Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

"Because I Like It? No, They Made Me Do It!!" Why Juveniles Engage In Sexting, Jennifer Ann Haegele

Theses

Developments in technology have changed the way we do everything; advanced our research capabilities, enhanced our communication abilities and speeds, even the way people commit crimes. It provides perpetrators with a new way to commit traditional crimes as well as new forms of crime. One of the many opportunities involved with increased communication devices is known as sexting. Adolescent sexting has received national and local attention due to possible long-term implications such as registering as a sex offender and even suicide. Sexting, which is considered an antisocial behavior among adolescents, has progressively become implicated in peer pressure as well. Peer …

The Sound Of Music: The Influence Of Evoked Emotion On Recognition Memory For Musical Excerpts Across The Lifespan, Sherrie L. Parks

Theses

TITLE: THE SOUND OF MUSIC: THE INFLUENCE OF EVOKED EMOTION ON RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR MUSICAL EXCERPTS ACROSS THE LIFESPAN Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen, 1999) posits that as people age, they selectively focus on positive aspects of emotional stimuli as opposed to negative as a way of regulating emotions. Thus, older adults remember positive information better than negative. This hypothesis has been tested extensively with visual stimuli, but rarely with auditory stimuli. Findings from this study provide support in the auditory domain. In this study, 135 younger, middle-aged, and older adults heard consonant (pleasant) and dissonant (unpleasant) musical excerpts. Participants were …

The Effect Of Condtional Discrimination Training On Choice Making In Children During `Pre-Gambling' Activities, Leigha S. Shoup

Theses

Past research has shown conditional discrimination training of a stimulus to change its function by manipulating variables within the contingencies (e.g., Johnson & Dixon, 2009), and the present study attempted to extend this research. Experimenters exposed 3 children (ages 6-9 years) to a computer program that trained participant to discriminate between two contextual cures (blue and yellow) representing more than and less than. All three participants will demonstrate an increased preference toward the color that had been paired with more than during both conditional discrimination training phases.

Deviant Peers, Opportunity, And Cyberbullying: A Theoretical Examination Of A New Deviance, Charern Lee

Theses

Scholars of cybercrime have used social learning theory (SLT) and routine activities theory (RAT) to explain the variation in offending and victimization; however, to date, only RAT has been used to explain the specific behavior of cyberbullying. Therefore, this study combines SLT and RAT concepts to explain the cyberbullying phenomenon. Today's adolescents are exposed early to cyberspace and this has given them more opportunities to bully their peers, especially in an environment that is difficult to monitor by adults. The results from this study of a sample of Southeastern middle and high school students suggest that the opportunity component of …

This Is The Best I Can Do, Amy Renee Milton

Theses

“This Is the Best I Can Do” is a collection of short stories and poems that explores the psychology of lost ideals. The characters in these stories hold convictions about how the world is and how people should be that are altered when they are placed in situations that prove reality is far more complex. With shaken faith comes the necessity of building a new understanding not only of the world around them as a whole but of their own lives and identities. These revisions are not necessarily improvements, but they are necessary. Whether the faith is in a deity, …

A Case Study Of Religious Engagement Online: How Malaysian Muslim Students Access Islamic Information, Mohd Mahadi

Theses

The spread of digital technology has expanded how people engage with religious information. Religious activities are no longer restricted to physical spaces as the Internet allows users to customize their religious experiences. This study, grounded in the uses and gratifications theory, explores how Malaysian Muslim students access religious information across two mediums: print and electronic media; as well as investigating the relationship between the preferred medium for accessing information and religious engagement. Malaysian Muslim students studying in Malaysia and the United States were recruited online for preliminary and in-depth interviews. The results show that access to the Internet, availability of …

Akrasia And The Elusive Self, Frank R. Faries

Theses

The concept of akrasia, or weakness of will, involves knowingly acting against what one judges best. This seems like a paradox of irrationality. However, I argue akrasia implies a notion of the self as a single, agentive mental object which persists across time, has a particular character, and is the subject of experience. This notion corresponds to the “folk” notion of the self invoked in everyday self-experience. However, the folk notion of the self is not only unnecessary for self-experience, it is also the source of the air of paradox surrounding akrasia. The novel view of the self introduced herein—the …

A Physicalist Account Of Consciousness And The Conceivability Argument, Christopher John Owen

Theses

I argue that David Chalmers’s Conceivability Argument is just as easily applied to a physical account of consciousness as it is applied to dualism, which implies that the Conceivability Argument yields absurd conclusions. To do so, I give a physical account of phenomenal consciousness within the brain, and then argue that conceiving of zombies is begging the question. I also suggest that because I have a plausible account of phenomenal consciousness based within the physical, such a consciousness is just as conceivable as a zombie would be in the Conceivability Argument. As I have given a conceivable account of physical …

Reconsidering The Battered Woman Syndrome Defense For Women Who Kill, Krista J. Wiley

