Digital Commons Network^™

Online Social Communities Through The Lens Of Polyvore, Maansi Aurora

Theses

Traditionally, people used the Internet for simple interaction within the communication sphere.With the introduction of social media platforms the online world has become more interesting as consumers are using them to create, share, and discuss over the Internet. The growing popularity of the social online communities is bridging the gap between consumers and brands by providing them with a platform to communicate with each other. This study visually analyzes Polyvore, a social shopping online community. It sheds light upon how members use Polyvore in different ways, the hedonic motivations associated with shopping online, and the way in which an online …

Reconstructed Memories, Sarah Vaughn

Theses

The Beginning is the End of the Piece You Started With:

I want to explore the use of visual narrative to convey the breadth of emotion within a moment. The scenes I create are snapshots of stories whose roots are based in my own memories. These pieces from my mind are usually partial and fleeting, recalled as if viewing my own life from a third person perspective. Primarily through the use of advanced methods in kiln forming glass, the work will create a three dimensional illustration of these experiences.

The Art of Reconstruction:

I think about life, what I am …

Campus Recycling - Influences And Decisions, Brooke Ann Lopeman

Theses

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF BROOKE A LOPEMAN, for the Master of Science degree IN GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES, presented on JULY 6, 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: CAMPUS RECYCLING - INFLUENCES AND DECISIONS MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Matthew Therrell The purpose of this study is to assess the factors that most influence decision making in regards to environmental programming on a university campus. The results of this study serve as a guide for campus administration when implementing future environmental programs. At most universities there is a large population living on campus, this creates the opportunity to encourage …

An Examination Of George Orwell's Newspeak Through Politeness Theory, Byron Scott Millard

Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the formation of politeness in the use of Orwell's artificial language, Newspeak. Multiple theories of politeness will be utilized for the examination but with primary focuses on Brown and Levinson's (1987) original theory and Watts' (2003) views on politic behavior. Orwell's (1949) original novel will be used for the grammatical and lexical basis of the language as well as the source for the language's sociolinguistic aspects. It will be shown that politeness is present within the society and its language, even though it is mechanically altered due to the structure of Newspeak. The largest changes …

Travelmacedonia: A Solution For The Discovery Of Macedonia As A Place Of Travel, Violeta Mangovski

Theses

TravelMacedonia is a thesis, which explores the relationship between interactive design and marketing. Both are studied in respect to create an improved marketing system for Macedonia's tourism, as it is under discovered. A website and app prototype are created in order to meet the goal of increasing awareness of Macedonia and desire to travel there. This topic is relevant to the field of design because of its importance in making the retrieval of information not only accessible, but also to provide this information in an easily accessible and readable way.

The website is designed to surprise users of how interesting …

The Sublime & The Picturesque In Art, James M. Chleboun

Theses

Is it possible to create "classical'' landscape pictures of today? The genre of drawing and painting landscapes is the subject for this thesis. For comparing for relevancy, the binary topic is two aesthetic terms, the Sublime and the Picturesque. I will show what the art critics and artists say about those terms with several historical and contemporary artists a<; examples. I will explain what I did with some of my drawings and paintings in relation to the terms within the "classical" composition format.

The challenge for my work is to compose the contemporary landscape using the classical composing principles used by Old Masters. A contemporary German artist has succeeded very well in composing the '·classical·' landscapes of today with modern cultural attributes, but they …

Examining Student Severe Weather Behavior During A Hypothetical Tornado Scenario, C Martin Leavitt

Theses

No abstract provided.

Religious Change Experiences Of The Participants Of The Inner Healing Retreat At The English-Speaking Site Of The Divine Retreat Centre, Kerala, India, Joe Cardoso

Theses

The Divine Retreat Centre, Muringoor, Kerala, India is internationally known for the changes it effects in the lives of its retreat participants. To date, over ten million participants have attended the retreats over a decade. However there is a dearth of empirical research on the change processes involved in this retreat experience. This study was formulated to investigate the following research question: how do the participants at the Divine Retreat Centre come to be what they come to be as a result of each day‟s experience of the six day Inner Healing Retreat? This study is a qualitative investigation and …

The Irish Sport Horse Abroad: The Role Of Public Relations In Promoting An International Brand, Marianne Van Pelt

Theses

This thesis uses a case study approach to explore the role of public relations in promoting an international brand. This thesis attempts to determine whether public relations can contribute significantly to the promotion of an established international brand. This thesis looks at whether the people in the organisation formally responsible for promoting the Irish Sport Horse brand have a stated goal of promoting the brand, a clear intention of promoting the brand through public relations tactics, and whether find these tactics successful. The thesis also looks at the views of opinion makers within the industry to try to verify the …

