feeling like a tourist and feeling more connected to the community. Alumni and local faculty both felt that …

The Settlement Stage: How Hull House Bridged Leisure, Creativity, And Play, Ann Goodson

Master's Theses

Of the settlement house movement in the United States at the turn of the century, perhaps the most famous of these houses was Chicago's Hull House. Founded in a slum by Jane Addams, Hull House provided healthcare, education, recreation, and childcare services to recent European immigrants living in extreme poverty . While the impact of Addam's work at Hull House on modern sociology, education, social work, welfare and child labor laws have been well documented, less celebrated are the contributions made by the arts education programs at Hull House to modern creative dramatics.

This thesis examines the presence of arts …

The Influence Of Community-Based Summer Programs On Ethnically Diverse, Low-Income Chicago Youth, Amy Governale

Master's Theses

How youth spend their time has become an increasingly important factor in studying adolescent development. During the summer months, longer periods of unsupervised time have been associated with a loss of academic skills and lower social-emotional skills. One support for at-risk youth and adolescents might be summer programs housed in community-based organizations. Using a pre-post test design over an 11-week period, the present study examines the linkages among participation in summer programs, individual characteristics, and youth outcomes among ethnically diverse, low-income Chicago youth. Analyses revealed ethnicity was related to math skills at the end of the summer, although the strongest …

Defining Character: A Curriculum Analysis Of The Boy Scouts Of America And The National Kappa League, Helen Marie Gerety

Master's Theses

Since the early 2000s and the dawn of No Child Left Behind and standards based accountability character education has been neglected and for the most disappeared. Many school districts can no longer justify spending part of students’ school day discussing character. Some character education remains, however, it is often only addressed in health, student financing, and college and career readiness. Most other character education programs have been contracted out. Schools now rely on community partners to help students develop values and morals. This thesis will examine two of these community partners: the Boy Scouts of America and the National Kappa …

Neural Correlates Of Inhibitory Function Following The Implicit Processing Of Emotional Faces, Lorri A. Kais

Master's Theses

Emotion and cognitive function interact to play a central role in determining

human thought and behavior. Attention to emotion can facilitate or hinder cognitive

control efforts based on the given contextual demands of the task at hand. This study used

scalp electroencephalography (EEG) methods to examine the link between valence of

facial stimuli and neural changes associated with emotional face processing and

subsequent inhibitory response. 20 participants completed a gender discrimination stop-

signal task using emotional faces. Facial valence did not differentially modulate the P200

event-related potential (ERP), indicating that happy and sad faces recruit similar neural

resources in the …

Wide As The Waters: Comparing Student Performance In Alabama And Florida From 1992-2011, Kellie Slappey Nothstine

Master's Theses

The school choice movement has been making significant traction within the United States in the last decade and a record number of states have implemented school choice programs that introduce competition to the traditional public schools and treat education like a market. The marketization of education and making traditional public school truly compete against alternative schooling options is more often discussed in theory but in reality is infrequently applied on a large scale. In an attempt to truly gauge the advantages, disadvantages, and real life application of what can result when market forces are applied to a state’s education system …

Autonomy Support, Elaborativeness, And Problem Solving During Families’ Building Construction In A Children’S Museum, Tayler Grashel

Master's Theses

The current study aimed to promote parent-child interactions that could foster children's early STEM learning. Specifically, the current study focuses on four dimensions of family interactions that have been found in prior work to support children's learning and development: problem solving, parents’ and children’s elaborative talk, and parental autonomy support. This study examined how levels of support on each of these dimensions related to children's abilities to build and fix skyscrapers made out of plastic building materials in the Skyline exhibit at the Chicago Children's Museum. The participants were 74 families with 4- to 8- year old children (M = …

The Effects Of Stress And Alcohol On Hiv-1 Latency, Sarah Ilene Talley

Master's Theses

A major barrier to HIV eradication is the persistence of latent viral reservoirs that exist despite antiretroviral therapy. In order to develop effective therapeutics, a comprehensive understanding of latency and factors driving the formation of the latent reservoir is needed. As stress and alcohol are common comorbidities associated with HIV infection, the goal of this research was to determine how stress and alcohol could affect HIV-latency. Specifically, we hypothesized that the ability of latent proviruses to be reactivated by “shock and kill” approaches would be altered by glucocorticoid and ethanol treatments, and prolonged ethanol exposure would affect the size of …

