Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating The Relationship Between Vocabulary Size Level, Informal Exposure, Motivation, And The Efl Learners’ Collocational Knowledge In Saudi Arabia, Amal Barzanji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current study investigated the correlation between English collocation test scores and three independent variables including vocabulary level, informal language exposure, and motivation. The study also examined which independent variable was the most influential in predicting the collocation tests scores. Data was collected using, Gyllstad’s (2007) COLLEX and COLLMATCH tests, Webb et al.’s (2017) Form A of the updated Vocabulary Levels Test, Luk and Bialystok’s (2013) Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ), and Moskovsky et al.’s (2016) L2 Motivational Self-System Questionnaire (L2MSS). Participants (N = 136) from a Saudi university completed the questionnaires. The results indicated that although there were …

Evacuation Decision Making And The Role Of Social Connections Across Evacuation Statuses During Hurricane Irma, Nathan D. Shull

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to examine the evacuation decision-making process during Hurricane Irma in 2017. Special consideration was given to the role of an individual’s social connections (SCs). Additionally, the dependability, density (i.e., social network size and number of connections), and diversity of SCs were compared between those who: (a) evacuated to a shelter in Pinellas County, (b) evacuated to somewhere outside of the Tampa Bay area, and (c) did not evacuate. Data for evacuees and non-evacuees from Collins et al. (2018) were used to perform this comparison, while the data for shelter evacuees were acquired via a …

Turkic Interlingua: A Case Study Of Machine Translation In Low-Resource Languages, Jamshidbek Mirzakhalov

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Machine Translation (MT) has the potential to bridge the gap between the developed world and the marginalized communities by making information more accessible in real-time. While there are over 7000 spoken languages in the world, only about a hundred have access to high-quality MT systems and even fewer enjoy the benefits of more advanced language technologies. Unfortunately, resource scarcity and the lack of digital infrastructure are only some of the many challenges associated with globalizing NLP. Many large-scale multilingual studies and datasets often get little to no feedback from native speakers or linguistic experts of the languages involved, leading to …

Chorine Conversion: Biological And Water Quality Impact On Activated Carbon Block Point Of Use Filters, Horace S. Jakpa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Point-of-use (POU) activated carbon (AC) filters are ubiquitous in many U.S. households. AC can reduce concentrations of lead, other heavy metals, and mitigate taste and odor issues. However, AC filters also remove residual disinfectants, thus allowing for the proliferation of microbes in the filter. In chloraminated systems, this can lead to localized, filter-induced nitrification. Most notably, high nitrite and nitrate in drinking water can cause methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome) in children under the age of three, raising public health concerns.

As a control measure for nitrification within distribution systems, utilities practice periodic, short-term secondary disinfectant switches from chloramine to free …

Health Risk Assessment Of Local Populations Ingesting Water With Naturally Occurring Arsenic And Fecal Related Contaminants In Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, Marisol Alvarez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala acts as a sink for wastewater discharge and as a source of drinking water. The populations living in the lake basin are primarily indigenous with a large percentage (70%) living in poverty. Wastewater effluent entering the lake poses an immediate health risk to those using it as a drinking-water source. Additionally, the lake is surrounded by three volcanoes and the water has concentrations of naturally occurring arsenic above the recommended reference level of 10 µg/L. Arsenic is acutely poisonous at high concentrations and has carcinogenic and neurological effects when chronically exposed at low concentrations.

The goal of …

An Examination Of Covid-19 Health Behaviors And Public Health Messaging Using The Health Belief Model And Organization-Public Relationship Quality, Aaron L. Nichols

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the context of the most severe pandemic in over 100 years, this study examined public health behavior and public health messaging using the health belief model (HBM) and organization-public relationships (OPR) as frameworks. The study employed a cross-sectional survey of students (N = 288) and employees (N = 203) at a large public university in the southeastern United States. First, the study empirically tested the components of the HBM as determinants of engaging in public health behaviors meant to slow or prevent the spread of COVID-19 and found all components of the model to be significantly related to engaging …

