Digital Commons Network^™

Variation In Diet Between Cave And Surface Populations Of The Northern Slimy Salamander (Plethodon Glutinosus), Megan A. Carter

Theses

The diet of the Northern Slimy Salamander (Plethodon glutinosus), a facultative cave-dweller, was examined at two pairs of subterranean and terrestrial sites in northern Alabama as its diet has remained largely unstudied. I investigated if salamanders are feeding in the darkness of caves and indirectly looked at specialization by examining gut contents via non-lethal gavaging for a year. A total of 52 salamanders were gavaged with cave salamanders rarely having stomach contents. Moreover, cave specimens ingested fewer prey items and a less diverse prey base compared to surface specimens. Eighty-four unique prey items/taxa were recovered across all sites. …

Applying Data Science And Machine Learning Techniques For Hydrological Applications : Case Study In Cambodia, Biplov Bhandari

Theses

Cambodia suffers from flooding and flash-flooding events every year, and thus better flood management and forecasting are crucial in taking early action. The Streamflow Prediction Tool (SPT) provides forecast discharge 15 days in advance globally. This thesis applies data-driven and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to improve Cambodia’s hydrological applications. Two case studies are presented – the first predicts the river discharge from the water level using time-series information; the second uses the predicted discharge from the first to bias-correct the SPT’s historical reanalysis data using several ML techniques. The historical Bias Correction (BC) is the first step toward the forecasted …

Developing A Contemplative Classroom. Are There Other Approaches That Usefully Extend Angelo Caranfa?, Rosemary Laoulach

Theses

This study will explore the literature on silence and contemplation in order to develop an approach for a contemplative classroom. It will examine Angelo Caranfa’s ideas on silence in education and a contemplative curriculum. The research will highlight some of the influences on his work, critiquing them and pointing out what can be further developed by outlining what a contemplative classroom might look like.

Contemplative practices will be defined broadly as silence, attentiveness, reflection, humility, attentive listening, and mindfulness. I will provide a theoretical and practical account of these to inform educators towards a holistic approach to teaching and learning …

An Exegetical Analysis Of The Johannine Jesus’S Son-Father Relationship In The Fourth Gospel With The Theological Significance And Implications In Contemporary Context, Jing Yih Hsieh

Theses

This exegetical study focuses on the distinctive characteristics of the Johannine Jesus’s unique cognitive perception, his claims of equality with God in the language of oneness in the Son-Father relationship in the Fourth Gospel, and with theological significance and implications in contemporary context.

Participation Of Tanzanian Nurses And Midwives In The Implementation Of Millennium Development Goals 4 (Reduction Of Child Mortality) And 5 (Improvement Of Maternal Health): A Case Study, Peter Taratara

Theses

In 2000, the United Nations (UN) developed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as an international framework to address poverty, promote sustainable development, and improve global health. The framework was translated into 8 goals with goals 4 and 5 targeting the reduction of child mortality and the improvement of maternal health. The UN and the World Health Organization (WHO) encouraged nurses and midwives to participate in the implementation process of the MDGs, and each country had the responsibility of formulating its own implementation policies and plans. The encouragement to participate was from the understanding that nurses and midwives are the backbone …

Do The Safeguards In The Victorian Assisted-Dying Legislation Adequately Account For The Experiences Of Other Nations?, Heath Harley-Bellemore

Theses

In 2017 the Victorian State Parliament passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, making it the first Australian jurisdiction since 1996 to pass assisted dying legislation. The Victorian model was hailed by the Government of Victoria as the ‘safest and most conservative in the world’, and had the benefit of drawing on over 20 years of voluntary assisted dying experiences of other jurisdictions for its development. This thesis examines the experiences of other jurisdictions and how they informed the development of the Victorian model. It examines available data, reports, and criticisms of international experiences and applies them to the Victorian …

The Accuracy And Validity Of Self-Reported Throwing Loads And The Characteristics Of Throws By Elite Cricket Players In Australia, Zachariah G. Hoyne

Theses

Objectives: To determine the relationship between elite cricket player’s self-reported and independently observed throwing volume. Examine whether sex, playing position, or time to upload self-reported data post training influences the accuracy of self-reported throwing loads. Describe the type and number of throws performed during elite cricket training, and identify characteristics such as type, distance and accuracy of throws.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Methods: A total of eight female and 18 male professional cricket players participated in the study. Overarm throws from 12 training sessions during the 2020-21 cricket year were observed. Player self-reported throwing volume data were retrieved …

Assess, Address, Progress: An Online Approach To Evaluate And Develop Teacher Education Students’ Numeracy Capability, Kate Hartup

