Digital Commons Network^™

Homesick, Or Sacred Heterosexual Spaces, Ryan A. Drake

Theses and Dissertations

A dark satire about a young queer man who comes home under mysterious circumstances to find that he's been replaced by someone who looks just like him. He starts having dreams that his family is trying to kill him...but are they dreams?

Design Of A Pneumatic Soft Robotic Actuator Using Model-Based Optimization, Mahsa Raeisinezhad

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, the design and optimization process of a novel soft intelligent modular pad (IntelliPad) for the purpose of pressure injury prevention is presented. The structure of the IntelliPad consists of multiple individual multi-chamber soft pneumatic-driven actuators that use pressurized air and vacuum. Each actuator is able to provide both vertical and horizontal motions that can be controlled independently. An analytical modeling approach using multiple cantilever beams and virtual springs connected in a closed formed structure was developed to analyze the mechanical performance of the actuator. The analytical approach was validated by a finite element analysis. For optimizing the …

Living With And Through Artificially Intelligent Virtual Personal Assistants: Subservience, Simultaneity And Surveillance In Late-Capitalist Cairo, Habiba Ahmed Elsayed

Theses and Dissertations

The global technological field has witnessed a computing shift - from focusing on human-device use to focusing on human-device ambient and social interaction. This shift is notably accompanied by a societal one that increases desire and dependency on everyday smart technologies powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of such growing AI-enabled technologies is the virtual personal assistant (VPA). In this project, I draw on my filed-work with my four interlocuters in Cairo with their respective VPAs, Siri and Alexa. In analyzing my experiences and observations, I focus on three main themes: subservience, simultaneity and surveillance. Examining the role …

Beyond Mental And Physical Pain: A Non-Reductive Account Of Suicide, Aya Aly Ragheb

Theses and Dissertations

What is the stigma behind our understanding of suicide? What causes this stigma? Should suicide only be viewed in relation to physical pain, as medicine often views it, or mental pain, as psychiatry views it? Or is it a more complex phenomenon? Can we think of suicide as a rational act that is, on the one hand, independent of pain, without, on the other hand, reducing it to mental illness? I will argue that if we can, we can give a less reductive account of suicide. In this paper, we shall attempt to give an answer to the above questions …

Behavioral And Neural Correlates Of Sensory Processing And Anxiety In Autistic Children, Kelsey Lee Ustach Tindall

Theses and Dissertations

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to experience higher levels of sensory processing differences as well as anxiety, compared to the neurotypical population (NT). Both theory and evidence suggest that there is an interrelationship between sensory processing, anxiety and fear, and prediction abilities in autism. However, much more remains to be discovered about their relationship and especially underlying neural mechanisms. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to examine the behavioral relationship between sensory processing, fear and anxiety, prediction, and related brain activity in autistic children. To this end, 30 autistic children (ages 6-11 years) and …

Taxonomy And Phylogenetics Of Island Damselflies (Odonata: Coenagrionidae: Vanuatubasis), Natalie Anne Saxton

Theses and Dissertations

Odonata is an order of charismatic insects, commonly called dragonflies and damselflies, that provide a rewarding study system to answer questions such as those related to diversity and biogeography. Despite being relatively well-studied compared to other insect orders, odonates have suffered from inconsistencies and disagreements about proper morphological terminology that provide barriers to incoming workers. These disagreements have subsequently led to confusion and the incorrect application of terms. Here, we clarify the terminology and propose standard terminology for terminal appendages. This terminology is employed in a taxonomic revision of Vanuatubasis Ober & Staniczek, 2009. This endemic genus of damselfly found …

Variability Of The Aerodynamic Measures Of Leporine Larynges Exposed To Inhaled Corticosteroids, Miriam Angela Cannon Bake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the effects of combination inhaled corticosteroids (ICs) on the stability of six aerodynamic measures of phonation utilizing a traditional benchtop model with leporine larynges. The motivation for this study was based on the increase of voice disorders associated with IC use in recent years. The aerodynamic measures examined were phonation threshold pressure (PTP), phonation threshold flow (PTF), onset resistance, sustained pressure, sustained flow, and sustained resistance. Leporine larynges were selected as the model for this study due to histological similarities between leporine and human vocal folds that make them ideal for translational research. Rabbits were either exposed …

