Digital Commons Network^™

The Revival Western And, Kevin Thomas Mckenna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I create a dialogue between films credited with reviving the Western film genre in the early 1990’s. I examine spatial representations in a group of films I label “the revival westerns”: Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990), Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), and George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone (1993). Through the use of extreme long shots, characters demonstrating a confined sense of place, and continuity editing, the revival westerns erect a concentrically scaled conception of space and place and maintain a linear temporality. However, I offer Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) as an intervention that reassembles these spatial and temporal notions. Dead …

A Queer And Crip Grotesque: Katherine Dunn's, Megan Wiedeman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The grotesque has long been utilized in literature as a means for subverting societal constraints and inverting constructions of normalcy. Unfortunately, in many instances, it has been constructed at the expense of disabled characters using their embodiment as metaphorical plot devices rather than social and political agents. Criticism of the grotesque’s use of bodily difference has prompted this analytical project in order to rethink disability as socially and politically positioned within texts, rather than simply aesthetics for symbolic means. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways the literary grotesque can be reread using queer theory and crip …

Field Testing Of Affordable Well Head Protection For Locally Manufactured, Self-Supply Pitcher Pumps On Manually Driven Tubewells In Madagascar, Michal Usowicz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lack of water access is an issue of global importance. The WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Program estimated that in 2015 71% of the world’s population used a safely managed drinking water source and 89% of the world’s population used an improved water source within a 30-minute round trip of home. Madagascar’s national statistics lags far behind these global statistics with 54% of the population using improved water sources, 31% using unimproved water sources, and 16% with no service at all.

This research studied water access in Madagascar with self-supply Pitcher Pumps attached on hand-driven tubewells. The term self-supply in …

Coloring In The Margins: Understanding The Experiences Of Racial/Ethnic And Sexual/Gender Minority Undergraduates In Stem, Jonathan D. Ware

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extensive research has documented the experiences and outcomes of women and certain underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups in STEM educational programs. This paper contributes to current conversations by focusing on the experiences of individuals that identify as both a racial/ethnic and sexual/gender minority (SGM). This paper has two major objectives in mind: (1) provide one of the first empirical studies examining the experiences of SGM students in STEM and (2) interrogate the intersection of racial/ethnic identity and sexual/gender identity within the context of these programs. In order to provide a more robust understanding in these areas, this paper is guided by …

Design, Synthesis, Application Of Biodegradable Polymers, Mussie Gide

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bacterial infections have posed a serious threat to the public health due to the significant rise of the infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There has been considerable interest in the development of antimicrobial agents which mimic the natural HDPs, and among them biodegradable polymers are newly discovered drug candidates with ease of synthesis and low manufacture cost compared to synthetic host defense peptides. Herein, we present the synthesis of biocompatible and biodegradable polymers including polycarbonate polymers, unimolecular micelle hyperbranched polymers and dendrimers that mimic the antibacterial mechanism of HDPs by compromising bacterial cell membranes. The developed amphiphilic polycarbonates are highly …

Better Safe Than Sorry: The Relationship Between Locus Of Control, Perception Of Risk, And Cyber Misbehaviors, Kim Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Information security is of vital importance to organizations. Breaches in security very often stem from behaviors of the system operator. Cyber misbehaviors on the part of employees can have devastating repercussions on the well-being of an organization. Up to now, research has mainly focused on how to protect information systems from outside attack, and only recently have researchers turned to the part the operator plays in keeping the systems safe. The present study investigated some individual differences that may play a role in people’s cyber behavior. The purpose of the study was to determine if locus of control was related …

Three Essays On Digital Annual Reports For Nonprofessional Investors: The Impacts Of Presentation Formats On Investment-Related Judgments And Decisions, Yibo Zhang (James)

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of presentation formats on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of firm performance in the context of digital annual reports. The dissertation implements a three-essay approach.

Essay 1 examines whether the effect of positive/negative financial performance news on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of management and firm performance depends on whether the graphical display of that news is vivid or pallid. Conducting a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment with 470 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk), I find that when the news is positive, presenting graphs vividly allows nonprofessional investors to have a more positive …

Food Insecurity And Age Of Menarche: Using A Biocultural Approach And Life History Theory To Assess Risks Of Food Insecurity Among Girls In Tampa Bay, Fl, Mecca Burris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using life-history theory within a biocultural perspective, this research explores whether household food insecurity correlates with early or delayed menarche among adolescent females in Tampa Bay, Florida. Early onset of puberty and menstruation is connected with numerous health consequences including growth stunting, obesity, type-2 diabetes, adult-onset asthma, reproductive cancers, increased risk for depression, behavioral problems, and early sexual activity which increases the risk for STIs and ovarian cancer. Early menarche also seems to disproportionally impact disadvantaged and minority groups. While there are many known factors that influence age at menarche (e.g.: genetics, diet), little is understood regarding the effect of …

An Examination Of Image Repair Theory And Bp’S Response To The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, William Anthony Korte Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The 2010 explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was an environmental disaster unparalleled in United States history. Because of this, there has been a great deal of research studies regarding the matter.

