Digital Commons Network^™

Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Effectiveness Of Interlayered Systems Containing Metal-Oxide, Conducting Polymer And Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Polymeric Composites, Shaik Merkatur Hakim Marjuban

Theses and Dissertations

The Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Shielding Effectiveness (SE) has become one of the important requirements for the devices associated with telecommunication systems consisting of large frequency bands. The degradation of the quality of transmitting signal influenced by frequencies emitting from external sources can be reduced by covering the circuits of the devices by EMI Shielding materials like polymer composites, metal-based nanofiber mats, the metal of oxide films, etc. The investigation strives for the attenuation of EMI by introducing two composite mats from conducting polymer-based, multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) coated Nylon 6 nanofiber composites. Two other composite mats are also developed by …

When It Comes To Money In Elections, It Doesn't Matter Which Paris You Live In, Jacqueline J. Arias

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue how money influences election outcomes in the Texas Legislature from 2010 to 2018. I explore the political history of Texas, where scholars have long alluded to the role of wealthy elites in the political process. Using an investment theory approach, where money is considered a powerful determinant in elections over other factors, this thesis will analyze total disbursements and vote totals of Texas senate and house candidates in a linear model. Along with this bivariate correlation, this thesis will conduct a multilevel analysis that includes partisanship and regions in Texas. This thesis found a strong …

“They Know Too Much Already:” Black Education In Post-Emancipation Era Columbus, Ga, 1866-1876, William Dwayne Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Despite local histories that have been published on the history of Columbus, Georgia, and its school system, very little has been written about Columbus’s freedmen schools created after the U.S. Civil War. As a result, a comprehensive history of Columbus’s freedmen does not exist, and those written are fragmented. The focus of this study is to document the beginnings of Columbus’s freedmen school efforts in the post-emancipation era, through those African Americans’ own historical voices and experiences. Though an analysis of archived unpublished letters, local and religious newspapers, census data, government documents, and meeting minutes, this study recovers the authentic …

The Integration Of Iterative Convergent Photogrammetric Models And Uav View And Path Planning Algorithms Into The Aerial Inspection Practices In Areas With Aerial Hazards, Michael James Freeman

Theses and Dissertations

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAV) can produce valuable data for inspections, topography, mapping, and 3D modeling of structures. Used by multiple industries, sUAV can help inspect and study geographic and structural sites. Typically, the sUAV and camera specifications require optimal conditions with known geography and fly pre-determined flight paths. However, if the environment changes, new undetectable aerial hazards may intersect new flight paths. This makes it difficult to construct autonomous flight path missions that are safe in post-hazard areas where the flight paths are based on previously built models or previously known terrain details. The goal of this research is …

Soil Water Dynamics Within Variable Rate Irrigation Zones Of Winter Wheat, Elisa Anne Woolley

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of soil water and crop water stress within a field is critical for effective Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI) management. Proper VRI can result in improved protection of the crop from early onset of crop water stress while minimizing runoff and drainage losses. The objectives of this study are (1) to examine zone delineation for informing irrigation recommendations from volumetric water content (VWC) and field capacity (FC) to grow similar or greater wheat yields with less water, (2) evaluate the ability to model soil and crop water dynamics within a season and within a field …

Development Of A New Instrument To Assess The Performance Of Systems Engineers, Niamat Ullah Ibne Hossain

Theses and Dissertations

System engineering (SE) is a structured systematized methodology that deals with designing, managing, and optimizing systems performance. System engineers use the perspective of system thinking to make the successful use and retirement of engineering systems. Since the role of system engineers ranges widely from technical support to customer interaction, system design to management, there is a demand to develop a cadre of effective systems engineers. However, two critical questions are not well-defined in the extant body of SE literature: (1) What are the fundamental attributes of systems engineering that would influence the performance/effectiveness of individual systems engineer? (2) What are …

Does Technology Matter: The Impact Of Wi-Fi On Student Retention, Emily Miller-Bishop

Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to determine students’ satisfaction with technology, particularly Wi-Fi, and how it may impact retention at one university in the southeast. Differences in satisfaction were analyzed for students who planned to stay versus those who planned to leave, transfer versus native students, and for students of various ages, genders, races, and classifications. Analyses were done to examine the data quantitatively. Significant differences were found between the perceptions of satisfaction with Wi-Fi internet services of native students and transfer student in several categories. Most of the students examined in this study (88.0%) planned to return to the same school …

Distribution And Habitat Use Of Sharks In The Coastal Waters Of West-Central Florida, Lindsay Mullins