American Military Service And Identity: From The Militia To The All-Volunteer Force, Andrew C. Sparks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to examine the growth of the American military service regimes along with how the American State used those regimes to construct American identity. To accomplish this, this project looks at the length of American war as a dependent variable from the types of war fought and the military service regimes. Over the course of this study, we examine four distinct eras: the militia regime, the coercive regime, the Peacetime Draft, and the All-Volunteer Force. Each of these correspond to various types of identity development, which include individual state, regional/national, international, and retrospective identity, respectively. …

Circrev1 Expression In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Meagan P. Horton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) comprises only 24% of breast cancer cases, yet is the second leading cause of cancer mortality in women due to its aggressive nature (1). This increase in mortality is due to the lack of receptors for three targetable growth factors (HER2, progesterone, and estrogen receptors). Our previous studies have indicated that these cancers are highly dysregulated in respect to alternative splicing. Hence, we undertook a study aimed at identifying circular RNAs (circRNAs) generated from back-splicing events which were dysregulated in TNBC. We have identified a novel circRNA transcript, circular REV1 (circREV1), which is upregulated in our …

Framing #Metoo Movement In China A Content Analysis Of China Women’S News Coverage, Wenminzi Wu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Grounded in the framing theory, this article examined a differential study by content analysis. After the #MeToo movement rapidly trended in at least 85 countries including China, many people’s life and mind have been changed. The purpose of this study was to explore the frames used in the news coverage in China Women’s News referring to sexual harassment/assault and to examine how far the sense of gender equality has been changed in China especially after the #MeToo movement began. The sample came from the online database of a total of 546 relevant coverage from 2014 to 2020 in China Women’s …

Enacting An Equity Framework With A Teacher And Students In An Urban Elementary Classroom: A Qualitative Study, Samantha J. Haraf

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This purpose of this study was to engage a fifth grade teacher and students in the exploration and application of the EFE (Education for Equity) conceptual framework, and to develop understandings of how EFE functioned in this context. This framework, developed around a decade of equity-focused research in elementary contexts, outlines research-based categories of practices for equity work in elementary schools, and it draws attention to areas lacking attention in the literature. Using and extending from case study methods and participatory methods, I worked with a teacher and her students in this urban classroom for approximately six months in both …

An Ecological Momentary Assessment Of Disordered Eating Behaviors Within Alcohol Use Episodes: Determining Temporal Sequencing In Food And Alcohol Disturbance, Emily M. Choquette

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The co-occurrence of disordered eating and alcohol use has been well documented in the literature. Food and Alcohol Disturbance (FAD), previously referred to as “drunkorexia,” refers to the use of disordered eating behaviors within an alcohol use episode for the purpose of increasing alcohol effects and/or offsetting caloric intake from alcohol. There is a relatively limited literature base which examines FAD; however, there is evidence that FAD is associated with alcohol-related consequences and health risk behaviors. As such, further study into this phenomenon is necessary. The current study aimed to address significant limitations in the literature. While the aims of …

Narrative Meaning Productions Of Compassionate Healthcare: An Examination Of Cultural Codes, Organizational Practices, And Everyday Realities, Carley Geiss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the social complexities of emotion in healthcare; employing a multi-level narrative approach that explores the cultural, organizational, and interactional aspects of “compassionate care.” The central question I ask is: How do cultural beliefs and values surrounding compassionate healthcare inform organizational practices and the lived experiences of individuals providing such care? This project highlights the largely overlooked cultural, structural aspects of emotion, demonstrating how pervasive collective values and beliefs become institutionalized, and how such standards inform everyday experiences of healthcare providers.

Explicating The Process Of Communicative Disenfranchisement For Women With Chronic Overlapping Pain Conditions (Copcs), Elizabeth A. Hintz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation builds upon the extant literature in fields such as medicine, psychology, sociology, women and gender studies, and communication studies to theoretically explicate and develop a measure of the process of communicative disenfranchisement (CD). This dissertation refers to CD in two capacities: (a) as the phenomenon of CD (i.e., a communication construct and process unfolding over time), and (b) as a theoretical framework (i.e., that builds on CIFC tenets and elucidates the phenomenon of CD) which is abbreviated TCD (i.e., theory of communicative disenfranchisement). TCD enables scholars to assess how talk may disempower and empower again individuals and communities …

