Digital Commons Network^™

Disparities In Administrative Pediatric Asthma Prevalence In Clark County, Aaliyah Goodie

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Objective: Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases affecting young children nationally and globally. Asthma affects more than 25 million people in the nation, of which 6

million are children. Lifetime asthma prevalence for children in Nevada is 11.5% (CDC, 2016). This is likely an underestimate due to a large undocumented Hispanic population. In Clark County School District (CCSD) during the 2016-2017 school year, 20,235 students (8%) listed asthma in school records as a health concern. Asthma burden varies by sociodemographic group with highest rates documented among Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and pediatric populations. The Centers for Disease Control …

Empirical Justification For Supportive Other Involvement In Collegiate Athletes’ Mental Health Intervention, Elena Gavrilova

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Student-athletes have been identified to evidence similar or higher rates of mental health difficulties and lower levels of mental health engagement as compared with non-athlete peers. Along these lines, sport-specific mental health intervention has been justified by researchers, yet only one randomized clinical trial has been conducted in collegiate student-athletes who have been formally assessed for mental health disorders (i.e., a family behavior therapy as compared with traditional campus counseling as usual; Donohue et al., 2018a). Results of this outcome study demonstrated greater improvements for participants who received the family-based intervention up to 8-months post-randomization. In this clinical trial, the …

Galena Creek Bridge Structural Health Monitoring Instrumentation And Modeling, Leopold Falkensammer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Structural health monitoring (SHM) of an instrumented structure provides numerous benefits when assessing the long-term condition of the structure against degradation, or the short-term condition after an extreme event, such as an earthquake. The Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) has an interest in expanding the use of SHM for such assessments. Accordingly, the objective of the current study is to develop and implement a permanent SHM system for the Galena Creek Bridge, the largest concrete cathedral arch bridge in the world, to monitor its response to routine traffic and seismic activity. Completed in 2012, the bridge connects Reno and Carson …

Community Exposure To Particulate Matter And Its Impact For Students And Residents Near A Construction Asphalt Plant: A Case Study, Aman Gebremariam Gebreselassie

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Particulate matter (PM) consists of various small particles in the atmosphere that has been associated with environmental health risk factors for many deadly diseases. PM2.5 is particulate matter 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, PM10 is particulate matter 10 micrometers or less in diameter and are both respirable particles that can penetrate the lungs and increase risk of cardiovascular problems and respiratory illness, among other health issues. Exposure to particulate pollution in the environment tends to cause lost income from work absence, students’ absences from school, hospital admissions as well as emergency and doctor room visits.

Although asphalt plants are …

The Retrospective Analysis Of Radionuclides In Banded Coral From The Bikini Atoll, Athena Marie Gallardo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nuclear weapons testing conducted within the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands resulted in local fallout contamination, including long lived isotopes of plutonium (Pu) and uranium (U), within the surrounding environment. The Bikini lagoon provides a continuous source of Pu (239+240Pu) and U (236U) to the Pacific Basin. The rate at which these isotopes are flushed from the lagoon to the ocean is balanced by inputs from remobilization of lagoon sediments. This research will provide a basis for predicting future change in the solubility and export potential of Pu and U in lagoon sediments. This is important to better understand …

Treatment Of Perchlorate And Multiple Oxyanions: Chemical And Biological Investigations, Mark Elkouz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Groundwater contamination with oxyanions is an issue that must be addressed for environmental, ecological and societal reasons. Chemical and biological treatment methods of reduction are already known and practiced, but the simultaneous presence of multiple oxyanions can add complicating effects to treatment sequence and efficacy. This research was concerned with the investigation of the chemical reductive treatment of Cr(VI) using both calcium polysulfide (CaSx) and ferrous sulfate (FeSO4), and the biological reductive treatment of chlorate, Cr(VI), nitrate and perchlorate using multiple organic substrates. The chemical treatment phase consisted of initial jar tests, using CaSx and FeSO4, followed by a laboratory …

The Historical And Cultural Influences Of Gagok 가곡 (Korean Art Song): A Musical Guide, Sarah Kim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document explores what Gagok (Korean Art Song) consists of, the origins and history of it and how one may approach it musically, vocally and interpret it textually. The main questions I answer in this document include: What makes these art songs distinctly Korean? What significance does the role of Eastern Asian history have in order to closely tie the inspiration of writing Gagok? How does the text and music express these important historical events? The answers to these questions are essential to understanding Gagok by analyzing and interpreting the songs also in relation to approach learning them.