Theses

For as long as numeracy has been assessed as a major domain in Australia (since 2003), Australian school students’ numeracy levels have been declining (Thomson et al., 2019). This decline is evident despite it being a national requirement for teachers to teach numeracy skills across all subject areas at all year levels (Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA), n.d.). Although there are several definitions of numeracy, fundamentally it is the application of mathematics and the ability to interpret and utilise mathematical information (Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), 2017). Given that teachers’ mathematical knowledge has been shown to affect their …

"That All May Justice Share: Sydney Catholics In The Interwar Years 1919-1929, Monica Van Gend

Theses

While the years immediately following Australia’s participation in World War I have received much academic attention, the churches in the post-war era have been largely overlooked. Responding to Michael McKernan’s claim that Australian churches became less relevant to Australian society after the war, this thesis examines the response of the Catholic Church in Sydney to life after the war. Utilising a dual methodology of religious history and social history, this thesis analyses the role of the Church at this time by examining its works and activities, drawing on primary sources in Archdiocesan archives and the archives of specific Catholic lay …

Tourism Trails And Resurgent Pathways: An Exploration Of The Nexus Between Indigenous-Led Tourism And Resurgence Discourses Alongside Karajarri Traditional Owners Of The Saltwater Kimberley, Australia, And Beyond, Bobbie Chew Bigby

Theses

This research explores the intersections between Indigenous-led tourism and resurgence among Indigenous communities. Resurgence is understood as practices promoting connections with culture, Country (i.e. Indigenous lands and waterways), and community. The research utilises a comparative case study approach to specifically analyse the experience of Karajarri Traditional Owners (TOs) of the saltwater Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. Comparative examples are drawn from Indigenous-led tourism development by other coastal Kimberley Aboriginal tourism leaders, as well as from the author’s own Tribal Nation, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, United States.

The conceptual framework for this work is derived from the following concepts from …

Intraperitoneal Instillation Of Local Anaesthetic (Ipila) In Bariatric Surgery And The Effect On Post-Operative Pain Scores: A Randomised Control Trial, Ramandeep Kaur

Theses

Background
Effective analgesia during bariatric procedures may be vital as it could reduce post-operative opioid use. This can lead to less nausea which may be associated with shorter post- operative length of stay (LOS). Understanding analgesic requirements in patients with obesity is important due to the varied physiology and increased number of comorbidities.

Objectives
The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of IntraPeritoneal Instillation of Local Anaesthetic (IPILA) to reduce opioid requirements in patients undergoing laparoscopic bariatric surgery.

Methods
A double-blinded randomised control trial was conducted to compare intraperitoneal instillation of ropivacaine to normal saline in 104 …

Does Acupuncture/Dry Needling Improve Pain And Itch In Abnormal Hypertrophic Scars, Catherine Tuckey

Theses

This research program investigated the use of acupuncture intervention as an adjunct for hypertrophic scar (HTS) management. Mechanistic evidence from ex vivo and animal studies suggests that acupuncture has the potential to modulate neurogenic inflammation to influence pain and itch associated with HTS. Further, acupuncture may mediate non-neuronal cells involved in the proliferation and remodelling stage of healing to promote scar maturation. Previous studies using acupuncture for scar management demonstrated positive outcomes, however low-quality clinical trials and case studies provide limited evidence for treatment benefit.

A treatment protocol was designed to investigate the effects of locally applied acupuncture compared to …

Exploration Of The Role Of The Enrolled Nurse Within A Team Nursing Model: Perspectives Of Enrolled Nurses And Registered Nurses, Anna Gardner

Theses

Background: The role of the nurse and the way in which nursing care is delivered has undergone significant change in recent years. Enrolled nursing, in particular, epitomises the extent of these changes. The scope within which enrolled nurses (ENs) may now practice grows ever wider, reaching into the skill domains once reserved for registered nurses (RNs). Medication administration is one such example. These changes, while addressing issues of nursing shortages and workforce flexibility, have also resulted in increasing role confusion between RNs and ENs, creating issues around appropriate delegation and adequate supervision.

Aim:The study aim was fourfold. First to …

Community Development Supporting Ecological Conversion, As Identified In Laudato Si’: On Care For Our Common Home, Anne Jennings

Theses

In this extraordinary time of multiple, intersecting crises with compounded costs in social, economic, and environmental degradation, calls for transformative change are emerging from all levels of humanity – global to local. Within that setting, my study concentrated on investigating change at a local level to address the research question ’How can community development theory and practice contribute to ecological conversion, as identified in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home?’

