Digital Commons Network^™

Water Quality And Sustainability Assessment Of Rural Water Systems In The Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, Panama, Corbyn Cools

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the last four decades significant progress has been made on providing people access to improved drinking water. The Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) estimates that 6.7 billion people have access to at least basic drinking water services. In spite of this great achievement 785 million people still lack even basic services and eighty percent of which live in rural areas. To further complicate matters, those with access to services experience interruptions or non-functionality for handpumps and piped system long before the intended design life of the system. In the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé province in Panama there is very little information on …

Development Of A Benthic Foraminifera Based Marine Biotic Index (Foram-Ambi) For The Gulf Of Mexico: A Decision Support Tool, Bryan O'Malley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is an economically important region (e.g. oil and gas, fisheries) and with the expansion of oil drilling, harmful algal bloom events, oil blowouts, dead zones, anthropogenic eutrophication and contaminant loading, it is important that the ecological quality statuses (EcoQS) of different localities in the Gulf are closely monitored. The EcoQS, as implemented by the European Water Framework Directive, is an effective tool for monitoring ecological health and developing reference conditions. One such index used to define EcoQS is the AZTI Marine Biotic Index (AMBI), which pairs species abundance with environmental stressors. Benthic foraminifera are ideal …

Exploration Of Drive For Leanness In Relation To Drives For Thinness And Muscularity, As Well As Their Concurrent Associations With Health-Related Outcomes, Brittany Lang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drive for leanness, the motivation to build lean muscle,as well as obtain low enough body fat content for this muscle to be seen, is a nascent drive construct compared to the more established drives for thinness and muscularity. What little research has been done on drive for leanness has suggested that drive for leanness is more sex neutral, as well as potentially more adaptive,than the other drive variables. However, there is debate regarding the factor structure of drive for leanness, or more specifically,whether drive for leanness is its own unique construct or if it is better described as an amalgamation …

A South Florida Ethnography Of Mobile Home Park Residents Organizing Against Neoliberal Crony Capitalist Displacement, Juan Guillermo Ruiz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The cyclical inflations of real estate values right before the 2008 housing crisis in the United States enticed mobile home park landowners, especially in California and Florida, to sell their land in the search for spectacular profits displacing many low-income residents. This thesis uses an engaged anthropological ethnographic approach to explore the struggle in organizing against neoliberal crony capitalist displacement in the South Florida metropolitan area. The study focuses on Davie, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, where at the time of fieldwork a third of residents lived in mobile homes. In 2007, the Davie town council attempted to soften the …

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice And Non-Western Embodied Topoi, Spencer Todd Bennington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Tae Kwon Do practitioner manuals as sites for better understanding the way diverse rhetorics can become embodied through technique. This dissertation understands martial arts in a Foucauldian sense as rhetorical institutions which discipline practitioners both physically and ideologically. A theory of “embodied topoi,” a term coined here to describe the process by which cultural commonplaces are incorporated into a material, carnal, or performed identity is presented alongside a review of how athletic or martial bodies have been previously studied. Seven popular Tae Kwon Do technical manuals are analyzed for moments when 1. Commonplaces are described, 2. “Daoist …

Evaluating Small-Scale Simulation For Teaching Abduction Prevention Skills, Jessica E. Ritzmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Approximately 1,600 attempted kidnappings occurred within 2018 (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2019). In a 2016 report by Wolak, Finkelhor, and Sedlak, of the 105 stereotypical kidnappings that occurred in 2011, many resulted in sexual assault, the children are never found, or death. These dangerous circumstances warrant a method of teaching safety skills to children to avoid abduction. Research has shown that small-scale simulation is effective for teaching firearm safety to 3- to 5-year-olds children (Maxfield, Miltenberger, & Novotny, 2019). This research has not been applied to abduction prevention safety. The current study aimed to address this research …

İyo Luché!: Uncovering And Interrupting Silencing In An Indigenous And Afro-Descendant Community, Eileen Cecelia Deluca

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this applied project is to uncover and interrupt the silencing of memories through the production of public narratives, specifically, the documentation of heritage of members of an indigenous and Afro-descendant community in Waspán, Nicaragua. The project is informed by interviews with seven women ex-combatants in the Contra War (1980-1990). Oral histories, transcribed interviews, and field notes are the source for the content of a book of heritage stories that I produced as one output about the former combatants utilizing their own words. In this thesis, I argue that the values of the “conquering” group of Nicaragua (i.e. …

Using Observations From The Uaw-Ford Ergonomic Assessment Tool To Predict Low Back Musculoskeletal Disorders, Colins Nwafor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Musculoskeletal disorders of the low back are common injuries found in many work environments. Some of the risk factors that workers experience include the weight of object being lifted during a task, frequency, duration, posture, distance the object is lifted, how well the worker can grasp the object, and the degree to which the worker may have to twist and turn their body during a lift. There are many tools that have been developed that are used to assess risk of a worker developing low back pain. The purpose of this study is to determine if the UAW-Ford Ergonomic Surveillance …