Improving Model Performance Through Indirect Integration Of Human Impacts In Data-Driven Hydrologic Models, Dawit Wolday Asfaw

Theses and Dissertations

Increasing water demand driven by fast-growing global population and climate change impact are threatening the groundwater resources. As a result, major aquifer systems in the world are undergoing depletion, The Central Valley aquifers is an examples. The paucity of hydrologic data, specifically groundwater pimping data contributes to model uncertainty which limits our capacity to better assess terrestrial water storage trends and manage water resources. This study aimed at improving hydrologic model performance by using multi-sourced datasets: in-situ, remote sensing, and model-based data in a highly stressed aquifer system where very limited water use or groundwater pumping data exists. Machine learning-based …

Minor Literature And Chicano Liberation In Heriberto G. Terán’S Espejo De Alma Y Corazón, Enrique Alberto Ibarra

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the power of Chicano poetics and its influence on liberatory rhetoric in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s-1970s. The late, Laredoan, activist Heriberto Gutiérrez Terán’s Espejo de Alma y Corazón presents a tradition of Chicano minor literature identifiable in the work of the many writers and rhetoricians who emerged during this politically tense time. This thesis marks the first time Terán’s literary work is subject to a literary analysis, positioning him among other known Chicano writers and figures from the 1960s and early 1970s, such as Alurista, José Angel Gutiérrez, José Rendón, Enrique Rodríquez, and Roberto Enrique …

Thomas Dixon And Southern Identity In The Leopard's Spots, Christopher Richard Castillo

Theses and Dissertations

Following the American Civil War, the United States witnessed a shift in its racial and social being. This shift, of course, was not without national anxieties. With the freeing of black slaves, came an attempt to integrate the former enslaved population into society. With this attempt at integration, came various political and social arguments on the shift of the American social and cultural bedrock. Writing during this period, Thomas Dixon Jr. became one of the nation’s most energetic voices on the topic of race in America. While popular during his time, Dixon is still publicly remembered, if slightly, for his …

An Eye-Movement Examination Of Gender Stereotype Processing, Elva Adriana Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study investigates how bilinguals comprehend gender, especially when one of their languages is grammatically marked in gender. This study explored influences of world knowledge, lexical representations, and language activation in a bilingual population. Eye-movements were recorded as bilinguals read sentences containing gender-stereotyped nouns (e.g., surgeon) followed by a male or female pronoun (he/she) that served as an anaphoric referent. Language dominance in Spanish and English dominant and balanced bilinguals, the gender of the stereotype noun (i.e., female or male), and congruency between noun and anaphor (match or mismatch) were included as variables. The following eye …

Tres Representaciones De La Niña Latinoamericana En Luna Caliente (1983), Sofía De Los Presagios (1990) Y Del Amor Y Otros Demonios (1994), Carmen Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis focuses on three representations of the girl-child: the girl-child as a reference to origins, the girl-child functioning as a woman-child, and the girl-child as an embodiment of the uncanny. The three novels that will be analyzed are Mempo Giardinelli’s Luna caliente (1983), Gioconda Belli’s Sofía de los presagios (1990), and Gabriel García Márquez’ Del amor y otros demonios (1994), in which two of the three protagonists are girl-children, while the third must return to her nascent stage to recover her identity. Through her three representations, the girl-child denounces and rejects the Christian and mestizo identity that is …

Employee Well-Being As A Mediator Of The Relationship Between Perceived High-Performance Work Systems And Employee Outcomes, Albi Alika