Since its release, Laudato Si’ has provoked considerable academic/theological and scientific/environmental debate that does not necessarily contain local people’s views and everyday lived experiences, given their often-limited access …

Reinterpreting The Villain: Changing The Pattern Of The Fairy Tale Through Sleeping Beauty’S Maleficent, Mackenzie Waldon

Theses

Recent filmic representations of the fairy tale villain can offer powerful counter-narratives to archetypal fairy tale stories. This thesis examines how certain contemporary representations of fairy tales have reinterpreted the traditional ‘villain’ archetype, revealing a greater diversity of perspectives. Using John Stephens’ and Peter Stockwell’s cognitive poetics theory on schema and scripts as a theoretical framework, this thesis closely analyses the known Disney fairy tale villain, Sleeping Beauty’s (1959) Maleficent, as she is portrayed in the live-action films Maleficent (2014) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), as well as Disney’s Descendants (2015, 2017, 2019) films. By analysing the patterns and …

The Fountain Formula. Damien Hirst’S Use Of Marcel Duchamp’S Readymade Controversy, Grayson Nader

Theses

Controversial art challenges the norms of society, by pushing boundaries to expose what is comfortable and uncomfortable. It inevitably garners attention and demands discourse. Marcel Duchamp was an innovator of controversy. He was angered by the status quo and material greed of the art industry of the early 1900s and rebelled against it with his now-famous readymade, Fountain. In Fountain, Duchamp created a formula that used controversy to garner attention from the public, the media and the art world. This formula was used by various artists throughout the past century. Contemporary artist Damien Hirst was disillusioned by the monotony of …

The Use Of Differential Reinforcement Of Other Behavior To Decrease Scripting, Kathleen Egbert, Robbie Hanson

Theses

Vocal scripting is a behavior commonly targeted for reduction with individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when it occurs at a rate or severity that interferes with learning (e.g., Koegel & Covert, 1972). Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) has been shown to be effective for reducing scripting in previous research, however additional replications of these results would add to the research literature to continue to support its use for this issue. The purpose of this study was to implement a DRO schedule with a young girl with ASD to reduce vocal scripting. The results showed a slight decrease in …

The Effects Of Preference Assessments On The Duration Of Independent Play For A Child With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Elise Amo, Robbie Hanson

Theses

Plays skills are important within typical development and independent play has shown to lead to the development of other skills, such as increased social interactions (Edwards et al., 2018). Previous research has demonstrated increases in independent play for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who display skill deficits in this area. However, research has been largely lacking for increasing independent play for individuals with ASD who simply display a preference for interacting with adults. The current study examined the effectiveness of incorporating a multiple-stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment to increase the duration of independent play for a child with …

The Effects Of Behavioral Skills Training On Staff Member Implementation Of Behavior Intervention Plans, Riley Young, Robbie Hanson

Theses

Behavioral skills training (BST) is a well-researched and empirically validated teaching method that typically involves the use of instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback to improve staff and client performance (Leaf et al., 2015). Previous studies have shown the effectiveness of BST across a wide variety of populations and skill sets, including within educational environments (Kirkpatrick et al., 2019). However, limited research exists on the use of BST to improve staff member implementation of behavior intervention plans (BIPs), particularly for staff members who have a history of incorrect implementation. The current study examines the effectiveness of in-person BST in a school …

The Discovery Of Lilly Pulitzer And Her Business Of Fashion, Susan Mallott

Theses

This thesis will be an investigative look at fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer. The significance of this project is based on the discovery of Lilly Pulitzer as one of the most successful women entrepreneurs in the fashion industry. Despite Lilly Pulitzer’s success, not much has been written about her. The few articles found written about her restated the same information. The writings about her talk of her privileged background and her social status but do not delve into who she was as a person or the social stigmas that she dealt with by being a businesswoman during the 1960’s. The purpose …

Flexible Microfluidic Device With Nonplanar Interdigitated Microelectrodes, Saud Alssaidy

Theses

The lab-on-a-chip concept has improved significantly in recent years to meet global demand for various applications with the advent of new technologies. Much progress has been achieved, but many microfluidic devices still suffer from design limitations in terms of sensitivity and selectivity because they use rigid, fragile substrate materials and conventional electrodes, which do not provide high sensitivity or selectivity and suffer from signal-to-noise ratio issues. This work proposes a novel device architecture that uses flexible, transparent top and bottom layers integrated with (nonplanar interdigitated microelectrodes) to create a sandwich-like flexible substrate base. The top and bottom layers consist of …

Itraconazole Nanocomposites Prepared Via Rotary Evaporator Drying Of Nanomilled Suspensions, Alexander Santos Coelho