The purpose of this study was to determine what inshore fishing guides in the Tampa Bay Area feel should be a response to future oil spills using Image Repair Theory, as well as how this important group of stakeholders felt about the image repair responses employed by BP in the wake of the spill.

In depth interviews were used to gather data and answer the pertinent research …

Grooming Behaviors Of, Lauren N. Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The giant freshwater shrimp, Macrobrachium rosenbergii is a large species of prawn grown extensively in aquaculture settings. A social hierarchy exists within the males of this species, representing three distinct male morphotypes. These male morphotypes differ in their behavior, physiology, and morphology and include the largest blue-clawed males (BC males), moderately- sized orange-clawed males (OC males), and the undifferentiated small-clawed males (SM males). All individuals of this species perform grooming behaviors to rid themselves of body fouling which can impede important functions such as movement, respiration, chemoreception, and reproduction. Grooming behaviors in crustaceans often utilize specialized structures called setae, which …

Porter’S Bar: A Coastal Middle Woodland Burial Mound And Shell Midden In Northwest Florida, Kerri Knigge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis should serve as a comprehensive site report for both Porter’s Bar (8Fr1) and Green Point (8Fr11) mounds in northwest Florida. These prehistoric burial mounds and their associated village shell midden are determined to have been constructed during two different time periods, Middle Woodland and Early Woodland, respectively. This is the first time that all materials and data have been described and compiled for both sites, despite the fact that they were both originally recorded over a century ago and described differently later by multiple researchers.

The mounds served as an important ceremonial center along Apalachicola Bay some 1500 …

Conversion Of Biomass To Liquid Hydrocarbon Fuels Via Anaerobic Digestion: A Feasibility Study, Ahmad Naqi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The use of biomass as a potential feedstock for the production of liquid hydrocarbon fuels has been under investigation in the last few decades. This paper discusses a preliminary design and a feasibility study of producing liquid hydrocarbon fuels from biomass through a combined biochemical and thermochemical route. The process involves anaerobic digestion (AD) of the biodegradable portion of the biomass to produce methane rich gas. The methane rich biogas stream is purified by removing contaminants and upgraded to liquid hydrocarbon fuel in a gas to liquid facility (GTL) via thermochemical conversion route. The biogas conversion involves two major steps: …

Once Upon A Genre: Distant Reading, The Newbery Medal, And The Affordances Of Interdisciplinary Paradigms For Understanding Children’S Literature, Melanie Griffin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Typical critical patterns for studying children’s literature, defined in this study as a written text intended for a reader up to the age of 14, make it difficult to chart generic change across a large corpus of texts. Traditionally, criticism of children’s literature focuses on cherry picked archetypes, exemplars, and the standout extraordinary. This study employs interdisciplinary methods and data sources from library science, education, and literary studies to create a method for analyzing a sample corpus of children’s literature more holistically vis-à-vis distant, macroscopic reading techniques.

In this dissertation, I macroscopically read the corpus of Newbery Medal-winning texts in …

Sublethal Effects Of Crude Oil And Chemical Dispersant On The Eastern Oyster (Crassostrea Virginica) At Multiple Life History Stages, Sara Marie Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oil spills in the marine environment can threaten vulnerable ecosystems that support ecologically and economically significant organisms, such as the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), in coastal habitats. The use of chemical dispersant (Corexit 9500) was applied as a cleanup effort in response to the Deepwater Horizon blowout to minimize crude oil slicks, but also resulted in increased concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the water column. The effects of increased soluble fractions of crude oil and dispersant components may be harmful to marine organisms. This study aimed to investigate possible sublethal impacts to the eastern oyster at multiple life history …

Parallelizing Tabu Search Based Optimization Algorithm On Gpus, Vinaya Malleypally

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are many combinatorial optimization problems such as traveling salesman problem, quadratic-assignment problem, flow shop scheduling, that are computationally intractable. Tabu search based simulated annealing is a stochastic search algorithm that is widely used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. Due to excessive run time, there is a strong demand for a parallel version that can be applied to any problem with minimal modifications. Existing advanced and/or parallel versions of tabu search algorithms are specific to the problem at hand. This leads to a drawback of optimization only for that particular problem. In this work, we propose a parallel version of …

Flames And Frogs – The Impact Of Environmental Disturbances On Host-Parasite Dynamics, Nicole Ortega