Heat Misconceptions Among 11th Grade Students, Amnah Mohamed Abdullah Al Kaabi

Theses

This study explores the misconception of the female students at 11^thgrade about the heat concepts (e.g., latency, conduction, equilibrium, boiling point, etc.) the study targets to i – classifying the misconception nature, and ii- distinguishing the heat misconception from point of the lack of knowledge and lucky guess. A sample of 230 female students at 11^th grade randomly selected from five secondary schools in the Emirates of Fujairah; northern UAE. The heat misconception test (HMT), a three –tier diagnostic instrument comprising of ten question is used as data collection tool. The study raises the three research questions. …

The Impact Of Nitrogen Limitation And Mycorrhizal Symbiosis On Aspen Tree Growth And Development, Bich Thi Ngoc Tran

Theses

Nitrogen deficiency is the most common and widespread nutritional deficiency affecting plants worldwide. Ectomycorrhizal symbiosis involves the beneficial interaction of plants with soil fungi and plays a critical role in nutrient cycling, including the uptake of nitrogen from the environment. The main goal of this study is to understand how limiting nitrogen in the presence or absence of an ectomycorrhizal fungi, Laccaria bicolor, affects the health of aspen trees, Populus tremuloides. Under limited nitrogen conditions, aspen tree growth and development is reduced, and mycorrhizal symbiosis may significantly improve plant biomass, providing sufficient nitrogen is available. The results of biochemical analysis …

Directing Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years In An Educational Theatre Environment, Philip J. Gill

Theses

This thesis explores the process of directing Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Last Five Years in an educational theatre setting. The author, Philip J. Gill, documents his approach to staging this complex, two-character show, which presents a unique narrative structure—one character moves forward in time while the other moves backward. Gill discusses his directorial vision, emphasizing the importance of time, musical transitions, and abstract staging to enhance the storytelling. He details the audition and casting process, highlighting challenges such as selecting actors who could meet the vocal and emotional demands of the roles.

The thesis also examines the collaboration with …

Sustainability Curriculum Inventory And Literacy Assessment: The Influence Of Values On Knowledge Of And Perceived Importance Of Sustainability Components, David James Drogos

Theses

The incorporation of sustainability education and sustainable practices in higher education serves several purposes. It prepares students for work in sustainability-focused professions, fosters environmentally responsible behavior in individuals, and helps to reduce the ecological impacts of the operational aspects of educational institutions. However, contemporary definitions of sustainability, which consider social, political, ecological, and economic influences on the environment, complicate educational initiatives. Distinct educational departments often consider sustainability through their specialized lens. Trans-disciplinary initiative must be enacted in order for sustainability education to reach its full potential. This paper outlines the results of an electronically administered faculty sustainability curriculum inventory as …

A Model Of Contaminant Transport, Saline Valley Aquifer, Gallatin County Illinois, Ryan William Cox

Theses

The Saline Valley Conservancy District (SVCD) formed in 1980 to provide a stable source of water to many communities in Southern Illinois. The SVCD well field located in the thickest, most productive region of the Saline Valley Aquifer lies directly adjacent to a reclaimed coal mine. Subsurface movement and surface discharge from the mine has been shown to be responsible for deterioration of water quality in the surrounding area, including the aquifer. Previous studies conducted in the region have addressed water supply issues and simulated contaminant transport from the reclaimed mine. The limited scope of these models did not extend …

The Use Of Coincident Synthetic Aperture Radar And Visible Imagery To Aid In The Analysis Of Photon-Counting Lidar Data Sets Over Complex Ice/Snow Surfaces, Kimberly H. Horan

Theses

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of multi-sensor data is becoming increasingly useful as a method of improving our understanding of complex environments, and can be an effective tool in the arsenal to help climate scientists to predict sea level rise due to change in the mass balance of large glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic. A novel approach to remote sensing of the continuously changing polar environment involves the use of coincident RADARSAT-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and Landsat 7 visible/near-infrared imagery, combined with digital elevation models (DEM) developed from Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar (MABEL) data sets.

