Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of Titanosilicate Materials For The Sorption Of Cesium And Strontium From High Level Wastes, Matheus Tolentino Lauar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Treatment of high-level waste (HLW) stored in the U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) sites of Hanford and Savannah River involves the separation of radioactive cesium (137Cs) and strontium (90Sr). Challenges in treating the liquid HLW includes high alkalinity or acidity, and high salt content, many orders of magnitude above Cs and Sr concentrations. Ion exchange is the preferred process for removing these compounds, due to the availability of selective media and large volume-processing capacity by column operations. The crystalline silicotitanate (Na2Ti2O3SiO4·2H2O), i.e. CST, which structure is analog to the mineral sitinakite, is considered the reference material for this application. …

Pentecostal Churches: A Multiple Case Study Of Education And Youth Women And Leadership, Derric A. Carter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Pentecostal church had been a religious anomaly amongst other Protestant affiliations because of their commitment to particular beliefs and practices. By using Gutierrez’s (1973) Liberation Theology and Freire’s (1970) Critical Theory as theoretical frameworks, the completed study examined the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings of the Pentecostal youth concerning higher education and whether or not it was promoted by church leadership as well as Pentecostal women’s beliefs, thoughts and feelings about the role of women, including their consideration and encouragement for leadership in the church. Specifically, the study was framed around the following questions:

How, if at all, did the …

Schools And Crime: An Empirical Analysis Of School Safety Measures, Heather Gilmore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During the 2015-2016 academic year, more than three-fourths of public schools reported having a violent, property, or other crime on their campuses (Musu-Gillette et al., 2018). While most students do not experience victimization (Musu-Gillette et al., 2018), a large portion schools do report criminal activity on campus. The desire for improved school strategies on crime is warranted, particularly as student populations continue to grow, increasing to 56.6 million students (NCES, 2018). The focus, however, has remained primarily on violence and specific types of school security measures. The purpose of this study is to close the gaps in the literature and …

Validating Empathy As Captured By The Meanness In Psychopathy-Self Report, Stephanie Marie Molina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Psychopathy is a distinctive personality disorder with an array of interpersonal and affective deficits. In particular, deficits in affective and cognitive empathy skills are noted to be a central feature of psychopathy. Specifically, the construct of psychopathic meanness, which is conceptualized as a tendency to act aggressively without regard for others, is preferentially related to deficient empathy. To elucidate the relationship between psychopathic meanness and empathy, three studies were conducted utilizing the Meanness in Psychopathy-Self Report (MiP- SR). The MiP-SR is a new measure that parses apart the construct of psychopathic meanness into three factors: Malice, Coldness, and Imperviousness. MiP-SR …

Transition Perceptions Of High School Students With Emotional And Behavioral Disorders And Their Teachers, Kristopher Hawk Yeager

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

After school, students with EBD often have poor outcomes related to employment, postsecondary education, and independent living. Individualized strengths-based transition planning that provides a multitude of services and supports can improve these outcomes. There is limited research on the perspectives of students with EBD and how these viewpoints compare with those of teachers. Additional research in this area can provide researchers and practitioners with a more complex understanding of youth perspectives that can influence the development of authentic, strengths-based, and culturally responsive interventions. This mixed-methods study analyzed the transition-related strengths, needs, and social supports of students with EBD. Across three …

An Analysis Of Teacher Training Concerning The Identification Of Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Brittany Jo Desnoyer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Given recent revisions to the diagnostic criteria as it pertains to students with ASD (DSM-V; APA, 2013), several studies have raised concern that future diagnosis will be limited (McPartland et al., 2012). However, prevalence rates of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have continued to rise since its release (Baio et al., 2018). Because special education referrals are subject to bias, and positively correlated with a high probably of subsequent diagnosis (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 1981), the role of the educator warrants exploration.

This study investigated the level of training provided to pre-service and in-service general and special educators in the DSM-IV (APA, …

The Relationship Between Motivation To Use Airbnb And Guests’ Repurchase Intention: Moderating Effect Of Consideration Set, Wen Jiang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With the rise of the peer-to-peer sharing economy, Airbnb has become the leading platform as an online marketplace that allows homeowners to contract short-term leases or rents to tourists. It has expanded rapidly around the globe. This study comprehensively reviews previous literature with respect to the marketing of Airbnb. The study then summarized and categorized 12 motivators linked as causative agents for guests choosing Airbnb. Using the push-pull theory, along with research on the consideration set, this study examines the relationships between Airbnb motivators and guests’ repurchase intention. This study further examines how the consideration set moderates these relationships.