Theses and Dissertations

An elasmobranch survey conducted from 2013-2018 in the waters adjacent to Pinellas County, Florida, was used for a baseline assessment of the local shark population. ArcGIS and Boosted Regression Trees were used to identify hot spots of abundance and links between environmental predictors and distribution, as well as create species distribution models. A diverse assemblage of sharks, dominated by five species: nurse shark, bonnethead, Atlantic sharpnose shark, blacktip shark, and blacknose shark, was identified. A large proportion of captures (~42%) were immature sharks. Results indicate areas characterized by seagrass and “No Internal Combustion Engine” zones correlate with greater diversity and …

Evaluating Various Socio-Economic Factors And Their Effect On Tornado Knowledge In Mississippi And Alabama, Jacob E. Dickey

Theses and Dissertations

Repeated exposure to tornado events in “Dixie Alley” over the years with often fatal outcomes has led to vibrant discussion in the weather enterprise. Two areas of focus for research are socio-economic factors which increase vulnerability for individuals, and the communication channels used by individuals during tornado events. Understanding what individuals know and how their background and experiences play a role in weather knowledge can help communicators reach at-risk groups more effectively and efficiently not only in the moments that matter, but also when education can play a role in the weeks and months before a potential tornado event. Through …

Investigations On Mechanisms Of Survival And Pathogenesis Of Mycobacterium Ulcerans In Polymicrobial Environments, Laxmi Dhungel

Theses and Dissertations

Buruli ulcer disease (BUD) remains a ‘mysterious disease’ due to the unknown mode of M. ulcerans transmission and pathogenesis. To understand these, it is important to determine the reservoir of the organism in its natural environments, and stress response and interactions of M. ulcerans in its natural niche and during infection of a host. The major virulence factor of M. ulcerans is mycolactone, a lipid cytotoxin that is encoded on a giant plasmid pMUM001. Genetic analysis suggests that plasmid pMUM001 was acquired by M. ulcerans during evolution from its progenitor, M. marinum. Coincidental evolution of virulence hypothesis suggests that many …

Household Food Insecurity And Its Determinants In The United States, Sweta Tiwari

Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity is one of the biggest challenges facing American society today. Over 13.7 million US households were food insecure in the year 2019 and 19 million Americans lived in food deserts in the year 2015 (USDA, 2020, 2017). Despite food insecurities affecting communities in every corner of the country, there is a dearth of research on food security and food deserts. Therefore, the main objectives of this study are 1) to identify underlying neighborhood characteristics that predict the communities at higher nutritional risk, 2) to analyze the impacts of household characteristics on household food insecurity, and 3) to examine …

Regulating Demographics Through Regulating Marriage: Israel's Millet-Based Approach To Personal Status Law And Its Ramifications On The Social Hierarchy, Briana Nirenberg

Theses and Dissertations

Identity, though deeply personal, has often been exploited by the ruling class in order to gain power over their subjects. The preservation of social cleavages—be they national, ethnic, racial, religious, et cetera—is thus a matter of public policy. To ensure the propagation of a certain identity, the state must rely on its current citizens to reproduce the social structures that give their identities value. In order to maintain boundaries between the factions, groups must remain “pure” lest these structures be challenged. While prohibitions on whom an individual can marry exist across systems, they take on different, more subtle forms in …

Impacts Of Land-Use Change On The Menominee River In Jo Daviess County, Illinois, Preston J. Konop

Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses land-use changes in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, and their effects on the Menominee River. The Menominee River flows north to south through Jo Daviess County, and southern Grant County, Wisconsin. Many of the surrounding properties are agricultural and have undergone developmental and land-use changes that may affect the flood flashiness of the Menominee River. The concern with increasing flood flashiness of the Menominee River include more frequent flooding events, undercutting of riverbanks, and increased amounts of sediment transport from upstream locations into the Mississippi River. Increases in impermeable surfaces have led to greater amounts of runoff during …

The Nature Of Primary Source Instruction In Social Science Methods Courses, Judith Loraine Bee

Theses and Dissertations

137 Pages

Teachers are the key to shifting the way learning happens in the classroom. However, teachers are not always skilled in inquiry, critical thinking, and historical impact. Teaching with primary sources provides a context from which to educate preservice teachers in these essential skills. This dissertation focuses on the nature of primary source instruction in preparing preservice teachers to teach social sciences at the K-8 level. This qualitative study explores education methods professors’ practices for educating preservice teachers to use primary sources in their classroom instruction. Social Science methods professors in Illinois were observed, interviewed and an analysis of …

