Digital Commons Network^™

Design Standards Within Constructed Wetlands For The Reduction Of Mosquito Populations In Clark County, Nevada, Phillip C. Bondurant

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Wetlands are considered one of the most productive ecosystems in the world and provide many benefits to the environment. However, the slow moving and sometimes stagnant water created by the vegetation in the wetland creates an ideal environment for the proliferation of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are the most important insect disease vector worldwide. The presence of mosquitoes within wetlands increases the risk of disease transmission among workers and visitors creating a public health concern. Effective design standards aimed at reducing mosquito breeding habitat should be implemented during the construction and planning phase of wetland development to effectively reduce the mosquito populations. …

Protocol Variation Analysis Of Whole Brain Ct Perfusion In Acute Ischemic Stroke, Peter T. Heiberger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Computed tomography perfusion (CTP) analysis is a rapidly advancing imaging modality that is improving diagnosis of brain abnormalities in patients suffering from hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke, traumatic brain injury, vascular occlusion and numerous other conditions. Through the advancements of computed tomography (CT) imaging, including the introduction of the 320-detector row CT with a 16 centimeter range in the z-axis enabling whole brain CTP, perfusion analysis now has a significantly increased clinical utility that is useful for both diagnosis and treatment of central nervous system (CNS) conditions. This study focuses on the procedural and analytical approach to the diagnostic evaluation of …

Pattern Extraction From The World Wide Web, Praveena Mettu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The World Wide Web is a source of huge amount of unlabeled information spread across different sources in varied formats. This presents us with both opportunities and challenges in leveraging such large amount of unstructured data to build knowledge bases and to extract relevant information.

As part of this thesis, a semi-supervised logistic regression model called “Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Extraction” proposed by Sergey Brin is selected for further investigation. DIPRE presents a technique which exploits the duality between sets of patterns and relations to grow the target relation starting from a small sample.

This project built in JAVA using …

The Role Of Creativity In Naturalistic Decision-Making Environments: A Systems Approach, Richard Hendrik Feenstra

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of creativity in
problem solving situations. Previous research suggested that both
background knowledge and the inability to transfer knowledge across
contexts are important factors in how a problem is ultimately resolved.
Given these findings, the researcher undertook a study on the role
creativity might play when individuals lacking sufficient background
knowledge are faced with a novel real world problem. A question raised
by the researcher whether an absence of background knowledge might
encourage novices to be more creative than their more experienced
counterparts in novel problem solving situations.

Findings of …

Analysis And Evaluation Of Safety Impacts Of Median Types And Midblock Left Turn Treatments For Urban Arterials, Timur Mauga

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Urban growth leads to new land-uses abutting arterials requiring driveways for their accessibility. Uncontrolled number and locations of such access points causes safety, mobility and accessibility problems. The solution to these problems is access management (AM) which controls the number and location of the access points. AM techniques are normally documented in the form of guidelines for engineers and planners to follow when implementing the techniques. However, AM guidelines may not cover every technique due to the fact that AM is still growing. For example, the current AM guideline prepared by The Nevada Department of Transportation addresses many AM techniques. …

Commercial Sex Workers: Lives And Practices, Sarah J. Knowles

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Commercial sex workers epitomize a population who is both stigmatized and underrepresented in marriage and family therapy research. Through this research I hope to gain understanding about the gains of being a commercial sex worker, which many people may overlook due to their moral opposition to the occupation. I will also be exploring some of the challenges that commercial sex workers face that are unique to their line of work, especially in regards to their relationships, as many aspects of this may have been generalized or disregarded. Finally, I plan to address any implications for therapists who work with commercial …

Kairotic Strategema: A Rhetorical Investigation Of Barack Obama’S 2009 Health Care Address, Serena M. Sánchez-Wilson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines President Barack Obama’s address given on September 9, 2009 entitled “Remarks by the President to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.” In order to address various situational and contextual elements such as legislative ambiguity, national expense, bureaucratic intrusion, abortion, euthanasia and illegal immigration, President Obama opportunely enters the conversation at a particular time so as to benefit his agenda of passing health care reform. Revolving around the notion of kairotic strategema, which includes the understating of deliberative address as well as the possession of kairos and phronesis, I assert that this aids President …

Verbal Cues: Producing The Same Results In Stereotype Threat Research?, Tarryn E. Mcghie