Theses and Dissertations

This study builds upon the strategic human resource management literature to further understand the effect of high-performance work systems on employee outcomes. Despite the increasing interest in examining the relationship between high-performance work systems and employee attitudes and behaviors, the mechanisms of how these HR practices affect employees are not fully clear. As such, the current study sheds more light into this area of the HR literature by examining the mediating role of employee well-being between perceived high-performance work systems and three important worker outcomes: work effort, turnover intention, and counterproductive work behavior. The model is tested by using a …

Minimal Genomes Simplify The Analysis Of Biological Relationships In Medicine, Taxonomy, Ecology, And Astrobiology, Rafael Deliz Aguirre

Theses and Dissertations

As humans, we continuously thrive to determine meaningful biological relationships between living things on the basis of specific characteristics. Taxonomy is the science that studies these connections for the purpose of naming and grouping organisms as well as identifying logical clusters (i.e, clade). Its origin may be traced as far back as ancient Greece and beyond, and while we explore species diversity, most of our attention focuses on the biomedical and ecological applications of taxonomy. The contemporary taxonomical revolution began with Carl Linnaeus. He established the principles of binomial nomenclature and taxonomical hierarchy that we employ now. Relationships were later …

Aesthetics And Religion: Nietzche And Freud On The Value Of Illusions, Carlos Calderon

Theses and Dissertations

This work will examine the psychological function of religious belief, particularly their capacity to provide guidance and relief from the aspects of existence that prove troublesome. Religions, a culturally instituted set of traditions and practices, have played a significant role in shaping the development of civilization. The collective organization of individuals and the shared acceptance of values has made possible the formation of large and complex social arrangements, making existence for the human species a more bearable enterprise. Interested in the lives of the ancient Greeks, the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, sought to apprehend the mystery of their deities as products …

Generation Of Antibiotic Resistant Mutants In The Minimal Pathogen Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, Bryant De Jesus

Theses and Dissertations

Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MPN) causes community acquired pneumonia (CAP). The inability to identify M. pneumoniae infections through common clinical screenings has added to the global antibiotic resistance problem. MPN characteristically lacks a cell wall, which prevents proper diagnosis in an infected patient. This has led to the inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics at insufficient dosages, allowing these microorganisms to thrive at sub-lethal concentrations. The small genome size of MPN, makes it a viable candidate for studying and developing tools to understand the genetic mechanisms behind the acquisition of antibiotic resistance by microbes. This study aimed to generate MPN mutants through prolonged exposure …

The Matrix Revisited: A Critical Assessment Of Virtual Reality Technologies For Modeling, Simulation, And Training, George Demetrius Lecakes

Theses and Dissertations

A convergence of affordable hardware, current events, and decades of research have advanced virtual reality (VR) from the research lab into the commercial marketplace. Since its inception in the 1960s, and over the next three decades, the technology was portrayed as a rarely used, high-end novelty for special applications. Despite the high cost, applications have expanded into defense, education, manufacturing, and medicine. The promise of VR for entertainment arose in the early 1990's and by 2016 several consumer VR platforms were released. With VR now accessible in the home and the isolationist lifestyle adopted due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, …

All The King’S Horses: Stable Administration In New Kingdom Egypt, Tessa Genevieve David Litecky

Theses and Dissertations

Horses were an important part of Egyptian society during the New Kingdom as tools of warfare, status symbols of the elite, and an emblem of the power of kingship. However, little is known about how these animals were trained and cared for, or who was working in horse stables and their roles. There are no texts or images that explicitly explain methods of horse management. Therefore, this topic has been generally overlooked in the literature. This thesis combines two threads of evidence to create a more complete picture of the organization, purpose, and function of horse stables and the treatment …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Translucent Wood Composite Using Egyptian Hardwoods: Casuarina & Eucalyptus, Sherif Elia

Theses and Dissertations

Due to climate change and global warming, there is an increasing need for sustainable solutions in all industries. As one of the most important and growing industries worldwide, the construction industry has a huge responsibility towards the environment. It is responsible for the consumption of vast amounts of resources and consequently generating massive quantities of waste. Also, as the building sector is responsible for consuming large portions of the world energy and electricity, such buildings' efficiency and sustainability must be considered. While the world is working on balancing between consuming less and recycling more while maintaining the construction materials' effectiveness …