When I Rhyme It’S Sincerely Yours: Burkean Identification And Jay-Z’S Black Sincerity Rhetoric In The Post Soul Era, Antoine Francis Hardy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

‌ ‌ The‌ ‌slang,‌ ‌attitude,‌ ‌cultural‌ ‌memory,‌ ‌creativity‌ ‌and‌ ‌innovation‌ ‌of‌ ‌African‌ ‌diasporic‌ ‌youth‌ ‌created‌ ‌a‌ ‌ global‌ ‌cultural‌ ‌movement-hip-hop--that‌ ‌informs‌ ‌all‌ ‌aspects‌ ‌of‌ ‌our‌ ‌society.‌ ‌In‌ ‌this‌ ‌dissertation;‌ ‌ however,‌ ‌I‌ ‌examine‌ ‌how‌ ‌post-soul‌ ‌hip-hop‌ ‌featured‌ ‌black‌ ‌cultural‌ ‌conversations,‌ ‌specifically‌ ‌the‌ ‌ ‘conversation’‌ ‌between‌ ‌Jay-Z‌ ‌and‌ ‌his‌ ‌imagined‌ ‌black‌ ‌audience.‌ ‌Over‌ ‌the‌ ‌past‌ ‌25‌ ‌years‌ ‌Jay-Z‌ ‌has‌ ‌been‌ ‌ known‌ ‌as‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌most‌ ‌acclaimed‌ ‌and‌ ‌successful‌ ‌recording‌ ‌artists‌ ‌of‌ ‌his‌ ‌time;‌ ‌however‌ ‌this‌ ‌study‌ ‌ examines‌ ‌what‌ ‌I‌ ‌term‌ ‌his‌ ‌‌black‌ ‌sincerity‌ ‌rhetoric‌ ‌(BSR)‌.‌ ‌At‌ ‌times‌ ‌Jay-Z‌ ‌is‌ ‌praised‌ ‌for‌ ‌his‌ ‌commitment‌ ‌to‌ ‌ community‌ ‌in‌ ‌verse;‌ …

Women Entrepreneurs In China: Dialectical Discourses, Situated Activities, And The (Re)Production Of Gender And Entrepreneurship, Zhenyu Tian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the number of women entrepreneurs on the rise globally, the business world and the identity of the entrepreneur remain to be normed masculine and male gender stereotyped. This male gender stereotyping situates women who practice entrepreneurship in disadvantages, limiting their access to resources on which they depend to make meaning of their activities and identities. This imbalanced masculine gender order also manifests in China’s economy. Women entrepreneurs in China face complex contradictions and challenges when navigating an arena that privileges men and masculinity. However, not much is known about the micro-dynamics of Chinese women’s entrepreneurial experiences in light of …

A Study Of The Implementation Of Technology In The Elementary Setting, Matthew J. Hoff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this self-study was to explore the technology implementation that took place at one Title I elementary school over the course of a four-year period. The implementation of technology in the school was undertaken for three specific reasons: to invigorate school culture, to enhance classroom instruction, and to raise student achievement.

The research of the technology implementation at Comet Elementary used a self-study approach. Data collected and analyzed during the self-study included the following: school culture and climate surveys, teacher evaluations and observations, student standardized assessments, school budgets, teacher technology integration surveys, and student technology integration surveys.

The …

Elementary Teachers' Beliefs And Practices For Building Teacher-Student Relationships In Title I Schools, Raven S. Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As elementary teachers may serve as the initial advocates for students’ safety, basic needs, and emotional well-being, research has pointed to teacher-student relationships as a means of increasing successful experiences within the school setting (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Cook et al., 2018; Pianta, 1999; Schafer & Barker, 2018). However, urban schools continue to be disproportionately identified as contexts that serve as a nexus toward lack of opportunity for student success, but a focus on teachers’ beliefs and practices for building teacher-student relationships urban, Title I schools can dispel misconceptions (Delale-O’Connor et al., 2017; Hornstra et al., 2015; Milner, 2018; Nieto, …

