Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of An Education Program On Women's Knowledge And Behavior During Menopause, Diana L. Stenger

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if women's knowledge of perimenopause, menopause, and related health issues increased after participation in an educational workshop. The first objective was to determine if there was an increase in particip cipants' knowledge of physiological and psychological changes often experienced during perimenopause, menopause, and related health issues. Two further objectives were to determine if women reported learned treatment options and made any behavioral health changes to manage perimenopause, menopause, and related health issues, from attending the educational workshop, during a 3-month follow-up telephone survey. A quasiexperimental pre-test and post-test design involved a purposive …

The Influence Of Internet Pornography On Heterosexual Male University Students' Attitudes Toward Sexuality, Misty Baker

Masters Theses

The purpose of conducting this study was to explore heterosesexual male, Midwestern university students' attitudes regarding internet pornography. This study explored the use of internet pornography, with a specific focus on: a) the age of first exposure to internet pornography; b) the usage characteristics of internet pornography among heterosexual male university students; c) the sexual attitudes and beliefs toward women among heterosexual male university students;and d)the sexual activity history of heterosexual male university students. A 29-item questionnaire was designed by the researcher to explore exposure to internet pornography, sexual behavior, sexual attitudes, and attitudes toward forced sex. Fifty-five participants completed …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Parental Religiosity And Parent-Adolescent Conflict, Courtney Crane

Masters Theses

While religiosity's influence on family life has been widely examined in studies, little attention has been paid to religiosity's relationships to communication and conflict patterns within the family. The current study examined the relationship between parental religiosity and parent-adolescent conflict. A quantitative, bivariate exploratory survey design was utilized to examine parental religiosity's relationship with parent-adolescent conflict; 28 parents from three religious organizations participated in the study. The results indicated that there is no significant relationship between parental religiosity and quantity of topics discussed with adolescent, indicating parental religiosity does not affect the amount of communication in the parent-adolescent relationship. Parents …

Communication And Authenticity: Transformations Of The Self In The Digital Age, John Dowd

Masters Theses

Through an examination of disembodied forms of communication and technological discourse, this project explores the concepts of authenticity and its implications for communication research. Situated within phenomenological notions of embodiment, authenticity can serve as an important tool for doing rhetorical criticism. It provides an ethical component to criticism that is sorely lacking within many social scientific approaches to the study of human communication, which operate under the guise of objectivity. As authenticity, subjectivity, and embodiment are inescapably connected and as all three provide the foundation for this project, chapter one provides a working definition of each. It is argued that …

Law, Responsibility, And The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Christopher D. Frith

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article addresses new developments in neuroscience, and their implications for law. It explores, for example, the relationships between brain injury and violence, as well as the connections between mental disorders and criminal behaviors. It discusses a variety of issues surrounding brain fingerprinting, the use of brain scans for lie detection, and concerns about free will. It considers the possible uses for, and legal implications of, brain-imaging technology. And it also identifies six essential limits on the use of brain imaging in courtroom procedures.

Endowment Effects In Chimpanzees, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan, Susan P. Lambeth, Mary Catherine Mareno, Amanda S. Richardson, Steven Schapiro

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Human behavior is not always consistent with standard rational choice predictions. The much-investigated variety of apparent deviations from rational choice predictions provides a promising arena for the merger of economics and biology. Although little is known about the extent to which other species also exhibit these seemingly irrational patterns of human decision-making and choice behavior, similarities across species would suggest a common evolutionary root to the phenomena.

The present study investigated whether chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect, a seemingly paradoxical behavior in which humans tend to value a good they have just come to possess more than they would have …

Law, Responsibility, And The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Dean Mobbs, Hakwan C. Lau, Christopher D. Frith

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article addresses new developments in neuroscience, and their implications for law. It explores, for example, the relationships between brain injury and violence, as well as the connections between mental disorders and criminal behaviors. It discusses a variety of issues surrounding brain fingerprinting, the use of brain scans for lie detection, and concerns about free will. It considers the possible uses for, and legal implications of, brain-imaging technology. And it also identifies six essential limits on the use of brain imaging in courtroom procedures.

