Digital Commons Network^™

Invisible Families, Clear Consequences: Work-Family Integration Among Employees In Same Gender Presenting Romantic Relationships, Joseph Regina

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent qualitative studies have provided evidence LGBTQ+ individuals experience unique challenges related to integrating one’s romantic partner into their work life. Informed by signaling theory, the role of work-romantic partner integration supplies (WRPIS) as a variable of interest was tested as an outcome of formal and informal signals of inclusion and as a predictor of job satisfaction, romantic relationship satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Hypotheses were tested using a three-timepoint survey with a sample of 138 full-time employed individuals who were currently involved in a committed same-gender presenting romantic relationship. Results provide support informal signals of inclusion relate to WRPIS and …

The Rise Of Text Analysis: Using Machine Learning To Explain The Variation In Going Concern Accuracy, Yimei Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Auditors are required to issue modified audit opinions if they have sufficient doubts about the client’s ability to continue as a going concern. These going concern opinions represent an important information resource for financial statement users to evaluate client performance, and are associated with a number of negative capital market outcomes (e.g. negative returns, increased cost of capital, etc.). Despite being used by capital market participants, going concern opinions are commonly plagued with Type I errors (false positive) and Type II errors (false negative), making them a particularly noisy measure. The purpose of this study is to determine whether machine …

“We Need To Have A Place To Vent And Get Our Frustrations Out”: Addressing The Needs Of Mothering Students In Higher Education Using A Positive Deviance Framework, Melissa León

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the experiences of mothering students at four different colleges using a positive deviance (PD) framework. PD is an approach that seeks to identify positive behavioral patterns that help members of a community overcome structural barriers (Gross, et al. 2017). The Positive Deviance Framework was applied to investigate how some mothering students are successful in college and how their experiences could potentially help new or struggling mothering students. Eleven mothering students were interviewed to determine what interventions could assist mothering students who lack representation in the traditional college environment, a situation that often leads to feelings of isolation. …

A Novel Role For Enos In Regulating Lymphatic Valve Development During Embryogenesis, Drishya Iyer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lymphedema is a disease that occurs when lymph flow is impaired, resulting in tissue swelling, fibrosis, chronic inflammation and recurrent secondary infections. Lymphatic valves play a critical role in maintaining unidirectional lymph flow and evidence for valve defects have been reported in lymphedema patients. The lack of drugs that can correct lymphatic valve defects warrants a better understanding of the molecular regulators of lymphatic valve development and maintenance. Lymphatic valves first develop during embryogenesis in response to mechanotransduction signaling pathways triggered by oscillatory lymph flow. Since eNOS (gene name: Nos3) is a well characterized mechanotransduction signaling molecule in blood vessels, …

Exploring The Risk Narratives Of Transgender People Engaged In Do-It-Yourself Hormone Replacement Therapy, Brianna Rae Cusanno

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzed the risk narratives of transgender people engaged in do-it- yourself hormone replacement therapy. Transgender (trans) people, those whose gender identities and/or expressions defy normative constructions of gender, experience a variety of health inequities as a consequence of systemic oppression within U.S. society. Many of the health inequities observed in trans people can be traced to structural determinants, such as discrimination at home, work, and school that results in housing, food, and social instability. Yet, medical and public health researchers have often attributed trans health inequities to “high risk” behaviors in which trans people engage.

One such behavior …

Meeting Diverse Student Needs: An Examination Of A Physical Education Teacher Alumnus’ Culturally Responsive Teaching Beliefs And Their Enactment, Craigory V. Nieman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how one physical education teacher education (PETE) alumnus teaching in a CED urban school perceives culturally responsive teaching in physical education (PE), as well as how they enact it in their classes. Guided by culturally responsive teaching and self-efficacy, this study examined John, a physical education teacher education alumnus teaching in a CED urban elementary school. John completed the culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy scale (CRTSE; Siwatu, 2007), five semi-structured interviews, five reflection journal prompts, and eight voice memos over the course of 12 weeks. Additional data collection included text messages, emails, and …

Archaeogaming And The Re-Use Of Digital Archaeological Materials: Generating Serious Games For The Villas Of Roman Sicily, Kaitlyn Kingsland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With 10 million copies sold and 500 million dollars of revenue, the 11th installment of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018), showed how a videogame based on ancient Greek history and archaeology can make a splash in popular culture and that the distant past can become an extinguishable source of infinite engaging gaming narratives. As pedagogic and research counterparts to videogames of this kind, serious games and archaeogames focusing on Greek and Roman civilizations move from different premises, though aspiring to the same level of success. Serious games, created for a primary purpose other than sole entertainment, have …