Theses

The aim of this study is to explore the feasibility of rotary evaporation for drying wetmilled drug suspensions as a novel approach to produce drug nanocomposites that exhibit fast redispersion and immediate drug release. To this end, the physical stability of the nanomilled itraconazole (drug) suspensions, a.k.a., nanosuspensions, during the milling and storage; the drying of the itraconazole nanosuspensions via the rotary evaporator; and the type/loading of various polymers/surfactants (dispersants) on aqueous redispersion and drug release from the nanocomposites were examined. Our results suggest that smaller drug particle size, owing to nanomilling, and smaller nanocomposite particle size, owing to optimized …

Sentiment Analysis Of News Tweets, Haya Fathim

Theses

Sentiment Analysis is a process of extracting information from a large amount of data and classifying them into different classes called sentiments. Python is a simple yet powerful, high-level, interpreted, and dynamic programming language, which is well known for its functionality of processing natural language data by using NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit). NLTK is a library of python, which provides a base for building programs and classification of data. NLTK also provides a graphical demonstration for representing various results or trends and it also provides sample data to train and test various classifiers respectively. Sentiment classification aims to automatically predict …

Building A User-Based Recommendation System Using A Model-Based Collaborative Filtering Approach, Shaheer Airaj Ahmed

Theses

The modern day internet faces a very famous problem called information overload. Where the amount of information is huge and the need for personalized results to match ones preferences for ease of access to other information like it. This is especially a problem in the e-commerce and streaming industries where the amount of items available is massive and users need a way to surf through results quickly and efficiently to find the exact items they are looking for and possibly look at similar recommendations. Modern day recommendation engines use user-item data to find items an active user may like based …

Analysis Of Car Accidents Causes In The Usa, Mohamed Aljaban

Theses

Over the past decade more people are opting in to purchase and own their own personal vehicle and in some instances several, which means that road accidents rates are doomed to increase. And this presents a challenge to the government, individuals and the collective community as car accidents are in most cases life threatening and a hazard to society. Thus, this paper aims to tackle this issue and dig deep to explore the main factors contributing to the increase of car accidents rate. The dataset used in this research is data collected from traffic accidents events captured by the department …

Marketing Automation Customers Segmentation, Hamad Murad

Theses

Understanding the various facets of a customer’s data is very important for businesses. This insight can help them identify patterns and opportunities to improve their operations. RFM values are often used to identify which customers are valuable for a company. They are then used to identify which promotional activities are most appropriate for them. K-means clustering is an unsupervised learning technique that works when you have unlabeled data. It allows the identification of new data points and groups. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines data cleaning and analyzing customer data to divide a broad market into various consumer …

Solar-Powered Bike Lanes, Eman Al Ali

Theses

The problem of lack of bike paths in urban areas is a common problem with the increase in the number of riders. Riding the bikes in the main roads due to the lack of cycling tracks affects negatively on the urban area, its residents, visitors, and in many other aspects. To solve this problem, this study examines the design of a solar-powered cycling path in one of the areas of Umm Al Quwain city that located in the northern region of the United Arab Emirates. The research included secondary data sources derived from best practices research for solar-powered cycling paths …

Esaal (Smart Delivery System In Dubai), Banout Alketbi

Theses

Delivery sector has been facing many issues lately due to covid 19 pandemic mainly delivering items and packages late and some of them being in bad condition. The new smart delivery system ( will help in making the delivery system in Dubai more sustainable and at the same time more accurately functioning The proposed system will achieve that by running on their own tracks that are especially made for them to deliver Furthermore, the new designed system will be running and functioning depe nding on solar energy. These routes will be designed to have way to all of the areas …

Amazon Reviews Using Sentiment Analysis, Ammar Rashed Hamdallah

Theses

The intense competition to attract and maintain customers online is compelling businesses to implement novel strategies to enhance the customer experiences. It is becoming necessary for companies to examine customer reviews on online platforms such as Amazon to understand better how customers rate their products and services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how companies can conduct sentiment analysis based on Amazon reviews to gain more insights into customer experiences. The dataset selected for this capstone consists of customer reviews and ratings from consumer reviews of Amazon products. Amazon product reviews enable a business to gain insights on …

The Artemis Project: Exploring Mass Communication Utilizing A Visual Exploration Of Influential Imagery., Brooke K. Collins

Theses

Society struggles to have difficult conversations. Polite silence is often preferred to dredging up uncomfortable topics. This silence is deafening as the majority of Americans do not consider topics such as The American Sex Trafficking Crisis. In a post-pandemic world, how do we initiate difficult conversations in both digital forums and public domains? The Artemis Project seeks to visually explore this gap in conversation, undergoing an optical investigation of utilizing design and illustrative practices as tools for mass communication. This project conceptualizes the development and application of imagery to introduce a conversation, facilitating understanding and empathy. In short, The Artemis …