Age Identity And Adjustment Patterns In Later Life : A Qualitative Study Of Retired Secondary School Teachers And Manual Workers In Hong Kong, Kit Ying, Connie Yong

Lingnan Theses

With escalating heterogeneity of the older population due to extending healthy life expectancy, chronological age is decreasingly likely to be an appropriate discriminator of social groups among the diverse population. It may be more fruitful to understand how older people actually feel and live their lives than merely using chronological age as a categorizing variable. Therefore, the present research investigates individual age identity which may provide a more realistic indicator of ageing in the life course. It may also underpin many behavioral phenomena.

Age identity focuses on how an individual perceives himself or herself in terms of age. Previous studies …

Democracy And The Death Of Knowledge, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This essay was presented as the 2006 William Howard Taft lecture at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. It suggests that the conflation of politics and law - the view that judges are not legal experts but rather legislators in robes - is part of a deeper and more worrisome trend. We do not see judges as legal experts because we no longer believe in expertise. We have, in other words, begun to conflate politics and knowledge. We are moving toward a world in which the creation of knowledge is not the province of experts, but is instead produced …

The Pardy-Ruhl Dialogue On Ecosystem Management, Part Iv: Narrowing And Sharpening The Questions, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, fourth in a five-part dialogue appearing in the Pace ELR, further responds to Professor Bruce Pardy's critique of ecosystem management. I defend ecosystem management, arguing it does not involve the standardless, unbridled administrative discretion Pardy suggests.

Regulating Settlement: What Is Left Of The Rule Of Law In The Criminal Process?, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Consider what plea bargains would be like if legal rules were taken more seriously than they currently are. A court would recognize a defendant's willingness to be convicted of an offense only when certain conditions were met: (1) the defendant actually committed the crime; (2) the defendant was punished with the penalty authorized by law for that crime; (3) all government actors involved in the investigation, prosecution, defense, and adjudication of the case had complied with the law governing the criminal process; and (4) the settlement agreement did not relieve any of them of the duty to comply with the …

An Environmental Complexity Analysis For Robot-Environment System Design, Gang Yang

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, researchers have begun to investigate intelligent environments for robot applications. In this work, a robot and its work environment can be considered to be an integrated system. Currently, such robot-environment systems are designed on an ad-hoc basis, with the final performance of the system greatly dependent on the experience and preferences of the designer. This dissertation investigates a way to improve on this situation by looking at the complexity of an environment from the perspective of a robot. The objective of this research is to develop a method to evaluate environmental complexity and then use this information to help …

Computational Models To Predict The Inhibition Of Cytochrome P450 3a4 By Selected Natural Compounds, Sushma Thotakura

Theses and Dissertations

Cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) plays a pivotal role in the metabolism of xenobiotics. Methylenedioxobenzene containing natural products have been shown to inhibit CYP3A4. Given that these compounds are widely distributed in nature there is a strong potential for drug interaction with many plants used for dietary or medicinal purposes. In this research we have developed two different computational models (Comparative Molecular Field Model and Artificial Neural Network Model) to assist in the identification of potentially strong inhibitors that could be further studied for potential inhibitory effects. These models were used to screen for the CYP3A4 inhibitory effects of 100 naturally …

Demystifying Content Management: Practical Applications For Writing Professionals, Nancy J. Howard

Theses and Dissertations

"Demystifying Content Management: Practical Applications for Writing Professionals" explores the subject of content management. This thesis explains what content management is, and it suggests a realistic approach for developing a content management plan and choosing a content management system (CMS). Before selecting a CMS, companies should define requirements, identify staffing needs, evaluate their content life cycle, and create an information model. Once the organization has a content management strategy, it can begin the process of choosing a CMS. This process involves establishing selection criteria, researching and evaluating potential vendors, and then making the final selection. This thesis concludes by identifying …

Differentiating Between Women In Hard And Soft Science And Engineering Disciplines, Amanda Gail Camp