Theses

This paper considers two possible alterations to the current use of Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) as a defense for the criminal act of murder. First, I will argue that BWS is best used as an excuse defense for murder. In the United States, BWS has historically been used as a justification defense for victims of long-term domestic violence who kill their abusers. A justification defense attempts to show that the criminal defendant’s action was warranted and justified while an excuse defense is meant to show that the criminal defendant is not fully responsible for her actions due to some mental …

Concepts, Universals, And The Abstract, David Keith Mcgraw

Theses

Through a historical investigation into the medieval problem of universals, I come to an understanding of the philosophical notion of ‘concept’ that is compatible with the contemporary discussion of concepts within cognitive science. Contra Edouard Machery (2009), I argue that the philosophical and psychological notions of ‘concept’ are compatible by developing the Aristotelian solution to the problem of universals into a conceptualist position. This will then be used to subsume the various paradigms of concepts countenanced by contemporary psychologists. I emphasize a conceptual scheme of reality that is embraced by both ancient and contemporary thinkers: what I call the tetrafurcation …

Aristotle’S Conception Of Equity In Context, Andrew Sucre

Theses

Aristotle’s discussion of equity (ἐπιείκεια) in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Rhetoric is examined in its proper historical legal and political context in order to present an informed understanding of equity and its role in Aristotle’s thought. Contemporary interpretations have invoked anachronistic legal features, and these interpretations, as a result, have failed to capture the proper understanding of the text. After an examination of relevant features of Athenian legal practice, this thesis argues that the Athenian institution of arbitration exemplifies the proper role of equity, a role in which equity is that type of justice that approaches the higher virtue …

Pattern Changing Clothing, Yong Kwon

Theses

People's styles and characters are changed by their environment and their relationship throughout their lifetime. However, the garment that we wear has just one look without accessories because once we wear clothing its appearance doesn't change, even though it is an essential medium to express ourselves. This thesis project's main goal is to make a piece of responsive clothing and to provide users the pleasure of creating their own style. When the clothing is an active medium through interactive communication between a wearer and a garment, it will be a responsive living object for a user. By the use of …

Matter, Spirit, And Cosmogony: The Context And Meaning Of Thomas Vaughan’S Alchemical Vitalism, Adam Heinrich Borrego

Theses

During the seventeenth century in Europe, three major theories of matter were in contention for the dominant natural philosophy: the hylomorphism of the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy, the mechanism of the Cartesians and other mechanical philosophers, and the vitalism of the Hermeticists and alchemists. The debate over matter between these three views of the physical world, as well as the argument over their associated epistemologies, fueled the scientific revolution. The fact that alchemy was a viable contender for the dominant natural philosophy of the time—an era that is supposed to be marked by strides forward to a more “rational” and “scientific” view …

Joint Optimization Of Manifold Learning And Sparse Representations For Face And Gesture Analysis, Raymond Ptucha

Theses

Face and gesture understanding algorithms are powerful enablers in intelligent vision systems for surveillance, security, entertainment, and smart spaces. In the future, complex networks of sensors and cameras may disperse directions to lost tourists, perform directory lookups in the office lobby, or contact the proper authorities in case of an emergency. To be effective, these systems will need to embrace human subtleties while interacting with people in their natural conditions. Computer vision and machine learning techniques have recently become adept at solving face and gesture tasks using posed datasets in controlled conditions. However, spontaneous human behavior under unconstrained conditions, or …

A Better Looking Brain: Image Pre-Processing Approaches For Fmri Data, Siddharth Khullar

Theses

Researchers in the field of functional neuroimaging have faced a long standing problem in pre-processing low spatial resolution data without losing meaningful details within. Commonly, the brain function is recorded by a technique known as echo-planar imaging that represents the measure of blood flow (BOLD signal) through a particular location in the brain as an array of intensity values changing over time. This approach to record a movie of blood flow in the brain is known as fMRI. The neural activity is then studied from the temporal correlation patterns existing within the fMRI time series. However, the resulting images are …

Design For Long Distance Relationships, Chen An

Theses

Does holding on to the mantra "distance makes the heart grow fonder" begin to give you some doubts? If you are troubled by your long distance relationship, you are not alone. According to Ezinearticles.com, "an estimated 2.9% of US marriages were considered long distance, with 1 in 10 marriages reported to have included a period at long distance within the first 3 years. Between 25-40% of all romantic relationships among students attending colleges across the US are Long Distances. " Every day on the planet, millions of people have no choice but to deal with being miles apart from their …

Assessing The Performance Of Digital Micromirror Devices For Use In Space-Based Multi-Object Spectrometers, Kenneth Fourspring

Theses

A current need in space-based instrumentation is a reconfigurable slit mask. Several techniques for slit masks have been employed for ground-based astronomical spectrographs. These ground-based instruments have used large discrete components, which are impractical for remote operation in space-based deployment. The Texas Instruments' Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) was originally conceived purely for display purposes, but is a viable candidate to be use as a slit mask in a space-based multi-object spectrograph (MOS). The Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturing industry has enabled the robust integration of both silicon transistors and Micro-Electrical Mechanical Systems (MEMS) optical components into a very reliable monolithic chip …

