Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Scalability Of Multimodal User Interface Design In Virtual And Augmented Reality, Sarah M. Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Use of Extended Reality (XR) technology such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) has experienced significant growth, with continuous advances in mobile technology and head-mounted display (HMD) headset development. As applications that span more than one type of reality have started to emerge, there is a need for additional research regarding the user interfaces (UIs) developed for these multimodal systems. While some work exists towards the creation of UI design guidelines in AR and in VR, little to no work has been done in providing recommendations for designing interfaces that work successfully across multiple XR modalities. To explore …

Methadone Patients In Vietnam: Substance Use Patterns, Reasons For Entering Treatment, And Methadone-Related Attitudes, Tram Hoang Huyen Tran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objectives. Vietnam has high rates of opioid addiction, but methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) only became available in Vietnam in 2008. To date, MMT has expanded nationwide serving about 51,000 patients. As MMT is relatively new in Vietnam, additional research on methadone patients is still needed. This dissertation aims to address two important issues related to MMT that have been understudied: the extent/type of substance use (SU) among MMT patients in Vietnam; and the low utilization of MMT among women.

Methods. This dissertation contains three separate, but related studies. Study 1 systematically reviewed 20 studies and summarized the literature on the …

The Local Neurologies Of Substance Use Triggers, Breanne I. Casper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Substance use triggers are largely understood to be embedded in drug use contexts and to be a major precipitator of relapse. Yet, the relationship between triggers and future instances of drug use is not quite clear– particularly in understanding the nuances of when triggers are “triggering” and when they are not. Additionally, there is little ethnographic work that explores how individuals interact with triggers in contexts related to substance use, particularly during periods of active use. This project employs ethnographic and survey research methods to interrogate substance use triggers in the harm reduction context. In doing so, it answers the …

A Forward Genetic Screen Identifies Genes Involved In Gametocyte Development Of The Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium Falciparum., Jyotsna Chawla

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transmission of the deadly malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum from human to mosquito is achieved by specialized intraerythrocytic sexual forms called gametocytes. Circulating in the vertebrate host, relatively few intraerythrocytic gametocytes are picked up during a bloodmeal to continue sexual development in the mosquito vector. Human-to-vector transmission thus represents an infection bottleneck in the parasite's life cycle for therapeutic interventions to prevent malaria. Though the crucial regulatory mechanisms leading to gametocyte commitment have recently come to light, networks of genes that control sexual development remain to be elucidated. Here, we report a forward genetic approach to identify genes associated with gametocyte …

Evaluating Foot-Drop Interventions For Multiple Sclerosis Using A Multimodal System, Laura Marie Byrnes-Blanco

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how multimodal walking impacts quantitative and qualitative aspects of gait for persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) experiencing foot-drop. Foot-drop can dramatically impede mobility and clinicians routinely prescribe ankle-foot-orthosis (AFO) and functional electrical stimulation (FES) devices to alleviate its impacts on daily life. However, little is known about how these devices affect pwMS while traversing environments with real-world complexity. To explore this topic, an interventional, parallel assigned study was conducted. A realistic nature pathway containing changes in floor pitch, audiovisual stimulation, and during-trial tasks (for dual-tasking) was generated in an immersive virtual reality system called CAREN: Computer Assisted …

Relationships Between Leading And Trailing Indicators At Construction Sites In Yanbu Industrial City, Saudi Arabia, Anas H. Halloul

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Statement of Purpose: This study sought to assess the relationship between leading and lagging indicators in construction safety Management in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In particular, it sought to determine whether construction sites with higher leading indicators predicted fewer incidents/accidents.Rationale for Study: Construction safety management is a critical occupational health concern globally. Scholars have researched approaches to improve safety measures and performance in construction sites. However, there is little discourse assessing the relationship between the leading indicators and the occurrence of incidents and accidents in construction sites. General Methods: A quantitative analysis was used in this study. Data were …

Evaluation Of A Prototype Deep Learning-Based Autosegmentation Algorithm On A High Quality Database Of Head And Neck Cancer Radiotherapy Patients, Jihye Koo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the study of deep learning-based autosegmentation in head and neck radiotherapy. Much of the work presented here is motivated by the need to introduce a clinically useful autosegmentation model for head and neck organs at risk, with the aim of reducing inter-observer variation in structure segmentation and enhancing time efficiency of the treatment planning process. This dissertation describes autosegmentation approaches, introduces a prototype deep learning-based autosegmentation algorithm trained with carefully curated local gold data, and presents a series of comprehensive evaluations to verify the feasibility of implementing the prototype model in clinical settings.