Theses and Dissertations

The intent of the study was to investigate how women in hard (engineering, mathematics, computer science, physical science) and soft (social, psychological, life sciences) sciences differ from each other among a set of variables known to influence educational attainment and to evaluate how well Weidman's undergraduate socialization model explains higher education's influence on women in science and engineering fields. Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (1996-2001), descriptive discriminant analysis and multivariate analysis of variance were used to identify differences among the women, and structural equation modeling was used to evaluate Weidman's model. Results indicated that women who went into …

Evaluation And Characterization Of Some Biologically Active Coumarin Derived Sulfonamides, Harish Gosike

Theses and Dissertations

Sulfonamide drugs discovered in the 1930's were the first effective chemotherapeutic agents to be employed for the prevention and cure of bacterial infections in humans. Bacterial resistance to these drugs over the years has led to the development of new variety of sulfonamide derivatives. Recently Chohan et al. synthesized a series of coumarin derived sulfonamides and their chemical structures have been established. In this report, we present some microbiological studies to establish the antibacterial characters of these compounds. In order to establish their chemical structure-biological activity relationship, electrochemical and spectroscopic studies have been conducted. Antibacterial studies conducted on these compounds …

Giant Pandas Balance Energy Budgets With Metabolic Depression: Insights From Radar Detection Of Heart Rates, Tommy Gene Finley

Theses and Dissertations

Giant pandas ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca ) are flagship species for conservation because of their endangered status and charismatic nature. Giant pandas are placed in the bear family (Urisidae) within the order Carnivora. They specialize on a diet of bamboo, yet retain a typical carnivore gastrointestinal tract. Low energy digestive efficiency (9.5–34%) was calculated from bamboo-only digestibility trials conducted on captive giant pandas. Huge amounts of bamboo are consumed to overcome inefficient extraction and thus obtain sufficient energy and nutrients. I designed this study to gain insights into giant panda energy balance by measuring heart rates during sleep, their primary means …

Identification Of Potential Organic Contributors In Carbonaceous Aerosols: Enhanced Uv Absorption Spectra, Anand Mangu

Theses and Dissertations

Direct aerosol climate effects include light scattering and absorption that present the largest uncertainties in the assessment of radiative forcing. To estimate the overall effect of aerosols on climate the relative amounts of scattering and absorption must be known. Determination of aerosol UV-absorption spectra is the primary focus of this thesis research. Aerosol samples were collected in Mexico City in 2003 and 2006 as a part of Mexico City Metropolitan Area field study and also at Little Rock. UV-visible absorption spectra of these aerosol samples have been obtained by using an integrating sphere coupled to a UV-visible spectrometer and compared …

Load Distribution And Channel Assignment In Ieee 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks, Mohamad Haidar

Theses and Dissertations

Recent growth in Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) deployment has generated considerable interest in load management and channel assignment among network designers. WLAN has become a major component of the modern telecommunication infrastructure. Load management and Channel assignment are among the critical aspects that face WLAN deployments. Well planned WLAN service environments require a network designed to provide not only radio coverage but also better load distribution and less interference across the service area, which in turn improves the Quality of Service (QoS). In this dissertation, a novel approach to the WLAN load distribution and channel assignment is proposed that …

Mining Frequent Patterns From Sequences: Theory, Algorithm, Implementation, And Performance, Markus Petteri Turkia

Theses and Dissertations

Mining frequent patterns from sequences is an important data mining problem which has direct applications in many areas. In this thesis, we make three contributions to the state-of-the-art of the sequential frequent pattern mining. First of all, we propose a fast pattern-growth mining algorithm using a novel sequence database representation called First-Occurrence Linked WAP-tree (FLWAP-tree). The pattern-growth mining algorithm using the Pre-Order Linked WAP-tree (PLWAP-tree) was reported in the literature to be faster than other algorithms. We show that our pattern-growth using our FLWAP-tree outperforms the PLWAP-tree mining significantly and consistently. Secondly, we extend the pattern-growth algorithm with partial enumeration …