Assessment Of Carbon Dioxide Emission And Its Impact On High-Rise Mixed-Use Buildings In Egypt, Ahmed Salah Hamza

Theses and Dissertations

With Egypt's vision of 2030 focusing on sustainable development with a true emphasis on Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emission reduction in the newly built cities and high-rise buildings, efforts are exerted on various levels towards accomplishing the vision’s goals. This is achieved through multiple tools and models associated with aiding the reduction of carbon emissions, yet not a clear one was introduced for the mixed-use buildings in Egypt.

Through this work, a significant gap was identified with respect to high-rise buildings carbon emission assessment in Egypt. This was a main driving force for this work in an attempt to …

The Anti-Secular Regulation Of Religious Difference In Egypt, Meriam Wagdy Azmi

Theses and Dissertations

Egyptian religious freedom activists and researchers have for decades called for more secularism to remedy the violations facing religious minorities. Those religious minorities have been subject to attacks for practicing religious rituals and suffered from lack of recognition by the government. As those activists advocated secularism, some academics critiqued it and deemed it the instigator of the very problems it claims to uproot. Saba Mahmood famously argued that secularism is a primary producer of religious tension in Egypt. In this thesis, I argue that it is not the mere regulation of religious difference as a feature of secularism that is …

Copyright And Creativity: Critiques Of The Us System And Possible Reform Strategy For Egypt, Dina Magdy El-Hussieny Selite

Theses and Dissertations

The optimum goal of copyright is to maximize the production of creative works and innovations by balancing the benefits of the copyright owners and public users. This balance requires securing the rights of copyright owners to induce authors to produce their creations, while at the same time providing public users with regulated freedom to use copyrighted work to produce new creations and innovations. In this context, it is necessary to explore the problems of the copyright system and address them in the optimum way to achieve the goals of copyright. This paper analyzes the problems of the United States copyright …

Formulation Of Coffee Extract As Polymeric Nanoparticles And Studying Their Potential Biological Activities, Nouran Sharaf

Theses and Dissertations

Coffee extract was prepared and optimized (by solvent extraction) and subsequently entrapped into PLGA nanoparticles using single emulsion-solvent evaporation method (using Design Expert software). Dynamic Light Scattering, Scanning Electron Microscope, Fourier Transform-Infrared Spectroscopy and Folin Ciocalteau assay were used to characterize the NPs and to aid in selecting the optimum formulation conditions. The optimized NPs were in-vitro evaluated for their antimicrobial (by agar-well diffusion method), antioxidant (by DPPH assay) and anticancer (by MTT assay) activities. Finally, the release rate study was conducted for the NP sample showing the highly promising results.

The succeeded NP sample, in terms of the most …

Evaluation Of The Antimicrobial Activity Of Vangueria Volkensii Bark, Fruit, Leaf, And Stem Extracts, Douglas Parnell Holland

Theses and Dissertations

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Medicinal plants have been used for thousands of years and continues to have a critical role in the healthcare system worldwide, and it is estimated that 80% of all pharmaceutical drugs are plant based in origin. Plants from the Rubiaceae family have gained the attention of scientist because they exhibit great medicinal potential and value. However, Vangueria volkensii has no published research on its pharmacological activity and properties. Materials and Methods: In the present study, Vangueria volkensii bark, fruits, leaves, and stems were sequentially extracted via Soxhlet extraction using petroleum ether (PE), acetone (ACE), and ethanol (ETOH) solvents. …

The Role Of The Cytosolic Chaperonin Cct In Folding Β-Propeller Proteins, William Grant Ludlam

