Digital Commons Network^™

Bullying: How Feelings Of Fatalism May Influence Youth Choices To Offend, Tammy Shartzer

Theses

School age bullying continues to be a source of intense research as it is commonly linked to increased levels of delinquency in adolescents. In an effort to understand the process through which bullying victimization is linked to increased levels of delinquency, researchers continue to explore environmental and psychological components. This study used both OLS regression and negative binomial regression to examine the relationship between traditional and cyberbullying victimization and delinquency to assesses if fatalism mediates or moderates this relationship. An individual with fatalism often feels they are stuck within a revolving cycle of bad happenings and are powerless to change …

Deep Into The Eyes: Applying Machine Learning To Improve Eye-Tracking, Aayush Kumar Chaudhary

Theses

Eye-tracking has been an active research area with applications in personal and behav- ioral studies, medical diagnosis, virtual reality, and mixed reality applications. Improving the robustness, generalizability, accuracy, and precision of eye-trackers while maintaining privacy is crucial. Unfortunately, many existing low-cost portable commercial eye trackers suffer from signal artifacts and a low signal-to-noise ratio. These trackers are highly depen- dent on low-level features such as pupil edges or diffused bright spots in order to precisely localize the pupil and corneal reflection. As a result, they are not reliable for studying eye movements that require high precision, such as microsaccades, smooth …

The Role And Responsibility Of The Nurse In Caring For The Dying Patient, Julia M. Robinson

Theses

The problem undertaken in this study was to learn the specific nursing functions a selected sample of registered nurses performed in an effort to meet the needs of the dying patient and how adequate they felt in performing these functions.

Movement Patterns Of The Shovelnose Guitarfish (Pseudobatos Productus) And California Bat Ray (Myliobatis Californica) In The Southern California Bight, Annabel Gong

Theses

While the movement patterns of large elasmobranch species have been studied extensively, those of smaller, mesopredatory species remain understudied. The shovelnose guitarfish (Pseudobatos productus) and the California bat ray (Myliobatis californica) are among the least studied elasmobranchs in the Southern California Bight. This study quantified the broad- and fine-scale movement patterns of these species using passive acoustic telemetry. Twelve guitarfish were surgically implanted with coded acoustic transmitters at a known aggregation site off La Jolla (San Diego County), California, USA and tracked for 849.5 days each, on average. Six bat rays were also implanted here and tracked for …

Seeing Slavery, Lulu Hamissou

Theses

This paper examines the resilience of Laura Clark, Carrie Davis, and Delia Garlic, three formerly enslaved women from Alabama whose memories and experiences during enslavement were part of a large slave narrative project called Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938. The design exhibition, Seeing Slavery, visually communicates and portrays the accounts and portraits of the three women. Printed and embroidered fabrics visually communicate the narrative stories of these women, while their portraits are made from screen printed acrylic glass.

Following an introduction, a literature review details the history of the three slave …

Comparative Modeling And Evolutionary Comparison Of Serine Protease, A Timber Rattlesnake Venom Protein, Qawer Ayaz

Theses

The aim of this study is to create a homology model of VG35 serine protease and evaluate the evolutionary comparison of secondary structure on basis of protein model using YASARA. This method was furthermore used to predict the potential epitopes which can help in the investigation of future studies.

The VG35 was used to run a BLAST search which gave most resembled serine protease of different species which was then translated and modeled in YASARA. The modeled protein data was then used to determine the secondary structure. This was then used for evolutionary comparison of all proteins to VG35. Then …

Behavioral Choices Of Apple Snails, Pomacea Maculata, Under Varied Chemical Landscapes, Andrea Adams

Theses

Habitat choice is a critical behavior for organisms to successfully survive and reproduce. These choices are dictated by available environmental information about potential predation risks or food patches that form the organism’s sensory landscape. This study specifically focused on the behavioral choices of two invasive apple snail (Pomacea maculata) populations exposed to varying predation threats. We collected snails from Florida and Alabama which were used in laboratory experiments with varied sensory landscapes. Trials consisted of controls with no cues (FL: n = 7, AL: n= 7), an attractive treatment with introduced food cues (FL: n = 4, AL: …

Alexander Calder And Studio Jewelry: Rethinking The Role Of The Decorative, Mandy Clark-Russell

Theses

Alexander Calder is best known for his monumental mobile sculptures. Firmly ensconced in mid-century modernism, Calder was highly influential for a number of other artists and movements between wars, especially Surrealism. Less known is that Calder was not only a sculptor, but also a jeweler. In fact, Calder’s work expanded from mobiles, stabiles, and sculptures into the world of studio jewelry as early as the 1930s. The recent revival of studio jewelry, coupled with increased attention of the artist due to record auction numbers, have begged a reconsideration of the role played by the “decorative” digressions of his oeuvre. Previously …