The Literacies Of Adolescents With International Experiences, Caitlin Hanzlick Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reports the findings of a study on how international experiences impact adolescents. Data were gathered from interviews with and writing samples from seven participants with varying international experiences. A critical perspective and existing research in New Literacy Studies (NLS), on study abroad programs, and on transnationalism framed the study and predicted much of what was found about the literacies of adolescents with international experiences. However, five new findings emerged as significant about adolescents’ utilitarian, oral, geolingual, critical, and cosmopolitan literacies uniquely impacted by travel. From these findings, new insights emerged about the importance of embracing multiple forms of …

Integrated Techniques To Increase Systems Thinking For Sustainability Education Of High School Science Students Using Educational Design Research, Nora Kathryn Weatherhead

Theses and Dissertations

This study used a design research framework to teach secondary high school science students about environmental sustainability. A high school teacher and researcher collaborated to design a two week environmental science unit to help students make sense of complex environmental sustainability issues. This dissertation study sought to answer the following research questions: Using Design Research and various instructional tools, how do students develop an understanding of systems thinking and relate it to environmental sustainability; How does analyzing personal and classroom data on paper or plastic usage and recycling influence high school science students’ understanding of global environmental sustainability issues through …

Urban Space And Politics Of The Everyday: Thinking Through And With The Image In Contemporary Cairo, Darren Spirk

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the increasing eminence of the image within contemporary social theory to intervene into what Tarek Elhaik terms the “sensorial turn” in anthropology. I implement a method of thinking through and with the image that balances creative and critical modalities of engaging socially embedded images beyond a semiotic approach. My entryway into such discussions is seven Cairo films from 2010-2013 that allow us to complicate “pre-” and “post-” revolutionary imaginaries and expand how to see, listen to, and think the political everyday and changing notions of publicness within the city. In tandem with the generative strategies of visual …

Bilateral Investment Treaty And Stock Market Correlation: Africa & Middle East Case, Nada Asaad

Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to study the effects of bilateral investment treaties between countries on their stock market correlation. The study focuses on Africa and Middle East countries and how their bilateral investment treaties with other countries affect the stock market correlation of their indices. Some previous studies have ignored the effects of bilateral investment treaties on stock market correlation. Therefore, it is important to fill in this gap. The data examined are indices for Africa and Middle East countries who are involved in bilateral investment treaties with other countries to examine the effects of these bilateral investment treaties on the …

Prejudice, Personality And Contact: How Personality Traits Affect The Role Of Intergroup Contact In Interethnic Prejudice Reduction, Aurel Haxhiu

Theses and Dissertations

Despite having had the chance to see a broad spectrum of different scholars efforts to attest the impact of the Big Five personality in intergroup contact, we considered that there is still room to furthermore shed some light in spite of those efforts to describe the intertwined impact while conducting a specific analysis how the Big Five personality traits affect the role of intergroup contact in interethnic prejudice reduction, by taking examples of Kosovo’s albanians and their feeling temperature toward the ethnic group of serbs and the role of contact. On our efforts to explain the impact of the Big …

Faulknerian Echoes And The Grotesque In Mccarthy’S The Orchard Keeper, William Haynes

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Faulknerian Echoes and the Grotesque in McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper (August 2020)

William Leland Haynes, B. A., Texas A&M International University

Chair of Committee: Dr. Manuel Broncano

This thesis is an exploration of Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner’s craft through a focus on their works The Orchard Keeper and “Barn Burning.” This analysis charts the two dialoguing or conversing with each other across times through the art of their writings.

The basis of this project examines a key phrase from “Barn Burning,” where the problem of doing the right thing creates a conflict of identity within the story’s young …

A Woman’S Portion: 5000 Years A Slave, Ann R. Glickman

Theses and Dissertations

Slavery has existed for all of recorded history. The evidence is conclusive that slave systems have almost always been majority female. I suggest that slavery originated as an attempt to control female reproductive capacity, and that this attempt to control was not limited to enslaved women.

Snow-Albedo Feedback In Northern Alaska: How Vegetation Influences Snowmelt, Lucas C. Reckhaus

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates how the snow-albedo feedback mechanism of the arctic is changing in response to rising climate temperatures. Specifically, the interplay of vegetation and snowmelt, and how these two variables can be correlated. This has the potential to refine climate modelling of the spring transition season. Research was conducted at the ecoregion scale in northern Alaska from 2000 to 2020. Each ecoregion is defined by distinct topographic and ecological conditions, allowing for meaningful contrast between the patterns of spring albedo transition across surface conditions and vegetation types. The five most northerly ecoregions of Alaska are chosen as they encompass …

Vegetation Phenology As A Function Of Plant Functional Type And Urbanization, Ryan Lennon