One of …

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 …

Relationship Between Demographic Characteristics And Internship Participation Of Senior Undergraduate International Students, Timothy W. Gjini

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States higher education institutions’ mission is to support students' academic success and career development goals by preparing them to become globally competent citizens and workforce-ready graduates. With student workforce preparation at the core of their mission, there is concern that colleges and universities are not adequately investing in international students’ engagement in career-preparation practices (e.g., internships). As such, this quantitative, secondary-data study explored the relationship between senior international students’ demographic characteristics, the institutional environment (type and classification), and their internship participation behavior. Key variables were identified from three complementary theoretical strands, including Astin’s Input-Environment-Output (I-E-O) Model (1988, 1993a, …

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 …

Self-Determination And The Lived Experience Of Employed Adults With Intellectual Disabilities: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Abdelrahman Mohammad Alzarie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Literature reveals that self-determination is a critical predictor of employment at the post-secondary level for individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ID). However, current research concerning self-determination in the post-secondary work of individuals with ID is scarce and primarily focused on the perspectives of parents or educators or has been driven by evaluating learning models of self-determination. Furthermore, individuals with ID were not adequately represented as participants in the current research, and their voices were not given the opportunity to be heard. Therefore, this qualitative phenomenological study aimed to explore the lived experience of six Saudi employed adults with mild ID who …

Statistical Analysis Of Ribonucleotide Incorporation In Human Cells, Tejasvi Channagiri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the DNA replication process, ribonucleotides, the building blocks of RNA, may be occasionally incorporated in the newly synthesized DNA. DNA is primarily composed of deoxyribonucleotides and there exist cellular mechanisms for removing ribonucleotides from DNA, which may point towards ribonucleotide incorporation being a replication error. Further, an excess of these ribonucleotides in the genome has been known to lead to genomic instability and has been implicated in human diseases. However, there are also hypotheses that suggest that ribonucleotides may be beneficial in certain circumstances. In this study we examine ribonucleotide incorporation in the human genome in several human cell …

Partial Characterization Of Plasmodium Falciparum Genes Implicated In Altered Artemisinin Stress Response, Caroline F. Simmons

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Malaria is a parasitic illness caused by the Plasmodium spp., with an estimated 247 million malaria cases reported in 2021 across 84 endemic countries. Treatment of the deadliest malaria parasite, P. falciparum, relies on artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs). However, while ACTs have greatly decreased malaria mortality, this progress is threatened due to artemisinin (ART) partial resistance and ACT failure in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. SNPs to the Kelch13 (K13) gene are a well-characterized marker for ART resistance. However, increasing evidence that resistance to ART mediated by genes not related to K13 SNPs prompts the need to characterize other novel …

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), …

Music As An Instructional Modality To Increase Attending Behavior Of Elementary Students, Zachary Grossman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Audio and audiovisual cues, when used as teaching tools, result in desirable learning outcomes for young learners when compared to visual cues alone (Havy et al., 2017; Kirkham et al., 2019; Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003). Previous research has demonstrated that music can be an effective delivery method for teaching math in the elementary classrooms (An & Tillman, 2015; An et al., 2014; Azaryahu et al., 2020). However, the effectiveness of music at increasing attending behavior specifically has not been assessed in these studies. This study evaluated the effectiveness of music based instruction on students’ attending behaviors compared to non-music based …

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study Of Cortez, Florida, Karla Ariel Maddox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired …

The Ontological Grounds Of Reason: Psychologism, Logicism, And Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Stanford L. Howdyshell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation explains the psychologism debate as it played out in the 19thand early 20th Centuries and then shows how Martin Heidegger radicalized the debate by undermining its key themes and assumptions. First, I explain each side of the psychologism debate, starting with the psychologicists. I explore the philosophies of Jakob Friedrich Fries and John Stuart Mill in order to encapsulate the full spectrum of psychologism in the 19th Century, from Neo-Kantian to British Empiricist. The investigation will show a set of common themes within psychologism, such as the grounding of logic in the constitution of the human subject, …

Environmental Justice From The Ground(Water) Up: Coping With Contamination In Tallevast, Florida, Grey W. Caballero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How do communities living with chronic environmental contamination cope with the social, political, and economic impacts of the contamination? This research employs a community-engaged oral history approach with participant observation and archival research to address this question. We focus on the case of Tallevast, Florida, where the local groundwater has been contaminated with chlorinated solvents for over 60 years and where cleanup is estimated to take another 100 years. In addition to concerns about health and wellness, we find that residents are also concerned about household displacement and the disruption of social networks, failed governance at the local and state …