The Role Of Physical Geographic Features In Video Games, Dexter Ferguson

Theses

This thesis examines how physical geographic features affect individuals when interacting with video game environments. There are very few studies on the geography of video games. I aim to bridge the gap between game studies and geography, a naturally occurring link. The observation of elements such as the geography of an area is critical when exploring an individual’s perception of a video game environment. Individuals interact with the geography of their location on a day-to-day basis, whether it be physical or human geography; how they can relate a video game’s geography to the real world dramatically affects their immersion. An …

Safe Water For All: A Multi-Modal Approach To North Alabama's Water Resources, Elijah Walker

Theses

Environmental degradation is a destructive force produced by the human disturbance of pollution. It is a phenomenon that gradually evolves landscapes over time resulting in irreversible outcomes. Environmental degradation physically affects spaces’ resources, objects, and inhabiting humans. This study observes the impacts of pollution beyond physical boundaries and how it affects human identity/sense of place through the utilization of geographic information systems. Specifically, it examines cultural identity developed through human experiences and connections to landscapes containing water resources. Following, pollution contaminates water resources disrupting experiences and connections thus causing the cultural identity to disappear. The case study applied to this …

Vertical Adaptive Reuse: Balancing The Past And Present, Jostin Sarmiento

Theses

Many countries like the United States are taking lands that are untouched and putting in new structures stripping away the natural beauty of the site. Structures that once thrived in the past lay in waste as society continues to move forward. Architecture can be used to revitalize abandoned historic structures keeping a balance between respecting the past while designing for the present and the future. This a design thesis that proposes to revive an existing structure by adding a vertical addition for the pedestrian to experience the past, present, and future while rising up.

Deep Feature Learning And Adaptation For Computer Vision, Abu Md Niamul Taufique

Theses

We are living in times when a revolution of deep learning is taking place. In general, deep learning models have a backbone that extracts features from the input data followed by task-specific layers, e.g. for classification. This dissertation proposes various deep feature extraction and adaptation methods to improve task-specific learning, such as visual re-identification, tracking, and domain adaptation. The vehicle re-identification (VRID) task requires identifying a given vehicle among a set of vehicles under variations in viewpoint, illumination, partial occlusion, and background clutter. We propose a novel local graph aggregation module for feature extraction to improve VRID performance. We also …

Mineral Nutritional Status Of Plants Of A Public Park Under Long-Term Irrigation With Treated Sewage Effluent, Chandana Chakraborty

Theses

Treated sewage water is widely used for irrigation of urban greenery in UAE, and it contains significant number of elements that serve as nutrients for plants. The crucial unresolved question that remains, is regarding its long-term impact on the nutritional status of plants. Sulaimi Park of Al Ain was chosen as the study site. The main objective was to examine if the nutrient supply was adequate for plants. N, P, K levels were expected to exceed plant demands and micronutrient supply was assumed to be below plant requirements. To assess this, soil pH, annual nutrients input with water and elemental …

Yield, Nutrient Contents And Antioxidant Levels In Basil (Ocimum Basilicum L.) Grown In Aquaponic And Soil Systems, Maryam Ahmed Albedwawi

Theses

A study was conducted to evaluate the performance of Ocimum basilicum L. in both aquaponic and soil systems in the UAE climatic condition. The experiments were conducted under greenhouse conditions. Plants were raised in aquaponic beds with ornamental fishes in different concentrations. At the same time, a set of plants were raised in pots under a greenhouse set-up. The studied parameters were morphological (total weight and leaf number, shoot and root length, number of branches), biochemical (chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, anthocyanin, xanthophyll, protein, and phenol contents) and antioxidant levels (Ascorbic acid and tocopherol). For analyzing the stress effects …

Effect Of Natural Elicitors And Cold Storageperiod On Quality Improvement Of Uae Date Palm Fruit (Phoenix Dactylifera L. Cv. Khesab), Shamsa Salem Nasser Abdulla Alblooshi

Theses

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is one of the most important fruit trees grown in arid and semi-arid regions. Despite the immense capabilities of date palm, it is still a challenge to maintain fruit quality, marketability, and shelf life. The objective of this study was to investigate the synergistic effect of a preharvest spray application of the natural elicitor chitosan (Ch) 1% alone and in combination with salicylic acid (SA) 2 mM and calcium chloride (Ca) 3%; (Ch, SA, Ca, Ch+Ca, Ch+ SA, Ch+ SA +Ca) on the quality parameters, shelf life and bioactive compound content of date fruit of …

Elucidation Of The Interaction Between Hemorphins And Targets In The Renin-Angiotensin System, Amie Jobe