Seventy-eight …

Animal Assisted Therapy And Support Animals, What Mental Health Professionals Know And Understand, Alexandro H. Velez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Animal-assisted therapy can greatly benefit mental health professionals with clients in and out of the school settings in many ways. It is believed mental health professionals are successfully implementing Animal Assisted Therapy, even though some are not. Mental health professionals who are not using Animal Assisted Therapy are not doing so as the result of various variables, such as lack of information, knowledge, training, certification and policies, which prevents them from using Animals Assisted Therapy with clients and the community. It is also believed some mental health professionals are using animals as part of therapeutic interventions without proper training. The …

Applied Symmetry For Crystal Structure Prediction, Scott William Fredericks

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents an original open-source Python package called PyXtal (pronounced "pi-crystal") that generates random symmetric crystal structures for use in crystal structure prediction (CSP). The primary advantage of PyXtal over existing structure generation tools is its unique symmetrization method. For molecular structures, PyXtal uses an original algorithm to determine the compatibility of molecular point group symmetry with Wyckoff site symmetry. This allows the molecules in generated structures to occupy special Wyckoff positions without breaking the structure's symmetry. This is a new feature which increases the space of search-able structures and in turn improves CSP performance.

It is shown that …

An Application Of Conformal Mapping To The Boundary Element Method For Unconfined Steady Seepage With A Phreatic Surface, Jorge Eduardo Reyes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, numerical results using the Boundary Element Method (BEM) for groundwater flow in a domain with a boundary that contains numerous singularities with a phreatic surface are developed. The flow in the domain is modeled using Darcy’s law for a homogeneous isotropic porous medium. The boundary conditions are a combination of Dirichlet and Neumann with the phreatic surface having both boundary conditions. Exact solutions by Conformal Mapping for simplified domains with the same singularity as the original domain allow for modifications to the BEM resulting in an improvement to the numerical solution.

An iterative process is used to …

Performance Comparison Of Message Queue Methods, Sanika Raje

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Message queues are queues of messages that facilitate communication between applications. A queue is a line of messages or events waiting to be handled in a sequential manner. A message queue is a queue of messages sent between applications. It includes a sequence of work objects that are waiting to be processed. For a distributed system to work, it needs to pass information between various machines. No single machine is responsible for the entire system, but all information is interrelated. Hence a major concern of distributed systems is this transfer of data. Which also proves to be one of the …

Words As Weapons And Wisdom, Barbara Paige

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement were two seminal eras in American history. The Renaissance also referred to as the New Negro Movement was a literary artistic, and cultural movement, centered in Harlem in which writers produced large bastions of literary works. African descended people began to identify with their African past and intellectuals adopted Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist methodologies to overcome oppression. Their efforts laid a foundation for the Civil Rights movement. The Black Arts Movement, an era of intense literary artistic activism begun with the assassination of Malcolm X. Artist/intellectuals responded to a more hostile environment …

Informal Interactions: A Mini-Ethnographic Case Study Of Students With Emotional And Behavioral Disorders, Katelyn Jessie Zirkus

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Most educational professionals are committed to supporting the students they serve in developing the skills needed to achieve the highest educational life potential they possibly can. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA, 2004) reaffirms that the purpose of special education is to prepare students for further education, employment, and independent living. However, post-school outcomes for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often run counter to this stated purpose. Outcomes for students with EBD into adulthood are often not positive, substantiating the need of congressional intent to strengthen preparation and consequently improve these students’ quality of life.

Therefore, …

Microstructural Effects On Photocatalytic Performance In Ag3po4/Bi2moo6 Z-Scheme Photocatalyst Systems, Kaleab Mengesha Ayalew

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As the world population continues to grow and access to modern industry become increasingly common, humanity finds itself amid an environmental and energy crisis. Natural resources, such as clean water are getting scarce. Currently, the development of high efficiency, green energy sources, and eco-friendly methods for water treatment have become a nonelective task. As a result, photocatalysis, as one of the most promising technologies in utilizing solar energy and pollutant removal, has attracted considerable attention.

However, the practical application of photocatalysis is still elusive because of the difficulty of finding an individual material that can satisfy all the requirements for …

Managing Iot Data On Hyperledger Blockchain, Akhil David

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Blockchain is a rapidly evolving technology known for its security, immutability and decentralized nature. At its heart, it’s used for storing various kinds of data like transactions. But it is not limited to just the transactions or the cryptocurrency. It can also be used to store many other things like assets, IoT data or even multimedia data like songs, pictures, and videos.

