Digital Commons Network^™

Contre L’Amour Courtois: 
Le Vrai Amour Chez Marie De France Et Chrétien De Troyes, Elizabeth Walley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes were two of the most influential French writers of the twelfth century. Both of these poets use different devices and themes of l’amour courtois, a model of how love was portrayed in literature at that time, to warn against the folie and the dangers to which adhering to the doctrines of this model could lead. They use narrative voice and commentary from characters to directly explain to readers why l’amour courtois is not an ideal example to follow, and they rely on the outcomes of their stories to portray potential outcomes for …

Can We Talk?: Synergistic Effects Of Cognitive And Behavioral Frameworks To Address Substance Use And Abuse, Lauren Jaye Adams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral economic accounts of substance use have provided a novel framework to examine constraints that affect behaviorally driven outcomes. Several behavioral studies support the application of such frameworks to examine impulsive decision-making processes as well as how subjective reward influences substance use. Based on stimulus-response models, behavioral economic research often applies mathematical formulas to draw conclusions about behavioral outcomes. These mathematical formulas, while useful, largely ignore decades of cognitive psychology research that have examined state-based influences (e.g., mood, environment, motivational processes, etc.) on behavioral sequelae. To address this issue, the present study merged a cognitive framework into two behavioral economic …

The Empirical Selection Of Anchor Items Using A Multistage Approach, Brandon Craig

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if using a multistage approach for the empirical selection of anchor items would lead to more accurate DIF detection rates than the anchor selection methods proposed by Kopf, Zeileis, & Strobl (2015b). A simulation study was conducted in which the sample size, percentage of DIF, and balance of DIF were manipulated. The outcomes of interest were true positive rates, false positive rates, familywise false positive rates, anchor contamination rates, and familywise anchor contamination rates. Results showed the proposed multistage methods produced lower anchor contamination rates than the non-multistage methods under some conditions, …

Machine Learning And Adaptive Signal Processing Methods For Electrocardiography Applications, Calvin A. Perumalla

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is directed towards improving the state of art cardiac monitoring methods and automatic diagnosis of cardiac anomalies through modern engineering approaches such as adaptive signal processing, and machine learning methods. The dissertation will describe the invention and associated methods of a cardiac rhythm monitor dubbed the Integrated Vectorcardiogram (iVCG). In addition, novel machine learning approaches are discussed to improve diagnoses and prediction accuracy of cardiac diseases.

It is estimated that around 17 million people in the world die from cardiac related events each year. It has also been shown that many of such deaths can be …

Force Compensation And Recreation Accuracy In Humans, Benjamin Rigsby

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As industry becomes increasingly reliant on robotic assistance and human-computer interfaces, the demand to understand the human sensorimotor system’s characteristics intensifies. Although this field of research has been going on for over a century, new technologies push the limits of the human motor system and our knowledge of it. With new technologies come new abilities, and, in the area of medical care and rehabilitation, the need to expand our knowledge of the sensorimotor system comes from both the patient and physician.

Two studies relating to human force interaction are presented in this thesis. The first study

focuses on humans’ ability …

Early Childhood Mathematics Through A Social Justice Lens: An Autoethnography, Jennifer Ward

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this autoethnography was to explore the experiences, both successes and challenges, as I worked to teach mathematics using a social justice framework in a summer enrichment camp with four and five-year-old children. Drawing from both critical approaches (Freire, 1968) and sociocultural approaches (Rogoff, 2008), this dissertation outlines critical perspectives within Early Childhood Education, as well as trends in teaching mathematics for social justice to frame the research study. Autoethnography was selected as a methodological approach in this study as I examined my own teaching experiences and journey engaging in teaching mathematics for social justice. Primary data sources …

Development Of Ethologically-Based Inhibitory Avoidance Models Of Fear Memory, Savannah Dalrymple

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Translational research provides a unique opportunity to investigate innate and conditioned fear to develop an integrated understanding of anxiety disorders, ultimately improving treatment for those afflicted. Many fear conditioning paradigms use physically aversive stimuli to induce fear but ethological stimuli may better represent psychological disorders from a translational standpoint. Natural predators and immobilization have been successful in inducing both innate and contextually conditioned fear in rodents but an inhibitory avoidance paradigm that uses ethologically relevant stimuli has yet to be developed. To expand the use of these stimuli into inhibitory avoidance conditioning, an inhibitory avoidance paradigm was developed to include …

Quantifying And Modeling Surface Inflow And Groundwater Infiltration Into Sanitary Sewers In Southern Pinellas County, Fl, Megan E. Long

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following large rain events, excess flow in sanitary sewers from inflow and infiltration (I/I) cause sanitary sewer overflows (SSO), resulting in significant problems for Pinellas County and the Tampa Bay area. Stormwater enters the sanitary sewers as inflow from improper or illegal surface connections, and groundwater enters the system as infiltration through cracks in subsurface infrastructure. This pilot study was designed to develop methods to separate and quantify the components of I/I and to build a predictive model using flowmeter and rainfall data.