Utilizing Galectin 3 As A Marker Of Ruptured Vesicles In Vivo, Jonathan London

Master's Theses

Ruptured vesicles have been associated with pathological forms of α-synuclein during the development of PD. Galectin 3 (Gal3) is readily recruited to these ruptured vesicles, making it a potentially useful marker of vesicle rupture in PD and other diseases associated with vesicle rupture and lysosomal dysfunction. We were able to visualize and quantify the differences in Gal3 levels during infection with pathological α-synuclein in the rat brain. Having significantly high basal levels of Gal3, we found that the differentiated monocytes showed a nearly100 percent increase in intercellular levels of Gal3 after treatment with pathological α-synuclein. By expressing only the Carbohydrate …

A Study Of Education Management Organizations: Competition Framing As A Technique In Education Policy, Calli Leigh Burnett

Master's Theses

As world markets become more interconnected through the phenomenon of globalization, many scholars have noted an expansion of capitalist and economic language in the realm of education discourse. This study focuses on the adoption by education policymakers of the "competition" model and framing, which traditionally used in business, is now being used to justify and promote education policies, such as school choice. This study pursues how competition framing occurs within education, the possible effects of such language use on education stakeholders, and the specific historical contexts and different interests being served by such framing in education. Specifically, this study examines …

Characterization Of Exopolysaccharide (Eps) Produced By Bacillus Subtilis Mutants, Alexander Argianas

Master's Theses

Bacillus subtilis is a probiotic bacterium that can protect against the murine-

specific attaching and effacing (A/E) pathogen Citrobacter rodentium. C. rodentium displays many features observed with the human pathogen enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC). Protection by B. subtilis is mediated by exopolysaccharide (EPS), which is encoded by the epsA-O operon that contains 15 genes. Disruption of one of these genes, epsH, which appears to encode a putative glycosyltransferase, leads to the loss of protective capacity by B. subtilis and by EPS. EPS is a major component of the B. subtilis biofilm and the ΔepsH mutant is unable to form a …

Role Of Heat Shock Proteins In Maintenance Of The Gut Barrier Following Burn Injury, Abigail Rhea Cannon

Master's Theses

Introduction: Burn injury remains a prominent clinical problem. Patients suffering from burns often succumb to secondary infectious complications leading to sepsis and widespread tissue injury ending in Multiple Organ Dysfunction. However, the mechanism behind the onset of these extraneous symptoms following burn injury is not fully understood. The integrity of the gut barrier is of critical importance as it harbors the largest bacterial reservoir in the body. Following burn injury, we observed a breakdown of the gut barrier resulting in increased gut leakiness and bacterial translocation. Under homeostatic conditions, heat shock proteins (HSPs) stabilize tight junction proteins. Particularly, HSP72 is …

Emetine As An Anti-Cancer Therapeutic In Bladder Cancer, Valerie Davidson

Master's Theses

Bladder cancer is a serious health concern among the older population, as it is responsible for thousands of deaths annually in the United States. Patients that are diagnosed with muscle-invasive disease have a 5-year survival rate of only 20 percent. Additionally, muscle-invasive disease has a high metastatic potential; half of all patients develop metastatic disease within 3 years. Patients with muscle-invasive disease are presented with few treatment options aside from surgery. The current standard of care is a chemotherapeutic combination therapy of cisplatin and gemcitabine. This therapy is highly toxic, and due to the high instance of co-morbidities in these …

Development Of The Personal And Professional Self-Care Scale, Katherine Elizabeth Dorociak

Master's Theses

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on the importance of self- care for psychologists and other mental health professionals. However, the research on self-care is limited because of the lack of an empirically based, psychometrically sound measure of this construct. Thus, the purpose of this project was to develop a measure of personal and professional self-care. The preliminary phase involved the development of a self-care definition and a two-factor framework that divided self-care into personal and professional activities. Based on this definition and framework, self-care items were generated for expert evaluation. After incorporating the expert feedback, 52 …

Examination Of Script And Non-Script Based Narrative Retellings In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Elizabeth Ann Hilvert

Master's Theses

This study compared the narrative abilities of 19 children with Autism Spectrum

Disorder (ASD) and 26 neurotypical children (NT), between 6 and 12 years of age, on two story retelling tasks: a script-based story and a non-script based story. The script- based story contained the structural aspects of a narrative, but also had the internal framework of a script (Hayward et al., 2007). Given the reduced cognitive and linguistic demands of the script-based story, it was expected that the script-based narrative measure would minimize narrative differences between children with and without ASD. Additionally, the relation between narrative production, theory of …

