Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating Human-Associated Escherichia Coli Marker Genes For Microbial Source Tracking Applications In Florida, Jacob K. Senkbeil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fecal pollution of surface water can lead to human health issues because waterborne transmission of pathogens is a common cause of gastroenteritis. Genetic markers developed for human-associated Escherichia coli (H8, H12, H14, and H24) are promising tools for microbial source tracking (MST) of sewage in environmental waterbodies but are untested in the US. H gene marker performance characteristics (specificity, sensitivity, and prevalence) were assessed, with the goal of developing a quantitative PCR assay for the markers with the best performance. Individual E. coli isolates from reference samples were tested to determine end-point PCR assay performance. Three hundred E. coli strains …

Enhanced Co2 Conversion By The Simultaneous Doping Of Co, Fe, And Mn In The B-Site Of A Lanthanum Perovskite, Adela E. Ramos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a pressing need for carbon dioxide (CO₂) mitigation technologies as increasing emissions continue to threaten our environment. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) alone would not be able to achieve temperature rise below 2 °C. In addition, CCS cost increases considerably for power generation and other industries where CO₂ separation is necessary. Conversion of CO₂ to usable products is the most economical and feasible solution as it could offset CO₂ separation cost. Liquid fuels are an attractive route since it is a commodity used globally and demand increases with population and economic growth. Conversion …

Use Of A Towed Camera System Along The West Florida Shelf: A Case Study Of The Florida Middle Grounds Benthic Marine Communities, Katie S. Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As technologies advance the study of ocean dynamics, new approaches to vexing problems of scale and process are becoming more widely available. Originally conceived as a tool primarily for indexing the abundance of near-bottom fishes, the Camera-based Assessment and Survey System (C-BASS) may also be an effective tool for monitoring benthic invertebrate resources vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic perturbations, and for characterizing the composition of benthic communities to inform spatial management. Using still images derived from the C-BASS video of benthic transects within the Florida Middle Grounds, I documented the abundance of benthic habitat-forming functional groups—sponges, algae, and corals—and noted …

A Biographical Study Of Bernard Lafayette, Jr. As An Adult Educator Including The Teaching Of Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation, Rozelia Maria Kennedy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the life and work of LaFayette, nonviolence and conflict reconciliation from an adult education perspective. This study explores LaFayette’s life from an early age through his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, his contributions to adult education, and his current views on social change. The nonviolence conflict reconciliation LaFayette teaches is based on the philosophy and strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr. During the last 50 years, LaFayette has been kidnapped, threatened, and survived ventures into hostile environments in his effort to teach nonviolence philosophy, strategies, and methods.

This historical/biographical study used …

Acoustic Source Localization With A Vtol Suav Deployable Module, Kory Olney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A real time acoustic direction-finding module has been developed to estimate the ele- vation and azimuth of an impulsive event while function aboard a small unmanned air- craft vehicle. The generalized cross-correlation with phase transform method was used to estimate time differences of arrival in an 8 channel microphone array. A linear least squares approach was used to calculate an estimate for the direction of arrival. In order to accomplish this task, a vertical takeoff and landing small unmanned aircraft system was assembled to host the direction finding module. The module itself is made up of an eight-channel synchronous analog-to-digital …

Effects Of Alternative Seating On Children With Disabilities, Jessica Hoofman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children with disabilities in school settings often display problem behavior. These challenging behaviors can be inattention, disruptions in class, difficulties with transitions between tasks, and low task motivation. These types of behaviors can lead to problems for the students with their peers, teachers, and school staff. One way to decrease problem behavior is to implement antecedent manipulations to prevent problem behavior from ever occurring. One type of antecedent manipulation is using alternative seating in the classroom, such as stability balls or stabili-t stools. However, little research has been conducted to evaluate different types of alternative seating, therefore this study used …

Using Video Modeling To Improve Staff Implementation Of The Peak Relational Training System, Kelsie Thompson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Evidence suggests that the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System (PEAK) is an effective method of providing verbal behavior training to individuals with developmental disabilities, and previous research indicates that BST can be used to train staff in its implementation. Video modeling is a modification to BST that can decrease the amount of resources necessary to provide instruction without limiting the effectiveness of the training. This study evaluated the effectiveness of using video modeling for teaching direct care staff how to implement the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System (PEAK) using a multiple baseline …

Comparison Of Modeled And Measured Pesticide Concentrations In Air, Trenell Davis Boggans

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Chlorpyrifos (CPF) is a popular organophosphorus insecticide that is heavily used in the agriculture industry as a means of pest control. Chlorpyrifos is known for its toxic effect to inhibit the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (ACHE) in humans and is widely used in areas of California where the site of application is close to occupied areas, such that exposures to residents and bystanders can occur due to secondary drift. Secondary drift refers to the volatilization of a pesticide from the surface to which it was applied (e.g. soil or plant foliage) and subsequent off-site movement in ambient air. Secondary drift is different …

Une Analyse De La Vertu Dans Trois Tragédies Historiques De Pierre Corneille, Mariela Saad-Delgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theologians, philosophers, moralists, artists, men and women of letters of the seventeenth century were interested in the notion of "virtue" and the place it should occupy in the education of children and in the life of adults. Because of this interest, literary genres of this period, and more specifically plays, provide us with many references of the word "virtue".