The research …

Lifting The Veil: Do Health Care Price Transparency Laws Actually Lower Costs?, Nora Michelle Irene Langendorf

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this research is to determine whether or not health care transparency laws, in the form of price transparency, lower the rate of increase paid out in health care expenditures in those states that have enacted these laws compared to those states that have not. By controlling for factors such as poverty, age, chronic illnesses, and income that may play a part in lowering or raising health care costs, the primary explanatory variable – health care price transparency laws – can determine if there is a strong relationship with the dependent variable (the rate of increase on health …

Ethnic Power Dominance In A Resource-Rich Sub Saharan African State: An Analysis Of Violent Conflict Accelerators And The Mitigating Influence Of Civil Society In Nigeria, Victor O. Fakoya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My dissertation research explores the impacts of ethno-regional power dominance, trust, and violent conflict in a resources-rich multiethnic, sub-Saharan African state. This dissertation examines the impact that ethnic power dominance has on the relationship between conflict and civil society in a resource rich sub-Saharan African (SSA) nation examined. Relying upon intra-state case study analysis of the socio-political climate in Nigeria, I argue that distrust in the national government, when motivated by ethno-regional cleavages has an accelerating influence on the incidence of conflict. Using cross-national survey data in conjunction with field interview data, this research finds that in the regions where …

On Algebraic Structures And Automaton For Optimal Computer Network Design And Performance Study, Xiangrong Ma

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For decades, study of computer networks has been concentrated on the use of the well-established OSI or TCP/IP reference models that have found tremendous success in the actual implementation of various network structures and protocols. Lack of theoretical foundation, this implementation-driven, empirical approach, however, is experiencing insurmountable difficulties in delivering, tuning for, and sustaining the promised peak performance of a computer system that is so heavily dependent on the performance of the underline computer networks. This issue is becoming particularly prevalent in today’s cloud-based high-performance computing environment where CPU-time-extensive computation loads need to get distributed among computing machines through high-speed …

Discovering Motor Phenotypes In Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Cross-Syndrome Approach, Daniel Edwin Lidstone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a behavioral phenotype characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction accompanied by restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, or activities. Currently in the US, approximately 2.5% of children have a diagnosis of ASD. The etiology of ASD is complex, however the disorder does have a strong genetic basis. Specific genetic mutations can lead to neuroanatomical and neurophysiological changes during development resulting in a behavioral phenotype that falls along the ASD spectrum and may result in a diagnosis of ASD. The severity of ASD-specific behaviors falls on a continuum …

Uncovering New Mechanisms Of Cdc34 And Cullin-Ring Activity, Spencer Hill

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Ubiquitylation is a cellular regulatory system found in all eukaryotic cells, which has managed to find a role in most pathways imaginable. The system works fundamentally through the ligation of a small protein known as ubiquitin onto a substrate. Depending on the context of the ubiquitin ligation, the substrate can be directed towards a number of cellular fates, the best-studied being degradation of the substrate. While originally thought of as a signal for cellular disposal units to degrade aberrant proteins, we now know that ubiquitin plays a highly nuanced role in cellular epistasis, controlling everything from the cell cycle to …

A Highly-Sensitive Global-Shutter Cmos Image Sensor With On-Chip Memory For Hundreds Of Kilo-Frames Per Second Scientific Experiments, Konstantinos Moutafis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this work, a highly-sensitive global-shutter CMOS image sensor with on-chip memory that can capture up to 16 frames at speeds higher than 200kfps is presented. The sensor fabricated and tested is a 100 x 100 pixel sensor, and was designed to be expandable to a 1000 x 1000 pixel sensor using the same building blocks and similar architecture.

The heart of the sensor is the pixel. The pixel consists of 11 transistors (11T) and 2 MOSFET capacitors. A 6T front-end is followed by a Correlated Double Sampling (CDS) circuitry that includes 2 capacitors and a reset switch. The 4T …

The Effect Of Pleistocene Glacial - Interglacial Cycles On Patterns Of Genetic Diversity And Differentiation Of Populations Of Leptodactylus Albilabris (White-Lipped Frog) In The Puerto Rican Bank, Andre Nguyen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The historical distributional shifts of various species have been attributed to the glacial-interglacial cycles of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 mya – 10,000 ya). Sea level changes caused by Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles impacted the total area of landmasses, particularly in island systems. Cooler, glacial periods increased emergent (subaerial) island area via lower sea levels. Adjacent islands may have become connected through emergent land bridges, resulting in a larger subaerial landmass. Warmer interglacial periods led to higher sea levels, which in turn reduced island area, and in some cases, submerged land bridges, fragmenting larger islands into separate, smaller units. The Puerto Rican …

On Action Quality Assessment, Paritosh Parmar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this dissertation, we tackle the task of quantifying the quality of actions, i.e., how well an

action was performed using computer vision. Existing methods used human body pose-based features to express the quality contained in an action sample. Human body pose estimation in actions such as sports actions, like diving and gymnastic vault, is particularly challenging, since the athletes undergo convoluted transformations while performing their routines. Moreover, pose-based features do not take into account visual cues such as water splash in diving. Visual cues are taken into account by human judges. In our first work, we show that using …