Theses and Dissertations

Many Proteins require the aid of molecular chaperones to achieve a stable folding state and avoid misfolding pathologies. A major eukaryotic chaperone is the cytosolic chaperonin CCT. While CCT is known to fold a significant portion of all cytosolic proteins, there is no general model for the mechanism CCT uses to fold substrate proteins. One class of proteins that CCT is known to fold are β-propeller containing proteins. Here, we present structural and biochemical data on the processes that CCT uses to fold three distinct β-propeller proteins: the G-protein Beta 5 (Gβ5) subunit of the Gβ5-RGS complex, mLST8 of the …

Cationic Steroid Antimicrobials: Applications To Medical Device Coatings, Mechanism Of Pro-Osteogenic Properties, And Potential Synergy With Common Antifungals, Brian J. Hilton

Theses and Dissertations

Cationic steroid antimicrobials (CSAs or ceragenins) are a novel class of synthetic, cholic acid-based mimics of endogenous antimicrobial peptides. These small molecule compounds display broad bactericidal activity against gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, potent ability against fungal pathogens, and cidal effects against drug resistant and multidrug resistant microbes. Implantable medical devices provide an abiotic surface upon which bacteria and fungi can accumulate--thereby leading to localized or systemic infection. We proposed that CSA antibiotics can be incorporated into medical device surface coatings which can be optimized for the active release or elution of the CSA compounds over time to prevent device-associated infections. …

Rebalancing Shared Mobility Systems By User Incentive Scheme Via Reinforcement Learning, Matthew Brian Schofield

Theses and Dissertations

Shared mobility systems regularly suffer from an imbalance of vehicle supply within the system, leading to users being unable to receive service. If such imbalance problems are not mitigated some users will not be serviced. There is an increasing interest in the use of reinforcement learning (RL) techniques for improving the resource supply balance and service level of systems. The goal of these techniques is to produce an effective user incentivization policy scheme to encourage users of a shared mobility system to slightly alter their travel behavior in exchange for a small monetary incentive. These slight changes in user behavior …

Parental Incarceration And Juvenile Delinquency: The Role Of Gender, Kirstie S. Weyland

Theses and Dissertations

Parental incarceration is connected to many negative outcomes for children including negative externalizing behaviors. Most studies are not conclusive in determining whether maternal incarceration or paternal incarceration has a more detrimental impact on children. This study looks at a sample of 2,458 youth from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCWS) and their parents and compares the gender of the incarcerated parent and that of the child to determine if there are differences in the risk of delinquent behavior among adolescent children. Results found that parental incarceration overall increased the risk of juvenile delinquency and that female children are …

Engineered Nanostructured Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Network (Ndc) Electrodes With Unprecedented Cycling Stability For Water Capacitive Deionization In Harsh Conditions, Soha Essam Anwar

Theses and Dissertations

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is a feasible low-cost desalination technique for low-to-medium (brackish) salinity water. However, cycling stability and regeneration of the CDI electrodes are the bottlenecks hindering the practical application of the technology on large scale. Oxidation of the electrodes during the sequential adsorption-desorption processes is one of the most challenging problems hindering their long-term cycling performance. Herein, we demonstrated the ability to design and fabricate exceptionally stable CDI electrodes via a one-pot pyrolysis protocol. The optimized pyrolysis of nitrogen-carbon precursors at different temperatures enabled the fabrication of carbon materials with a controlled amount nitrogen dopant (NDCs) with exceptional cycling …

Population Dynamics Of Mule Deer (Odocoileus Hemionus): Maternal Effects And De Novo Genome, Sydney Lamb

Theses and Dissertations

Population dynamics of large ungulates are complex and vary with fluctuations in factors such as predation, resource availability, human disturbance, and weather (Gaillard et al. 1998, Forrester and Wittmer 2013). These regulating factors exhibit similar effects on ungulate populations by changing vital rates such as birthrate, death rate, emigration or immigration (Gaillard et al. 2000). To better understand the mechanisms influencing population change, it is useful to involve tools from multiple disciplines (Krausman et al. 2013). Here we explore population dynamics of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) through the lenses of two distinct fields: population ecology and genomics. In the first …