Digital Commons Network^™

Folkloric Musicians Among The Bugakhwe, Robert Veith

Masters Theses

Increased access to global media by traditional culture in remote parts of Africa has, in many cases, seen indigenous music marginalized in favor of imported forms. In some places, a folkloric tradition thrives, though this music may face extinction if those who practice it do not document their art in a way which can be passed down to future generations. For this project, I recorded seven musician/composers of the Bugakhwe, a Khoisan people group living in the Okavango Delta region of Botswana. Two were given enough studio time to create a complete CD-length set, so as to show off the …

A Driving Simulator Study To Evaluate The Impact Of Portable Changeable Message Signs (Pcms) On Driver Speed Characteristics, Bharath Kolar Venkat

Masters Theses

"This research project examined the effects of sequential Portable Changeable Message Signs (PCMS) on driver behavior in work zones. PCMS are temporary traffic control (TTC) devices, part of Intelligent Transportation Systems, which supplement static signs to provide advance warning and real-time information to drivers. Text and number based messages are displayed on the PCMS for which detailed evaluation has not been carried out before. This research fills this gap using a driving simulator (DS) supplemented by objective and subjective surveys. A work zone on I-44 in rural Missouri was replicated in the DS using video recordings and GIS (Geographical Information …

Analysis Of Academically At-Risk Second Year Students' Perceptions Of How Campus Support Services Engage Them Via Social Media, Brad Sandefer

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Student Leaders' Facebook Use, Valerie Penn

Masters Theses

Facebook and other social media have changed the way that our society communicates. As student affairs professionals, it is important to understand how this shift in communication affects our students and their development. This study aimed to learn more about how students leaders use Facebook, how they perceive Facebook, and how their leadership position has impacted their use and perception. The researcher used an electronic questionnaire, a Facebook tracking log, and a personal interview to examine the Facebook use and perceptions of eight participants. These participants represented the following groups: Greek leadership councils, orientation leaders, resident assistants, and student government. …

"They Want All Of Your Kids To Be Gay And Oppose God": Incivility And Othering In Yahoo! News Comments, Emily Vajjala

Masters Theses

In 2004, many newspapers in the U.S. allowed public commenting on news articles posted to their websites, however since then, many U.S. news websites have removed public comment boards, ceased archiving public comments, or turned to moderators to edit or delete hateful or overly aggressive comments (Hughey and Daniels, 2013). Yahoo!, however, continues to utilize comment boards on Yahoo! News reports, in which incivility continues to run rampant. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, this study addresses incivility and "othering" in Yahoo! News article comment sections from news reporting on LGBTQ-related stories. From a sample of 1000 Yahoo! News comments using open …

An Examination Of Areas Of Involvement That Foster Student Retention, Abigail L. Ford

Masters Theses

Campus involvement has been proven to improve the persistence of students through college. This qualitative study was designed to learn if there are certain areas of involvement that are more influential to creating a perceived sense of belonging for students and in turn influencing their persistence. Using a qualitative approach the researcher gathered narratives from four undergraduate students who were involved in varying out-of-class activities and analyzed the resulting data for important themes. Three major themes emerged which were importance of involvement, connectedness to the university, and employment. The results indicated that being involved in extracurricular activities is influential in …

Satisfaction And Importance Analysis Of Features And Services To Nontraditional Students: A Mixed Methods Approach, Denise E. Corray

Masters Theses

The study examined the importance and satisfaction to nontraditional students (NTS) with features and services offered at Eastern Illinois University (EIU). Participants included students over age 25 who were currently or recently enrolled at the university at the time of data collection. A triangulation mixed-methods approach was utilized; a 40-item instrument was created to measure NTSs' EIU experience. Findings indicated that Instructors' knowledge of course content, Overall quality of instruction, Relevancy of subject matter taught in classes I attend, Cost of tuition to attend EIU, and Clarity of degree requirements were the most important to NTS at EIU. Participants were …

A Monetary Analysis Of Ghana: Examining The Relationship Between Monetary Policy, Price Stabilization, And The Real Exchange Rate, Nana Quaicoe