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined the notion that stereotype threat experiments can be influenced through linguistic manipulation. The cueing of a phrase (whether stereotypical or non-stereotypical) can produce performance differences between groups, rather than cueing of a stereotype, as used in previous research. Participants (n=95) mostly Caucasian females (68%) ranging in age from 18-45 (M=22.7). The design involved three groups and participants were randomly assigned in order to control for consequential affects. The control group received no verbal cues. The stereotypical group received a stereotypical cue (i.e. men tend to do better on this test than women). The counter-stereotypical group received a …

Evaluation Of Video Based Pedestrian And Vehicle Detection Algorithms, Varun Bandarupalli

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Video based detection systems rely on the ability to detect moving objects in video streams. Video based detection systems have applications in many fields like, intelligent transportation, automated surveillance etc. There are many approaches adopted for video based detection. Evaluation and selecting a suitable approach for pedestrian and vehicle detection is a challenging task. While evaluating the object detection algorithms, many factors should be considered in order to cope with unconstrained environments, non stationary background, different object motion patterns and the variation in types of object being detected.

In this thesis, we implement and evaluate different video based detection algorithms …

Management Research In The Hospitality And Tourism Industry, Xu Cheng

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to identify the current research trends and clarify the changing direction of scholarly studies on knowledge management. The context of this study is hospitality and tourism research with a focus on research publications between 2006 and 2010. Published scholarly studies within this period are examined through content analysis, using such keywords as knowledge management, organizational learning, hospitality, tourism, tourist destinations, travel industry, hotels, lodging, motels, hotel industry, gaming, casino hotel and convention to search scholarly research journals. All contributions found are then screened for a hospitality and tourism theme and KM as the main …

Estimating The Future Growth Potential Of Kangwon Land Casino, Yunekyong Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the further revenue growth potential for Kangwon Land casino in the context of visitor's spending trend. Using table games drop as an indicator of overall gaming demand, a time series regression with dummy variables was utilized to develop a forecast model for table games drop. Then, the predicted data was divided by the number of visitors in an effort to control for the visitor effect. Table games drop data was collected from Kangwon Land casino reflecting the period from November 2000 to May 2008. The Number of visitor data was also collected …

The Write Moves: An Autoethnographic Examination Of The Media Industry, Danielle Gomes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the current media environment through the use of adaptation theory, political economy theory, and media ecology theory. More specifically, this thesis is an autoethnography of this author‟s attempts to release content into the mass-media.

This thesis expects to find that in the current conglomerate controlled media environment content that has multi-media potential is preferred. Vertical integration is the standard in these massive media corporations. Consequently, the adaptation of content into multiple media is no longer an afterthought to creation, it is forethought.

Gesture As An Act Of Meaning-Making: An Eco-Social Perspective Of A Sheltered-English Second Grade Classroom, Alessandro A. Rosborough

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this sociocultural study was to investigate gesture as a mediational tool for meaning-making in learning and teaching a second language. Gesture was observed between a teacher and her immigrant students in a second grade elementary classroom designed specifically for second language learners of English. This study provides an innovative investigation in the role gesture plays as a meditational tool for meaning-making by using a SCT framework at an elementary context level.

Using sociocultural theory, particularly the Vygotskian tradition, this study views gesture as a part of image in thinking. This SCT framework views second language learning in …

Dynamic Indexing, Viswada Sripathi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we report on index constructions for large document collections to facilitate the task of search and retrieval. We first report on classical static index construction methods and their shortcomings. We then report on dynamic index construction techniques and their effectiveness.

Predictors Of Recall And Reading Time For Seductive And Nonseductive Text Segments, Ivan V. Ivanov

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This correlational study explored how concreteness, relevance, importance, and interestingness related to the recall of seductive details and base text, while controlling for text coherence, and student background knowledge. Previous research has provided evidence for the significant relationship between these variables and the seductive details effect in particular and text recall in general. However, this is the first study to consider all these variables simultaneously. A group of 68 undergraduates read an expository text on lightning formation, performed an immediate test on free recall, and rated each text sentence for concreteness, relevance, importance, and interestingness. A simple regression analysis revealed …