To identify surface inflow, daily wastewater production and groundwater infiltration patterns were filtered from the flow data, …

Active Cleaning Of Label Noise Using Support Vector Machines, Rajmadhan Ekambaram

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Large scale datasets collected using non-expert labelers are prone to labeling errors. Errors in the given labels or label noise affect the classifier performance, classifier complexity, class proportions, etc. It may be that a relatively small, but important class needs to have all its examples identified. Typical solutions to the label noise problem involve creating classifiers that are robust or tolerant to errors in the labels, or removing the suspected examples using machine learning algorithms. Finding the label noise examples through a manual review process is largely unexplored due to the cost and time factors involved. Nevertheless, we believe it …

Lost In The Crowd: Are Large Social Graphs Inherently Indistinguishable?, Subramanian Viswanathan Vadamalai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Real social graphs datasets are fundamental to understanding a variety of phenomena, such as epidemics, crowd management and political uprisings, yet releasing digital recordings of such datasets exposes the participants to privacy violations. A safer approach to making real social network topologies available is to anonymize them by modifying the graph structure enough as to decouple the node identity from its social ties, yet preserving the graph characteristics in aggregate. At scale, this approach comes with a significant challenge in computational complexity.

This thesis questions the need to structurally anonymize very large graphs. Intuitively, the larger the graph, the easier …

Predictive Analytics In Cardiac Healthcare And 5g Cellular Networks, Dilranjan S. Wickramasuriya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis proposes the use of Machine Learning (ML) to two very distinct, yet compelling, applications – predicting cardiac arrhythmia episodes and predicting base station association in 5G networks comprising of virtual cells. In the first scenario, Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are used to classify features extracted from electrocardiogram (EKG) signals. The second problem requires a different formulation departing from traditional ML classification where the objective is to partition feature space into constituent class regions. Instead, the intention here is to identify temporal patterns in unequal-length sequences. Using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), it is demonstrated that accurate predictions can be …

Validity Of A New Measure Of Phonemic Awareness That Does Not Require Spoken Responses In Children With Complex Communication Needs, Tiffany Chavers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) routinely have difficulty attaining appropriate literacy skills. Two indicators of literacy development are the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989). The acquisition of minimal literacy skills such as letter sound knowledge can give children with CCN the opportunity to communicate and generate their own messages, instead of being reliant on vocabulary provided by others. In order to identify appropriate intervention approaches, nonverbal assessments of phonological and phonemic awareness for individuals with CCN are needed.

The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of the Dynamic Assessment of the Alphabetic …

Hate Is A Strong Word: The Influence Of Hate-Acknowledging Advertising On Brand Outcomes, Lisa Monahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given a lack of tactics for addressing brand hate, most managers tend to ignore brand haters, and instead dedicate their resources towards consumers who like or love their brand. Similarly, relative to the volume of research on positive brand emotions, the academic literature exploring negative brand emotions is limited. Moreover, research indicates that compared to positive brand information, negative brand information is more diagnostic, and ultimately more damaging.

In contrast to such findings and practices, this dissertation proposes a strategy whereby using advertising to openly acknowledge that a brand is hated (i.e. hate-acknowledging advertising) can be advantageous for corporate polarizing …

The Interaction Of Scale And Temperature In Elastically Powered Movements, Jeffrey P. Olberding

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For many animals, rapid movements place high power demands on underlying muscles. Storage of muscle energy in elastic structures and the subsequent rapid release of that energy can effectively amplify muscle power. Elastic recoil can also confer thermal robustness to performance in behaviors occurring at variable temperatures. Muscle contractile performance tends to decrease at lower temperatures, but elastic recoil is less affected by temperature. Here I examine the impacts of temperature and scale in systems using elastic recoil and I explore possible interactive effects on movement performance.

I explored the role that muscle contractile properties play in the differences in …

Functional Trade-Offs In Feeding Performance In Salamanders Of The Family Salamandridae, Charlotte M. Stinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Performance is an organism’s ability to accomplish a particular task or behavior, and morphology can have a major impact on the performance of an organism. Salamanders are ecologically diverse and can feed using a variety of behaviors depending on the environment in which feeding occurs. Feeding is accomplished through the use of the hyobranchial apparatus, which lies along the oropharynx, and this structure can have competing roles; in aquatic environments the apparatus is used for suction feeding and works to depress the floor of the mouth, but during terrestrial feeding this structure projects the tongue forward out of the mouth. …

Multi-Scale Spatial Cognition Models And Bio-Inspired Robot Navigation, Martin I. Llofriu Alonso

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rodent navigation system has been the focus of study for over a century. Discoveries made lately have provided insight on the inner workings of this system. Since then, computational approaches have been used to test hypothesis, as well as to improve robotics navigation and learning by taking inspiration on the rodent navigation system.