Masters Theses

The primary objective of this study involves evaluating the link between monetary policy, price levels, and the bilateral real exchange rate in Ghana. To make up for the sparse and inadequate monetary economics literature in Ghana, the study makes a substantial contribution by delineating between different monetary policy instruments. Using monthly data from 1992-2013, a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is developed for exploring and measuring the relationship between monetary policy, inflation rate, and the bilateral real exchange rate in Ghana. The growth of broad money supply (M2) and the Monetary Policy Rate are used as the principal monetary policy …

The Prevalence, Reasons, And Effects Of Hazing On Female Student Athletes, Danielle Steffa

Masters Theses

The present study was designed to understand the prevalence, reasons, and effects of hazing on female student athletes at a midsized, Midwest institution. Hazing is defined as any activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotions and/or physical harm, regardless of that person's willingness to participate (Gersehel, Katz-Sidlow, Small, & Zandieh (2003). By using a modified survey done by Hoover (1999) and Allan and Madden (2008), the frequency, reasons why female athletes believe hazing happens, and any effects felt by these athletes was measured. Results showed there are many types of hazing behaviors that are …

Computational And Experimental Studies Of Non-Covalent Interactions: Characterization Of Ch...Π Interactions And Structure Of 1,1-Difluoroethylene...Carbon Dioxide, Ashley M. Anderton

Masters Theses

Weakly bound CH/π interactions, due to the abundance of C-H bonds and π systems that exist in larger organic molecules, are an important driving force in the construction of biomacromolecules, supramolecular assemblies and crystal packing of organic compounds. To assist in the characterization of CH/π interactions, a density functional theory (DFT) study has been conducted to determine a quick and cheap method for accurate determination of the binding energy and rotational constants for CH/π interactions. Seven complexes were used in this study: five benzene-HY complexes (where Y= C≡CH, Cl, F, Br and C≡N) and two fluorobenzene-HY complexes (where Y= C≡CH …

A Retrospective Study Of The Link Between Maternal Social Anxiety And College-Student Social Anxiety: Mediating The Role Of Maternal Cognitions & Behaviors, Kyung Won Kim

Masters Theses

Parental social anxiety is a well-established risk factor for child social anxiety. In addition to being passed along genetically, parental anxiety seems to be transmitted partially via environmental factors, such as parental cognitions and behaviors that convey negative expectations toward the child. This paper reviews the current literature linking maternal social anxiety, maternal cognitions, and offspring social anxiety. Using a retrospective design, a mediated model, examining the association between maternal social anxiety and later offspring social anxiety, with maternal cognitions and behaviors during childhood as a mediator was tested. Consistent with the hypothesis, maternal fear of negative evaluation served as …

Comparison Of Costs Of Personal Protective Equipment For All Workers To Avoid Costs Of Fall Accidents, Sultan Noori Al-Karawi

Masters Theses

"The construction industry is one of the most important industries in the United States. It is the biggest contributor in the growth of the U.S. economy. Despite the great achievements and prominent role for this sector in the U.S. economy, the construction industry is suffering from neglect and dereliction by related government institutions and private companies. This neglect led to formation of a negative image about the construction industry that has caused a deep impact in productivity and economic growth. One of the reasons is a high percentage of accidents that occur within the construction industry which leads to injuries …

Quantitative Modeling Of Reliability And Survivability For Cyber-Physical Power Systems, Murtadha Nabeel Albasrawi

Masters Theses

"Critical infrastructure systems are increasingly reliant on cyber infrastructure that enables intelligent real-time control of physical components. This cyber infrastructure utilizes environmental and operational data to provide decision support intended to increase the efficacy and reliability of the system and facilitate mitigation of failure. Realistic imperfections, such as corrupt sensor data, software errors, or failed communication links can cause failure in a functional physical infrastructure, defying the purpose of intelligent control. As such, justifiable reliance on cyber-physical critical infrastructure is contingent on rigorous investigation of the effect of intelligent control, including modeling and simulation of failure propagation within the cyber-physical …

Additive Manufacturing Laser Deposition Of Ti-6al-4v For Aerospace Repair Application, Nanda Kumar Dey

Masters Theses

"Parts or products machined from high performance metals are very expensive, partly due to the processing complexities during manufacturing. Therefore, many high performance metal parts users, such as the aerospace industry, mold/die casting industry, heavy machinery consumers etc., extend the service of these damaged parts by employing repair or remanufacturing technology. The research objective is to use laser deposition and machining processes to repair titanium parts.

