Digital Commons Network^™

Mathematical Inequalities, Amy Dreiling

Master's Theses

In this thesis, we discuss mathematical inequalities, which arise in various branches of Mathematics and other related fields. The subject is a vast one, but our focus is on inequalities related to complex analysis, geometry, and matrix theory.

We investigate recently proven trigonometric and hyperbolic inequalities. This includes Katsuura's string of seven inequalities for the sine and tangent functions and Price's Inequality (with new proofs derived by Katsuura and Obaid). We also discuss complex hyperbolic inequalities and inequalities from infinite products.

We then establish geometric inequalities, including those relating parts of the triangle as well as conic sections and their …

Designing Affordances On Embedded Interfaces, Gabriela Madalina Istan

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a user interface on users' performance during an online shopping checkout task. Two interfaces were developed using the principles of Rasmussen's SRK model: a high-affordance and a

low-affordance interface. Seventy undergraduate and graduate students performed a simulated online shopping task with the two interfaces. It was hypothesized that the high-affordance interface would require less time and fewer clicks to conduct the shopping task when compared to a low-affordance interface. In addition, it was predicted that participants would prefer the high-affordance interface. The findings revealed participants spent more time on …

An Examination Of The Representation Of Irish Catholic Priests In Contemporary Irish Theatre, James Patrick Jeans

Master's Theses

Modern Irish theatre can trace its origins to the creation of The Irish Literary Theatre by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1899, which later became the Irish National Theatre Society, and eventually, the Abbey Theatre. For more than 100 years, Irish theatre has served as a mirror for reflecting Irish identity and as an oracle of future possibilities. A decade into the Twenty First Century found Irish identity challenged by a child abuse scandal of tragic proportions whereby over 30,000 children suffered at the hands of a duplicitous and negligent Catholic Church. The purpose of this thesis is to …

The Prevalence Of The Uncultivated Bacterium Tm7a In Human Subgingival Plaque, Jamsheed Adrian Ghadiri

Master's Theses

Most bacteria are yet to be cultivated, and some uncultivated bacteria have been associated with human diseases. TM7, an uncultivated candidate division of bacteria, has been recently associated with periodontitis, a disease if left untreated causes tooth degradation and gum decay. A subgroup of TM7, known as TM7a, has been found in both human samples and activated wastewater. TM7a from these two locations are as high as 99.7% similar by 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, leading researchers to believe both TM7a strains are very similar functionally. TM7a has been extensively studied in activated wastewater. However, little is known of its …

Performance And Gta Training: Understanding An Adaptation Of Boal's Forum Theatre For New Teachers, Tiffany Harbrecht

Master's Theses

The Communication Studies Department at San José State University adapts Boal's Forum Theatre to provide its graduate teaching associates (GTAs) a space for cooperatively re-imagining their way through challenges and concerns they may (or do) face during teaching. This research fills a gap in our disciplinary understanding of how new teachers experience forum theatre and the substantive differences and difficulties that arise when implementing it in trainings that are not focused on challenging oppression. Chiefly, participants risk conflating forum theatre with role-play and losing Boal's theory; while fusing its ideas this way might appear as a way to problem-pose with …

Effects Of White Space On Consumer Perceptions Of Value In E-Commerce, Sin Lee Loh

Master's Theses

As e-commerce becomes an increasingly large industry, questions remain about how the isolated effects of design elements on websites influence consumer perceptions and purchasing behavior. This study used a quantitative approach to measuring the effect of a ubiquitous element of design, white space, on the perception of the monetary value of individual items. White space is a key component of design and website usability, yet it has been shown to be related to the perception of luxury. Little is known about the direct relationship between manipulation of white space and the outcomes on consumer perceptions of value in an e-commerce …

Propriety Of Self-Disclosure On Facebook: An Examination Of Its Impact On Credibility, Katherine Colleen Ireland

Master's Theses

This experimental study examined the effects of the propriety of computer-mediated teacher self-disclosure on perceptions of teacher credibility and how that relationship is moderated by ethnicity. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions: White Appropriate, Latina Appropriate, White Inappropriate, and Latina Inappropriate. Participants answered questions about the instructor's perceived credibility. Results suggest that teachers who engaged in appropriate self-disclosure were rated higher on teacher credibility than those with inappropriate Facebook® profiles. There was no main effect for ethnicity. Implications for classroom pedagogy, technology use, and areas for future research are discussed.