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The successful completion of this work is dedicated first to my grandparents for having always shown their unwavering love and encouragement in my journeys (most of which they kindly and politely only pretended to understand) and for having also served as life-long role models who upheld an unparalleled work ethic. To many whom I consider to be my chosen family, especially Ann Williams and Brittany Sears, who kept me laughing, but more importantly, kept my crazy train from derailing during these tumultuous years. To Wayne Price and Tom Jackman, who fostered the success of my career and are the epitome …

Design And Implementation Of A Ferrocement Improved Cookstove In Rural Panama, Josh Donegan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Household air pollution contributes to the premature death of more than 4 million people annually. Improved cookstoves are one technological intervention that can potentially reduce exposure to household air pollution. However, improved cookstove implementation programs need to consider measures to increase sustainability and promote long-term adoption. The objectives of this research were 1) to develop and implement a new ferrocement cookstove for Peña Blanca, a rural indigenous community in the Ngäbe-Bugle region of Panama, 2) to evaluate its potential sustainability in comparison to the most common cooking technologies observed in the community, 3) to prepare a construction manual for the …

Collecting The Past: Using A Private Collection Of Artifacts To Assess Prehistoric Occupation Of The Chipola River Valley In Northwest Florida, Kelsey Kreiser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Chipola River Valley in northwest Florida is an area of extensive occupation by pre-contact peoples, dating as far back as the Paleo-Indian time period (approximately 11,000 BC). With such a rich archaeological history, it has enticed many local divers to explore river bottoms and collect artifacts. I worked with one local collector to study over 700 projectile points found in the Chipola River. The collector has taken great care to protect and preserve these points and, in many cases, documented the GPS coordinates from where they were collected. Using the GPS coordinates and ArcMap, I have been able to …

Angiostrongylus Cantonensis: Epidemiologic Review, Location-Specific Habitat Modelling, And Surveillance In Hillsborough County, Florida, U.S.A., Brad Christian Perich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a parasitic nematode endemic to tropical and subtropical regions and is the leading cause of human eosinophilic meningitis. The parasite is commonly known as rat lungworm because the primary host in its lifecycle is the rat. A clinical overview of rat lungworm infection is presented, followed by a literature review of rat lungworm epidemiology, risk factors, and surveillance projects. Data collected from previous snail surveys in Florida was considered alongside elevation, population per square kilometer, median household income by zip code territory, and normalized difference vegetation index specific to the geographic coordinates from which the snail samples …

Novel Role Of Histone Deacetylase 11 (Hdac11) In Regulating Normal And Malignant Hematopoiesis, Jie Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During hematopoiesis, multilineage progenitor cells and the precursors are committed to individual hematopoietic lineages. In normal myelopoiesis, the immature myeloid cells (IMCs) differentiate into macrophages, neutrophils or dendritic cells. However, under tumor burden, these IMCs differentiate into myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) result in an up-regulation of immune suppressive factors and pro-tumor effect. The development of normal or malignant is tightly controlled by endogenous signals such as transcription factors and epigenetic regulations. HDAC11 is the newest identified members of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) family. Previous study in our group had identified HDAC11 as a negative regulator of interleukin 10 (IL-10) …

Concerning Virtual Reality And Corporealized Media: Exploring Video Game Aesthetics And Phenomenology, Matthew Morales

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the birth of the New Hollywood blockbuster out of the Hollywood Renaissance in the 1970s, popular moving image media has continually exhibited an intense interest in play with Newtonian physics and tactile, immediate experience. As the entertainment industry has moved further away from analog and celluloid and deeper into a digital media space, we have begun to see new a new breed of media project that differently engages with our sensorium in order to newly use (and abuse) this interest. I term this digital media project “corporealized media.” Corporealized media, as I define it, refers to media that includes, …

Distinguishing Patterns Of Utopia And Dystopia, East And West, Huai-Hsuan Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Before Sir Thomas More published Utopia and defined his ideal world with this fictional land, humans had been looking for their ideal society for centuries based on various religions and cultures. Yet, there are a few studies focusing on Utopia and Dystopia in cross-cultural contexts. This thesis will explore the two main questions: 1) can Utopia and Dystopia be separated? and 2) how does the utopian concept in the West involve in Eastern culture during the postwar period in postcolonial perspective?