This concept is presented as one of the essential characteristics to be found in a hero and a heroine. However, "virtue" is not a constant concept, for its meaning is determined by the socio-political context, the author's philosophy, and the gender …

Sorption Of Benzene, Toluene And Ethylbenzene By Plasticized Poly (Ethyl Methacrylate) Using Quartz Crystal Microbalance At 298.15k, Kiranpreet Kaur

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quartz crystal microbalances (QCM) are chemical sensors used for liquid and vapor sensing. In this thesis work, plasticized poly (ethyl methacrylate) (PEMA) coated QCM was used to study sorption behavior of benzene, ethylbenzene and toluene in respective polymer at 298.15K. Poly (ethyl methacrylate) (PEMA) is a promising polymer with solubility parameter close to BTEX compounds, but it's glassy and rigid nature at room temperature make it less sensitive. The addition of plasticizers (Diisononyl cyclohexane-1,2-dicarboxylate (DINCH) and Diisooctyl azelate (DIOA)) lowers the glass transition temperature, provides flexibility and thus increases the free volume of the polymer to enhance analyte sorption. In …

Knowledge Sharing Behavior: Clarifying Its Measurement And Antecedents, Tiffany T. Lee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is increasing recognition that informal learning is a crucial component of organizational functioning and a necessary complement to the formal training that employees receive. As jobs evolve and demand more complex skills, workers must use informal learning to adapt to ever-changing work requirements. Informal learning is often dependent on voluntary knowledge sharing behavior, as evident among members of mastermind groups or communities of practice. In order to assist organizations, researchers must seek to understand the factors that motivate employees to engage in knowledge sharing behavior.

Empirical research on knowledge sharing is nascent. There exists only a handful of quantitative …

Comparison Of Bacterial And Viral Reduction Across Different Wastewater Treatment Processes, Aayushi R. Vagadia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today billions of people live without access to basic sanitation facilities, and thousands die every week due to diseases caused by fecal contamination associated with improper sanitation. It has thus become crucial for decision makers to have access to relevant and sufficient data to implement appropriate solutions to these problems. The Global Water Pathogen Project http://www.waterpathogens.org/ is dedicated to providing an up-to-date source of data on pathogen reduction associated with different sanitation technologies that are important if the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to health and sanitation provision. In this research, a subset of the …

Ice And Guano Deposits In El Malpais Lava Tubes: Potential Paleoclimate Archives For The Southwest United States, Dylan S. Parmenter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Three ice cores and one guano core were obtained from lava tubes in El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico, in the Southwest United States. A large hiatus in the Bat Cave guano record, resulting from mining activities in the early 1900's, left us with only ~50 years of data (from AD 1955-2006) to use in analysis. 13C values in guano (-18 to -11.6‰) primarily fall within the range of C4 plants, and likely indicate a tendency of Tadarida brasiliensis to feed on insects over grasslands to the North or South of the park. Variations in 13C values for this period …

Growth Options And Corporate Goodness, Linh Thompson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I find evidence to support the negative impact of growth options on corporate social responsibility (CSR). I propose that attention-constrained managers reduce corporate goodness to focus on growth opportunities. The effect is more pronounced for well-governed firms, for financially-constrained firms, and for capital-intensive social dimensions. Firms reduce their research and development (R&D) and capital expenditures, and experience lower annual buy-and-hold abnormal returns (BHAR) subsequent to significant increases in their social performance. I also report value implications of CSR investments. The empirical evidence suggests that managerial choices to divert attention from growth projects toward CSR hurt shareholders.

Validation Of Results Of Smart Grid Protection Through Self-Healing, Felipe Framil Assumpção

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a verification of the results of “Smart Grid Protection through Self-Healing” from the publication of Chathurika Chandraratne, et al., that proposes a protection solution for the smart grid. The paper used as reference has as the main focus on three different protections; directional overcurrent protection, overcurrent protection, and transformer protection, which are validated through ETAP software simulation of IEEE- 9 bus and 14 bus electrical power systems, the same used by the author. It was validated after repeated simulation, that just as intended, self-healing increases system agility, and it helped prevent false-tripping14 bus electrical power systems.