Impact Of Design Cost Percentage On Cost Growth, Schedule Growth, And Construction Intensity Of Road Construction Projects, Elina Prajapati

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The performance of construction projects is measured in terms of cost and schedule variation. Studies have identified that such variations are mainly due to design changes, which are more frequent on projects executed through the design-bid-build (DBB) delivery method. Thus, the design factor is identified as one of the major parameters affecting the performance of DBB projects. Despite the majority of road projects being constructed following the DBB method, the impact of design cost on the performance of road projects has not been sufficiently studied yet. Therefore, this study focuses on determining the effect of design cost on the performance …

Development Of Natural Perlite Based Concrete For Sustainable Construction, Seyedmahmoud Motaharikarein

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study aimed to partially replace Portland Cement (PC) with environmentally friendly binders capable of improving the longevity of concrete. The new binders consisted of different proportions of natural pozzolan (perlite) with various fineness and particle size distributions. A step-by-step research program was designed to: (1) discover the optimum fineness of perlite powder and its optimum replacement level with cement; (2) investigate the rheological properties of the perlite-containing mixtures, and examine whether this binder can be used in selfconsolidating concrete; and (3) assess the weaknesses of the new binder, and improve its deficiencies by using nanomaterials such as nano-silica. The …

Characterizing Compact Game Trees, Andrew Dubose

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

It is well-known that the body of a game tree of height less than or equal to ω is compact

if and only if the tree is finitely branching. In this thesis, we develop necessary and sufficient

conditions for the body of any game tree to be compact.

Examination Of Maskelynite Through Static Recompression And Dynamic Compression, Justin James Reppart

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This is an experimental study that aims to clarify the possible formation mechanisms of maskelynite. Maskelynite is a diaplectic glass, that forms during shock compression of feldspar far below the melting point, and without fusion. Maskelynite also paramorphises precursor feldspar grains. Maskelynite is an important probe of shock-pressures at terrestrial impact sites and in many meteorites. Two mechanisms of formation of maskelynite are examined here: 1) maskelynite is result of a pressure-induced amorphization of feldspar compressed beyond its mechanical stability where the formation of thermodynamically stable phases is kinetically inhibited [1, 2]. 2) Feldspar transforms upon dynamic compression into a …

Application Of Data-Driven And Process-Based Modeling Approaches For Water Quality Simulation In Lakes And Freshwater Reservoirs, Ali Saber Sichani

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Lakes and freshwater reservoirs often serve as the primary drinking and irrigation water sources for surrounding communities. They provide recreational and tourism opportunities, thereby promoting the prosperity of neighboring communities. Reliable estimates of water quality in lakes and reservoirs can improve management practices to protect water resources.

Seasonal water temperature and solar shortwave radiation variations, and their subsequent interactions with water column aquatic life, combined with seasonal variations of mixing intensity throughout the water column, result in variations of water quality constituents with depth during the annual cycle. The complexity of these variations entails the use of advanced water quality …

Sizing A New Bike Sharing System For The University Of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nesley Orochena

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The strategic planning objectives for a novel Bike Sharing Systems (BSS) are to locate the BSS stations, size the stations, and determine the bicycle fleet size, among others. Current guidelines to design BSS programs are tailored to city centers with large coverage areas and high bicycle to population ratios, and thus not directly transferable to a university setting. An ordered probit model was created using data from a university online stated preference survey to determine the key factors that affect the uptake rates for the UNLV BSS program and to estimate the potential demand. The demand analysis was incorporated into …

An Evaluation Of Factors Associated With The Perceptions Of Diabetes In A Filipino American Sample Residing In Clark County, Nevada, Lawrence Nartatez Sagadraca

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study assessed beliefs about the contribution of the Filipino diet and genetics to diabetes burden and its ability to control it without medical interventions. The data from a need’s assessment survey of 200 Filipino Americans residing in Clark County, Nevada, were analyzed by using the logistic regression model. A significant proportion of the participants believed that diabetes is a problem in the Filipino community (79%) and is related to the Filipino diet (75%) and genetics (69.0%), and that it can be controlled without medical intervention (52.4%). In univariate analyses, age (Odds ratio [OR]: 1.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01 …

Neural Network In Hardware, Jiong Si

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation describes the implementation of several neural networks built on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and used to recognize a handwritten digit dataset – the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) database. A novel hardwarefriendly activation function called the dynamic ReLU (D-ReLU) function is proposed. This activation function can decrease chip area and power of neural networks when compared to traditional activation functions at no cost to prediction accuracy.

