Digital Commons Network^™

Population Genomics Of The Giant Caribbean Sea Anemone Condylactis Gigantea (Anthozoa: Actiniidae) In Florida And Across The Caribbean, Nancy E. Sheridan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The giant Caribbean sea anemone Condylactis gigantea is a long-lived, conspicuous, and phenotypically diverse species native to the western Atlantic Ocean (from Bermuda to southeast Brazil), Caribbean Sea, and southeastern Gulf of Mexico. This sea anemone is an important benthic community member that provides habitat to numerous species, including cleaner shrimp. This relationship makes these animals desirable to aquarists for both enjoyment and the service provided by the shrimp for the overall health of an aquarium, and which is why they are sought.

The extraction of about 3.3 million C. gigantea individuals in Florida over a 23-year period for the …

An Integrated Approach For Dynamic Process Modeling And Optimization Of Wastewater Treatment Facilities, Komal Rathore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The subareas of process systems engineering including process modeling, simulation, and optimization are becoming progressively substantial for understanding processes, making decisions, improving efficiency, and complying with stricter environmental and safety legislation. Additionally, the availability of user-friendly flowsheet simulators and computational resources with the current trend of data collection and analysis has allowed for a more accurate representation of complex processes such as wastewater treatment systems. Despite all the progress in the areas of process modeling and simulation, the first-principle mechanistic models for wastewater treatment processes are at best employed during the design stage, and therefore, not used optimally for day-to-day …

Psychometric Characteristics Of Academic Language Discourse Analysis Tools, Courtney (Cici) Brianna Claar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Academic language plays a key role in students’ educational success, yet its development in primary grades is poorly understood and often neglected (Snow & Uccelli, 2008). Academic language skills may enhance overall academic performance if targeted early and intensively. However, current methods of assessment are not sufficient to understanding the construct well enough to develop evidence-based intervention strategies. This investigation examined the psychometric properties of two discourse analysis tools designed to directly measure students’ comprehension and production of academic language. Academic language samples (n = 7,887) from a previous cohort-design study (n = 1,040; Kindergarten through third grade participants) were …

Methods In Discrete Mathematics To Study Dna Rearrangement Processes, Lina Fajardo Gómez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, we introduce novel tools to study DNA recombination pathways and measure their complexity. Genome rearrangement in some ciliate species can be modeled by subword pattern deletions in double-occurrence words (DOWs), words where each symbol appears exactly twice. The iterated deletions can be represented by a graph whose vertices are DOWs connected by an edge if one word can be obtained from the other through a pattern deletion. On this graph, called the “word graph”, we build a complex comprised of cells defined by Cartesian products of simplicial digraphs where we define a boundary operator and compute homology …

Two Essays In Applied Microeconomics: Retirement, Income Inequalities, And Other Economic Indicators Of Health And Life Satisfaction, Zahra Akbari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following proposal includes two essays in applied microeconomics. The first essay studied the relationship between income differences among siblings and the health outcomes of the individuals. Health inequalities and the factors associated with them have been a significant interest of health economists. Among those factors that can lead to health differences in adulthood, many studies have studied financial status. There are still many questions about these factors which should be answered in this area, especially about the adulthood income relative to a reference group and how it can be related to differences in adulthood health. The main goal of …

Data-Driven Analytical Predictive Modeling For Pancreatic Cancer, Financial & Social Systems, Aditya Chakraborty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deathly disease and becoming an increasingly commoncause of cancer mortality. It continues giving rise to massive challenges to clinicians and cancer researchers. The combined five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is extremely low, about 5 to 10 percent, owing to the fact that a large number of the patients are diagnosed at stage IV when the disease has metastasized. Our study investigates if there exists any statistical significant difference between the median survival times and also the survival probabilities of male and female pancreatic cancer patients at different cancer stages, and irrespective of …

An Analysis Of International Soccer Fans’ Knowledge Of Qatar, Perceptions Of Qatar’S Country Image, And Intention To Support The 2022 Fifa World Cup, Taleb Al-Adbah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

International sporting competitions have become an essential tool for countries to promote a favorable image of themselves around the world. This study focuses on the FIFA 2022 World Cup, which will be hosted by Qatar - the first Arab country ever to host the event. Since 2010, when Qatar was awarded the FIFA 2022 World Cup, several studies have shown that soccer fans are hesitant to attend matches in Qatar. This study investigates the correlations between soccer fans’ level of knowledge, soccer fans’ perception of Qatar using a 4D model of country image, and soccer fans’ behavioral intention to support …

Influences Of Sentence Context And Individual Differences In Lexical Quality On Early Phonological Processing During Silent Reading, Sara Milligan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current thesis investigates the role of sentence context and individual differences in the quality of sub-lexical representations of words in activation of phonological forms during silent reading. More specifically, this study aims to determine how these situational and participant-level factors influence the use of phonology to aid word recognition during parafoveal processing, before a reader directly fixates the word. Therefore, I manipulated sentence constraint in two eye tracking during reading experiments (one using real-word and one using pseudoword parafoveal previews) that utilized the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner 1975) and measured individual’s scores on assessments of spelling ability, phonological decoding …

Examining The Relationship Between Racial Respect Among Black Early Childhood Professionals And Their Perceptions Of Black Children, Kayla Nembhard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Black children are exposed to the highest rates of negative teacher perceptions and punitive consequences. Healthy People 2020 acknowledges the significance of the first five years of child development and the various factors that promote or hinder health outcomes during this time. Furthermore, it highlights the significance of quality relationships between children and their caregivers, including their ECE teachers. Overall, Black children tend to fare better academically when they are able to engage with Black educators and other ECE professionals. However, there is recent evidence Black educators in ECE settings, specifically, also uphold racialized negative perceptions of Black students that …

Ice Deposits In Lava Tubes From West-Central New Mexico As Archives Of Past Volcanic Eruptions And Climate Change, Quinton Z. Vitelli-Hawkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Southwest of the United States is currently in a megadrought phase. Recent studies have shown that three of the most severe droughts of the last two millennia have occurred in the last 120 years, while geo-archaeological evidence suggests there were five megadroughts just from 150 to 950 CE. To try to better understand the causes of the droughts across the Southwest, a 110-cm long ice core was drilled from an ice deposit in a lava tube (Cave 29) from El Malpais National Monument in west-central New Mexico. The δ18O values in the ice core (ranging from −11.78 to −3.54‰) …

The Use Of Social Media By Leaders In Times Of Crisis: 2020–21 United States Election Protests, Cagdas Yuksel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the Facebook posts made by presidential candidates Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden during the crisis that emerged after 2020 presidential election. The purpose of the study is to gain a better understanding of how crisis response is enacted via social media. This study's conceptual basis is the Social Crisis Communication Theory. The crisis, which is the focus of the study, was limited to the post-election process, which started with the allegations of Donald Trump alleged fraud in the election, after the 3 November 2020 US presidential elections, and especially to the process that resulted in the …

Prevalence And Predictors Of Careless Responding In Experience Sampling Research, Alexander J. Denison

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the current study we examine the prevalence and several predictors of careless responding to an experience sampling (ESM) study. While careless responding has been noted as a potential problem in ESM research, few studies have examined the prevalence of this behavior (Beal, 2015; Berkel et al., 2017; Eisele et al., 2020; Gabriel et al., 2019; Jaso et al., 2021). Using statistical methods of careless response classification, we derive cut scores from data simulation and graphical examination of item correlations, and flag 44.98% of response episodes as careless. A majority of these flagged episodes were the product of overly consistent …

Improved Performance Of Silica-Supported La0.5Ba0.5Feo3 In The Reverse Water Gas Shift - Chemical Looping Process For Carbon Dioxide Reduction – A Density Functional Theory Study, Jiawei Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Global warming is increasingly obvious, and the reduction of greenhouse gases is an effective way to heal. Increasing the efficiency of catalysts that is applied in the industry can significantly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Reverse water gas shift chemical looping (RWGS-CL) is a promising reaction to convert CO2 to CO. La0.5Ba0.5FeO3 (LBF) is a good candidate for RWGS-CL, which shows increased conversion yield when supported on silica. This research focuses on identifying the mechanism of RWGS-CL via silica-supported LBF by exploring the oxygen vacancy formation energy (EO-vac). Density Functional Theory (DFT) is a powerful computational method to solve …

Conquistas And Chronicles: A Social History Of The Fernando De Soto Expedition Of Conquest, 1538-1543, Morgan Norman Greig

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the course of the last century, Fernando de Soto’s conquest of Florida has been a central topic of debate among scholars of the United States. In particular, the written sources generated by expedition members during and after their time in Florida have been used primarily by archaeologists and anthropologists for ethnohistoric data on Native American societies in the early-sixteenth century southeast. However, there are two central problems in the historiography that have plagued the field of Soto studies, both of which are the central focuses of this study. First, there has never been a full-length historical study conducted on …

Simulating Flood Control In Progress Village, Florida Using Storm Water Management Model (Swmm), Azize Minaz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Flooding is a natural event caused by heavy rains, melting snow, high tides, and anthropogenic impacts such as channel clogging, improper land use, and deforestation. In this study, the strategies for controlling flooding seek to establish flood prevention systems by implementing grey infrastructure and green infrastructure practices. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the study area, Progress Village Neighborhood in Delaney Creek Watershed, regarding flood risk and flood mitigation techniques. The analysis was performed using EPA SWMM 5.1 and Arcmap 10.7.1. The study used design storms,10-years 24 hours and 25-years 24 hours, to analyze flood risk in …

“Sometimes I Do This Thing”: Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge And Beliefs About Reading Instruction, Sherridon Leigh Sweeney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prior research has established preservice literacy teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning are often misguided and/or overly-simplistic, yet limited work has examined in what ways their in-the-moment teaching decisions align or misalign with what they believe. This qualitative study used deductive analysis methods to: (1) Identify three preservice teachers’ knowledge/beliefs about reading, reading instruction, and learning, as evidenced by their planning, reflecting, and in-the-moment teaching decisions, and (2) investigate if/how participants’ knowledge/beliefs manifested across multiple teaching experiences. Findings indicate that while participants made attempts to act on professional ideas they explored/practiced with the support of a university-based mentor, they taught …

Hybrid Rans-Les Hemolytic Power Law Modeling Of The Fda Blood Pump, Joseph Tarriela

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study applies the SBES and IDDES hybrid RANS-LES turbulence models along with the K-ω SST model to four flow conditions of the FDA blood pump. Validation of all three turbulence models show good agreement with experimental pressure and velocity fields. Evaluation of turbulent kinetic energy fields for the hybrid models show 80-90+% of kinetic energy is resolved in the rotor and diffuser regions of the pump. Hemolysis power law models were evaluated using the commonly used von Mises stress and additional energy dissipation stress (EDS). Results show viscous and Reynolds stresses computed with the K-ω SST under predict and …

Mound-Summit Practices At Cockroach Key (8hi2) Through The Lens Of Practice Theory, Chandler O. Burchfield

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cockroach Key (100-1000 CE) has one of the tallest platform mounds (Mound A) in Tampa Bay and all of prehistoric Florida; however, little is known about what the surface was used for. This research uses a forward-looking approach (following the ideas of Pauketat and Kassabaum) of interpreting mound-summit practices to avoid pre-Mississippian platform mound misconceptions of surfaces serving primarily as elite residences. Recent GPR investigations on the mound-summit revealed a circular pattern of anomalies hypothesized as a structure. These results are tested by the sampling of artifacts from a small diameter auger (18 auger samples) and elemental distributions based on …

The Use Of Acceptance And Commitment Training To Improve Teacher Interactions With Students, Taylor Raaymakers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teachers in classrooms with students who engage in challenging behavior often experience high levels of stress and may leave the profession. Few research studies have evaluated interventions to decrease teacher stress. Therefore, this study assessed the use of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACTr) with teachers for decreasing stress and increasing positive interactions with students. The ACTr intervention consisted of both a one-time training and subsequent activities throughout the intervention phase of the study. Two self-report measures were administered during baseline and post follow-up observations. These self-report measures provided information on the levels of psychological distress the teachers were experiencing and …

Exploration Of Energy Efficient Computing For Data-Intensive Applications, Md Adnan Zaman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The recent surge of data-intensive applications has stretched the performance and energy limit of today’s traditional computing system. The massive amount of data generated by data-intensive applications is not processed at the same speed due to bandwidth mismatch between the faster processing unit and slower memory. Memory access and communication bandwidth can be identified as the primary bottlenecks. Consequently, these two bottlenecks make up most of the total energy consumption. In light of this, we explore energy-efficient computing for data-intensive applications. We examine different aspects of two computing systems, such as in-memory computing and AI-enabled edge computing, more popularly known …

A Technique-Based Approach To Structure-From-Motion: Applications To Human-Coastal Environments, Robert Van Alphen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Photogrammetry is a method by which physical information can be extracted from thecorrespondence of 2-dimensional images. In the geosciences, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry is a technique that has seen considerable interest in the past decade of research. Here I present three case studies of various scope and methodologies which can inform the use of SfM in the geosciences. First, I discuss the theoretical and algorithmic basis of SfM photogrammetry and its uses thus far in the geosciences. Chapters two through four show specific studies which highlight several approaches to SfM and the data which can be produced. Chapter five then concludes …

"Are We Done?": The Minimization Of Covid-19 And The Individualization Of Health In The United States, Cassidy R. Boe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the death toll from Covid-19 in the United States exceeds 1 million in just over two years, more variants continue to emerge, threatening more waves of Covid-19 and ultimately, more deaths. Despite this, mask use continues to decline, and one third of Americans say that the pandemic is over. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been central in publicly disseminating biomedical knowledge using Twitter. The CDC’s Twitter account (@CDCgov) shares information related to the spread of Covid-19, including mitigation measures such as mask recommendations and vaccine information. I have conducted a narrative analysis of the replies …

Continuous Effort Required To Maintain Populations Of Outplanted Acropora Cervicornis In The Florida Reef Tract, Usa, Tiffany S. Boisvert