This dissertation focuses on the study of the multi-scale representation of the rat’s current location found in the rat hippocampus. It first introduces a model that uses these different scales in the Morris maze task to show their advantages. The generalization power of larger scales of …

Characterizing Benthic Habitats Using Multibeam Sonar And Towed Underwater Video In Two Marine Protected Areas On The West Florida Shelf, Usa, Jennifer L. Brizzolara

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates a way to characterize the geology and biology of the seafloor in two Marine Protected Areas on the West Florida Shelf. Characterization of benthic habitats needs to include sufficient detail to represent the complex and heterogeneous bottom types. Characterizations can be interpreted from multiple data sets and displayed as benthic habitat maps. Multibeam sonar bathymetry and backscatter provide full spatial data coverage, but interpretation of such data requires some form of ground truth (to characterize the habitat). Imagery from towed underwater video provides continuous transects of seafloor data, which provide a more efficient method than data from …

Effects Of Temperature On The Emission Rate Of Formaldehyde From Medium Density Fiberboard In A Controlled Chamber, William Swankie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Formaldehyde is a colorless gas that is found naturally in the environment. It is a popular additive in many consumer products including composite wood products. Composite wood products are engineered wood panels produced from pressing pieces, chips, particles, or fibers of wood together at high temperatures held together with a bonding agent. This bonding agent is often formaldehyde-containing resins that are known to release formaldehyde over time. This is concerning because of the carcinogenic classification of formaldehyde, the wide spread application of composite wood products, and the increasing amount of time spent in the indoor environment.

In a controlled 0.53 …

The Development Of A Platform Interface With The Use Of Virtual Reality To Enhance Upper-Extremity Prosthetic Training And Rehabilitation, Ashley D. Knight

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the investigation and development of an effective prosthetic training and rehabilitation platform with the use of virtual reality to facilitate an effective process to return amputees to the highest level of independence and functioning possible.

It has been reported that approximately 10 million people live with a limb loss worldwide, with around 30% being an upper-extremity amputee. The sudden loss of a hand or arm causes the loss of fine, coordinated movements, reduced joint range of motion (ROM), proprioceptive feedback and aesthetic appearance, all which can be improved with the use of a prosthesis and proper …

To Tell The Truth: The Credibility Of Cable News Networks In An Era Of Increasingly Partisan Political News Coverage, Christopher Jadick

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The credibility of the American news media is increasingly under fire. Despite an exponential expansion of information available in the digital media era, increased political news coverage and commentary has brought growing apprehension over how much of today’s news can be trusted and believed. 24-hour cable news channels are among the media most often subject to this criticism. At the same time, the media operates under First Amendment freedom of press protection, a constitutional guarantee granted with the understanding that democracy can only succeed when its citizens are well informed. In the great experiment of our republic, a freely functioning …

Real-Time Classification Of Biomedical Signals, Parkinson’S Analytical Model, Abolfazl Saghafi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The reach of technological innovation continues to grow, changing all industries as it evolves. In healthcare, technology is increasingly playing a role in almost all processes, from patient registration to data monitoring, from lab tests to self-care tools. The increase in the amount and diversity of generated clinical data requires development of new technologies and procedures capable of integrating and analyzing the BIG generated information as well as providing support in their interpretation.

To that extent, this dissertation focuses on the analysis and processing of biomedical signals, specifically brain and heart signals, using advanced machine learning techniques. That is, the …

Parsing The Influences Of Nicotine And Expectancies On The Acute Effects Of E-Cigarettes: A Balanced-Placebo Experiment, Amanda M. Palmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

E-cigarette use has been increasing in recent years, and its ultimate public health impact is still unknown. In order to assess the addictive liability of these products, research is needed to investigate the roles of nicotine and other factors on psychological and physical effects of “vaping.” The goal of the current study was to investigate the role of expectancies, nicotine delivery, and their interactions on the effects of e-cigarette use via a balanced-placebo experiment. In this design, drug dosage (contains nicotine or not) was crossed with instructions (told nicotine or non-nicotine) during ad-lib e-cigarette use sessions by 128 current e-cigarette …

Exploiting On-Chip Voltage Regulators As A Countermeasure Against Power Analysis Attacks, Weize Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Non-invasive side-channel attacks (SCA) are powerful attacks which can be used to obtain the secret key in a cryptographic circuit in feasible time without the need for expensive measurement equipment. Power analysis attacks (PAA) are a type of SCA that exploit the correlation between the leaked power consumption information and processed/stored data. Differential power analysis (DPA) and leakage power analysis (LPA) attacks are two types of PAA that exploit different characteristics of the side-channel leakage profile. DPA attacks exploit the correlation between the input data and dynamic power consumption of cryptographic circuits. Alternatively, LPA attacks utilize the correlation between the …

Mixed Method Study Of Condom Use Among Emerging Adults With New Sex Partners Met Online Or Offline, Shana M. Green

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Emerging adults (young people age 18 to 29) are increasingly using the Internet to seek sex partners, with over 30% having tried an online or mobile dating site. As more emerging adults use dating and sex-seeking websites (DSP) for their love and sexual pursuits, it is imperative to understand how DSPs contribute to HIV/STI risk.