Automated Approaches To Enable Innovative Civic Applications From Citizen Generated Imagery, Hye Seon Yi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Smart governance is an area, that is increasingly becoming important, not only in advanced countries, but all across the globe. Thanks to global scale network connectivity, permeance of smart-devices of various form-factors, and overall improvement in digital literary, we are now seeing "smartness" everywhere, or if not, the general public is expecting the same. Ultimately, the goal of smart governance is to facilitate state-of-the-art technologies to improve citizens’ lives. With the ubiquity of smart phone technologies today, citizens more readily participate in collaboration with public officials for improved quality of life and their communities. By utilizing optimal tools, public officials …

Do Firms Overreact To The Enactment Of Corporate Laws: Evidence From Anti-Price Gouging Laws, Mario Marshall

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The enactment of state corporate laws increases attention to issues related to price fairness.I present evidence that firms become less efficient in generating margins but not revenue upon enacting anti-price gouging laws. This finding is consistent with a prediction of salience theory that increased attention to unfair pricing induces firms to adopt more conservative pricing strategies. I provide evidence that companies that are more sensitive to unfair pricing risks have larger changes in efficiency. The results are consistent with the salience theory of choice and imply that attention that corporate laws generate may substantially impact firms.

“You Don’T Seek Help, You Are Just Thankful For The Things The Country Provides For You.” The Emotional Burden Of Growing Up Undocumented In The United States, Melanie Anne Escue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For over a decade, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has provided more than 800,000 undocumented young adults with the ability to lawfully reside in the United States. Despite the program’s benefits, DACA falls short of offering long-term security and full societal integration. Over the past few years, political and legal attacks on the DACA program (e.g., actions of the former Trump administration, 2017 DACA recission, ongoing court proceedings) have made visible the precarious nature of the program and threatened the futures of young adults protected under the program. While prior studies have found that the growing anti-immigrant …

Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Immigration-Related Stressors, Pregnancy, Birth, And Post-Partum Experiences Of Women Living Along The Us-Mexico Border, Isabela Solis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic coupled with immigration-related stressors had a profound effect on women who lived on the U.S.-Mexico border and their pregnancy, birth, and post-partum experiences. This project focused the experiences of 17 women living in El Paso, Texas and how border closure, economic insecurities, and family separation during the COVID-19 pandemic shaped women’s experiences. This research included interviewing maternal and child health experts to propose recommendations geared towards policy change. Finally, this project highlights the vast complexities that go into the pregnancy, birth, and post-partum period for women living on the U.S.-Mexico border, and how these experiences shape maternal …

Essays On Cybersecurity And Information Privacy, Moez Hamedani Farokhnia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research focuses on two key aspects of cybersecurity research. Security safeguard allocation, and AI-powered tools for anomaly detection. The first dissertation essay (Chapter 1) proposes a novel framework for the allocation of security countermeasures in the presence of uncertainty using robust optimization technique. The second dissertation essay (Chapter 2) studies the impact of algorithmic bias on the practice of insider threat detection in Electronic Health Record Systems and proposes a mitigations strategy. The final dissertation essay (Chapter 3) investigates how the biases of anomaly detection algorithms, and the characteristics of ensemble methods relate to the ensembles’ accuracy and …

Pamam- Cyclodextrin Conjugate Upregulates Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor In Arpe-19 Cells, Gopika Ashokan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a major contributor to death and disability due to motorvehicle accidents, sports, physical abuse, and battlefield injuries. The primary insult to the brain leads to inflammation, vascular dysfunction, and oxidative stress in the brain as well as in the eye. This leads to loss of Retinal Ganglion Cells (RGCs) and downregulation of Brain derived Neurotopic Factor (BDNF). BDNF is a neurotrophic factor that binds to Tropomyosin Receptor Kinase B (TrkB) receptor to promote cell growth, survival, and differentiation. Current treatment strategies do not promote neuronal regeneration. Therefore, novel treatments are needed to restore vision …

Secure Reconfigurable Computing Paradigms For The Next Generation Of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Applications, Brooks Olney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been popular tools for data analysis at the edge, particularly through complex deep and convolutional neural networks (DNNs/CNNs), which can learn to parameterize a function given a labeled dataset. Indeed, these technologies have enabled significant progress across a wide range of fields and are becoming ubiquitous. However, training the best model for an application and subsequently using them to evaluate data in real-time requires an immense amount of computational power. Typically, ``smart" sensors at the edge rely on the cloud to accelerate this computation due to power and compute …

Proud And Mischievous Designs: Elizabethan Propaganda Of The Dutch Revolt, Michael Swierczynski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the late sixteenth century, England’s political culture was engaged in a heated debate over that kingdom’s participation in the Dutch Revolt. Across the Channel, predominantly Protestant Dutch rebels had risen up in revolt against their Catholic overlord, King Philip II of Spain. The English people, linked to the Dutch by longstanding cultural, economic, and religious ties, largely sympathized with the rebels. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and, after his death, his stepson, Robert Deveraux, Earl of Essex, sponsored extensive campaigns of print propaganda to influence their fellow subjects to support an active English military intervention in the Revolt. They …