Theses and Dissertations

Urban land cover contributes to higher temperatures in urban areas compared to adjacent rural areas, which can cause an earlier start of the growing season for urban vegetation. Variations in plant community characteristics between urban and rural areas also produce intra-urban differences in vegetation phenophases, although few studies have investigated differences in phenology between plant functional types in multiple urban environments. In this study I used an exploratory analysis based on the Landsat Phenology Algorithm and weather station data to quantify differences in leaf-onset dates for different plant functional types in the New York City Metropolitan Area. The results demonstrate …

Consumer Purchasing Response To Mandatory Genetically Engineered Labeling, Elizabeth Macaulay Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

On January 1, 2022, mandatory genetically engineered (GE) food disclosure labeling will be required nationwide in the United States. To date, the only mandatory GE labeling law implemented in the U.S. was Act 120 in Vermont. This thesis examines the consumer purchasing response to the implementation of Vermont Act 120 using store-level scanner data of food purchases. I measure the effects of Vermont Act 120 on the grocery store sales of non-GMO, organic, and GE- labeled products in Vermont. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I can compare stores in Vermont to control states before and after the law was passed, implemented, …

Parenting Practices And Parental Religiosity: The Context Of Region And Conservatism, Melanie Stearns

Theses and Dissertations

Although parental religiosity generally has been associated with positive child outcomes it also has been connected to the use of corporal punishment and authoritarian parenting style. Thus, other variables must exist which influence how the interaction between religiosity and parenting practices influence child outcomes, such as regional differences (i.e., conservatism, population density, etc.). The current study expanded upon previous literature by examining maternal and paternal variables, extending the study to emerging adults, examining emerging adult gender, various religions, and different regions of the United States (i.e., Northeast, South, Midwest, West), as well as levels of conservatism and population density (i.e., …

Easily Overlooked: Modelling Coastal Dune Habitat Occupancy Of Threatened And Endangered Beach Mice (Peromyscus Polionotus Spp.) Using High-Resolution Aerial Imagery And Elevation Models Of The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Wesley Burger

Theses and Dissertations

The Gulf of Mexico dune system is a broad and dynamic environment that varies greatly in geomorphology and vegetative composition across the Gulf coastline. Beach mice (Peromyscus polionotus spp.) are an endangered species that rely on coastal habitat structure. I hypothesized that beach mouse occupancy would be dependent upon coastal dune land cover and landform features. I identified coastal landforms using high-resolution elevation data and landform models in GRASS GIS and identified coastal dune vegetation classes using high-resolution aerial imagery and object oriented vegetation classification. These features were used to create a dynamic occupancy model to determine occupancy patterns in …

Evaluating The Unequal Impacts Of Hurricane Harvey: A Critical Gis Analysis In Systems Of Governmental Risk Assessment And Mitigation, Mustafa Ansari Monk

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses flooding driven by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a history of inundation in Houston, Texas to critique the systems of floodplain mapping through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The role of Geographic Information Systems becomes a subject of interest in the context of U.S governance and the role of property as a driving force in urban development. The shortcomings of existing systems of mitigation are examined through mappings that bring measures of risk, damage, and recovery into contrast with each other. Racial and economic inequality are integrated into the analysis through a deeper consideration of the …

Genetics Of A Color Polymorphism In Heliconius Doris, Caleb Benson

Theses and Dissertations

Balancing selection refers to the maintenance of multiple phenotypic variants within a population. There are a number of proposed mechanisms explaining the origin and persistence of the evolution and genetics of polymorphisms, but they largely remain unresolved in the specific instances in which they occur. This study aims to identify the genetic basis of a polymorphism in the butterfly, Heliconius doris, which displays four distinct color patterns on the dorsal hindwings of individuals. While Mullerian mimetic theory proposes that phenotypes will converge on a common, aposematic phenotype, this is not the case in Heliconius doris. We identify an interval perfectly …

Daphne Odjig: Indigenous Art And Contemporary Curatorial Practices, Lucy Kay Riley

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the history of curatorial practices and scholarship regarding the work and life of Daphne Odjig (1919-2016), a self-taught Canadian artist of Potawatomi and English ancestry, in order to situate her at the crux of the contemporary Indigenous art movement in Canada.

Holistic Approaches To State School Grading Systems, Darryl Bond Denhalter

Theses and Dissertations

The United States education system has experienced an evolution of school accountability systems that has led to changes and variation in state school grading systems. This study shows that the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, a recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, provides greater autonomy to individual states in evaluating and reporting school accountability than in preceding years and provides opportunities for states to implement a more holistic or well-rounded approach to school grading. ESSA policy and this study encourages states to choose to evaluate schools more holistically by implementing a wider …