Hyaluronic Acid Coated Targeted Lipid Micellar Nanoparticle As A Delivery Vehicle For Lapatinib And Ketoconazole In Egfr Mutated Lung Cancer, Nadia Tasnim Ahmed

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer was accountable for over 142,000 deaths in the USA in 2019. Common mutations related to lung cancer mainly occur in TP53, EGFR, and KRAS genes. Lapatinib is a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor which acts reversibly on both epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Overexpression of EGFR leads to increased production and signaling of proteins that cause upregulation of cellular proliferation, cholesterol synthesis and resistance to apoptosis. Ketoconazole is an imidazole antifungal agent which works principally by inhibiting the enzyme cytochrome P450 14α-demethylase (CYP51A1) …

Developing Design Elements For A Parkinson’S Disease Informative Website: A Social Marketing Approach, Emilie R. Madsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease with no known cause or cure. No two cases are identical, meaning that every individual will present different symptoms and will have a different progression of the disease. Me Over PD is an initiative created to aid newly diagnosed PD patients and care partners in navigating the complexities surrounding the disease and live a more informed life with PD. Considering Me Over PD, the present research works to understand the experiences of PD patients and care partners upon diagnosis and after, and gauge what elements and information would be most beneficial to these individuals …

Training Observers In Class-Wide Behavior Data Collection Using Behavior Skills Training, Nicholas L. Scheel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Training individuals to conduct classroom observations typically requires practice in an analogue setting using one or a combination of strategies, including behavior vignettes, role-play, or video clips of target behaviors (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007; Hartmann & Wood, 1990; Bass, 1987). However, researchers have yet to determine if these strategies are effective and to develop a standard approach to training observers. This investigation was a part of a larger study that looked at the effectiveness of tiered teacher training to facilitate implementation of an interdependent group contingency in the classroom. For this study, I utilized a concurrent multiple-baseline design to …

Sentiment Analysis In Peer Review, Zachariah J. Beasley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sentiment analysis, a widely popular subfield of natural language processing, has recently been used in the classroom to predict student attrition or to determine the mood of students, teacher strengths and weaknesses, or student perception of internship experience. These are all helpful indicators for the enhancement of students' academic experience but none improve the information gathered from or the reliability of peer review. This is particularly important in large courses with complex assignments (e.g., essays, software projects, and presentations) where scalable grading is requisite. In this dissertation, we apply sentiment analysis not on an assignment itself, but on the meaningful …

Action Recognition Using The Motion Taxonomy, Maxat Alibayev

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last years, modern action recognition frameworks with deep architectures have achieved impressive results on the large-scale activity datasets. All state-of-the-art models share one common attribute: two-stream architectures. One deep model takes RGB frames, while the other model is fed with pre-computed optical flow vectors. The outputs of both models are combined to be used as a final probability distribution for the action classes. When comparing the results of individual models with the fused model, it is common to see that that latter method is more superior. Researchers explain that phenomena with the fact that optical flow vectors serve …

Discovery And Characterization Of Small Molecule Inhibitors Of Bromodomains, Md Rezaul Karim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The epigenetic “reader” modules bromodomains (BRDs) exert their diverse cellular functions through the recognition of acetylated lysines on histones and other proteins. Small molecule inhibitors of bromodomains have emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy to treat atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Therefore, a large number of small molecule bromodomain inhibitors have been developed in the last decade, some of which are currently being assessed in the clinic. However, the success of bromodomain inhibitors is currently limited to the bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) subfamily.

To address these, bromodomains outside the BET subfamily (non-BETs) such as TAF1, BRD7/9, TRIM28, and BRD8 …

The Role Of Threat And Efficacy In Anti-Vaping Ads: A Test Of The Extended Parallel Process Model, Ryan Noone

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Often thought of as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes, electronic cigarette use among youth and young adults has steadily increased over the past 10 years. With over 34 percent of high school students and over 7.8 percent of young adults using electronic cigarettes, organizations like the CDC and the FDA have created campaigns and advertisements to combat the epidemic (Truth Initiative). This study uses a 2x2 between subject factoral experiment to gain insights into how varying levels of anti-vaping advertisements’ threat and efficacy elements effect college age students’ perceptions and behaviors towards e-cigarettes. While several of the study’s hypotheses …

A Dangerous New Era: Analyzing The Impact Of Cyber Technology On International Conflict, Kenneth Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the causal relationship between cyber technology’s deep global integration and changes in how states struggle for power in the international system. Specifically, it argues that cyber technology has changed international conflict by providing external actors the ability to penetrate states’ grand strategy decision-making and implementation processes to an unprecedented degree and scope. As a result, the meaning of power has changed from a material-centric metric to one that is more nuanced and difficult to measure.