Theses

Hemorphins, short bioactive peptides produced by the enzymatic cleavage of the hemoglobin β-chain, exhibit anti-hypertensive effects via the inhibition of the angiotensin-1 converting enzyme (ACE1), a key component of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) that governs blood pressure regulation. ACE1 and its homolog ACE2, which is also involved in the RAS, share significant similarity in their catalytic domains. The main objective of this work was to identify and compare the molecular mechanisms that underlie the interaction of hemorphins of camels and that of other mammals with ACE1 and ACE2. In silico docking and molecular dynamics simulations were employed, and in vitro …

Towards Efficient Lifelong Machine Learning In Deep Neural Networks, Tyler L. Hayes

Theses

Humans continually learn and adapt to new knowledge and environments throughout their lifetimes. Rarely does learning new information cause humans to catastrophically forget previous knowledge. While deep neural networks (DNNs) now rival human performance on several supervised machine perception tasks, when updated on changing data distributions, they catastrophically forget previous knowledge. Enabling DNNs to learn new information over time opens the door for new applications such as self-driving cars that adapt to seasonal changes or smartphones that adapt to changing user preferences. In this dissertation, we propose new methods and experimental paradigms for efficiently training continual DNNs without forgetting. We …

Functional Evolutionary Adaptation Of Binding Dynamics In The Sars-Cov-2/Ace2 Interface From Bats To Humans, Madhusudan Rajendran

Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the substantial public health, economic, and societal consequences of virus spillover from a wildlife reservoir. Widespread human transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) also presents a new set of challenges when considering viral spillover from people to naïve wildlife and other animal populations. Here, we used molecular dynamic (MD) simulations to understand the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from bats to humans and investigate the evolution of the various human variants. More specifically, we used MD simulations to understand the atomic fluctuation dampening at the receptor-binding domain (RBD)/ angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) interface …

Sustainability In Design: The Exploration Of Using Digital Design As A Tool To Promote Environmental Conservation And Sustainable Practice, Kaitlyn Maxwell

Theses

The final website deliverable functions not only as a means of presentation, but as a jumping off point for digital designers to build off of, using the carefully curated resources and informational findings that are included in, and crafted specifically for, this project. By focusing on three main aspects of how to answer the research question 1) creating awareness, 2) making a case for caring, and 3) effective messaging methods, a framework has been created that the audience can expand upon without being overwhelmed by a question with many potential routes to travel down. A digital designer can promote sustainable …

Creating Engaging Online Curriculum In A Secondary Graphic Design Class, Berea Moss

Theses

This project focuses on how to improve online learning courses leading to increased student engagement. This project examines a variety of online tools and course structures such as Padlet, introductory videos, and prompt teacher feedback to engage a variety of learners throughout the online course. Prior research conducted on proper online course design was used in the development of an online unit of instruction. The unit created consists of four lessons with an emphasis on proper course layout, student-teacher interactions, and engaging online tools. The project studies the engagement of seventy-eight seventh and eighth grade graphic design students during the …

Convection In High-Mass And Low-Mass Common Envelopes, Emily C. Wilson

Theses

While isolated stars evolve in fairly predictable ways, the evolution of a binary star (i.e., a pair of stars) is not as well understood. Many close binary systems undergo a phase of evolution wherein one star engulfs the other such that both stars share a common stellar envelope. During this phase, the orbital distance between the two stars rapidly shrinks by a factor of 100-1000 in approximately 1-10 years. As a result of this so-called “inspiral,” the companion deposits energy into the envelope until the shared envelope itself becomes gravitationally unbound and is ejected from the system. The efficiency with …

Investigating The Presence Of Cladocera Species Within The Wetlands Of Uae, Shamma Eisa Salem Shahdad Alneyadi

Theses

The wetlands ecosystems found in the Arabian Peninsula have been poorly investigated. Moreover, the available information about the presence of freshwater communities have been rarely documented. Although there are scattered records about the presence of freshwater Cladocera organisms within the Arabian Gulf countries; few of them have received proper taxonomic identification. Cladocera populations in freshwater bodies are always characterizing its water quality and other living invertebrates’ community. United Arab Emirates wetlands are among the ecosystems belonging to Ramsar convention for its conservation. The presence of both temporary and permanent freshwater area has been developed after the great interest to collect …

Effects Of St713 With Simultaneous Histamine H3 And Dopamine D2/D3 Receptor Antagonist Properties On Cognitive Impairments And Autism-Like Behaviors In Btbr T+Tf/J Mice, Mohammed Mustafa Alawad

Theses

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a multifactorial neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by two core symptoms which are impairments in social interaction and communication, repetitive and restricted behaviors. Dopamine (DA) and histamine (HA) are two neurotransmitters that are proposed to be involved in several brain disorders including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and narcolepsy, all of those disorders are comorbid with ASD. Thus, the palliative effects of the novel multiple-active histamine H3 receptor (H3R) antagonist and dopamine D2/D3 receptor (D2/D3R) antagonist ST-713 with its high H3R antagonist affinity and balanced inhibitory effects on both dopaminergic receptor subtypes D2R and D3R on ASD-like behaviors in …

