Digital Commons Network^™

Cluster Profiles Of The Drinking Motives In A Sample Of Firefighters And Emts, Joshua A. Muniz

Open Access Dissertations

Despite the extensive literature that exists on alcohol use, misuse, and drinking to cope, a drinking culture remains prevalent in occupations that experience high volumes of induced occupational stress and exposure to trauma. To our knowledge, patterns of alcohol use motives have never been characterized in a firefighter/emergency medical technician (FF/EMT) sample, nor have they been evaluated in the context of other relevant factors. The current study investigated the Drinking Motives Questionnaire-revised (DMQ-r) within a sample of FF/EMT who reported that they currently drink alcohol (N=183). This study sought to confirm the factor structure of the DMQ-r, identify empirically derived …

The Human Dimensions Of Coral Reef Restoration: A Case Study In The Spermonde Islands Of Indonesia, Jessica Vandenberg

Open Access Dissertations

This study employs a decolonial multidisciplinary approach to explore the sociocultural dimensions of a corporate-led coral reef restoration program implemented in a small island community in Indonesia framed as a conservation and food security initiative. Coral Reef Restoration (CRR) has gained increased attention as a coral conservation tool to supplement traditional approaches to tropical marine management (Boström-Einarsson et al. 2020). Like many other forms of conservation, CRR programs are often posed as dual conservation and development programs, aimed at achieving both ecological and social outcomes. Despite the intention to meet both conservation and development goals, CRR studies have been criticized …

Composite Cooperative Adaptive Learning And Control For Multi-Robot Coordination, Xiaonan Dong

Open Access Dissertations

A cooperative adaptive learning-based control (CALC) method and a corresponding experience based controller for a group of identical unicycle-type ground vehicles are proposed in this research, through both state feedback and output feedback. Specifically, consider the generalized dynamic model of the unicycle-type vehicle with unstructured system uncertainties, the proposed CALC method is able to drive all vehicle agents in the multi-agent system (MAS) to their respective desired reference trajectories and accurately approximate the unmodeled vehicle dynamics with radial basis function (RBF) neural network (NN) at the same time. Furthermore, it is shown that the approximation of the unknown dynamics, presented …

The Relationships Between Racial Microaggressions Experiences, Coping With Discrimination Strategies, And The Psychological Well-Being Among Asian American College Students, Richard Song

Open Access Dissertations

Research on Asian American college students’ experiences with racial ethnic microaggressions and their coping strategies is scant. The present study examined how Asian American college students (N = 222) experienced racial ethnic microaggressions, identified engagement or disengagement strategies for coping with discrimination, and if the coping strategies affect students’ psychological well-being. Along with providing demographic information, participants completed three instruments, the Racial Ethnic Microaggressions Scale (REMS: Nadal, 2011), the Coping with Discrimination Scale (CDS: Wei, Alvarez, Hu, Russell, & Bonett, 2010), and the Scales of Psychological Well-Being (SPWB: Ryff, 1989). Participants also provided responses to two open-ended questions about how …

Right-Shoring: Offshoring To Reshoring For A Sustainable Manufacturing Location Decision In The Healthcare Industry, Gawon Yun

Open Access Dissertations

Firms have increasingly offshored manufacturing to foreign countries in the past decades due to the expected benefits driven by low manufacturing costs in developing economies. With changes in competition and government pressure for domestic production, however, manufacturing firms have reevaluated these decisions leading some to reshore manufacturing activities. Recent studies have investigated various reshoring motivations and developed conceptual frameworks that can be used as tools in reshoring decisions. However, the complexity in decision making remains high due to product and industry specific traits impacting the manufacturing process. Examples include the increasing concern over product quality and changing regulations. Two industries …

Reading The Reader: Analyzing Depictions Of Male Readers In Serial Victorian Fiction, Ashton Foley-Schramm

Open Access Dissertations

During the nineteenth century, mass literacy was taking hold in Britain, spurred on by the widespread availability of printed materials, crossing class and gender borders as never before. Most literary scholars concerned with reading in nineteenth-century England investigate the female reader within fiction, analyzing the various cultural, especially social and gender-specific, aspects of how, where, why, and what women read. This project addresses the gap in our knowledge created by this focus on the female reader in Victorian fiction: the position and function of the male reader. It argues that concerns over too much reading, or not reading the “right” …

Structured, Individualized, Video-Based Coaching To Improve Technical Skill Acquisition, Kenneth A. Lynch Jr.