The Relationship Of Snowmobile Year, Track Length, And Riding Terrain To The Occurrence Of Musculosketetal Symptoms In Recreational Snowmobile Drivers, Erica L. Heisler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this retrospective study was to examine the occurrence of musculoskeletal symptoms in recreational snowmobile drivers and relate them to the manufacture year of the snowmobile, the length of the track, and/or the riding terrain. Participants included 186 males and 57 females (n=243), aged 18 years and older, and were all snowmobile drivers. Subjects were asked to complete either an online survey or a paper survey to gather information about the year of snowmobile they drove, the track length of that snowmobile, the typical riding terrain they drove on, and any musculoskeletal symptoms they developed from driving snowmobile. …

Application Of A Judgment Model Toward Measurement Of Clinical Judgment In Senior Nursing Students, Tiwaporn Pongmarutai

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Clinical judgment, defined as “the application of the nurse’s knowledge and experience in making decisions about client care” (The National Council of State Boards of Nursing, 2005, p. 2), has been recognized as a vital and essential skill for healthcare providers when caring for clients. Undisputedly, nurses represent the largest component of the healthcare profession and, therefore, play a major role in ensuring quality patient care in the United States. Although the concept of clinical judgment in nursing has been discussed for more than three decades, and in spite of numerous efforts to improve student clinical judgment, the recent literature …

Vertical Transmission Of West Nile Virus In Culex Spp. Mosquitoes Of Clark County, Nevada, Vivek K. Raman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

West Nile Virus (WNV) is an RNA arbovirus that cycles between mosquitoes and birds, but also infects and causes disease in humans, horses and other vertebrate species. Although most infections are asymptomatic, WNV has emerged as the most common cause of epidemic meningoencephalitis in North America and the leading cause of arboviral encephalitis in the United States.

Mosquitoes of the genus Culex are the most active vectors of WNV in North America. Approximately 85% of human WNV infections in the United States occur in late summer with a peak number of cases in August and September. Vertical transmission is defined …

A Front-Fixing Finite Element Method For The Valuation Of American Options, Anthony D. Holmes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

American options are the most commonly traded options in the market. They are used to mitigate risk, speculate about the future, and are the key components of complex trading strategies. In this dissertation, we propose a new front-fixing finite element method for the valuation of American options. One of the attractive qualities of our front-fixing finite element method is that the early exercise boundaries and the option prices can be computed simultaneously with very high accuracy.

We study in detail our front-fixing finite element method for the valuation of American options on stocks, American options on zero-coupon bonds under a …

An Annotated Guide To Flute And Guitar Music, Kristi Benedick

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document will contain an annotated bibliography of all of the flute and guitar music that is currently available. The annotations, organized by level of difficulty, will include title, composer, arranger, publisher, date of publication, level of difficulty, description of difficulties, and description of the piece.

The pieces will be located and obtained by diverse sources, including libraries, various collections, and catalog listings. The study will be completed after careful examination of each piece listed in the document. The end result will be a publishable resource for both flutists and guitarists of all levels.

Poisson Process Monitoring, Test And Comparison, Qing Chen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The task of determining whether a sudden change occurred in the generative parameters of a time series generates application in many areas. In this thesis, we aim at monitoring the change-point of a Poisson process by method, which is characterized by a forward-backward testing algorithm and several overall error control mechanisms. With the application of this proposed method, we declare that Mount Etna is not a simple Poissonian volcano, because two different regimes divided by the change point, January 30th 1974, are identified. The validation procedures, used in a complementary fashion, by the formal hypothesis tests and graphical method will …

Recent Accelerated Second-Degree Baccalaureate Graduates’ Perceptions Of Educational Preparation, Susan Candelaria

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As of 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor is predicting a need for greater than one million new registered nurses by the year 2016 (American Associations of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2008). One way that nursing schools around the country are dealing with this issue is through the creation of accelerated second-degree programs for non-nursing graduates.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the perceptions of educational preparation of accelerated second-degree baccalaureate graduates, who have been out of school for at least one year, but no longer than four years. The sample consisted of 54 graduates from an …

Chemical And Electronic Structure Of Surfaces And Interfaces In Compound Semiconductors, Sujitra Pookpanratana

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The interface formation between two different materials is important in applications for optoelectronic devices. Often, the success or performance of these devices is dependent on the formation of these heterojunctions. In this work, the surface and interfaces in such materials for optoelectronic devices are investigated by a suite of X-ray analytical techniques including X-ray photoelectron (XPS), X-ray excited Auger electron (XAES), and X-ray emission (XES) spectroscopies to provide novel insight.