Objectives: The objectives of this research were accomplished by pursuing the following specific aims: Aim 1. To systematically review and quantitatively synthesize evidence from published findings to determine the association between condom use and meeting venue (online and offline). Aim 2. To determine whether …

Geospatial And Negative Binomial Regression Analysis Of Culex Nigripalpus, Culex Erraticus, Coquillettidia Perturbans, And Aedes Vexans Counts And Precipitation And Land Use Land Cover Covariates In Polk County, Florida, Joshua P. Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although mosquito monitoring systems in the form of dry-ice bated CDC light traps and sentinel chickens are used by mosquito control personnel in Polk County, Florida, the placement of these are random and do not necessarily reflect prevalent areas of vector mosquito populations. This can result in significant health, economic, and social impacts during disease outbreaks. Of these vector mosquitoes Culex nigripalpus, Culex erraticus, Coquillettidia perturbans, and Aedes vexans are present in Polk County and known to transmit multiple diseases, posing a public health concern. This study seeks to evaluate the effect of Land use Land cover …

Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination In Contemporary Indian Literature, Sucheta Kanjilal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project delineates a cultural history of modern Hinduism in conversation with contemporary Indian literature. Its central focus is literary adaptations of the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata, in English, Hindi, and Bengali. Among Hindu religious texts, this epic has been most persistently reproduced in literary and popular discourses because its scale matches the grandeur of the Indian national imagining. Further, many epic adaptations explicitly invite devotion to the nation, often emboldening conservative Hindu nationalism. This interdisciplinary project draws its methodology from literary theory, history, gender, and religious studies. Little scholarship has put Indian Anglophone literatures in conversation with other …

A Qualitative Study Examining The Learning Orientations Of Adult Doctoral Students In A College Of Education Using Houle’S Typology As A Framework, Kristeen Tiffanee Bulluck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Houle conducted one of the first studies about adult learner participation. In 1961, Houle wrote The Inquiring Mind, which describes three distinct learning types: goal-oriented, activity-oriented, and learning-oriented learning. For more than fifty years, The Inquiring Mind has been read, referenced, and reviewed. Several scholars during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have added dimensions to Houle’s typology including: Sheffield (1964); Burgess (1971); Boshier (1971); Houle (1983); Gordon (1993); and Brockett and Donaghy (2011). What is missing in the current research is that no one has synthesized all of the literature and directly asked learners of today if the …

Estimating The Impact Of A Select Criteria Pollutant (Pm2.5) On Childhood Asthma In Florida, Shabnam Mehra

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Asthma has been reported in children as a leading chronic illness in the US and around the world. It is also the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under the age of 15, and is also one of the most common causes of school absenteeism. Children are at higher risk of asthma attacks and they pose a higher burden on health care system. Nearly 20.6% of middle and high school children in Florida have been told they have asthma, this prevalence has grown over 3% from 2006 to 2012. Changes in air pollutant levels are often related to health …

Semantic Description Of Activities In Videos, Fillipe Dias Moreira De Souza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Description of human activities in videos results not only in detection of actions and objects but also in identification of their active semantic relationships in the scene. Towards this broader goal, we present a combinatorial approach that assumes availability of algorithms for detecting and labeling objects and actions, albeit with some errors. Given these uncertain labels and detected objects, we link them into interpretative structures using domain knowledge encoded with concepts of Grenander’s general pattern theory. Here a semantic video description is built using basic units, termed generators, that represent labels of objects or actions. These generators have multiple out-bonds, …

An Evaluation Of The Pointe Program To Guide Dance Instructors To Use Behavioral Coaching Procedures With Their Dance Students, Mallory J. Quinn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the POINTE Program, a manualized behavioral intervention designed for use by dance instructors to improve student dance performance using behavioral coaching procedures. This study consisted of three phases. Phase 1 was a formative evaluation of the POINTE Program, which assessed the technical adequacy of the manual. Feedback from 3 experts in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and 4 dance instructors were used to improve the manual content in this phase. Overall, the experts and instructors viewed the POINTE Program as providing accurate information on the basic ABA backgrounds and suggesting behavioral coaching procedures appropriate for use in a …