Open Access Dissertations

In the current era of a reduced hourly workweek and competency-based curriculum, it is becoming increasingly clear that the cognitive apprenticeship model of training, which dominated the surgical discipline for well over a century, may no longer be the single best strategy to train the surgeons of today. There needs to be a multifaceted approach to surgical residency training, especially with regards to improving technical skill acquisition. Video-based-coaching is quickly being adapted for use in many training programs due to its low cost and broad range of applications including self-assessment, operative evaluations, and bench model training. The challenge for most …

The Mark Of The Vanishing Reader: Intradiegetic Interaction In Multimodal Narrative, Catherine Ann Winters

Open Access Dissertations

What is a book? What do we expect to find in books? Who is the twenty-first-century reader? Such questions have proliferated over the last thirty years as the anxiety of the death of the book and the vanishing reader has loomed over literature. In this dissertation, I explore how twenty-first-century American multimodal narrative books featuring intradiegetic readers (a character who reads a story within the storyworld) represent the possibilities and limits of the print book to engage the informed reader in a changing media ecology. The books in this study are not merely testing the limits of how stories can …

Nurses’ Involvement In End Of Life Communication And Care Practices In Icus, Annette Griffin

Open Access Dissertations

Patients with end-stage and life-threatening diseases are frequently admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). In fact, the ICU is the place of death for one in five patients in the United States due to the acuity of this population. Despite the high frequency of death in ICUs, evidence suggests that there is a need to improve end-of-life care (EOLC) for these patients.

Additionally, advancing medical technologies have contributed to the rescue culture of ICUs and in some cases has increased the use of aggressive and ineffective life-support therapies. Since critically ill patients are often too ill to participate in …

Reorienting The Female Gothic: Curiosity And The Pursuit Of Knowledge, Jenna Guitar

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the mode of the Female Gothic primarily by examining how texts utilize the role of curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, paying close attention to how female characters employ these attributes. Existing criticism is vital to understanding the Female Gothic and in presenting the genealogy of feminist literary criticism, and yet I argue, this body of criticism often produces elements of essentialism. In an attempt to avoid and expose the biases that essentialism produces, I draw from Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer phenomenology to investigate the connections between the way that women pursue and circulate knowledge through …

Female Comic Grotesque Characters In Victorian Novels: Investigating The Possibilities Of Liminality, Barbara A. Farnworth

Open Access Dissertations

Female comic authors during the nineteenth century have received little attention from twentieth and twenty-first century literary critics. As Regina Barreca observes, major studies of the role of comedy in British literature do not deal with women writers (Barrecca 1988 11). Several anthologies which focus on humor in nineteenth-century literature begin with Jane Austen and then ignore every other female comedic writer. Similarly, studies of the comic grotesque in nineteenth century literature focus primarily on how it is employed by male authors such as Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and Anthony Trollope. My dissertation will address this imbalance by examining the …

Molecular Mechanism Of Polypeptide Insertion Into Bilayer And Exit, Gregory Slaybaugh

Open Access Dissertations

The pH-low insertion peptide (pHLIP) and pH-low insertion cycle (pHLIC) have been shown to target cancer cells and inflammation due to the acidic environment present at those sites. It has been demonstrated that pHLIP’s and pHLIC’s pH dependent behavior stems from the protonation and deprotonation of aspartic acid (Asp) and glutamic acid (Glu) residues. A decrease in pH leads to the protonation of Asp/Glu located in membrane-inserting part of peptides, which increases the overall hydrophobicity of pHLIP and pHLIC and triggers the insertion across a lipid bilayer.