MABEL is …

An Assessment Of Worldview-2 Imagery For The Classification Of A Mixed Deciduous Forest, Nahid Carter

Theses

Remote sensing provides a variety of methods for classifying forest communities and can be a valuable tool for the impact assessment of invasive species. The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) infestation of ash trees (Fraxinus) in the United States has resulted in the mortality of large stands of ash throughout the Northeast. This study assessed the suitability of multi-temporal Worldview-2 multispectral satellite imagery for classifying a mixed deciduous forest in Upstate New York. Training sites were collected using a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, with each training site consisting of a single tree of a corresponding class. Six classes were …

Effects Of Reputation And Aesthetics On The Credibility Of Search Engine Results, Bryan Christiansen

Theses

Search engines are the primary gatekeepers of online information, but are judged differently than traditional gatekeepers due to the interactive and impersonal nature of the online search process. The researcher distributed an online survey with 141 respondents and conducted 22 observational interviews. Information credibility was tested through measures of expertise, goodwill, and trustworthiness, which were each correlated with perceived reputation and perceived aesthetics. Search engine reputation was found to have moderate correlations with expertise and trustworthiness, and a lesser, but still moderate correlation with goodwill. Aesthetics was related to the credibility measures in similar but lesser proportions. Interviews indicated search …

Under Construction: Viewing Manipulated Space, Michael David Farrell Jr.

Theses

North America, the United States in particular, has established an unique and distinct connection to the the wildspaces outside of urban environments. The two spaces, urban and wilderness, are placed in opposition to one another in a sliding valuation scale that is based on the degradation experienced in these urban areas, due to industrialized capitalist means of production, by the inhabitants. These effects are the source of both literary and visual art protests that originate in the 19th century in both generations of the Hudson River School painters, American pastoral writing, philosophy, and photographs. These romanticized views of natural space …

At Cross Purposes: Protrestant Missionaries Among The Osage Indians 1820-1837, Joshua Nathan Luparell

Theses

Luparell, Joshua N. “At Cross Purposes: Protestant Missionaries Among the Osage Indians, 1820-1837. M.A. Thesis, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 2013. At Cross Purposes sets out to establish a nuanced interpretation of the complicated relationships forged between Osage Indians and Protestant missionaries. These interactions occurred between 1820 (when New England Protestant missionary societies first attempted to “civilize” and Christianize Osage Indians) and 1837, when the missionaries left the Osages without significantly impacting Osage beliefs or culture. This thesis challenges the relatively recent assertion that the Osages resisted the Christians and their messages. Instead, this thesis argues that the traditional diversity of …

Sobject, Warren Iii Lloyd

Theses

Attempting to find a solution to the problem of how to make art that is both critical yet participatory, sobject explores subject/object relations within the development of the medical gaze in the history of medico-clinical perception and Modern Art. Sobject works both analytically, tracing these apparently parallel developments, and synthetically as it forms a methodological approach from the interpolating spaces of each. It locates and analyzes histories of objective instrumentation between subjects and objects, then works to open and redistribute these into new possibilities. It does this by developing an artistic practice that engages with contemporary forms of institutionalized instrumentation, …

Using Word And Phrase Abbreviation Patterns To Extract Age From Twitter Microtexts, Nathaniel Moseley

Theses

The wealth of texts available publicly online for analysis is ever increasing. Much work in computational linguistics focuses on syntactic, contextual, morphological and phonetic analysis on written documents, vocal recordings, or texts on the internet. Twitter messages present a unique challenge for computational linguistic analysis due to their constrained size. The constraint of 140 characters often prompts users to abbreviate words and phrases. Additionally, as an informal writing medium, messages are not expected to adhere to grammatically or orthographically standard English. As such, Twitter messages are noisy and do not necessarily conform to standard writing conventions of linguistic corpora, often …

Assessing Foreclosure And Crime At Street Segments In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Blake Richard Christenson

Theses

Foreclosures are potentially problematic for neighborhood crime rates by providing crime attractors to residential communities. In the past, like many criminogenic features, foreclosures were typically seen as an inner city problem; however, in the wake of the housing market collapse of 2008 precipitated by suspect banking practices, foreclosures were particularly impacting young and new middle class homeowners (i.e., people with little credit history or assets). This study improves upon past research in two areas. First, instead of using large heterogeneous units of analysis (e.g., block groups, tracts, counties), this study uses street blocks. Street blocks, here, are preferred because of …

Already Gone, Manuel Fermin Hernandez Marquez

Theses

Already Gone is a project that explores the relationship of the photographic medium to the concepts of time and history, and the several temporal and historical layers contained within any photographic image. It is heavily influenced by photo-conceptualist practices that were introduced in the 1960s that often employed a de-skilled aesthetic, and questioned photography's intrinsic characteristics, possibilities, and limitations. Already Gone is inspired by the ideas of artistic agency in a time where the end of history and the beginning of post-history is proposed, and in the effects the demise of analog photography might have in the indexical nature of …