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 …

Conformational Dynamics And Free Energy Studies Of Dna And Other Biomolecules, Paul B. Orndorff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work uses molecular dynamics simulations and enhanced sampling methods to investigate both the qualitative and quantitative properties of biomolecular systems. Conformational dynamics are critical in the study of biomolecular systems. Application of computer simulations to study dynamics of biomolecular systems allows for motions to be readily investigated at a resolution not possible in experimental techniques. In this work, the dynamics of uracil damaged and undamaged DNA is studied via molecular dynamics simulations. Uracil results in DNA from either misincorporation in the replication process or through spontaneous deamination of cytosine, and its presence in DNA can lead to mutations in …

L2 Writer Identity Construction In Academic Written Discourse: A Multi-Case Study, Beibei Ren

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Writer identity has gradually become a focus in writing scholarship in recent years. From a social constructivist lens, writer identity is not optional; it resides in all texts. And it is a construct that does not exist in a vacuum, but is shaped by the sociocultural and academic context, and simultaneously individual writers agentively selected from the socially available repertoire to construct their identities in text. Departing from social constructivism, this study adopted Ivanic’s (1998) conceptualization of writer identity, which consists of autobiographical self, discoursal self, self as author and possibilities for selfhood, and highlighted the role of agency in …

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 …

An Evaluation Of Staff Management Strategies To Minimize Reactivity In Treatment Integrity Of Intervention Implementers, Claudia C. Reyes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Treatment integrity is of great importance in applied behavior analysis because of its influence on skill acquisition and behavior reduction. Staff management procedures have been assessed and found to increase levels of treatment integrity. Despite this, implementers exhibit reactivity to the presence of a supervisor with high levels of treatment integrity when supervisors are present and low levels when they are absent (e.g., Pantermuehl & Lechago, 2015). Researchers have tried to account for the effects of reactivity with limited success. The purpose of the current study was to increase treatment integrity in observer absent conditions by delivering feedback to participants …

Understanding And Measuring Family–Teacher Partnerships, Emily L. Baton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has long been acknowledged that there is an important bond between families and schools that enriches the child’s behavior and academic life. The benefits of parent–school partnerships in a child’s education extend beyond the child, benefitting the families and educational staff as well. Terminology, definitions, and practices within the continuum of parent–school partnerships (Goodall & Montgomery, 2014) currently vary. The three most common term of the continuum are (a) family involvement, (b) family engagement, and (c) parent–school partnerships.Firstly, this dissertation sought to build upon the knowledge around the terminology and definition used to explain families and the education system …

How Feeling Like A Minority Affects Preferences For Autonomous Digital Interfaces, Ye Seul Kim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the novel aspect of minority perception and how feeling-like-a-minority influences the consumption of digital interfaces in a service context. The focus on the perception of minority consumers is important given greater emphasis on minority-related issues catalyzed by recent social events. Examining the effects on the choice likelihood for digital interfaces such as service robots is also relevant given the increasing widespread use of such technology. The findings across eight studies including six online studies and two field experiments demonstrate that individuals who perceive themselves as a minority in a service setting show defensive behavior by choosing a …

Natural Disasters And Human Capital: Empirical Evidence From Indonesia, Lei Lv

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In developing countries, natural disasters could destroy physical capital and adversely affect human capital accumulation by disrupting individual decisions. Such decisions play a critical role in determining individuals' human capital accumulation process and have a lifelong effect on their happiness and economic prosperity. To better understand how natural disasters affect human capital in developing countries, this dissertation uses the earthquakes in Indonesia as a natural experiment to study how this earthquake affects health, child marriage, and education. For the first chapter, I study how the 2006 Yogyakarta Earthquake a affects water-related acute disease symptomsin the short and long run. By …

Fuzzy Kc Clustering Imputation For Missing Not At Random Data, Markku A. Malmi Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research has a variety of difficulties, especially when involving human subjects, and one of the most prevalent is the issue of missing data. Missing data will always be present in research due to the fact there is no perfect method for collecting data and protecting against human error or mechanical failure. This requires researchers to be able to mitigate the problems that come along with missing data; reduction in power of an analysis and bias introduced by the missing pattern. This research investigated a non-parametric method using a nested approach of fuzzy K-Modes and fuzzy C-Means clustering to impute missing …

Early Agricultural Lives: Bioarchaeological Inferences From Neolithic And Early Copper Age Tombs In The Central Po Valley, Italy, Christopher J. Eck Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current project seeks to illuminate the diets of the earliest farming societies in central Northern Italy. Neolithic peoples who first began settling in the Central Po Valley sometime at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth millennium BCE forever changed the landscape from one of expanding sub-continental forests to one of intensive agricultural production and anthropogenic influence. A total of 109 individual burials from 24 separate infrastructure project excavations of 17 sites surrounding the modern city of Mantua, Italy were analyzed utilizing a biochemical approach and a bioarchaeological explanatory theoretical framework based within embodiment and life …