To explore this hypothesis, the study follows a three-step process. First, it examines the history of cyber technology, how it has become …

Medical Model Vs. Eco-Behavioral Model: School Psychologists’ Conceptualization Of Consultation, Patricia Y. Hanson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which school psychologists conceptualize culturally responsive consultation based on their description of using an ecological approach or an intrapsychic approach to consultation. Additionally, this study aimed to address barriers school psychologists may face when providing culturally responsive consultation based on the consultation method they describe using. I conducted a secondary analysis of 1 to 2-hour, semi-structured interviews of 15 school psychologists throughout the United States. I used a constructivist paradigm to understand participants’ approaches to consultation and how these approaches related to their descriptions of culturally responsive consultation. I …

Impact Of Heat-Related Illness And Natural Environments On Behavioral Health Related Emergency And Hospital Utilization In Florida, Natasha Kurji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral health disorders are the leading cause of disability in the United States and are known to have multidimensional effect on wellbeing. Several environmental factors are known to impact behavioral health such as weather (i.e. heat) and access to natural environments (i.e. parks and beaches). The study goals were to identify contextual factors that increase the co-occurrence of heat-related illness and behavioral health disorders, illustrate the re-utilization patterns of these co-occurring cases in Florida emergency and inpatient settings, and explore the association between behavioral health disorders such as anxiety and depression, and natural environments such as parks and beaches. The …

Family Response To A Diagnosis Of Serious Mental Illness In Teens And Young Adults: A Multi-Voiced Narrative Analysis, Douglas J. Engelman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Narratives are stories, stories persuade, persuasion is necessary to develop social problem consciousness, and social problem consciousness is a necessary element of mobilization toward social change. Thus, narratives are intrinsic to social change, both in the form of policy and legislation, and as evidenced by transformations in culture and consciousness. In this dissertation I analyze narratives about mental illness in families because they reflect what we think of as common, everyday understandings about these experiences. Through these analyses, I hope to learn how individuals and families understand the diagnosis of mental illness through stories they tell about how they cope …

A Visit To Cuba: Performance Ethnography Of Place, Adolfo Lagomasino

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bestowed to the Cuban government in 1956, The Parque Amigos de José Martí in Ybor City, FL is a historical site intended to symbolize the relationship between Tampa and Cuba that facilitated Cuba’s independence. Cuban cultural identity and the sense of Cubaness are confounded by the history of exile and the constraints of the United States Embargo. This project articulates the experience of the Cuban exile community and their descendants through descriptive accounts of visiting the Parque Amigos de José Martí. Visiting a place is framed as a means of identity performance and a method of performance ethnography, enabling discursive, …

Transcriptome Studies On The Toxicity Of Silica Nanoparticles, Shih-Yi Hsu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nanotechnology enables more precise harmony in health condition via reducing the dosage amount, improving the delivery of hydrophobic drugs, more specific targeting to the cancerous sites, and so on. Nevertheless, issues regarding the toxicity of nanotechnology have begun to call for attention several decades later after the innovation of nanotechnology. Tools about risk management of nanotechnology have been developed, but recently not much evidence recognizes the toxicity of nanoparticles (NPs) except for some animal studies, which demonstrated organ damage after the exposure to NPs. Toxicogenomic approach refers to the method utilizing gene expression to evaluate the chemical toxicity. Databases as …

Automating The Classification Of Mosquito Specimens Using Image Processing Techniques, Mona Minakshi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According to WHO (World Health Organization) reports, among all animals, mosquitoes are responsible for the most deaths worldwide. Mosquito borne diseases continue to pose grave dangers to global health. In 2015 alone, 214 million cases of malaria were registered worldwide. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published in 2016, 62,500 suspected case of Zika were reported to the Puerto Rico Department of Health (PRDH) out of which 29,345 cases were found positive. The year 2019 was recorded as the worst for dengue in South East Asia. There are close to 4,500 species of mosquitoes (spread across …

Cancer Biomarker Detection In Human Plasma By Integrating Surface Acoustic Wave And Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence, Yuqi Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis includes data and discussion about the technique of metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF) to lower the detection limit of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The detection limit goes down to 100pg/mL level when using MEF substrate made by rapid thermally annealed silver film covered by silica, which has great promise in diagnosing certain types of cancer that uses CEA as detection biomarker, such as pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. To further address the issue of background noises from non-specifically bound proteins (NSB) in complex media, such as plasma, serum, urine and blood, MEF is integrated with surface acoustic wave (SAW) streaming in …