Pollen-Vegetation Relationships In Upper Tampa Bay, Jaime E. Zolik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological and environmental studies reveal prehistoric human-environmental interactions and resolve baseline conditions for estuaries. Paleoecological proxies, such as pollen, aid archeologists in investigating past vegetation dynamics and human impacts. An issue with collecting this information today is that most present-day estuaries in Tampa Bay have been succeeded by mangrove communities and do not represent baseline vegetation dynamics. This is believed to be the consequences of widespread mosquito ditching. As a result of this, the once complex mangrove, salt marsh, juncus marsh, salt prairie, and coastal upland mosaics were converted to monodominant mangrove forests. Upper Tampa Bay (UTB) park contains some …

Sensible/Latent Hybrid Thermal Energy Storage For The Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Brayton Cycle, Kelly Osterman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mitigating the effects of climate change will require rapid deployment of a carbon-free electricity system that includes all available forms of zero-carbon energy. Both renewables and nuclear show great promise, but both come with drawbacks. Power production from wind and solar is limited to times when their respective resources are available, while nuclear is limited in its ability to adjust its output according to the ever-varying demand for electricity. Additionally, the systems must be affordable. One way to reduce the cost of thermal power plants (concentrated solar power and nuclear) is to use new power cycles, such as the supercritical …

Fuer Kaiser Und Heimat: Svetozar Borevic, South Slav Habsburg Nationalism, And The First World War, Sean Krummerich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the function of national identity and the degree to which it is a recent development, particularly in the region of the Balkan Peninsula populated by the South Slav (Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian) peoples. The study examines the question of whether in the period prior to 1918, when much of this territory was part of the multinational empire of Austria-Hungary, was it possible for individuals to be entirely loyal to both their national group and to the construct of the multinational state simultaneously.

In order to answer this question, the dissertation surveys the career of Svetozar Boroević von Bojna …

Investigation Of Coo Ato For Solar Cells And Infrared Sheaths, Manopriya Devisetty Subramanyam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Solar as an energy source is expected to grow fastest from now to 2050. Increasing the efficiency is usually achieved by increasing the short circuit current density (JSC) and/or the fill factor. Improving the efficiency of solar cells will be an ongoing effort.Structurally solar technologies can be classified into two types, wafer-based and thin-film-based. Wafer solar cells have been used in this study. The anti-reflective layer on top of solar cells has been fabricated by a process called electrospinning to tune the solar cells' top surface with the desired thickness and dimensions of the nanofibers. The nanofibers' dimensions, shape, and …

From Mythology To Pop Culture: Myth, Representation, And The Historiography Of The Amazon Warrior Woman In Ancient Art And Modern Media, James William Poorman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today’s global society, the mediums in which cultural iconography are portrayed are mostly film, photography, and other mass media. 2500 years ago, in classical Athens, pottery and sculpture dominated the social scene. . Regardless of societies, religions, cultures, etc., certain human traits seem to follow us through time. On the other hand, some things do change, i.e.: the way civilizations view other groups through cultural lenses, view their own culture through perceived gender norms, and how civilizations and cultures try to correlate taboos into the exotic or barbaric. Wonder Woman is a recreation, or reinvention, of an ancient Athenian …

Sharing Their Stories: A Qualitative Investigation Of Adolescents’ Inpatient Experiences During Psychiatric Hospitalization, Jessica L. Rice

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Psychiatric hospitalization is an intensive treatment intervention, reserved for youth with severe mental illnesses, considered in imminent danger of harm to themselves and/or others. Although the prevalence of youth that are psychiatrically hospitalized continues to rise, there remains a gap in the available research about adolescents’ appraisals of their inpatient treatment, as most studies draw conclusions from surveys, administered after patients are discharged. Not only does this limit insights about treatment changes that could be beneficial in reducing psychiatric hospital recidivism, but it also inhibits youth from sharing their subjective experiences. As such, the current study sought to develop a …

Essays On Ceo Personal Characteristics And Corporate Outcomes: Athlete Ceos And Foreign Ceos, Kirill Pervun