Please Don’T Label Me: An Examination Of Black-Owned Labels And How A Positive Consumer Activism Movement May Have A Negative Outcome, Khalia C. Jenkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Covid-19 crisis that began in 2020 brought to light many societal issues as people had time to sit and reflect. One of these issues is the systemic injustices against African Americans, which were highlighted after the death of George Floyd. This event re-ignited the Black Lives Matter movement amongst U.S. citizens of all races and within corporations. While some companies pledged to donate to various Black causes, others opted to empower Black businesses economically by supporting the Buy-Black Movement. One of the ways they are accomplishing this goal is by adding a Black-owned label to products and businesses. While …

Chasing A Moving Target: Examining Shifts In Elementary Teachers' Language And Conceptions Of Digital Literacy During Professional Learning, Stephanie M. Branson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging and transforming innovations carry with them new ways of conceptualizing literacy practices in the classroom. As the technology revolution forges ahead and permeates the elementary school setting, teachers must consider how they talk about and model digital literacy practices. Digital literacy goes beyond merely operating technology tools and devices. It includes the cognitive and social processes that take place when reading, writing, and communicating in digital spaces and with digital tools. To understand the integration of digital literacies into the classroom, we must better understand how teachers develop digital literacy competencies and dispositions through focused and intentional professional learning …

Turmoil In The Workforce: Introduction Of The Nomadic Employee, Catrina Hopkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study is designed to define a “nomadic employee,” a figure who has emerged in the ever-changing labor force, and to define what drives these workers to move between companies within a short period of time (generally within a 12-month period). These nomadic employees are driving higher turnover rates and causing rising onboarding costs. Relationships between employees and their employers have changed drastically in recent decades. Business concepts have evolved, and, thus, so have employee motivations. With the introduction of the millennial generation into the workforce and the emergence of the technology revolution, workforces have transformed, again establishing the …

Attention-Grabbing Tactics On Social Media, Arjun Kadian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

News posts are popular among social media users. Since news reading is critical for both social media platforms and news providers, the use of attention-grabbing tactics, such as hyperbole and expressed emotional arousal, is commonplace to increase news readership. However, there is scant empirical evidence to explain the impact of attention-grabbing tactics on social media users’ reading intentions and behavior in social media. Therefore, I first explore how and why the use of hyperbolic statements in news headlines influences users’ interest and intention to read the news. Drawing on expectation violation theory, I propose competing hypotheses. I conducted three experiments …

Identifying Contributors To Disproportionality: The Influence Of Perception On Student Social, Emotional, And Academic Behavior Ratings, Chelsea Salvatore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Successful implementation of the MTSS framework involves equitable assessment and decision-making. This calls for researchers to investigate the processes utilized to identify students for early behavioral support, such as multi-informant universal social-emotional behavioral screening. The current study aimed to investigate this by first examining the usability of the Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Subscale (SAEBRS) and the student self-report version (mySAEBRS) across Black and White students in grades seven through nine. After examining these tools for measurement invariance, the trifactor model was employed with race as a predictor variable to examine the mean difference of Black and White students’ scores …

Prepare For, Respond To, Recover, And Learn From Disasters: Using Data-Driven Methods To Model And Understand Disaster Resilience, Jinwen Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community resilience reflects the ability of human communities to prepare for, respond to, recover, and learn from disastrous events. Community resilience carries different meanings in different phases of disaster management (i.e., preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation). With the emergence of new geospatial data sources, human activities now can be captured through social media, mobile signals, and nighttime illuminations, which makes it possible to describe the conditions among various communities before, during, and after disasters. Therefore, this dissertation explored the use of different types of geospatial data sources (social media, nighttime light remote sensing, land-use data, and census survey data) during …

Saudi Parents As Advocates For Their Young Children With Disabilities: Reflections On The Journey, Sadeem A. Alolayan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although special education advocates have played an essential role in obtaining rights for individuals with disabilities, there is still much unknown about their motivations, challenges, roles, and the meaning they made from their experiences. Research into Saudi parent advocates of children with disabilities and their complex daily life issues have seldom been investigated, with rare studies that focus solely on Saudi early intervention services needs and supports. This qualitative study aimed to explore the experiences of Saudi parents of children with developmental disabilities who are special education advocates in their communities. One of the goals of this study was to …

Transformative Psychedelic Experiences At Music Events: Using Subjective Experience To Explore Chemosocial Assemblages Of Culture, Gabrielle R. Lehigh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clinical interest in psychedelic treatments in the United States started in the 1950s, but anti-drug policy and anti-social sentiments quickly thwarted future research. The last decade has renewed clinical interest in using psychedelics to treat a diversity of mental health ailments. While these studies provide essential protocols, treatments, and therapy models for patients, they are limited in understanding the role of the contextual elements that influence psychedelic experiences and outcomes. This project examines how people use psychedelic substances outside medical settings by studying transformative psychedelic experiences at music events. This inquiry into psychedelic use utilizes an integrated framework of chemoethnography …