Despite similarity of pHLIP and pHLIC ability to sense pH at cell surfaces …

Icg- And Gnp-Phlip: Novel Agents For Imaging And Therapy, Troy M. Crawford

Open Access Dissertations

After heart disease, cancer is the leading cause of death in the U.S. According to the National Cancer Institute, approximately 38% of the population will be diagnosed with cancer at some point over the course of their life. This number is only expected to increase with the increased age of the general public due to medical progress, leading to an increased importance in finding effective and convenient treatment that can be used across a wide array of cancers.

In theory, any tumor can be destroyed using enough of a cytotoxic method, whether it be heating, radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy. However, …

Lsvt®Big Exercise-Induced Neuroplasticity In People With Parkinson’S Disease: An Assessment Of Physiological And Behavioral Outcomes, Christine Marie Clarkin

Open Access Dissertations

Background and Purpose

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the impact of LSVT.BIG, an intensive, whole-body, amplitude-based exercise protocol for people with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD), on functional mobility, quality of life, and markers of neuroplasticity. A secondary aim was to evaluate correlations between neurobiological measures (serum brain derived neurotrophic factor - sBDNF) and functional changes associated with the intervention.

Methods

Nine people with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD), age = 69.9 years Å} 4.9, were recruited from the local community and enrolled in LSVT BIG, which includes 16, one-hour individual treatment sessions delivered over one month (4 sessions per …

Exploring The Greek-Letter Organization Experience At Primarily Commuter Public Colleges And Universities: A Phenomenological Study, Michael D. Giacalone

Open Access Dissertations

Higher education institutions are typically designed for residential students (Attewell & Lavin, 2012; Jacoby, 2015), even though the majority of students at four-year colleges and universities commute to their campuses (Horn & Nevill, 2006). One part of the higher education structure is the co-curricular experience, and is a way for students to develop a sense of belonging on campus, which leads to positive outcomes like self-actualization and persistence (Strayhorn, 2012, 2019). Greek-letter organizations are one aspect of the co-curricular experience, yet are also typically designed with residential students in mind. These organizations, however, have been present at primarily commuter institutions …

Nitrogen-Removing Wastewater Treatment Systems: Microbial Communities And Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Sara Katherine Wigginton

Open Access Dissertations

Wastewater is a major source of anthropogenic nitrogen (N) pollution that causes groundwater contamination and eutrophication in coastal ecosystems. The negative effects of excess N from wastewater on human and environmental health have led the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and many state and local agencies to set maximum N concentrations for treated wastewater before it can be discharged to ground and surface water bodies. Wastewater treatment systems that include biological nitrogen removal (BNR) can help meet these standards by promoting microbial N removal in centralized wastewater treatment plants (WTP) as well as decentralized, onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS; …

“The Skipping King”: Masculinity And Effeminacy In Early Modern Drama, Danielle Johanna Sanfilippo

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes depictions of effeminacy and anxiety surrounding masculinity in early modern drama. Effeminacy is a frequently used term in the literature of the period, occurring seven times in Shakespeare alone. For my research, I combine literary analysis and performance criticism. I consulted the National Theatre Archives in London and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford to analyze performances of early modern plays. Effeminacy is a wide-reaching mode of being that makes several layers of meaning. For royals and men of rank, the presumption of effeminacy is a danger to the realm. In Roman historical drama, effeminacy stands in …

Developing Stimuli-Responsive Biomaterial Systems For Drug Delivery In Tissue Engineering And Cancer Chemotherapy, Seyedeh Zahra Moafi Madani

Open Access Dissertations

Controlled and sequential drug delivery is a strategy to enhance the therapeutic effectiveness of drugs in a variety of biological processes and disease states. While many different drug delivery systems are developed recently, most cannot generate temporally complex delivery profiles of multiple therapeutics. These temporally complex profiles are critical for applications such as bone regeneration and cancer chemotherapy, where an orchestrated delivery of multiple drugs is required for an optimal outcome.