Response Of Waterbirds To Salt Pond Enhancements And Island Creation In The San Francisco Bay, Stacy M. Moskal

Master's Theses

Historically, San Francisco Bay supported the largest salt pond complex on the Pacific coast of North America, and these areas have been used by large numbers of migrating and wintering waterbirds for more than a century. In 2003, salt ponds in the South San Francisco Bay were purchased with a goal of restoring 50-90% of the 6100 ha of former salt ponds to replace lost tidal marsh habitats. However, a major challenge for the restoration project has been maintaining the abundance of non-breeding waterbirds in a smaller footprint of managed ponds. Thus, in 2009-2010, Pond SF2 was enhanced with 30 …

Evaluation And Improvements Of The Offline Clm4 Using Arm Data, Terrence J. Mullens

Master's Theses

Hourly ground observations for year 2004 from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program of the Department of Energy were used to examine the surface and subsurface energy simulations of the Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4). The 2 m air temperature, wind speed, solar radiation, downward longwave radiation, and precipitation observed by the ARM project were used to force the offline CLM4, and the ARM land surface and soil observations including skin temperature (T_skin), soil temperature and moisture, and sensible, latent, and ground heat fluxes were used to evaluate the model outputs. The default and ARM-forced CLM4 runs …

In Pursuit Of A Globalized University: An Analysis Of The Sjsu Salzburg Program, Elizabeth Diane Ohlhausen

Master's Theses

Colleges and universities are responding to the force of globalization by encouraging faculty and administrators to develop programs that support students in the global worlds of work and of citizenship. Through a partnership with the Salzburg Global Seminar's International Study Program (ISP), San José State University (SJSU) is making efforts to "globalize the campus" through institutional change. The ISP draws on the Salzburg Global Seminar's experience with the Universities Project and with other institutions of higher education in the United States to create the desired change. This paper examined the progress of the SJSU Salzburg Program (the Program), drawing on …

Women In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (Stem) Fields: The Importance Of The Need To Belong And Self-Esteem On The Intention To Leave A Job, Jung Eun Lee

Master's Theses

The purpose of the study was to predict individual intentions to leave science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field jobs. Psychological predictors were gender, the need to belong, self-esteem, perceived personal discrimination, and perceived group discrimination. We used the Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit participants and Survey Monkey to conduct an online survey. Participants were 174 men and women who worked or studied in STEM fields. Two-step hierarchical linear regression analyses were performed to analyze the data. As a result, we found that all predictors mentioned above accounted for the variance in the intention to leave a job. Self-esteem and …

Brats: A Memoir, Timothy James Heath

Master's Theses

There are two Americas. There is the America where families grow up generation after generation in the same geographic location. There is another America. This America moves populations about as if they were post-it notes attached to a bulletin board. Today, Great Lakes, tomorrow, Fort Carson, next week, Fort Wainwright, and so on. In this America, children rarely spend more than two years in the same location. Many are uprooted in the middle of a school year, often the senior year. Many do not know where home is, as their sponsor (the family member in the military) has not lived …

Mastermind-Like 1-Dependent Notch Target Gene Activation Requires A Sequence-Paired Site And A Tata Box, Cassandra Agbayani Ramos

Master's Theses

Notch signaling plays an important role in mammalian cellular proliferation, apoptosis, and differentiation. To activate target genes, the Notch intracellular domain (NICD) forms a complex with CBF1 and Mastermind-like protein (MAM). The Notch activation complex binds to a response element containing the consensus sequence RTGRGAR (R= purine) on target gene promoters. The promoter of one well characterized target gene, Hes1, contains four Notch response elements (NREs). Site-directed mutagenesis and reporter gene assays were used to examine the activation of Hes1 by mutating individual and combinations of NREs. Results indicated that NREs 2 and 4 are important for Hes1 activity, confirming …

Safe Sex As Patriotic Ideograph In Wartime Std Prevention Campaigns, Jessica Ann Johnson

Master's Theses

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are a problem that has afflicted people in the USA for centuries. Health communication and mass communication scholars have attempted to determine the effectiveness of STD prevention campaigns. It is crucial for scholars to take into account the persuasiveness of these campaigns and beliefs that become significant to these campaigns.

This rhetorical history examines how acted as a patriotic ideograph in World War I and II STD prevention campaigns. A history of war and knowledge associated with STDs gives readers a broad overview of the cultural aspects that are a part of the context of this …

Developing A Library Of Display Effects On Pilot Performance: Methods, Meta-Analyses, And Performance Estimates, Ellen Salud

Master's Theses

The design of NextGen and current-day cockpit displays are critical for efficient pilot performance and situation awareness on the flight deck. Before deployment of a design into the cockpit the costs and benefits that a display design imposes on performance and situation awareness should be considered. In this thesis, a design tool was developed to support the design of NextGen displays for situation awareness and performance. This design tool is a library of pilot performance estimates. Through literature reviews and meta-analyses of empirical data, the library was developed to provide display designers 1) qualitative distinctions of display properties that either …

Three Faces Of Destiny: An Analysis Of The Modern Medea Figure On The American Stage, Melinda M. Marks

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the ways in which three structural factors contained within three modern American adaptations of Euripides' Medea serve to enhance the dominant personality traits of the main character. The plays used in this study are Steve Carter's Pecong (1990), Cherrie Moraga's The Hungry Woman (2002), and Neil Labute's Medea Redux (1997). While each protagonist is a re-development of the original Medea, the personalities of each are distinctive to the world of their adaptations. There are three main ways in which the structure of each adaptation works to enhance certain emotional markers within the main character.