This thesis discusses a new way of approach for developing a repair process for Ti-6Al-4V for the aerospace industry using Laser Metal Deposition (LMD). The repairs were conducted in a multi-axis hybrid manufacturing systems …

An Empirical Study On Symptoms Of Heavier Internet Usage Among Young Adults, Saipreethi Vishwanathan

Masters Theses

"Understanding negative consequences of heavy Internet use on mental health is a topic that is gaining significant traction recently. A number of studies have investigated heavy Internet usage, especially among young adults in relation to online games, social media and email. While such studies do provide valuable insights, Internet usage so far has been characterized by means of self-reported surveys only that may suffer from errors and biases. In this paper, we report the findings of a two month empirical study on heavy Internet usage among students conducted at a college campus. The novelty of the study is that it …

Performance Analysis Of Zero Forcing And Minimum Mean Square Error Equalizers On Multiple Input Multiple Output System On A Spinning Vehicle, Aditya Kulkarni

Masters Theses

"Channel equalizers based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) and zero forcing (ZF) criteria have been formulated for a general scalable multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system and implemented for a 2x2 MIMO system with spatial multiplexing (SM) for Rayleigh channel associated with additive white Gaussian noise. A model to emulate transmitters and receivers on a spinning vehicle has been developed. A transceiver based on the BLAST architecture is developed in this work. A mathematical framework to explain the behavior of the ZF and MMSE equalizers is formulated. The performance of the equalizers has been validated for a case with …

Gel Treatment Field Application Survey For Water Shut Off In Production Wells, Jingyi Liao

Masters Theses

"Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) screening criteria are considered as a guideline for candidate evaluation and determination. Not many screening criteria for gel treatment had been published. Some published gel treatment application surveys for water shut off only include limited number of oil fields and locations.

The current work aims to summarize the worldwide gel treatment applications for water shut off in production wells by creating and analyzing a dataset from a variety of sources. This study started from collecting and cleaning the gel treatment application data. All the data were from SPE field publications from 1990 to 2012 and from …

Computer Vision Libraries For Trailer Truck Testbed Using Open Source Computer Vision Libraries, Krishnan Raghavan

Masters Theses

"Computer Vision is a field that aims at understanding and analyzing images from the real world to produce numerical and symbolical data. It is a first step at duplicating the capabilities of human vision by electronically understanding the image and perceiving its features. This work aims at providing some of the features of a human eye to a trailer truck. These features include getting a 3D wireframe from continuous images and prediction of the next position of the objects in view, while the truck is moving.

The thesis has been divided into 3 sections. First section is acquiring images in …

Use On Multinomial Logistic Regression In Work Zone Crash Analysis For Missouri Work Zones, Paul Robin

Masters Theses

"This study focuses on the use of statistical data analysis procedures in identifying factors which affect the severity of crashes in work zones. Work zones are unsafe for the traffic passing through as well as the workers. Multinomial Logistic Regression has been used to analyse Missouri work zone crash data to identify significant factors which affect the severity of crashes. This particular type of regression analysis was used due to the mixed nature of data. Multinomial regression was used to compare crashes with severity Property Damage Only against crashes with Minor Injuries and Disabling Injuries/ Fatal. The factors considered were …

M-Grid : A Distributed Framework For Multidimensional Indexing And Querying Of Location Based Big Data, Shashank Kumar

Masters Theses

"The widespread use of mobile devices and the real time availability of user-location information is facilitating the development of new personalized, location-based applications and services (LBSs). Such applications require multi-attribute query processing, handling of high access scalability, support for millions of users, real time querying capability and analysis of large volumes of data. Cloud computing aided a new generation of distributed databases commonly known as key-value stores. Key-value stores were designed to extract value from very large volumes of data while being highly available, fault-tolerant and scalable, hence providing much needed features to support LBSs. However complex queries on multidimensional …

Software-Based Instrumentation For Analysis Of Electrostatic Discharge Effects, Antonio James Sabatini

Masters Theses

”Failures caused by electrostatic discharge (ESD) compromise the reliability of embedded systems. Peripherals such as the universal serial bus (USB) are particularly vulnerable, as isolating them to avoid electromagnetic interference would defy their purpose - facilitating communication with and/or by the embedded system. Better understanding the propagation of failures that result from ESD can facilitate defensive development of hardware and software for embedded systems, but is hampered by the lack of non-invasive and lightweight instrumentation techniques.