Motherhood In The Multiverse: Melodrama And Asian American Identity In Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, Aditya Sudhakaran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In what follows, I look to the visual and narrative composition of the multiverse between Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (The Daniels, 2022) and Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022) to develop a more precise understanding of the superhero blockbuster as a contemporary expression of sensation melodrama. To do so, I use two depictions of maternity to excavate two very different approaches to the multiverse: one that externalizes social conflict, which it answers with individuated and exculpatory violence, and another that internalizes social conflict, which it answers through collective care. I introduce the blockbuster’s mobilization of the multiverse …

The Development Of A Behaviorally Based Mentoring Workplace Scale, Christina N. Falcon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the mentoring literature by providing a new tool to measure mentoring behaviors and their effectiveness from the perspective of the protégé. To accomplish this, I used the specific mentoring behaviors outlined by previous research to develop a behaviorally based measure of mentorship. The items for this new behaviorally based mentoring effectiveness scale were developed to measure the same theoretical construct as previous mentoring scales, but with the intention of capturing effective behaviors instead of broader mentoring functions. This scale was developed through three main steps: a pilot study to narrow down …

English Use In Italian Contexts: A Digital Ethnographic Study Of Language Ideological Discourses, Antonella Gazzardi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language ideologies are systems of beliefs about languages. Naturalized as “common sense,” they are widespread and significantly influence social, discursive, and linguistic practices. Language ideologies are expressed and circulated in a wide range of media formats, including social media, where lay people and experts alike share their opinions and beliefs. One “language problem” they debate about is the use of English in otherwise Italian contexts that is (mostly) deemed unnecessary (referred to as Italenglish). By applying a citizen sociolinguistic lens (Rymes & Leone, 2014), and by adding an ethnographic component to the critical discourse analysis of digital data (Fairclough, 2013), …

The Role Of The Dna Helicase Rrm3 Under Replication Stress, Julius Muellner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

DNA replication needs to be strictly monitored to ensure proper duplication of the genome. During DNA synthesis, the DNA replication machinery encounters multiple obstacles such as incorrect dNTP incorporation, RNA-DNA hybrids, modification of DNA nucleobases, collision with the transcription-replication machinery. These endogenous and exogenous sources of DNA damage may result in single-strand breaks (SSBs) and double-strand DNA breaks (DSBs), thereby impeding fork progression. To prevent stalling of DNA synthesis a multitude of DNA repair pathways are specifically designed to deal with these kinds of blockages. One of the proteins involved in ensuring DNA replication fork progression is the DNA helicase …

Who Goes And Who Stays: Predicting Hurricane Evacuation For Local Neighborhoods, Shakhawat Hosen Tanim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To reduce the devastating impacts of hurricanes on people’s lives, communities, and societal infrastructures, disaster management would benefit considerably from a detailed understanding of evacuation, including the socio-demographics of the populations that evacuate, or stay, down to disaggregated geographic levels such as neighborhoods. A detailed household evacuation prediction model for local neighborhoods requires both a robust household evacuation decision model and individual household data for small geographic units. To address the first of these, this dissertation performed a statistical meta-analysis of numerous survey-based hurricane evacuation studies to establish mean effect sizes for predictors impacting the household decision. To address the …

Diet And Salivary Microbiome On Cardiovascular Risk And Glycemic Control In Participants With And Without Type 1 Diabetes: The Cacti Study, Tiantian Pang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: The prevalence of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) has been increasing drastically in the United States. People with T1DM are at a higher risk of developing diabetes-related complications, including cardiovascular disease (CVD). Diet is one of the most modifiable factors and healthy eating could reduce CVD risk among individuals with T1DM. The current 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans focus on overall healthy eating patterns rather than individual foods and nutrients. A healthy dietary pattern or high-quality diet can be measured by diet quality indexes, and generally contains minimal ultra-processed foods (UPF). Although substantial evidence has linked poor diet quality …

The Redesign And Evaluation Of A Higher Education Online Instructor Certification Program, Lindsey W. Mercer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following exploratory case study is a program evaluation of a certification program for online instructors at a high-enrollment, 4-year research-intensive university in the southeast. Since 2014 the Online Instructor Certification (OIC) has operated as the predominant platform for preparing faculty to teach online at the site of study. The OIC contributes to meeting institutional strategic initiatives including accreditation and goals from the state board of governors. Using the Kirkpatrick training evaluation model, this study evaluated the OIC on the first three levels including how participants perceived the certification (Level 1), what participants learned (Level 2), and how participants applied …