Phoenix in Japan and THX 1138 in U.S. are two well-known works during the post-World War II period via …

Perceptual And Physiologic Analysis Of Dystussia In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Stephanie Anne Watts

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Swallowing and cough are two vital functions that are reflexive in nature and are related to each other in terms of shared neural and anatomical space. When a disorder impacts normal and effective swallowing and/or cough, the consequences can be life-threatening. Evaluation and treatment of swallowing and cough disorders can fall under the scope of practice of the speech-language pathologist and speech-language pathologists often are leading professionals. Furthermore, much of the current research on swallowing and cough is spearheaded by speech-language pathologists often working with a multi-disciplinary team. The focus of this dissertation is on the clinical evaluation of cough …

Astaxanthin Attenuates Mptp Induced Neurotoxicity And Modulates Cognitive Function In Aged Mice, Beth Grimmig

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parkinson’s disease is the second common neurodegenerative disease and is most frequently diagnosed in individuals over 60. There are no available medications that can prevent or restore the loss of neurons that correspond to motor impairments in patients. Identifying novel therapeutic compounds that are capable of slowing and reversing the extensive neurodegeneration that occurs in PD remains an important goal of the field. While basic research has identified potential therapeutic agents, studies often use young model organisms to demonstrate efficacy of the target compound. This approach ignores the impact of the aged CNS on the disease process, and likely contributes …

Graph-Based Latent Embedding, Annotation And Representation Learning In Neural Networks For Semi-Supervised And Unsupervised Settings, Ismail Ozsel Kilinc

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning has been immensely successful in supervised learning with outstanding examples in major industrial applications such as voice and image recognition. Following these developments, the most recent research has now begun to focus primarily on algorithms which can exploit very large sets of unlabeled examples to reduce the amount of manually labeled data required for existing models to perform well. In this dissertation, we propose graph-based latent embedding/annotation/representation learning techniques in neural networks tailored for semi-supervised and unsupervised learning problems. Specifically, we propose a novel regularization technique called Graph-based Activity Regularization (GAR) and a novel output layer modification called …

Sleep And Alzheimer’S Disease: A Critical Examination Of The Risk That Sleep Problems Or Disorders Particularly Obstructive Sleep Apnea Pose Towards Developing Alzheimer’S Disease, Omonigho A. Michael Bubu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a critical examination of the relationship between sleep problems and/or disorders, particularly Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and Alzheimer Disease (AD). First, I conducted an exhaustive systematic review of existing literature, and identified gaps in research that led to specific research aims. For the first aim, I conducted the first ever-published meta-analysis examining sleep, cognitive decline and AD, providing an aggregate effect of sleep on AD. Second, focusing on OSA, I conducted a study examining OSA’s effect on longitudinal changes on AD biomarkers in cognitive normal, MCI and AD subjects, using data from the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative …

Using Green Messages To Cue Recycling Tendencies, Danielle Quichocho

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recycling of common plastics is a practical way to limit the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, and eventually contributes to various forms of pollution. However, statistics indicate that it is not currently a normalized, prioritized behavior. A pilot study indicated that relying only on preexisting frameworks such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model to understand consumer perceptions simply does not encompass the scope of the topic. Consumer experiences with green messages, especially in the current climate of a saturated advertising market are incredibly complex. Understanding these experiences is also currently being impeded by inconsistencies in how researchers in …

Glomerular Hyperfiltration And Hypertension In Diabetes, Jie Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the present study, we investigated the pathophysiological mechanisms of the hemodynamic alteration in diabetes. Glomerular hyperfiltration occurs in the early stage of diabetes mellitus and has been recognized to promote the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy. We determine the role of TGF response and the vascular tone of Af-Art in diabetic hyperfiltration and we found that 1) tubular high glucose directly activates NOS1 and increases NO generation in the macula densa, which inhibits TGF response and increases GFR; 2) high glucose dilates renal Af-Art through GLUT1 and mediated by NOS3-derived NO generation; 3) in diabetes, blunted TGF mediated by NOS1 …

Ecological Epigenetics Of Avian Range Expansions, Holly J. Kilvitis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In light of human-mediated environmental change, a fundamental goal for biologists is to determine which phenotypic characteristics enable some individuals, populations or species to be more adept at coping with such change, while rendering others more vulnerable. Studying ongoing range expansions provide a unique opportunity to address this question by allowing documentation of how novel environments shape phenotypic variation on ecological timescales. At range-edges, individuals are exposed to strong selective pressures and population genetic challenges (e.g. bottlenecks and/or founder effects), which make genetic adaptation difficult. Nevertheless, certain species, such as the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), seem to thrive in their …

Ambient Ozone And Cadmium As Risk Factors For Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia, Rema Ramakrishnan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) results from a defect in the diaphragm through which abdominal contents enter the thorax displacing the heart and the lungs. This causes lung hypoplasia and varying degrees of pulmonary hypertension resulting in high rates of morbidity and mortality. Though CDH has a prevalence rate of 2.61 per 10,000 live births it is an expensive birth defect with an estimated annual cost of nearly $250 million for all CDH survivors. Maternal exposure to air pollutants have not been studied as risk factors for CDH in humans. Ambient ozone has been found to be risk factors for certain …