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 …

Impartial Validity, Salah Ahmed

Theses

Impartial Validity probes the relationship between self-representation and self-validation. This probing arises from an unsatisfied attempt to validate my own trauma associated with combat and selfhood. I find myself drawn to photograph banal objects that seem to reflect me, using representation to authenticate the experience of trauma. I feel a connection with these objects before I photograph them. Yet, once I have rendered them as images, I discover that the tenuous connections between the objects and myself were wholly created by the potential of the camera in my original encounter. These connections have little or no reality outside of the …

A Cart, A Box, A Gps: A Luggage Cart And A Clip Style Information Device Design From The View Of Universal Design, Sunyoung Stephanie Kim

Theses

The existing design of the airport luggage cart, which is intended to help travelers carry multiples pieces of luggage, has some issues. Also, the travelers sometimes are challenged to get information or to communicate with the workers at the airports especially when people travel outside of their mother country. These issues show that the airport needs a new luggage cart that is designed under the aspect of Universal Design. Therefore, this study proposed a new luggage cart design and the possibility of it to provide better service for all.

Integrating Site-Specific Environmental Graphic Design Within An Urban Context, Sanjyot Wagle

Theses

There are opportunities for environmental graphic design solutions that can enable urban residents to grasp information faster, reach destinations sooner and foster memorable experiences. In the daily negotiation of city living there may also be opportunities for educating residents about meaningful community-related topics. Graphic design can play a key role in addressing these goals. Environmental graphic design and wayfinding can help make urban experiences easier and more interesting. Incorporating the strategies of layering and sequencing within environmental graphic design solutions can strengthen the overall design and the particular messages being conveyed. One socially important topic city residents need to be …

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 …

Examination Of Interactive Experience: Construction Of Physical And Social Presence In Virtual Environments, Malwina Buldys

Theses

Interactivity seems to be a familiar concept, which partially explains its frequent use in discussions about new communication technologies and what they can bring to communication studies. However, interactivity research has yet to reach a comprehensive and concrete consensus concerning the antecedents and consequences of interactive experiences. The main objective of this research is to determine the factors responsible for fostering the interactivity experience in the multiuser virtual environments and to observe how this variance in interactivity will affect the formation of physical and social presence. The study also examines the possible relationship between physical and social presence via correlation …

Effect Of Time Constraint On Second Language Reading Comprehension, Hammad Alshammari

Theses

This study aimed to investigate the role of time constraint on second language reading comprehension via the recruiting of 47 Saudi participants who were learning English as a second language. Subjects shared similar level of English proficiency; all participants were in their third semester of English at Aljouf University, Saudi Arabia, at the time of data collection. Participants were divided into three time groups; limited (20 minutes), extended (30 minutes), and unlimited (40 minutes). In terms of stimuli, a reading text was adapted from a standard English proficiency exam, TOEFL. The text consisted of 699 words and was of moderate …

Gas Mask X, Yoon-Ha Noh

Theses

Gas Mask X is a 21-minute psychological genre, short narrative film by Yoon-ha Noh that was completed and premiered in November 2012. The film is about a character, Gas Mask X who carries the guilt and trauma about his mother and father's deaths. Gas Mask X's mother died when she was giving birth to him, and his father committed suicide in front of him when Gas Mask X was only 10 years old. His horrible memories have continually `suffocated' him, so he has worn a gas mask since after the death of his father. Gas Mask X reveals how the …

Safety Performance Comparison Between Light Rail Transit And Subway, Nehemie Jasmin

Theses

Along with the expansion and addition of guide way transit systems, such as light rail and subway, there came the need to compare the safety performance of each mode. The multimodal transportation systems with many different technologies, operating characteristics and diversified environments made it more difficult to compare their safety.

In order to evaluate the potential for intermodal comparison of safety performance measures, the thesis has focused on the subway and Light Rail Transit (LRT) modes at the national level. Starting with clear definitions of each safety category, the analysis utilizes mostly the National Transit Database (NTD) from recent years …

Remnant, Allyson Klopp

Theses

This body of work focuses on the creation of structures by individuals and shedding of identities. I have recreated remnants that portray a significant part of an organism's livelihood and identity. The remaining evidence of identity leaves a footprint of the past telling their story.

Cultural Democracy: From Uncle Tom's Cabin To A House Made Of Dawn; Unto Us Is Born A Manchild In The Promised Land, Herbert M. Ricks

Theses

Cultural democracy is the ability of a people to define their existence regardless of the dominant culture whose norms and values are institutionally accepted and expected. Where most freedoms refer to the individual, cultural freedom, in contrast, is a collective freedom referring to the right of people to follow or adopt a way of life of their choice. While varying levels of economic and political democracy have been achieved in America, the social techniques devised to create and implement cultural democracy are dependent upon capitalist endeavors developed from religious indoctrination and colonization. Through a close examination of Claude Brown's Manchild …

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 …