Understanding Long-Standing Belief Systems In Business: A Qualitative Study Of The Equine Industry, Robyn Lord

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Change management is a highly researched topic. With industry changing at record speed, it is inevitable that corporations will engage in a change management endeavor. As humans innately resist change at first exposure, corporations strive to acquire knowledge in adoption. It may not be enough to understand status quo proponents, but rather their underlying long-standing belief systems which may be affecting how they view change. What makes an employee resist corporate change? Most studies conclude that humans will resist innately. This research dives into the unique environment of the equine industry to uncover how long-standing belief systems contribute to adoption …

Body Image, Self-Esteem And Eating Disturbance Among Chinese Women: Testing The Tripartite Influence Model, Weiwei Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to confirm the reasons behind young Chinese women’s eating disturbances and self-esteem. The researcher uses the Tripartite Influence model to illustrate the relationship between internalization and pressures in the form of peer, family, and media pressure. It further reveals the relationship between internalization and self-esteem and eating disorders. Besides conforming with the mode of young Chinese females, it aims at finding out the reasons behind each relevant relationship. One point of the study is the different impact of media pressure on young Chinese females; the influence of media tends to be much lower in …

Morphodynamics Of Shell Key And Mullet Key Barrier Islands: Their Origin And Development, Zachary J. Westfall

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Shell Key and Mullet Key are two sandy barrier islands on the West Central Florida coast near the mouth of Tampa Bay. These islands are part of an interconnected barrier-inlet system that includes Pass-a-Grille (PAG) and Bunces Pass. Shell Key is a relatively new island about 40-years of age that formed in between the two inlets of Bunces Pass and PAG. Mullet Key is an island to the south of Shell Key situated between Bunces Pass and the main Tampa Bay channel that has demonstrated large scale upward shoaling events. Using numerical modeling, the wave and tidal conditions at the …

Factors Explaining Changes In Household Vehicle Miles Of Travel, Richard Driscoll

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vehicle miles of travel (VMT) is a key indicator of travel demand in the United States. Since 1995 total VMT and VMT per capita has fluctuated, with notable declines in the late 2000s and accelerated increases in the last 7 years. Since 1995, the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) has tracked the household share of total VMT to shed light on the demographic and behavioral data behind personal vehicle travel. The household share of VMT, while still a majority, has declined every NHTS year since at least 1995. Meanwhile, household VMT has stagnated around 2.25 trillion miles since the 2001 …

Comparison Of Acquisition And Generalization Of Tacts Across Three Stimulus Modes: A Replication Across Skill Levels, Haley Nelson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with disabilities often have a limited tact repertoire. This study compared the acquisition and generalization of tacts taught using different stimulus modes within discrete trial training (DTT) with children who have a limited tacting repertoire. The three stimulus modes that were compared were videos, pictures, and 3D objects. This research replicated Gómez’s (2015) methodology with a participant pool with lower tacting skills. In addition, this study assessed for generalization of the acquired tacts to a novel exemplar. In this study, tact training required fewer sessions when the picture and 3D object were used as stimulus modes. These results were …

Recovery Of Nutrients From Anaerobically Digested Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (Ebpr) Sludge Through Struvite Precipitation, Maraida Balaguer-Barbosa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water resources in Florida have been severely degraded by eutrophic conditions, resulting toxic algae blooms, which negatively affect health and tourism. Eutrophication, or excessive amount of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) in water, overstimulates the production of aquatic plants, depletes dissolved oxygen, and deteriorates the aquatic environment. However, phosphorus is a non-renewable resource essential for all living organisms. In fact, more than half of the total demand for P globally is to supply the food industry, which has concerningly accelerated the depletion rates of phosphate reserves.

In many wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) approach has …

Social Media Deployment In A Business To Business Environment: Theory And Practice., Loran Jarrett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media is increasingly being used by business-to-business (B2B) firms to engage with their customers as they seek to maintain and grow their relationship with their customers. In my dissertation, I examine what communication objectives B2B firms seek to achieve via social media at different stages of the relationship cycle (exploration, expansion, maturity). I then use a panel of social media experts to evaluate the social media efforts of these firms to determine how well these firms achieve their social media objectives. I then contrast how the social media communication objectives of these firms at different stages of the relationship …