Assessing The Impacts Of Sensorimotor Stimuli And Nicotine Content On Cravings And Other Outcomes Of E-Cigarette Use, Amanda M. Palmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As use rates of e-cigarettes continue to rise, especially among cigarette smokers, there remains concern that “dual use” may lead to increased dependence and hinder smoking cessation efforts. At the same time, emerging evidence suggests clinical efficacy of e-cigarettes. The role of nicotine must be considered, in addition to non-pharmacologic influences, such as expectancies or conditioned reinforcers. Sensorimotor stimuli associated with drug delivery have been demonstrated to produce cigarette and e-cigarette craving reduction, even without the nicotine. The purpose of the present study was to parse the influences of nicotine and sensorimotor delivery on various outcomes of e-cigarette use, including …

Nurses And Needlesticks: Perceptions Of Stigma And Hiv Risk, Bethany Sharon Moore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Health-care providers (HCPs) are vulnerable to occupational health hazards, including dirty needle-stick injuries (DNSIs), which increase the risk for infection with HIV and other blood-borne pathogens. This study examines the perceptions of nurses and nurse practitioners who work in various health care settings regarding HIV-risk and DNSIs, in order to ascertain how these perceptions inform their decision-making regarding their health and nursing practice. I utilize a phenomenological approach to analyze the lived reality and embodiment of the DNSI experience by HCPs. The study explores the personal and institutional level factors that may influence the timely reporting and treatment of DNSIs, …

Privacy-Preserving And Functional Information Systems, Thang Hoang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Information systems generally involve storage and analytics of large-scale data, many of which may be highly sensitive (e.g., personal information, medical records). It is vital to ensure that these systems not only provide essential functionalities at large scale efficiently but also achieve a high level of security against cyber threats. However, there are significant research challenges in offering security and privacy for such information systems while preserving their original functionalities (e.g., search, analytics) effectively. Hence, there is a critical need for efficient cryptographic protocols that can address data privacy vs. utilization dilemma for real-life applications.

In this dissertation, we introduce …

Exploring The Potential Of Nutrient Retention And Recycling With Wetlaculture Systems In Ohio With Physical And Landscape Models, Bingbing Jiang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Significant expansion of agricultural land use has been widely recognized for leading to global and regional negative environmental impacts, especially increased eutrophication of surface water systems for the last half-century. The landscape-scale environmental problem of overloading nutrients to lakes and streams by excessive fertilizer use and increased human-caused N-fixation is in urgent need of a sustainable landscape-scale solution. Wetlands have long been considered as an effective way to remove nutrients from surface water. However, the influence of regional seasonality and hydrologic conditions on agricultural runoff treatment wetlands still needs more investigation. A new approach, “wetlaculture,” has recently described as a …

The Immediate Effect Of A Brief Mindfulness Intervention On Attention And Acceptance, Xiaoqian Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given the increased popularity of mindfulness in both the clinical settings and the general public, it is important to understand the active mechanisms of mindfulness. Mindfulness practice (MP) involves two active components, attention regulation and acceptance of experience, being aware of the current experience as it is without evaluating the experience as positive or negative. Much research has evaluated the attention regulation component and found that MP improves high-level (effortful) attention with few reported effects on low-level (automatic) attention. It is unclear whether MP affects merely low- or high-level attention, or both, because little empirical research has examined both low- …

Do Similar Exposure Groups (Seg) Differ From Air Force Base To Air Force Base? A Combat Arms Training And Maintenance (Catm) Noise Exposure Comparison Of Moody Afb And Macdill Afb., Miriam F. Escobar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Noise is a common hazard for the military. The Department of Defense has set an Occupational Exposure Limit for noise at 85 dBA. The Air Force manages exposures using similar exposure groups (SEGs) which are formed at each Air Force Base. The purpose of this study was to compare the noise levels in SEGs in two Air Force bases across distance and time, and to review the effectiveness of the Air Force Hearing Conservation Program over distance and time. The SEGs chosen were Combat Arms Training and Maintenance (CATM) at Moody Air Force Base and MacDill Air Force Base because …

Non-Invasive Sex Determination And Genotyping Of Transgenic Brugia Malayi Larvae, Santiago E. Hernandez Bojorge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lymphatic filariasis is a very painful and disfiguring helminth disease caused by the tissue nematodes Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi, and Brugia timori. This parasitosis is considered a Neglected Tropical Disease and it is a major public health burden for 72 tropical countries of Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and South America. Despite the effectiveness of many control programs, there remains the need to develop new pharmacological agents to treat lymphatic filariasis, as most programs rely on a limited variety of drugs that are expensive, logistically difficult to obtain, and can lead to drug resistance. The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic …