Digital Commons Network^™

The Geophysical Kitchen Sink Approach To Improving Our Understanding Of Volcano-Tectonic Interactions, Ophelia Ann George

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A multi-prong approach was taken in this dissertation to understand volcanic processes from both a long-term and more immediate hazard perspective. In the long-term, magma sources within the crust may produce measurable surficial response and long-wavelength gravity anomalies that provide information about the extent and depth of this magma. Long-term volcanic hazard forecasting is also improved by developing as complete a record as possible of past events. In the short-term, a long-standing question has been on the casting of precursory volcanic activity in terms of future volcanic hazards. Three studies are presented in this dissertation to address these issues. Inversion …

Emotional Self-Regulation: Voices And Perspectives Of Teachers Within Diverse Socio-Cultural Contexts, Anna Paula Peixoto Da Silva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given the importance of emotional self-regulation to a child’s ability to develop social competence and prosocial behavior, and the significant role early childhood teachers play in supporting young children’s emotional self-regulation, it is important to explore the concept from the perspective of teachers, or from the socio-cultural context through which they (i.e., teachers) make sense of the world.

This study used an exploratory case study methodology to explore the understandings of emotional self-regulation among three Head Start teachers working with varying socio-cultural contexts and to identify the socio-cultural perspectives that influenced their ability to effectively apply their understandings.

Findings indicate …

Influence Of Language Arts Instructional Practices On Early Adolescents’ Motivation To Read: Measuring Student And Teacher Perceptions, Sarah E. Pennington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Early adolescence is a critical time for examining academic motivation, specifically motivation to read (Hervey, 2013). In order to support self-determined motivation to read, students’ needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness must be met within the classroom context (Miller & Faircloth, 2014). Since classroom instructional practices are a key component of adolescents’ daily experiences in the classroom, research which investigates the influence of these practices on students’ self-determined motivation to read is needed. In addition, the perceptions of students and teachers regarding the degree to which classroom instructional practices meet students’ needs as well as the influence of classroom instructional …

Efficient Algorithms And Applications In Topological Data Analysis, Junyi Tu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a new and fast growing research field developed over last two decades. TDA finds many applications in computer vision, computer graphics, scientific visualization, molecular biology, and material science, to name a few. In this dissertation, we make algorithmic and application contributions to three data structures in TDA: contour trees, Reeb graphs, and Mapper. From the algorithmic perspective, we design a parallel algorithm for contour tree construction and implement it in OpenCL. We also design and implement critical point pairing algorithms to compute persistence diagrams directly from contour trees, Reeb graphs, and Mapper. In terms of …

A Molluscan Record Of Monsoonal Precipitation Along The Western Shoreline Of The Late Maastrichtian Western Interior Seaway, Scott Allen Ishler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Global warming in response to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration (pCO₂) has generated concern over the effects of increasing surface temperature on the hydrologic cycle. Investigating precipitation dynamics during past ‘greenhouse’ intervals provide important insights necessary to better constrain potential future climate scenarios. The Late Cretaceous greenhouse is characterized by elevated pCO₂ and surface temperatures, with a prolonged cooling trend which initiated in the late Campanian and an associated 4^th-order sea-level regression recorded in the Western Interior Seaway (WIS), providing an opportunity to examine the hydrologic cycle under conditions of changing temperature and sea-level. …

Material Expertise: Applying Object-Oriented Rhetoric In Marine Policy, Zachary Parke Dixon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation applies object-oriented rhetorics and posthuman philosophies to environmental policy deliberation in order to help bridge gaps between policy makers, scientists, and citizens. For environmental policy scholars the non-credentialed expertise of local, or indigenous stakeholders is valued as possessing technical, objective merit that can improve the development and implementation of environmental policies. However, the utilization of stakeholder expertise in environmental policy faces serious challenges in terms of finding common grounds for communication within complex techno-social systems, of overcoming deep cultural differences and perceptions, and grave ethical issues of access and power. This dissertation develops two case studies of marine …

The Effect Of Presentation Format On Investor Judgments And Decisions: Does The Effect Differ For Varying Task Demands?, Kevin Agnew

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the efficacy of presenting footnotes information in alternative display formats on investors’ judgments and decisions. Non-professional investors play a significant role in the capital markets yet they do not always attend to information contained in footnote disclosures. As a result, nonprofessional investors systematically misprice firms and misallocate resources. Recognizing that increased mandatory and voluntary disclosures create additional challenges for non-professional investors, both the FASB and SEC have actively sought ways to increase the effectiveness of disclosures. I hypothesize that high display proximity, low signal-to-noise presentation formats can increase investors’ attention to and processing of footnote disclosures and …

Monitoring And Mitigation Of Elevated Co2 Impacts Using Microalgae, Terry-Rene Wiesner Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is arguably the greatest environmental and economic challenge of our time. There are considerable documented and projected impacts to both human and natural systems as a result of climate change. These impacts include changes in temperature, sea level, precipitation patterns, and biogeography of ecologically and economically relevant species, including pathogens. One of the main drivers of climate change is elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), a greenhouse gas. Since pre-industrial times, atmospheric CO₂ levels have increased from approximately 280 ppm to over 400 ppm, as a result of fossil fuel combustion, cement production and …

Mechanotransduction Of Matrix Stiffness Regulates Cell Adhesion Strength: An Analysis Using Biomaterial Surfaces With Tunable Mechanical And Chemical Properties, Asma Sharfeddin Sharfeddin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cells have the ability to sense the rigidity of the extracellular matrix which directly affects the control of cellular functions in development, wound healing and malignant transformation. Polydimethylsiloxane elastomers are useful model biomaterials for mechanotransduction studies because they possess several advantages including ease of fabrication, tunable elasticity and modifiable surface chemistry. In this work, we are investigating the influence of matrix stiffness on adhesion strength and the mechanosensory structures that regulate these processes. In addition, the effect of surface modifications to this elastic substrate system on other physical properties such as local stiffness and topography will be analyzed. Based on …

Representation Of Adolescent Identity Status Through Facebook Use: A Qualitative Multicase Study Of Adolescent Digital Behaviors, David Valdez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The expanding landscape of social media offers users several platforms to introduce into their lifestyle choices. Facebook continues to be one of the most ubiquitous social media platforms in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2015), and its use in educational contexts has become an area of inquiry. This study examines how a sample of high school seniors in an IB psychology class use social media, specifically, Facebook by inquiring into the interrelationship between social media use, identity formation, and personal teacher pedagogy as part of instruction. The research questions for this study were: Question 1- How are students using …

Analyzing Spelling Errors By Linguistic Features Among Children With Learning Disabilities, Christine Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to spell fluently and accurately, phonology, orthography, and morphology must be integrated and stored into long term memory (Berninger & Richards, in press; Berninger, Nagy, Tanimoto, Thompson, Abbott, 2015). Children with dysgraphia, dyslexia, and OWL-LD have specific deficits in linguistic processing that impede the cross-mapping of these linguistic elements. This study analyzes the frequency and nature of spelling errors produced by children with dysgraphia, dyslexia, and OWL-LD during an academic writing task in order to determine if known deficits in linguistic processing affect the type and severity of spelling errors made by these children.

The present study analyzed …

When Language Arts Meets The Spectrum: English Teachers' Perspectives Of Students With Autism, Laura De Armond Sabella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current accountability measures require English language arts (ELA) teachers to teach literacy skills to all students. However, the population of mainstreamed students is becomingly increasingly diverse and includes students on the autism spectrum for whom literacy skills may lie in opposition to population characteristics. Further, educators are encouraged to respond to students in culturally responsive ways, and current teacher evaluation systems often require teachers to demonstrate cultural competence. However, a dearth of research provides insight into the ways secondary ELA teachers perceive their students on the autism spectrum, or how they interact with those students or support them in culturally …

Multilevel Analysis Of A Scale Measuring Educators’ Perceptions Of Multi-Tiered Systems Of Supports Practices, Leslie Marie Marshall

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to provide evidence of reliability and validity for the 42-item Perceptions of Practices Survey. The scale was designed to assess educators’ perceptions of the extent to which their schools were implementing multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) practices. The survey was initially given as part of a larger evaluation project of a 3-year, statewide initiative designed to evaluate MTSS implementation. Elementary educators (Level-1 n = 2,109, Level-2 n = 62) completed the survey in September/October of 2007, September/October of 2008 (Level-1 n = 1,940, Level-2 n = 61), and January/February of 2010 (Level-1 n = 2,058, Level-2 …

White Teachers’ Experiences Of Working With Black Students Within A Response To Intervention Framework: The Role Of Racialized Deficit Thinking, Sujay Sabnis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a data-based decision-making framework of service delivery that has the potential to improve educational outcomes for all students. Preliminary data appear to bolster this claim. However, it is as yet unclear whether RTI will be able to close the gap in educational outcomes that exists between students of different racial groups. Drawing on theories such as culture of policy (Stein, 2004) and deficit thinking (Valencia, 2010), this study explored the experiences of six White elementary teachers using RTI while working with Black students receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 instructional supports. Using theoretically driven constant-comparative …

Photic Stress In Symbiont-Bearing Reef Organisms: Analyses Of Photosynthetic Performance, Natasha Mendez-Ferrer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Photo-oxidative stress is one of the key factors that can induce bleaching in reef organisms. With the decline of coral reefs and recurrent bleaching events, many studies have focused on understanding the mechanism behind this phenomenon. Two of the hypotheses that explain how the photosynthetic performance of the symbiont is affected and influences bleaching are: (1) disruption of the photosynthetic pathway by direct damage to the photosystem II (PSII), and (2) by inhibition of the Calvin-Benson cycle. In this dissertation I examine different aspects of photosynthetic performance in symbiont-bearing reef organisms and how this is influenced by symbiont loss and …

Authentication In Wireless Body Area Networks (Wban), Nagalaxmi Yenuganti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the advancements in technology and computing environment capabilities, the number of devices that people carry has increased exponentially. This increase initially occurred as a result of necessity to monitor the human body condition due to chronic diseases, heart problems etc. Later, individuals’ interest was drawn towards self-monitoring their physiology and health care. This is achieved by implanting various sensors that can proactively monitor the human body based on medical necessity and the health condition of the user. Sensors connected on a human body perceive phenomena such as locomotion or heartbeat, and act accordingly to form a Body Area Network. …

Using Expert Modeling And Video Feedback To Improve Starting Block Execution With Track And Field Sprinters, April Dyal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Correct formation during starting block execution is important for injury prevention and obtaining maximum velocity during the sprint. Researchers in applied behavior analysis have evaluated several procedures to improve performance in sports such as gymnastics, football, and, golf. A promising method to improve sports performance is expert modeling plus video feedback. However, there is little research on this method and it has yet to be evaluated with sprinters in track and field. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of expert modeling and video feedback to improve form during block starts with track and field sprinters. …

Polymer Characteristics Of Polyelectrolyte Polypeptides, Jorge Monreal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polypeptides are polymerized chains of amino acids linked covalently through peptide bonds. Polyelectrolyte polypeptides are polypeptides with electrolyte repeating groups. Several amino acids contain ionizable side chains which result in charge distributions when dissolved in aqueous solutions. This dissertation is motivated by a desire to gain knowledge of polyelectrolyte polypeptides as recent advances in chemical synthesis of polypeptides have made possible the fabrication of designed polypeptides that do not naturally occur in nature. Potential applications of newly designed polypeptides span the range from medical to clothing and energy even to robotics.

In this dissertation we compare the characteristic behavior of …

Applications Of Molecular Modelling And Structure Based Drug Design In Drug Discovery, Sreya Mukherjee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Calcium ions have important roles in cellular processes including intracellular signaling, protein folding, enzyme activation and initiation of programmed cell death. Cells maintain low levels of calcium in their cytosol in order to regulate these processes. When activation of calcium-dependent processes is needed, cells can release calcium stored in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) into the cytosol to initiate the processes. This can also initiate formation of plasma membrane channels that allow entry of additional calcium from the extracellular milieu. The change in calcium levels is referred to as calcium flux. A key protein involved in initiation of calcium flux is …

The Effect Of Home Range Estimation Techniques On Habitat Use Analysis, Brendon Quinton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The term “home range” refers to the area in which an animal spends most of its time during everyday activities. This study examined the effects of four different home range estimation techniques on the proportions of habitats located therein. The study utilized a point dataset collected for twenty individual Florida Black Bears (Ursus americanus floridanus), occurring in five different areas throughout the state of Florida. Each dataset was used to create home ranges using the following techniques: (1) Minimum Convex Polygon, (2) Kernel Density Estimation, (3) Characteristic Hull Polygon, and (4) Time-Geographic Density Estimation, a new home range …

Analysis Of Patterns In Handwritten Spelling Errors Among Students With Various Specific Learning Disabilities, Laura Ann Winkler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Students diagnosed with specific learning disabilities struggle with spelling accuracy, but they do so for different reasons. For instance, students with dysgraphia, dyslexia, and oral-written language learning disability (OWL-LD) have distinct areas of weakness in cognitive processing and unique difficulties with the linguistic features necessary for accurate spelling (Silliman & Berninger, 2011). This project considered the spelling errors made by such students to determine if their unique learning profiles lead to distinct misspelling patterns.

Academic summaries handwritten by 33 students diagnosed with dysgraphia (n=13), dyslexia (n=15), and OWL-LD (n=5) were analyzed for type/complexity and …

A Smartphone-Based System For Clinical Gait Assessment, Andres Alfredo Perez Leon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Patients with lower limbs problems are an increasing population in the US and many of them require surgery and its subsequent post-op Physical Therapy (PT). For all these patients, tracking their progress and evolution towards full recovery is very important. To assess the patients and track their progress, patients are usually required to perform very specific tests administered by a physical therapist. These tests either require very expensive equipment or rather require the subjective experience of the physical therapist who administer them. One of these tests is the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA) test, perhaps the most widely adopted one for …

Self-Determination During School-To-Adulthood Transition In Young Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder From The United States And Hong Kong, Gary Yu Hin Lam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing population of students with ASD graduating from schools and entering adulthood. Post-school transition is particularly challenging for these young adults and they tend to exhibit unfavorable outcomes in various domains in life. The concept of self-determination has been identified to promote successful transition and adult outcomes. With its root stemming from Western ideologies, the conceptualizations and manifestations of self-determination have rarely been examined across cultures. The present study aims to examine the experiences of self-determination in young adults with ASD during their school-to-adulthood transition and directly compare their experiences across American and Chinese contexts. Individual interviews …

Impact Of Visualization On Engineers – A Survey, Dhaval Kashyap Shah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the recent years, there has been a tremendous growth in data. Numerous research and technologies have been proposed and developed in the field of Visualization to cope with the associated data analytics. Despite these new technologies, the pace of people’s capacity to perform data analysis has not kept pace with the requirement. Past literature has hinted as to various reasons behind this disparity. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate specifically the usage of Visualization in the field of engineering. We conducted the research with the help of a survey identifying the places where Visualization educational shortcomings may …

Oversampling Methods For Imbalanced Dataset Classification And Their Application To Gynecological Disorder Diagnosis, Iman Nekooeimehr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In many applications, the dataset for classification may be highly imbalanced where most of the instances in the training set may belong to some of the classes (majority classes), while only a few instances are from the other classes (minority classes). Conventional classifiers will strongly favor the majority class and ignore the minority instances. The imbalance problem can occur in both binary data classification and also in ordinal regression. Ordinal regression is a supervised approach for learning the ordinal relationship between classes. Extensive research has been performed for addressing imbalanced datasets for binary classification; however, current methods do not address …

Enforcing Security Policies On Gpu Computing Through The Use Of Aspect-Oriented Programming Techniques, Bader Albassam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a new security policy enforcer designed for securing parallel computation on CUDA GPUs. We show how the very features that make a GPGPU desirable have already been utilized in existing exploits, fortifying the need for security protections on a GPGPU. An aspect weaver was designed for CUDA with the goal of utilizing aspect-oriented programming for security policy enforcement. Empirical testing verified the ability of our aspect weaver to enforce various policies. Furthermore, a performance analysis was performed to demonstrate that using this policy enforcer provides no significant performance impact over manual insertion of policy code. Finally, future …

Fast Computation On Processing Data Warehousing Queries On Gpu Devices, Sam Cyrus

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current database management systems use Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) as dedicated accelerators to process each individual query, which results in underutilization of GPU. When a single query data warehousing workload was run on an open source GPU query engine, the utilization of main GPU resources was found to be less than 25%. The low utilization then leads to low system throughput. To resolve this problem, this paper suggests a way to transfer all of the desired data into the global memory of GPU and keep it until all queries are executed as one batch. The PCIe transfer time from CPU …

Digital Integration, Jacob C. Boccio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence is an emerging technology; something far beyond smartphones, cloud integration, or surgical microchip implantation. Utilizing the work of Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, and Steven Shaviro, this thesis investigates technology and artificial intelligence through the lens of the cinema. It does this by mapping contemporary concepts and the imagined worlds in film as an intersection of reality and fiction that examines issues of individual identity and alienation. I look at a non-linear timeline of films involving machine advancement, machine intelligence, and stages of post-human development; Elysium (2013) and Surrogates (2009) are about technology as an extension of the self, …

Application And Analysis Of Asymmetrical Hot And Cold Stimuli, Ahmad Manasrah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The human body has a unique mechanism for perceiving surrounding temperatures. When an object is in contact with the skin, we do not feel its temperature. Instead, we feel the temperature change that is caused on our skin by that object. The faster the heat is transferred, the more intense the thermal sensation is. In this dissertation, a new dynamic thermal display method, where different rates of warm and cold are applied on the skin to generate a unique sensation, is presented. The new method can be related in a wide range of applications including thermal haptics and virtual reality. …

Decision Support Systems For Water Management: Investigating Stakeholder Perceptions Of System Use, Gabriella Balsam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water resources are becoming increasingly important to protect, but doing so has proven challenging due to the complex nature of resource management. Many researchers have been trying to develop “usable science” to aid in this endeavor, and one method of this is the development of decision support systems. This has led to the employment of this method as a potential tool for decision makers, scientists, and the interested public to use; yet little literature is available on the success of their implementation. This study attempted to fill the gaps by gathering data through surveys and interviews from stakeholders who are …