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains two essays that explore the effect of top managers’ background in competitive sports and foreign nationality on the organizational outcomes. In the first essay I document that one in four chief executive officers of large American companies (S&P 1500) have background in competitive sports developed during youth or adult years (Athlete CEOs). Using novel hand-collected data from detailed biographies of top executives I find strong evidence that Athlete-CEO-run firms are more profitable and invest more in long-term projects. Additionally, firms managed by CEOs with background in individual sports, but not in team sports, are more debt-averse and …

How Race Is Made In Everyday Life: Food, Eating, And Dietary Acculturation Among Black And White Migrants In Florida, U.S., Laura Kihlstrom

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how race impacts everyday food decisions and experiences among Black and White migrants in Florida, United States. The study is rooted in scholarship on food and immigration, which asserts that dietary acculturation or the “Americanization” of diets adversely affects the overall health status of migrant populations in the U.S. To date, the majority of this literature has focused on the experiences of Latinx migrants and has not centered race in its analysis. Building on participant observation and semi-structured interviews (n=49) completed over a period of 13 months in the Tampa and Miami Metropolitan areas among Ethiopian and …

Jewish Early Adolescent Perceptions Of Their Positive Youth Development, Identity Development, And Purpose, Lauren B. Kurnov

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study explored Jewish early adolescents’ perceptions of their positive youth development, identity development, and purpose. Three theoretical frameworks informed the study, including Lerner’s 5 C’s of positive youth development, Marcia’s identity development, and Damon’s youth purpose. Specifically, the study explored how Jewish early adolescents perceive certain aspects of the local Jewish community as supportive of positive youth development, identity development, and youth purpose. I collected qualitative data through a series of three interviews with 4 Jewish early adolescents recruited using purposeful sampling. Data were analyzed through a hybrid approach to thematic analysis. The first finding was that Jewish …

Analysis Of Denial Of Service Attacks In Emerging Software Defined Network Infrastructures, Andrea P. Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Software defined networking (SDN) improves upon traditional networking protocol technologies by decoupling the data and control planes and moving all control provisioning decisions to a centralized SDN controller entity. This concept has matured over the last decade, having gained strong industry traction, and is now being widely deployed within enterprise and carrier networks to streamline network services provisioning and reduce costs. Overall, centralized control delivers much more cost-effective and flexible networking setups that can support a wide range of customized user-driven network management applications, e.g., traffic engineering, security, survivability, admission control, policy control, etc.

However, the separation of the data …

Instructional Experiences: A Case Study Of Perceptions Of High School American Sign Language Teachers Who Are Hearing, Rhonda S. Leslie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A significant gap has been identified in research-based findings and classroom instructional practices of hearing ASL teachers in high schools in the U.S. (Rosen, 2015). Research has shown the absence of standardized ASL instructional guidelines, rules, and procedures has created a significant gap in teaching and learning practices at the high school level, and research-based findings about the most suitable pedagogical approaches that should be used in ASL induction and immersion programs. This study aims to understand hearing teachers’ perceptions of their ASL instructional practices and choices, using a qualitative research approach and a case study design. Based on a …

Impact Of Grain Morphology On The Temporal Evolution Of Interfacial Area During Multi-Phase Flow In Porous Media, Fizza Zahid

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many environmental issues deal with the movement of immiscible fluids in the subsurface, e.g., cleanup of oil spills and geological carbon dioxide sequestration. Engineers face a constant challenge to improve the efficiency of these processes. This can be facilitated by studying the underlying physics of how fluids flow and interact in these systems.

Traditionally, lab experiments can provide reliable information about fluid architecture in porous medium, such as trapped fluid volumes and contact area between two immiscible fluids (interfacial area). However, these methods can be expensive and tedious. A well designed numerical experiment is not only able to describe fluid …

School Music Administration During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Trauma, Loss, Meaning, Change, And Innovation, Christopher Burns

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

On Friday, March 13, 2020, the School District of Osceola closed its doors for Spring Break and did not open again until 3 weeks later in a digital capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way teachers and students learned. The band, chorus, and orchestra classrooms were empty, and replaced with digital meetings with the need to unmute and turn cameras on. This study is an autoethnographic narrative of my life during the COVID-19 pandemic as a district resource for the teachers that I serve. While music administration has existed in many forms over the past 100 years, there are no …