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The degradation of coral reefs due to natural and anthropogenic stressors has resulted in the expansion of coral restoration projects worldwide. In the Caribbean region, most restoration efforts focus on outplanting Acropora cervicornis, once a dominant branching coral, now found predominantly in spatially isolated populations. Thousands of A. cervicornis colonies are propagated within nurseries and outplanted onto degraded reefs every year. However, monitoring the long-term growth and survival of outplanted corals has been limited by financial, physical, and temporal constraints. In the current study, we assessed the long-term success of A. cervicornis restoration by determining the relationship between current populations …

Using Differential Reinforcement To Reduce Diurnal Bruxism, Stephanie Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The field of Applied Behavior Analysis is often used to intervene in dangerous or harmful behaviors to the benefit of service recipients. Many children engage in diurnal bruxism which can cause damage to their teeth, gums, and jaws. Tooth gnashing, which is a movement of the jaw that results in high impact between the lower and upper teeth, is a specific and damaging behavior which is included under the label of diurnal bruxism. This study examined the impact of using differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors to decrease the percentage of words spoken while gnashing teeth to reduce the long-term damage …

“That’S What We Call ‘Aesthetics’”: The Social Construction Of Tap Water Mistrust In An Underbounded Community, Abby Vidmar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent research on water insecurity in the United States has revealed that underbounded communities — urban disadvantaged unincorporated neighborhoods characterized by high-poverty and high residential density lying just outside the border of an incorporated municipality — often lack consistent access to clean and safe water. In these settings, poor water quality and inadequate infrastructure shape residents’ risk perceptions often leading to tap water mistrust. However, little is known about the broader social, political, and economic drivers of water quality in these settings and how such drivers inform the social construction of risk across different stakeholder groups. Using an underbounded African-American/Hispanic …

Using Behavioral Skills Training With Self-Monitoring To Increase Conversation Skills In Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Laura De Zayas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One of the major skill deficits found in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lack of social skills. These socials skills range from having conversations, interpreting nonverbal behavior, understanding emotions, and understanding the perspective of others. Behavior skills training (BST) and self-monitoring have generally been shown to be effective in improving social skills for individuals with ASD. However, there is limited research that used BST with self-monitoring as an intervention package to improve social skills, particularly communication skills of adolescents with ASD in the school setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to extend the current literature …

Evaluating Behavioral Skills Training To Teach Identification Of Choking Hazards To Substitute Caregivers, Madison L. Molve

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Choking is a leading cause of mortality in children (Committee on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, 2010). Over half of choking injuries occur due to food, and the remaining injuries involve common household objects (Chapin et al., 2013). Although studies have been conducted assessing the use of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) to teach hazard identification in substitute caregivers (Abarca, 2021), no studies have evaluated utilizing BST to identify choking hazards specifically. Thus, this study evaluated the efficacy of using BST to teach edible and non-edible choking hazard identification to substitute caregivers following guidelines from the Home Accident Prevention Inventory Revised …

Determining Depth Of Closure Based On Time-Series Beach Profiles And Empirical Formulas: A Case Study Along The Florida Coast, Elizabeth Royer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Depth of closure (DOC) is defined as the most landward depth seaward of which there is no significant change in bed elevation and no significant net sediment exchange between the nearshore and the offshore over a certain period of time, such as 5 to 20 years. DOC is an essential parameter used in beach and shore protection, sediment management, and many other aspects of coastal studies. Taking advantage of advancements in wave hindcast and bathymetry measurement in the past 20 years (2000-2019), this study determined the DOC at 12 locations along the Florida coast, including three from the northwest Gulf …

Assessing Required Hospitality Competencies Among Students, Industry Professionals, And Faculty, Angad Singh Dang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify the competencies important for success in the hospitality industry, based on the perceptions of hospitality faculty, professionals, and students. To identify the competencies, the research employed the following steps: initial survey development, input from a focus group panel of experts, review by validation panel of experts on revised survey, pilot study of process for final survey and data collection using the revised questionnaire. The study targeted hospitality students who were enrolled in a 4-year undergraduate degree program, faculty who taught in a 4-year hospitality under-graduate or graduate program, and hospitality professionals who …

Mixed Method Analysis Of Undergraduate Student Interpretation Of Different Phylogenetic Trees, Faith Frings

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Phylogenetic trees are common tools used to visualize evolutionary concepts such as historical patterns of ancestry, divergence of species, and descent of species. However, students have misconceptions when reading these abstract diagrams. The purpose of this study was to compare student performance and evolutionary thinking when using two styles of phylogenetic trees: cladograms and phylograms. The study also assessed the validity of a hierarchal theoretical framework evaluating student phylogenetic tree interpretation. Introductory biology students from two research universities were assigned to two groups, one solely given assessments with phylograms, and one solely given assessments with cladograms. One-on-one student interviews were …