The Impact Of Gender And Cultural Values On Savoring And Happiness Among Korean College Students, Soyeon Kim

Master's Theses

Historically, Korea has been strongly influenced by Chinese Confucianism, which emphasizes gender-role differentiation and patriarchal norms. Through globalization, however, Western values, which accentuate achievement and independence, have influenced Korean society and its emphasis on traditional values and sex roles. In particular, Korean females, relative to males, may gain more empowerment by rejecting traditional cultural values. Literature has shown that Asian cultures traditionally emphasize dampening rather than amplifying of positive emotions—a style of positive emotional regulation (i.e., savoring) that predicts lower reported levels of happiness. The present study examined gender differences in cultural values, savoring responses to positive experience, and happiness …

Muslims Never Bomb On Stage: Audience Perceptions Of Muslim Standup Comedy, Bilal Hussain

Master's Theses

This research investigates the audience perceptions of Muslim standup comedy by Muslim-American college and university students. The research question is ‘Do Muslim-Americans feel as if Muslim standup comedy is painting a new image of Islam and Muslims?’ There has yet to be any published research that asks Muslim-Americans for their perspectives regarding Muslim standup comedy. Since Muslim-Americans are some of the consumers of Muslim standup comedy, this demographic is necessary to study when it comes to exploring the consumption of Muslim standup comedy. The methodology for this research is a qualitative method that involves semi-structured in-depth interviews with Muslim-Americans. I …

Consumer Evaluation: Describing Construal-Level Theory And A Role Of Emotion On Human’S Thinking Processing Style, Junga Lee

Master's Theses

Based on emotion and construal level theory, this study examined the influence of emotion on consumer decision-making. Participants were induced into happy or sad moods by describing a past happy or sad life event. Then they were asked to read one of two smartphone advertisements. One advertisement emphasized only central features of smartphone, and the other one emphasized only secondary features. The dependent variables were participants’ attitudes toward the advertisements, purchase intention of the smartphone in the advertisement, and willingness to pay for the smartphone. Based on the connection between emotion and construal level, I predicted that due to their …

Separating Autoimmune And Anti-Tumor Responses With Hsp70iq435a, James Mahon

Master's Theses

Vitiligo and melanoma are both melanocyte-derived diseases; vitiligo progresses through the autoimmune-targeted destruction of healthy melanocytes while melanoma results from uncontrolled proliferation of cancerous melanocytes. Treatment of vitiligo with HSP70iQ435A inhibits the DC-mediated auto-immune response against melanocytes in vitiligo mouse models; this raises the concern that treatment with this modified HSP may also inhibit natural anti-tumor responses against melanocyte-derived melanoma tumor cells.

We hypothesized that HSP70iQ435A prevents migration of melanocyte-antigen reactive T cells to the skin in a way that is mechanistically different from anti-tumor responses to melanoma and therefore would not have a negative effect on anti-tumor responses. We …

Feeding The Poor: The Interactions Of Not For-Profit Organizations And The Decision Making Process Of Food Pantry Leaders, Russell Madajewski

Master's Theses

Organizational theorist have studied institutions on a macro level in order understand how these structures operate at a social level, accounting for the nature of the written rules and regulations where the involved individuals act both in the internal and external settings. Recently, scholars have focused on the micro level of interactions of individuals within organizations in which they attempt to identify themselves in their given prescript roles. Attempting to understand the interactions of actors within an organization and studying the formation of relationships between organizations, my investigation will also discuss the nature of food distribution in poor communities. Because …

Anthropogenic Litter And Microplastic In Urban Streams: Abundance, Source, And Fate, Amanda Rae Mccormick

Master's Theses

The accumulation and ecological effects of anthropogenic litter (AL) and microplastic are well-documented in marine ecosystems, but these materials’ abundances in rivers is unknown. AL enters rivers from recreation, runoff, and illegal dumping. Microplastic fibers and pellets are abundant in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent which enters rivers. Our objectives were to: (1) quantify AL abundance and composition in urban streams, (2) measure AL flux, accumulation, and export, and (3) measure riverine microplastic concentration and analyze its bacterial communities. We collected AL from 5 urban streams and observed greater AL density in riparian habitats and greater mass in benthic habitats. …