The number of IoT devices being connected to the internet is increasing day by day. In fact, Garter (Analyst Firm) predicts there will be 20.4 Billion IoT devices by the end of 2020 [IOTb]. With the increase in …

Coarse-Grained, Fine-Grained, And Lock-Free Concurrency Approaches For Self-Balancing B-Tree, Edward R. Jorgensen Ii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines the concurrency approaches for a standard, unmodified B-Tree which is one of the more complex data structures. This includes the coarse grained, fine-grained locking, and the lock-free approaches. The basic industry standard coarse-grained approach is used as a base-line for comparison to the more advanced fine-grained and lock-free approaches. The fine-grained approach is explored and algorithms are presented for the fine-grained B-Tree insertion and deletion. The lock-free approach is addressed and an algorithm for a lock-free B- Tree insertion is provided. The issues associated with a lock-free deletion are discussed. Comparison trade-offs are presented and discussed. As …

Application Of Semi-Hydrophobic Layers To Decrease Bare Soil Evaporation, Jesse Lee Barnes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Evaporative water loss from bare agricultural soils is a primary area of water conservation research. Mulching is the commonly utilized method to decrease evaporative water loss. The most commonly utilized mulch is nonbiodegradable polyethylene sheeting because it tends to decrease evaporative water loss and increase crop yields more than environmentally friendly mulches. This study aimed to test the utility of sand coated with polymerized soybean oil (i.e., hydrophobic sand) as a treatment to reduce bare soil evaporation and an alternative to current practices. Evaporation rates were measured in laboratory soil columns containing both treated and untreated soils. Treatment parameters were …

Factors Influencing Community College Students' Persistence In Completing An Associate Of Applied Science Degree, Amy Hutchinson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As the contemporary labor market continues to require highly skilled workers, who in turn require higher education, more traditional and nontraditional students bolster their marketability by pursuing additional education, increasing their numbers at community colleges. Although college enrollment has generally improved in recent decades, graduation rates have decreased. A term often associated with students’ drive to continue working toward their degree completion is persistence.

The aim of this study was to identify academic factors and student characteristics that influence a part-time student’s persistence in completing an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree at a community college. Bean and Metzner’s model …

Healthcare Access And Utilization By Transgender Populations: A United States Transgender Survey Study, Axenya Kachen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Transgender communities in the United States are highly marginalized and have been systematically and infrastructurally ignored due to the widespread fundamental belief that gender exists as a binary classification. The dichotomous theoretical framework of sex and gender prevented public recognition of this community as a population of interest for public health research and targeted intervention. Sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations have fought for basic human rights, including access to affordable healthcare. The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) was founded in 2003 to advocate for the advancement of equality for transgender people. In 2015, the NCTE conducted the United …

Policing Protests: An Exploratory Analysis Of Crowd Management Policies, Logan P. Kennedy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Several policing strategies have been used to manage protest crowds over the past 50 years. Research suggests that escalated force and command and control strategies were utilized until the 1990’s (Bourne, 2011; Schweingruber, 2000), while negotiated management has emerged as a prominent protest management strategy within recent decades (Gillham, 2011; Gillham & Noakes, 2006). While literature describes the general evolution of protest strategies over time, there has been no systematic documentation of police approaches to crowd management.

This study examines police policies governing protest management to identify current U.S. police practices. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) provides …

Exploring Mathematics Anxiety Of Students At-Risk For Mathematics Difficulties, Sarah Mccarthy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Students in mathematics classrooms are found to experience various levels of stress and anxiety during instructional time. Negative feelings associated with participation in math activities can lead to both physical and emotional manifestations, affecting performance, achievement, and even confidence with the academic subject. Students found to be at-risk for mathematics difficulties have greater risks when it comes to the possible experience of mathematics anxiety. Students with learning disabilities, students needing supplemental interventions, and students who are English learners can experience potential bouts of anxiety and stress, magnifying academic struggles in the math classroom. In addition, academic deficits can intensify levels …

Improving Ocr Post Processing With Machine Learning Tools, Jorge Ramon Fonseca Cacho

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Post Processing involves data cleaning steps for documents that were digitized, such as a book or a newspaper article. One step in this process is the identification and correction of spelling and grammar errors generated due to the flaws in the OCR system. This work is a report on our efforts to enhance the post processing for large repositories of documents.

The main contributions of this work are:

• Development of tools and methodologies to build both OCR and ground truth text correspondence for training and testing of proposed techniques in our experiments. In particular, we …

Adolescent Pregnancy: A Clinical Guideline For School Nurses In New Mexico, Karin Ludi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The overall purpose of this project is to ensure that school nurses and health assistants are knowledgeable and have the resources to care for pregnant adolescents in the public school system. New Mexico has consistently ranked in the top 10 in the United States for teen births to women aged 15-19 years. The New Mexico School Health Manual is currently used to guide school nurses and health assistants in the care of pregnant adolescents, but it is vague and addresses emergencies such as labor and bleeding.