The first analysis …

Analysis And Application Of Transmission Line Conductors, Orin Laney

Master's Theses

Skin effect is usually a concern reserved for radio frequency design and for high current conductors used in utility power distribution. Proximity effect between adjacent conductors has traditionally been a concern for the design of magnetic windings and other applications involving wire bundles. The rise in the ubiquity of high speed bit streams and other signals of very wide bandwidth has broadened the range of applicable contexts and increased the need to account for such effects. This

is especially true for transmission lines used to interconnect critical signal paths in applications ranging from microelectronic devices to the signal integrity of …

A Sign Of The Times: Contemporary American Post-Holocaust Imagery And Post-Jewish Identity, Stacy Rebecca Schwartz

Master's Theses

The construction of American Jewish identity has historically balanced efforts to reconcile acceptance into majority culture with maintaining traditional Jewish heritage. Expression of Jewish identity in a "diasporic community" has often been anchored in communal rituals and sociopolitical events, especially the Holocaust, uniting an increasingly diverse community. Beginning in the late twentieth century, the figure of the "post-Jew" and post-Jewish identity emerged alongside pluralist multiculturalism as an alternate identity framework recognizing the hybrid character of Jewish American identity as a combination of inherited and selected elements.

This thesis examines the manifestation of post-Jewish identity in artistic responses to the Holocaust …

The Relationship Between Job Embeddedness And Work Engagement, Raymond William Ringl

Master's Theses

Research on job embeddedness has focused on explaining why employees choose to stay with their organizations rather than why they leave. Recently, research on job embeddedness has expanded to predict other employee behaviors such as organizational citizenship behaviors and innovation-related behaviors. To date, no research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between job embeddedness and work engagement. The purpose of this study was to add to the literature on job embeddedness by investigating relationships between the six dimensions of job embeddedness and the three dimensions of work engagement. Based on 213 participants, the study results showed that organizational embeddedness …

Fostering Affective Commitment And Work Engagement Through Mentoring, Luis Portillo

Master's Theses

Past research on mentoring has focused primarily on the benefits that protégées and mentors derive from their mentoring relationships. However, little research has been devoted to revealing the ways in which mentoring can benefit organizations. To address this void, a sample of 124 protégées was used to investigate the relationships between satisfaction with a mentor, affective commitment (AC), and work engagement. Perceived organizational support (POS) was hypothesized as the mediator of the aforementioned relationships. Further, in order to identify the factors contributing to satisfaction with the mentor, this study examined the relationship between satisfaction with the mentor and mentorship type …

Use Of Dna Sequences To Identify Forensically Important Fly Species In The Coastal Region Of Central California (Santa Clara County), Angela T. Nakano

Master's Theses

Forensic entomology has gained prominence in recent years, as improvements in DNA technology and molecular methods have allowed insect and other arthropod evidence to become increasingly useful in criminal and civil investigations. However, comprehensive faunal inventories are still needed, including cataloguing local DNA sequences for forensically significant Diptera. This multi-year fly-trapping study was built upon and expanded a previous survey of these flies in Santa Clara County, including the addition of genetic barcoding data from collected species of flies.

Flies from the families Calliphoridae, Sarcophagidae, and Muscidae were trapped in meat-baited traps set in a variety of locations throughout the …

Effects Of Compression On The Temperature Distribution Of A Tissue-Mimicking Material During High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (Hifu) Ablation, Austin Robbins Roth

Master's Theses

Local blood flow near a high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) target has been shown to decrease ablation effectiveness and predictability, creating a barrier to clinical use for breast cancer treatment. This study investigated the effects of compression on HIFU ablation of a perfused tissue-mimicking material. Gellan gum-based phantoms, with thermal and acoustic properties similar to those of soft tissue, were ablated with a 1.13 MHz HIFU transducer while being subjected to varying levels of external compression. Phantoms were designed with an embedded 6 mm diameter vessel meant to mimic a thermally significant blood vessel near a breast tumor. The internal temperature …

The Effect Of Bmi On The Age Of Menarche In Adolescent Girls, Samara R. Sterling

Master's Theses

Problem. Over the past century, the age of menarche has consistently declined in the United States and globally. Obesity has also increased by 82% globally over the past 20 years. Obesity, as measured by BMI percentiles in children, may contribute to the declining age of menarche. -- Method. Adolescent girls ages 12-19 were examined in California and Michigan. Physical development and the age of menarche were assessed through an online questionnaire. Height and weight measurements were taken at a clinic and converted to BMI percentile values. -- Results. A negative correlation was observed between BMI percentile values and the age …