The original contribution of this thesis is the design and development of software-based instrumentation for monitoring the reaction of the USB peripheral of an …

The Effects Of Music Instruction On Phonological Awareness In Children With Hearing Impairment, Chelsea Fitch

Masters Theses

Phonological awareness skills are essential for reading development. Children with hearing loss lack access to essential auditory information that allows development of phonological awareness (Dillon, John, & Pisoni, 2011). Music instruction is becoming a popular approach to teach reading for typically developing children, and studies have supported beneficial effects from this treatment methodology. However, there is limited research regarding the use of music to teach phonological awareness and reading skills to children with hearing impairment (Gromko, 2005).

The effectiveness of a music program on increasing phonological awareness skills in children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing was evaluated in this study. …

Evaluation Of Student Writing And Its Effects On Motivation, Scott May

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Black Friday Consumer, Lori A. Logan

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Mid-Level Student Affairs Professionals' Interpretations Of Obama's 2020 Educational Goals, Shane Thomas

Masters Theses

Utilizing qualitative methodology, participants' perceptions were examined to understand midlevel professionals' and their interpretations and understandings of Obama's 2020 Educational Goals utilized by the six participants. Through conducting one-on-one interviews with mid-level professionals at a Community College and Four-Year College, it was found that participants had some knowledge of Obama's Goals. Participant's found that Obama's Goals play a huge factor in Financial Aid, Accountability, Retention, and Access for students who chose to pursue a degree in higher education. Participants recommended further professional development to become better assets to their department and the students they serve, educate students about Financial Aid …

Community College To A Four-Year Institution: Transition For Underrepresented Students, Sarah Adams

Masters Theses

Many four-year public institutions are experiencing increasing enrollment of students transferring from community colleges. For this qualitative assessment, six underrepresented students who transferred from a two-year community college to a four-year public institution were interviewed to examine both support and risk factors that underrepresented students experienced during and after the transition process. Findings showed that underrepresented students' common influential factors were finances, location, family/parental support, motivation and preparedness. The data revealed that underrepresented students experienced support from family, friends, TRIO, faculty and counselors while transitioning from community college. Risk factors that were revealed for underrepresented students at community college and …

The Path Into Student Affairs: How Undergraduate Experiences Influence Students To Pursue A Career In Student Affairs, Bryce Jacob Reuer Gergely

Masters Theses

The career field of Student Affairs is one that most individuals know nothing about until coming to college when they have the chance to interact with professionals in the field. How exactly do individuals come to be professionals in student affairs? This study looks to answer that question through the examination of nine individuals in various stages of the process into Student Affairs, analyzing their experiences throughout their undergraduate career. Special focus is given to experiences during participants' undergraduate education, influences on their decision to pursue Student Affairs as a career, and how interactions with Student Affairs professionals played a …

Building And Maintaining Legitimacy Online: Unicef's Use Of Facebook, John Kraps

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Increasing Cooking And Nutritional Knowledge Of Food Pantry Clients Via Cookbook Intervention, Joshua Kleczynski

Masters Theses

This study was designed to assess eating habits, cooking habits, and nutritional knowledge of food pantry clients. As a whole, the average American consumes a less-than-optimal intake of nutrients. This, combined with the elevated national food insecurity rate of 14.5%, produces an advantageous situation to educate food pantry clients about healthy lifestyle practice through cooking. This study utilized a quasi-experimental design including a pre-assessment, intervention, post-assessment design. Forty-nine participants were included in study, and either received a cookbook (intervention group) or were a control subject and only completed surveys. Results revealed that the cookbook intervention did not elicit any behavior …

The Perceived Benefits Of Participation In Living And Learning Communities: The Student Perspective, Sally Adams

Masters Theses

Students' experiences outside the classroom are important to their overall growth and development. Living learning communities (LLC) play a big role in helping to support these areas of growth. Students residing in an LLC are aware of the benefits of the LLC experience and can articulate how their residential environment can help them develop. Non-LLC members find it difficult to define the LLC experience and are not receiving the same benefits. Institutions and residence life often struggle in evaluating and assessing these communities because of the lack of direction and outcomes not clearly being stated. If institutions work to clearly …