Here, we developed three distinct biomaterial systems that each enable on-demand controlled or sequential drug release. These systems are based on varying external stimulus such as magnetic stimulation, radiofrequency …

Supply Chain And Service Operations Digitization: An Integration Of Knowledge Management, Mehrnaz Khalaj Hedayati

Open Access Dissertations

The rapid digitization of industry has increased both efficiencies and challenges for the field of supply chain management. While the incremental use of digital technologies and the amount of data made available through digitization provides various benefits to supply chain value creation, there are challenges regarding the rapid digitization of this field. Organizations still face the challenges of implementing and utilizing digital technologies as well as extracting knowledge from data throughout the supply chain network.

Although previous research has been conducted on business applications in various industries, digital technologies literature is still in its infancy. Despite the interest of both …

Ratings Of Consent In Lesbian, Gay, And Heterosexual Sexual Assault Situations, Katelyn T. Kirk-Provencher

Open Access Dissertations

Introduction: Rates of sexual violence on college campuses are highest among individuals who identify as sexual minorities. However, bystander intervention programs on campuses (programs aimed at targeting individuals’ beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge about sexual violence to increase engagement in intervention behaviors) are not inclusive of sexual minority experiences. That is, bystander intervention programs that have been evaluated for efficacy appear not to include sexual violence experiences of sexual minorities nor are program outcomes assessed among sexual minority populations. This lack of inclusivity is important as it is likely that many of the barriers to bystander intervention (e.g., situational or environmental …

Raise Your Glass: A Culture Evaluation Of Diatoms As Archives Of Past Nutrient Consumption, Colin Anthony Jones

Open Access Dissertations

Nitrate is the most common limiting nutrient in the ocean and plays a critical role in the extent and intensity of marine primary production, and therefore the global ocean’s biological pump. Characterization of the supply and demand of nitrate constrains how ocean biology may regulate climate, so understanding the degree of nitrate consumption in the past is a fundamental step towards understanding controls on past climate. The nitrogen isotopic composition (as δ¹⁵N) of phytoplankton biomass can be used to infer the degree of nitrate consumption in nitrate-replete surface waters such as the Southern Ocean. This signal is recorded …

Multicultural Research In Forensic Psychology: Where Are We Now?, Rebecca J. Aguiar

Open Access Dissertations

Introduction: Forensic psychology is one of the fastest-growing areas in psychology. Over the past few decades, forensic psychology research has had significant impact on legal outcomes and clinical practice. Further, the population served by forensic psychologists has become increasingly diverse. However, past reviews of forensic psychology research indicates cultural factors are not always prominent variables of interest. Accordingly, this study examined how cultural variables are captured within forensic psychology research, and identified the proportion of articles in major forensic psychology journals focused on multicultural research. This study aimed to extend previous work by examining the incorporation of cultural variables capturing …

Molecular Modeling Of Normal Modes And Dynamics In Aromatic Rings, Peptides, And A Complex Lipid Bilayer, Faramarz Joodaki

Open Access Dissertations

Interest in studying anti-microbial peptides (AMPs) has increased becasue of their potential as future applicable antibiotic drugs. In my research under supervision of Professor Michael L. Greenfield, we attempt to understand the structure and dynamics of a novel hybrid AMP LM7-2, which was designed previously in Professor Lenore M. Martin’s research group (Cell and Molecular Biology Department at URI). Several experimental studies have successfully investigated mechanisms of AMPs against bacteria and shown that AMPs attack the membrane of bacteria and induce bacteria death. However, there is still much uncertainty in the exact mechanisms because of experimental restrictions. Hence, studying the …

Black Parent-Adolescent Conversations About Sex: A Mixed-Methods Study Of Parent Perspectives, Teressa Davis

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore parental attitudes about adolescent sexual behavior among middle-income Black families. This study also examined the interactions between religion, parental attitudes about adolescent sexual behavior, and the frequency/quality of conversations regarding sexual topics. A total of 108 participants completed a survey via Qualtrics that examined these topics. Results found that parents generally have negative attitudes about adolescent sexual behavior. It was also found that parents discussed some topics more frequently than others and the quality of these conversations was neither overly negative nor positive. Results of stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated spirituality …