The implementations of three neural networks on FPGA are presented: 2-layer online training fully-connected neural network, 3-layer offline training fully-connected neural network, and two solutions of Super-Skinny …

Carbon Management And Volatile Fatty Acid Production In Primary Clarifiers At A Wastewater Treatment Plant, Brittany Nicole Radke

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An increasing number of treatment plants are required to remove nutrients from domestic wastewater to lessen the impact of nutrient loading to water bodies. Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (EBPR) is one of the processes commonly used to remove phosphorus from domestic wastewater. The presence of an adequate quantity of volatile fatty acids (VFA) in the wastewater influent to EBPR is important for process efficiency and stability. The objective of this research was to investigate the production of VFAs through fermentation of sludge in primary clarifiers as it related to improving nutrient removal, primarily targeting phosphorus.

The research tested, in full-scale, …

Ambient Temperature Dependence Of Air-Cooled Condenser Performance And Parameters, Alexander Darr Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Thermoelectric power generation uses 38% of total fresh water withdrawals and majority of that water is used during steam condensation. Air-cooled condensers are an alternative to water-cooled condensers for power generation. Ambient air temperature affects the performance of air-cooled condensers. A small air-cooled condenser was run under the ambient air temperature extremes of Las Vegas in order to examine the system performance and air-side heat transfer parameters. Three different sets of tubes with different surface areas and geometries were studied. The condenser is equipped with several air velocity sensors, thermocouples and thermistors to measure the conditions to develop the air-side …

A Community Of Care: Patterns Of Pathology And Trauma With A Focus On The Bioarchaeology Of Care At Carrier Mills, Il (10,000 – 1000 Bp), Alecia Schrenk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Illness and injury are universal human experiences which are endowed with cultural meaning. Bioarchaeology has only recently begun to engage with the socioeconomic impacts of illness, injury, impairment, and healthcare provisioning in the past. This study examines how the Middle Archaic (6000 – 300 BC) and Early Woodland (1000 – 200 BC) hunter-gatherer community of Carrier Mills, Illinois was affected by and managed the socioeconomic burdens of poor health. The data presented in this study used bioarchaeological analyses to reveal patterns of poor health and healthcare provisioning within the Carrier Mills community. Bioarchaeology is ideally situated for such investigations since …

The Perplexing Paradox Of Clostridioides (Clostridium) Difficile Infection (Cdi) - Analysis Of Anti-Germinants As Part Of Cdi Prophylaxis, Christopher Yip

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile infections (CDI) have become the leading cause of nosocomial antibiotic-associated diarrhea worldwide. Under normal circumstances, bacteria found in the gastrointestinal tract provide a barrier against C. difficile colonization. Upon antibiotic therapy, the protective barrier is lost as the microbial community becomes depleted thus providing the opportunity for C. difficile to colonize the human gut. Exposure to taurocholate, a bile acid produced within the mammalian gastrointestinal tract, causes C. difficile spores to begin their transition, a process known as germination, from metabolically dormant structures to toxin-producing cells. As germination is required for the onset of CDI, anti-germination compounds …

Balys Dvarionas: A Brief History, Analysis Of His Concerto For Horn And Orchestra, And The First Recording Of The Concerto, Jonathan Lewis Snyder

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document will concentrate on the currently unpublished and incomplete manuscript of the orchestral version of Concerto for Horn and Orchestra [Koncertas valtornei su orkestru], composed by Lithuanian composer Balys Dvarionas (1904–1972). Despite his popularity and importance in Lithuania, Dvarionas’s music is not as well known throughout the rest of the world. This document aims to redress this situation.

The document provides a more thorough English-language biography about the composer than those that currently exist in print. It discusses various aspects of the concerto, including its place in Dvarionis’s output and a brief analysis, a core aspect of which is …

The Timing Of Dynamical Interactions Between Planets In Exoplanetary Systems, David Robert Rice

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During the late stage of planet formation, a system is often dynamically packed with protoplanets. These bodies collide together and are ejected from the system to form the final planets. The duration of stability before these dynamical interactions occur is dependent on the initial separation of the bodies in a system. Previous works have shown that the time before a planet-planet close encounter is exponential with the initial planet spacing measured in units of mutual Hill radius. We investigate the limitations of these previous studies. We find that systems that are initially similar can have larger differences in stability times …

The Symbolism Of Play Behavior In Child-Centered Play Therapy, Kaitlin Andrewjeski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) is an evidence-based approach for mental health treatment with children. CCPT is based on the belief that play is a child’s natural language and so the therapist is required to make inferences of themes through observations of free play; however, there is no standard process by which themes are identified. The purpose of the current study is to gain detailed descriptions of play behavior in order to describe how themes emerge and how they are displayed in child-centered treatment. The themes were then used to describe the progression through the typical stages of child-centered play therapy. …