Comparison Of Media Selection In The U.S. And Indian Advertising Industries, Yashashree Potdar

Theses

Advertising is necessary to establish a brand and to increase the sale of the products. Media planning is an important phase of any advertising campaign. The purpose of this study was to determine the media types used in the advertising industries in India and in the U.S. Media professionals from five Indian advertising agencies and five U.S advertising agencies were interviewed to find out the media selection in both countries. The identification of media was then followed by the comparison of media selection in India and the U.S. The secondary research was carried out to find out media environment in …

Investigating The Apoptotic Response Of Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cells To Styrene, A Potential Poly(Adp-Ribose) Polymerase (Parp) Inhibitor, Shaina Richardson

Theses

Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is a rare basal-like subtype of breast cancer characterized by the absence of the estrogen (ER), progesterone (PR), and human epidermal receptor 2 (HER2) receptors which are normally targeted in other breast cancer subtypes, thereby making TNBC difficult to combat. In this study, four different styrene compounds (1.001, 1.006, 1.007, and 1.009) were used to treat TNBC cell lines HCC1806 and HCC70. Each of the compounds were composed of a 3-nitro group on the A ring and varying aryl groups on the B ring of the styrene. The breast cancer cells were exposed over a …

A Gas Chromatographic/Mass Spectral Analysis Of Aromatic Medicinal Plants From Tajikistan, Hanjing Zhang

Theses

Tajikistan is a small country located in central Asia which is rich in Aromatic medicinal plants. A large number of locally available plants species are used in the preparation of traditional medicines. However, research on essential oils of medicinal and aromatic plants from Tajikistan is still limited, and only a small number of species have been investigated. In coordination with a chemist from Tajik Academy of Sciences in Dushanbe, six aromatic medicinal plants were collected and their essential oils were extracted for analysis. The targeted plants are Bunium persicum B. Fedtsch., Anethum graveolens L., Galagania frangrantissima Lipsky, Melissa officinalis L., …

Utilisation Of Spent Dairy Yeast Kluyveromyces Marxianus For The Production Of Flavoured Yeast Extracts., Brendan Mccarra

Theses

Spent dairy yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus (SDYK), a by-product of whey to ethanol fermentations, was investigated as a natural biomass source for the production of alternative flavoured yeast extracts. SDYK which was characterised by a high protein content (55.3% (w/w) ± 0.8) and comparable levels of flavor enhancing amino acids to that of S. cerevisiae was prepared for induced autolysis at different pH values in the presence of inductors sodium chloride and the proteolytic enzyme papain. An induced autolysis process was developed for the production of flavoured yeast extracts in which pH and autolytic treatment applied were found to have a …

The Death Of The Press Release And The Changing Media Relations Landscape: A Public Relations Perspective, Jenn Crotty

Theses

The public relations industry of today is a much different one to that of a decade ago. The changes that are taking place within the public relations industry are monumental and are not going unnoticed. In recent years the explosion of new media and social networks has led to a distorted media relations landscape. Many academics and public relations professionals have began to focus on the importance of incorporating new media and social networks into their occupation. It appears as though the traditional media landscape is being swept under the rug.

This study aims to challenge the perception that new …

Under A Pale Grey Sky: An Interactive Timeline Of Iroquoian Warfare And Its Impact On The Acceleration Of American Colonization, Thomas Weaver

Theses

Early American settlers thought the Iroquois to be a violent, forceful and barbaric amalgamation of Native American Nations. Their organization of warfare, community, and politics allowed them to remain one of the most powerful nations for many years. Conflict with other tribes was a normal part of life for the Iroquois and the surrounding nations. However, as the American settlers began moving towards the frontier, Iroquois conflicts with the Algonquian begin to rise in frequency. This led to weakening of the Iroquois population and allowed the American settlers to usurp land from the Six Nations without considerable opposition.

Specific Gage Analysis On The Lower White River, Arkansas, Adam Levis Shaffner

Theses

This study documents the stage adjustments in the Lower White River between 1931 and 2012 at four rated gaging stations along the trunk stem of the river. The study reach extends from Calico Rock, Arkansas, to the confluence of the White River with the Mississippi River north of Arkansas City, a distance of about 509 km. The specific gage approach was used to track hydrological response in the study reach. In order to approach spatial homogeneity across the four gaging locations along the study reach, input discharges were normalized to multiples of mean daily flow (MDF). Specific gage analysis tracks …