The Effect Of Marine Snow Particle Distribution On The Foraging Behavior Of Calanus Pacificus, Elena Beckhaus

Theses

Marine snow is a major component of the biological pump, through which carbon is exported to the deep ocean. The sinking of marine snow can be disrupted by organisms, including many species of zooplankton that ingest or break up aggregates. These processes can have important impacts on planktonic food web dynamics and carbon export. Marine snow can have vertically patchy distributions, occurring in thin layers, which may further affect interactions with zooplankton. In this lab-based study, we examined how the presence of a marine snow layer affects copepod behavior and ingestion.

We conducted a series of experiments in which copepods …

Crassostrea Gigas Invasion In Southern California: Macrofaunal Diversity And Local Community Impacts Of Ecosystem Engineers On Estuarine Habitats, Noah Jansen-Yee

Theses

Many marine ecosystems are facing the growing threat of biological invasions. These invasions can have a variety of different impacts on ecosystems and their inhabitants. The Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, is currently in the relatively early stages of invasion in San Diego estuaries. Crassostrea gigas is a large, filter-feeding bivalve that forms dense oyster beds on hard substrate. These oysters are known to outcompete native counterparts and drastically alter habitats where they are present. Crassostrea gigas is an ecosystem engineer that, through shell creation and formation of a dense oyster matrix, impacts ecosystems in a variety of direct and indirect …

A Novel 3d Animation About Human Visual System: From Retina To Perception, Qiuwan Liu

Theses

Introduction to vision and perception has been a fundamental topic for students from varied majors in college. Students who study Biology, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Visual Design, need to learn about the visual pathway before they dive into more specific research topics. This thesis intends to create a 3D animation to assist professors explaining the complex process of the visual pathway. The target audience for this project is undergraduate students majoring in color science. My goal of this animation is to introduce students to the complicated anatomy of the retinal structure and the molecular pathway of the photoreceptors to demonstrate …

Towards Sustainable Cities: E-Waste Collecting Machine: A Conceptual Design, Marwah Al Ramsi, Alia Al Helali

Theses

Continuous development, keeping up with technology and increasing the production of multi-feature electronic devices are all factors that have increased the use of electronic devices all over the world. The accumulation of E-devices by individuals increases the amount of electronic waste that causes environmental pollution problems. Therefore, an innovative solution must be found that encourages people to give up old or damaged electronic items for recycling and benefit from their contents. An electronic waste collecting scheme that grants reward points to contributors and link the waste to recycling companies is suggested as an appropriate solution to attract people's attention. The …

Aims: Action Against Infirmity And Malnutrition In Seniors, Maeve Lorraine Mary O'Connell

Theses

Aim: The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate the relationship between nutrition and frailty in Irish older adults. The nutritional status, dietary quality and perceived barriers/motivators to nutrition were also examined, and a frailty intervention protocol was designed. Methods: Cross-sectional study in Irish community-dwelling adults aged ≥65 years. Nutritional status, dietary intake, functional mobility and food choice motivators/healthy eating barriers were assessed using the Mini Nutritional Assessment – Short Form (MNA-SF), a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test and a custom designed 2-item questionnaire, respectively. Frailty was defined as three or more of …

Genetic Selection For Improved Efficiency And Profitability In Beef Cattle, David Kelly

Theses

Despite the importance of feed intake and efficiency in beef production, there are still gaps in our knowledge on optimal production efficiency traits and breeding strategies for improved feed, production and economic efficiency. The objectives of this thesis were to redefine production efficiency in growing cattle by exploiting carcass information and to validate current beef breeding goals for improving efficiency, and to investigate the relationships of feeding behaviour with performance, feed efficiency, and carcass merit. Feed intake and liveweight data were available on up to 6,088 cattle, of which 3,146 had carcass data, 4,672 had ultrasound data and 1,548 had …

Elucidation Of Novel And Established Campylobacter Species With Clinical And Agricultural Significance Through Phenotypic, Genotypic, And Taxonomic Investigation, Caoimhe Lynch

Theses

Campylobacter spp. are well-established human, veterinary and economic pathogens, with a broad host range spanning from terrestrial and marine mammalian, avian and reptilian hosts. The scope of the study includes novel and notorious species within the genus, with reference to zoonotic agents Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli - the leading cause of human bacterial gastroenteritis in the EU and Ireland, Campylobacter fetus that represents the most common campylobacter causing bacteraemia and two novel species isolated from pigs not described in the literature previously. C. jejuni and C. coli isolates (n = 350) recovered from broiler caecal and neck skin samples, …