For the group III-nitrides (e.g., AlxGa1-xN) used in many light emitting devices, a significant challenge exists to form an Ohmic contact. The electron affinities and band gaps of GaN and …

Environmental Influence On Brain, Behavior, And Gene Expression In Drosophila, Xia Wang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Brain development and behavior are sensitive to environmental stimuli. To gain an understanding of how and to what extent environmental variations, particularly with regard to thermal stress and sensory input, affect brain development, function, and genomic activity, in this dissertation, three interrelated studies were conducted in Drosophila melanogaster.

The first study examined the effects of ecologically-relevant hyperthermia stress on development of the Drosophila mushroom body (MB), a conserved sensory integration and associative center in the insect brain. A daily hyperthermic episode throughout larval and pupal development was shown to severely disrupt MB anatomy by reducing intrinsic Kenyon cell neuron …

Sequence And Chemostratigraphy Of The Middle Cambrian Succession In Nevada And Utah, Robyn A. Howley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The House Range Embayment of western Utah and eastern Nevada was a prominent topographic feature on the passive margin of western North America during the middle and late Cambrian. In this study, detailed documentation of sequence boundaries, and their intervening sequences across a platform-to-basin transect of the House Range Embayment was used to establish a sequence-stratigraphic framework from which the depositional history of the embayment was deciphered. This framework was then used to test the hypothesis that the House Range Embayment formed by tectonic subsidence. In addition, the chemostratigraphic (δ13Ccarb) record across the embayment was analyzed within this framework to …

Hotel Revenue Management: Investigating The Interaction Of Information Technology And Judgmental Forecasting, I-Pei Claire Chen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Traditionally, forecasting has included human judgment and/ or guessing. The process has often been described as “guesstimation.” For instance, people are easily affected by user interface issue or rewarding policies during this process. The purpose of the study is to study and understand how revenue managers and other decision makers “make noise” during forecasting, especially when utilizing the advanced RMS, and to offer constructive suggestions to overcome the issues related to human judgment. In other words, the main objective of this study is to analyze the known influential factors for the interaction of revenue managers’ judgment and RMS tools by …

Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas: Building A Unique Brand In A Unique City, Garren Grieve

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A marketing plan tailored toward the Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas. The hotel’s performance has struggled along with the other two hotels at MGM Resort’s CityCenter venue since its opening in December, 2009 with lower than expected business levels. Creative marketing that focuses on the strengths of the hotel and the Mandarin Oriental brand, specifically in Las Vegas will set the young hotel up for the best success in the future. A comprehensive approach to the marketing plan includes numerous internal and external factors that will enable senior management to make sound fact based business decisions. The marketing plan for the …

Taxing Matters: How The Us Tax Code Affects Gamblers, Todd Haushalter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

It has been said that the only sure things in life are death and taxes, and while this is most certainly true of the former, the later will require mastery of the tax code and ensuing cases before you will have a complete picture. The tax code, which started out as a 400 page document is now some 3,387 pages long with a voluminous amount of tax court cases to interpret the code, and many issuances by the Internal Revenue Service to provide further clarification of the code. Somewhere intertwined in the tax code and the ensuing court cases is …

Sunrise, Sunset? Comparing The Las Vegas And Macao Gaming Markets In 2010, Jung-Eun Joyce Kim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When The Mirage opened in 1989, it was the most expensive hotel-casino in history with a construction cost of $630 million. Along with eruption of its signature attraction, The Volcano, this high profile project started a tourism boom and started a trend of further developments of integrated mega-resorts. The Mirage set a new level of experience for Las Vegas strip. However, the global financial crisis that started in 2007 has since left Las Vegas with the highest foreclosure rate in the country and sent accompanying businesses and growth tumbling (Veiga, 2010). Gaming industry has long been thought to be recession …

Understanding American Customer Perceptions On Japanese Food And Services In The U.S, Hoon Lim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to provide an appropriate approach for Japanese restaurant operators to identify the wants and needs of their American customers, and thereby assist restaurateurs in developing strategies that would best attract this market. There are many important attributes of Japanese food and services that affect the satisfaction and behavioral intentions of American customers. Japanese restaurant operators should recognize the perceptions of their American customers and monitor the factors affecting customer satisfaction and revisit intention. This effort will lead Japanese restaurants in the U.S. to improve their operational and marketing efficiency, and thereby increase profitability.