Toward A Biblical View Of Collective Responsibility For The Seventh-Day Adventist Church In The Twenty-First Century, Miroslav Danihel

Master's Theses

The notion of collective responsibility is an issue that is not very popular in the postmodern society. However, the idea of collective responsibility can be found in the Bible. This thesis examines philosophical, ethical, and biblical sources on the subject. The biblical evidence focuses on examining Josh 7 and Ezek 18, as well as some of the New Testament contributions to the topic. The relationship between collective responsibility, collective personality, and collective punishment is discussed. The thesis acknowledges collective responsibility as a valid biblical doctrine and proposes its application for church members, leaders, and the decision-making process in the Seventh-day …

From Clear Fulfillment To Complex Prophecy: The History Of The Adventist Interpretation Of Revelation 9, From 1833 To 1957, Jon Hjorleifur Stefansson

Master's Theses

Seventh-day Adventists originally agreed on the meaning of Rev 9 and regarded it as a very important prophecy, whereas today there is no consensus on this prophecy, which is regarded as both complex and non-vital. This thesis seeks to explain why this change occurred by tracing the history of the development of the interpretation of the fifth and sixth trumpets from 1833 to 1957, both in published and unpublished primary sources. Critics of the traditional interpretation found fault with its exegesis and historical application. Traditionalists never answered their questions comprehensively and this is the main reason why consensus was lost. …

Literary And Visual Representations Of Traumatic Memory Of The Pinochet Dictatorship In Chile, Alison Tange

Master's Theses

This thesis presents an analysis of six narratives that contribute to the collective memory of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. In this study, I attempt to pinpoint the commonalities, motivations, and differences in three literary texts - Un día de octubre en Santiago (Carmen Castillo, 1982), Mi verdad (Marcia Alejandra Merino, 1992), La vida doble (Arturo Fontaine, 2010), and three documentary films - La Flaca Alejandra (Carmen Castillo, 1993), Chile, la memoria obstinada (Patricio Guzmán, 1997), and Mi vida con Carlos (Germán Berger, 2008). These literary and visual narratives are deliberate efforts to shape the memories of the dictatorial past …

Features Of Copulation And The Copulation Call In Glaucous-Winged Gulls (Larus Glaucescens), Amanda Sandler

Master's Theses

Glaucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) breed along the Pacific Northwest coast where they perform highly stereotypical behavior patterns, including associated vocalizations. Early studies suggested the copulation call functions in maintaining pair bonds. Recent studies, however, challenge the idea that strengthening pair bonds is the only function of this call. I described the spectral and temporal features of the copulation call and investigated whether copulation behaviors varied over the course of the 2012 nesting season. During continuous observations from a blind in daylight hours, I documented the start and stop time for every copulation in a sample area of a nesting colony …

A Tunable Electromagnetic Band-Gap Microstrip Filter, Greg A. Lancaster

Master's Theses

In high frequency design, harmonic suppression is a persistent struggle. Non-linear devices such as switches and amplifiers produce unwanted harmonics which may interfere with other frequency bands. Filtering is a widely accepted solution, however there are various shortcomings involved. Suppressing multiple harmonics, if desired, with traditional lumped element and distributed component band-stop filters requires using multiple filters. These topologies are not easily made tunable either. A new filter topology is investigated called Electromagnetic Band-Gap (EBG) structures.

EBG structures have recently gained the interest of microwave designers due to their periodic nature which prohibits the propagation of certain frequency bands. EBG …

Restoring Native Plants Following Invasive Malephora Crocea (Coppery Iceplant, Aizoaceae) Eradication On Anacapa Island, Nathan William Hale

Master's Theses

To avoid unintended complications of invasive species eradication, it is important to understand the potential implications of the techniques used in species eradication efforts. This study aimed to compare how different methods of removing Malephora crocea affect the survivorship of planted seedlings of native perennial plants on Anacapa Island. Employing a randomized complete block design in an M. crocea stand, three removal treatments were tested: 1) hand-pull; 2) spray with herbicide and leave skeletons; and 3) spray and then remove skeletons after 2.5 months. In each treatment, seedlings of three species (Leptosyne gigantea, Frankenia salina, and Grindelia …

This Could Be A Game!": Defining Gamification For The Classroom, Darcy Elaine Osheim

Master's Theses

Instructors find a gap between what they experienced in school in the mid-to-late 20th century and the experiences of students entering college in 2012/13. In the United States, the influx of almost universal access to technology has marked this generation in a way the previous generations must work to understand, and gamification is a strategy used in areas like marketing to gain participation from this age group. Gamification is a strategy that employs game mechanics, techniques, and theory in areas that traditionally are not set up to function like a game. The purpose of this study was to define gamification …