From this author’s experience as a school nurse in the public school system, it …

A Video Game As A Pedagogical Tool For Pre-Service Teachers To Learn About Bullying Prevention And Intervention In School Contexts, Jeffrey Robert Laferriere

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bullying is an act of aggression intended to physically or emotionally harm another. It is a problem that affects millions of K-12 students around the world each year. Victims of bullying may suffer severe effects that follow them into adulthood, including depression and self-harm. In-service teachers, though aware of the problem, are often inadequately trained to correct the current trends. This lack of knowledge and skills is the result of a failure among teacher preparation programs to properly prepare their candidates. This study examined the use of the video game Bully as a pedagogical tool in an attempt simulate mastery …

Static Malware Detection Using Deep Neural Networks On Portable Executables, Piyush Aniruddha Puranik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There are two main components of malware analysis. One is static malware analysis and the other is dynamic malware analysis. Static malware analysis involves examining the basic structure of the malware executable without executing it, while dynamic malware analysis relies on examining malware behavior after executing it in a controlled environment. Static malware analysis is typically done by modern anti-malware software by using signature-based analysis or heuristic-based analysis.

This thesis proposes the use of deep neural networks to learn features from a malware’s portable executable (PE) to minimize the occurrences of false positives when recognizing new malware. We use the …

Factors Associated With Eosinophilic Esophagitis In Nevada, Julia Lorraine Anderson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a rare immune-mediated illness with symptoms that range from difficulty swallowing to food impaction of the esophagus. Most published studies have been documented among patients residing in cool regions with significant annual rainfall. No published studies to our knowledge have been performed examining the healthcare utilization trends of EoE in Nevada. Utilizing two unique databases, the factors associated with EoE healthcare utilization patterns in Nevada were examined. All analyses were performed in R version 3.5.1. This study included a demographic and regional analysis identifying risk factors associated with having an EoE healthcare visit in Nevada. Several …

Optimization Of Motor Performance, Lee-Kuen Chua

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

According to the OPTIMAL (Optimizing Performance Through Intrinsic Motivation and Attention of Learning) theory of motor learning, enhanced expectancies (EE), autonomy support (AS), and external focus (EF) augment the coupling of a person’s actions to intended movement goals. This goal-action coupling is postulated to boost a person’s focus on goal-related aspects of the motor task while reducing the person’s self-related thoughts, resulting in enhanced performance of skilled movements as well as in improving the acquisition outcomes for the learning of motor skills. The three studies in this compilation report were aimed at providing empirical evidence for the motor performance benefits …

Effects Associated With The Deployment Of Autonomous And Connected Vehicles: Insights From Las Vegas, Nv, Sarah Dennis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Autonomous and connected vehicles (ACVs) are quickly evolving and becoming part of our transportation systems. Adoption of this technology is largely dependent on public perceptions and comfort. The objective of this study was to evaluate public perceptions of ACVs and gain knowledge regarding potential use and important aspects towards acceptance of ACVs. Specifically, the differences in perceptions of people who have ridden an ACV are compared to those who have not. A stated preference approach was utilized, as this is an emerging technology. Two different survey questionnaires were distributed. The first survey was distributed to participants considered to be members …

Using Positive Self-Talk And Goal-Oriented Thinking To Improve Behavioral Outcomes For Students With Learning Disabilities, Danielle M. Feeney

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Positive self-talk is the experience of carrying on an internal conversation with oneself in the form of praise and encourages the individual to persist despite risks or challenges. Goal- oriented thinking is a purposeful mental process used when solving a problem or working on a task and generally occurs when an individual is reasoning, problem solving and decision making. When engaged in goal-oriented thinking, individuals must interpret their current situation, determine their desired state, and then connect the two through a series of actions in an attempt to transform the former to the latter. Individuals who frequently use positive self-talk …

Reduced Gabaergic Signaling At The Axon Initial Segment Decreases Vigilance State Transitioning, Austin John Boren

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Sleep is a highly regulated homeostatic process that is disrupted in an estimated 50-70 million Americans. Regulation of sleep depends upon coordinated signaling of multiple neurotransmitter systems. In particular, inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) signaling is required to suppress wake-active brain regions in order to initiate and maintain sleep states. GABA type A receptors (GABAARs) are ionotropic receptors with subunit compositions uniquely enriched on subcellular domains of target cells. α2 subunit-containing GABAARs are the primary target of GABA released onto the axon initial segment (AIS), a site critical for phasing the oscillatory activity of cortical cells. α2-containing GABAARs have previously been …