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism In Romantic And Victorian Literature, Timothy M. Curran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature posits religious medievalism as one among many critical paradigms through which we might better understand literary efforts to bring notions of sanctity back into the modern world. As a cultural and artistic practice, medievalism processes the loss of medieval forms of understanding in the modern imagination and resuscitates these lost forms in new and imaginative ways to serve the purposes of the present. My dissertation proposes religious medievalism as a critical method that decodes modern texts’ lamentations over a perceived loss of the sacred. My project locates textual moments in …

Newsroom Narratives And Newsroom Solutions: Local Print Media In The Digital Age, John Pendygraft

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks solutions to vexing problems facing media institutions today by exploring media narratives n the context of established anthropological theory. It is based in one local newsroom, the Tampa Bay Times, where I have worked for 22 years. The ethnography is a personal journey that draws on those decades of newsroom experience, social science theory, participant observation, interviews with journalists, and personal reflections. It examines dangerous historic periods of social dehumanization to put the political nature of today’s local print media crisis in context, and concludes that the greatest modern challenges to legacy journalism’s broken business model …

How To Build A Climate Of Quality In A Small To Medium Enterprise: An Action Research Project, Desmond M. Bishop Iii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quality Management (QM) in one of its many forms has become an integral part of contemporary business. Most research in this field was conducted within the context of large business. This study is one of the first to examine QM for small to medium enterprises (SMEs). This article used the action research methodology to explore how a SME located in the southeastern United States implemented a climate of quality. QM implementation in this company was executed in two separate interventions. In the first intervention, the factors of top management commitment, collaboration, data-centered decision making and process focus were implemented using …

Money Matters: An Examination Of Special Education Characteristics In Efficient And Inefficient Texas School Districts, Pakethia Harris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study veers from the traditional perspective of examining school efficiency or productivity as a cost minimizing process, in which educational inputs are minimized to achieve maximum outputs (student performance). Instead, it provides a critical examination of the dominant, cost minimizing assumption associated with efficiency models and suggest schools instead behave similarly to budget maximizers as presented in Niskanen’s (1971) seminal budget maximizing framework. The study examines the relationship between total student expenditures and subsequent student outcomes, establishing the relative efficiency of Texas school districts using stochastic frontier analysis within a budget-maximizing framework. Additionally, the study investigates how special education …

The Intervention Path: The Experiences Of Mothers Seeking Help For Their Child With Atypical Behavioral Development, Renee Hoopes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pre-school aged children experience challenging behaviors at a relatively common rate. Research shows that approximately 10–25 % of preschool-aged children engage in challenging behaviors to a greater degree than would be expected for their age (Lavigne, Gibbons, Christoffel, Arend, Rosenbaum, Binns, Sawon, Sobel & Isaacs, 1996). Problem behaviors are often the result of a child not following a typical developmental trajectory. Atypical development appears when a child either lags behind or jumps ahead of typical peer progress in physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social development or in adaptive life skills. When children with challenging behaviors are left untreated, their everyday functioning …

Application Of Image Recognition Technology To Foraminiferal Assemblage Analyses, Christian Helmut Gfatter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyses of foraminiferal assemblages involve time consuming microscopic assessment of sediment samples. Image recognition software, which systematically matches features within sample images against an image library, is widely used in contexts ranging from law enforcement to medical research. At present, scientific applications such as identification of specimens in plankton samples utilize flow through systems in which samples are suspended in liquid and pass through a beam of light where the images are captured using transmitted light. Identification of foraminifers generally utilizes reflected light, because most shells are relatively opaque.

My goal was to design and test a protocol to directly …

Myc Distant Enhancers Underlie Ovarian Cancer Susceptibility At The 8q24.21 Locus, Anxhela Gjyshi Gustafson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of death among women diagnosed with cancer. Mortality rate is high because an overwhelming majority of new cases are diagnosed with late-stage disease when the survival statistics are very poor with an overall 5-year survival rate of less than 40%. Despite the large burden of disease, the etiology of ovarian cancer is not well understood. In addition to linkage studies that have identified highly penetrant cancer susceptibility genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, the emergence of Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) in the last decade has facilitated the identification of common genetic variants with …

Development Of Bioactive Peptidomimetics, Fengyu She

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peptidomimetics are synthetic foldamers that expected more resistant to proteolytic degradation and enormous chemodiversity when compared with peptides. To date, the functional peptidomimetics such as β-peptides, peptoids, oligoureas, etc have been developed in many science fields. In order to explore the unnatural foldameric architectures, it’s necessary to discover the novel frameworks and molecular scaffolds. γ-AApeptides were reported to be a new class of peptidomimetics that showed its potential applications in drug discovery and chemical biology. However, a wide function and property of γ-AApeptides need to be further explored. To expand the potential application of γ-AApeptides in biochemistry, I have been …