Coastal Ocean Modeling Across Length Scales: From Estuarine Circulation To Boundary Currents, Kevin K. Rosa

Open Access Dissertations

From the shoreline to the continental slope, numerical models of coastal physics provide forecasts of storm impacts, inform environmental policy, and drive key processes in climate predictions. The coastal zone is a highly dynamic region characterized by tides, buoyancy-driven flow, bathymetric steering, upwelling, and boundary currents. This complex mix of competing forces has necessitated the development of increasingly advanced realistic numerical models. Realistic models can be used to analyze ocean physics in ways that would not be possible with observational data alone.

The first two chapters investigate water mass exchange between Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound using current meters …

Individual Differences Among Snapchat Users: Uses And Motivations, Nicole Baker

Open Access Dissertations

Social media has become a routine part of daily life, changing the ways people interact with one another. Prior research on social media in the field of psychology and communications has focused on the use of Facebook and Instagram, but little has focused on Snapchat, despite its fast growth and increasing popularity (Grieve, 2017). Thus, the current study examined how and why individuals use Snapchat. Undergraduate students (N=210) at the University of Rhode Island were recruited and asked to complete online surveys. Surveys examined background information, Snapchat activities and motives for use, as well as psychological factors like body image, …

Potential Value Of Gear-Based Management For Coral Reef Fisheries And Conservation, Paul Carvalho

Open Access Dissertations

Access to markets and globalization has fueled the expansion of fishing pressure in coral reef fisheries and has consequently led to overfishing on many reefs around the world. Overfishing has profound consequences for reef ecosystems and the people that rely on reef resources for nutrition and income. Collecting fisheries-dependent data required for traditional stock assessment methods that guide management is often infeasible for coral reefs due to the small-scale, dispersed, multi-species, and multi-gear nature of these fisheries. In addition, coral reefs are concentrated in developing countries that often have inadequate capacity for management and enforcement, which limits the effectiveness of …

Fictions Of Captivity: Racializing Religion In Early U.S. Literature And Culture, Serap Hidir

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on rarely explored but widely prevalent representations of non-Christian religions in fictional captivity narratives, specifically those that paint America as a new and independent nation. It argues that religious depictions in early American literature are extensions of racial meaning-making that become embedded in U.S. national identity. The representations of the heathen, in relation to Muslims and converted Jews in North Africa on an international scale, and domestically with the indigenous Pequots, consolidates American unity as Christian at its base. Particularly, the discussions of how and which populations are easily assimilated reveals an intricate triangulation of religious affiliation, …

Beyond The Negative Lens: A Strength-Based Approach To Understanding Sexual Minority Women’S Health, Angela Darosh

Open Access Dissertations

Introduction: It is well-documented that, compared to their heterosexual counterparts, sexual minority women (SMW) are at an increased risk for a variety of negative mental health outcomes, including depression, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. According to the minority stress model, lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are at an increased risk for adverse health outcomes because they experience excess stress as a result of belonging to a stigmatized group. In particular, sexual minority stress may be mediated by LGB-specific stressors including discrimination and victimization as a result of one’s sexual orientation, internalized homophobia, and concealment. The majority …

Between Siblings: How The Sibling Metaphor Reimagines Affective Entanglements In The Victorian Novel, Beth Leonardo Silva

Open Access Dissertations

Throughout the long nineteenth century, characters in novels are often described as being like siblings to other characters. Frequently, such sibling-like characters end up being the protagonist’s most desirable marriage partner. While older literary criticism assumed that such coding was meant to invoke themes of incest, more recent scholarship has begun to investigate how such characters can inform our understanding of the dramatic historical shifts in family structure and alliance (from the biological to the conjugal), as well as changes in what motivated and validated marriages. In either case, the scholarship assumes that the reference to siblinghood places unrelated characters …