Short-Term Reliability Of A Thin Film Resistance Temperature Detector (Rtd), Julian W. Post, Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The primary focus of this dissertation was on the short term reliability of a thin film resistance temperature detector (RTD). As a first step, the transient and steady state temperature response of an encapsulated, thin-film RTD, which was used as a micro heater, have been characterized for a range of pressures and applied voltages, while placed on thermally insulating and conductive platforms. A user-friendly model was used to capture the three major mechanisms of heat transfer from the device (i.e. conduction, convection, and radiation). The calibration parameters of the model allowed the different modes of heat transfer to be quantified. …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Highly Conductive Polypyrrole And Polypyrrole/Lignosulfonate/Graphite Composites, Aopeau Imvittaya

Theses and Dissertations

Polypyrrole (PPy) is one of the conductive polymers frequently used in commercial applications, mainly due to its long-term stability and the possibility of forming homopolymers or composites with optimal properties. Polypyrroles were prepared by the chemical polymerization of pyrrole using various methods. The effects of several parameters such as oxidant, dopant type, additives and reaction conditions on the properties of PPy were investigated. In addition, PPy/graphite composites were prepared because graphite is highly conductive and effectively incorporated into the polymer matrix during the polymerization. The amount of graphite in the composite was varied to determine the maximimum conductivity achievable in …

The Abc's Of Early Intervention: Assessing The Arkansas Better Chance For School Success Pre -School Program, Lisa Walker Todd

Theses and Dissertations

Early intervention programs have long been associated with increased cognitive benefits for disadvantaged poverty children. The Arkansas Better Chance for School Success Pre-school Program (ABCSS) was implemented in select counties in Arkansas as an early intervention strategy for Arkansas' poverty children. The core rationale behind the implementation of the Arkansas Better Chance for School Success Pre-school Program was the belief that it is much easier not to be left behind if you do not start behind. The study assessed the Arkansas Better Chance for School Success Pre-school Program on the impact of sustained benefits on third grade children who previously …

Undergraduates’ Perceptions Of Ideal Learning Environments, June Hetzel, Keith Walters

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

Four hundred and fifty three undergraduate students were surveyed at one CCCU institution regarding perceptions of what “exists” and what they “value” related to university pedagogy, learning activities, assessments, and learning relationships. Researchers ranked students’ values and examined gaps in students’ perceptions of what students say exists at the university as compared to what they value. The highest ranked values primarily related to learning relationships, including “demonstrates Christian ethics in interactions with others” and “integrates Christian worldview in the teaching of course content.” The factor that most explained satisfaction with teaching practices was the “Methods Factor” and the single item …

History Lessons For A General Theory Of Law And Technology, Gregory N. Mandel

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Neuroimaging, Entrapment, And The Predisposition To Crime, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

Professor Tovino's (2007) paper is a welcome contribution to the emerging body of scholarship on the issues arising at the nexus of cognitive neuroscience (and neuroimaging in particular) and the law. It is a useful overview of the various ways in which neuroimaging might affect a wide array of legal questions. Though many of the issues that Tovino discusses are at present quite speculative (as she acknowledges), it is always wise to take advantage of the rare opportunity to reflect on the legal, ethical, and public policy implications of developments in biotechnology before they are upon us. In that spirit, …

Anisotropic Polarized Light Scatter And Molecular Factor Computing In Pharmaceutical Cleaning Validation And Biomedical Spectroscopy, Aaron Andrew Urbas

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Spectroscopy and other optical methods can often be employed with limited or no sample preparation, making them well suited for in situ and in vivo analysis. This dissertation focuses on the use of a near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and polarized light scatter for two such applications: the assessment of cardiovascular disease, and the validation of cleaning processes for pharmaceutical equipment.There is a need for more effective in vivo techniques for assessing intravascular disorders, such as aortic aneurysms and vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques. These, and other cardiovascular disorders, are often associated with structural remodeling of vascular walls. NIRS has previously been demonstrated as …

Ambystoma: Perspectives On Adaptation And The Evolution Of Vertebrate Genomes, Jeramiah James Smith

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Tiger salamanders, and especially the Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), are important model organisms in biological research. This dissertation describes new genomic resources and scientific results that greatly extend the utility of tiger salamanders. With respect to new resources, this dissertation describes the development of expressed sequence tags and assembled contigs, a comparative genome map, a web-portal that makes genomic information freely available to the scientific community, and a computer program that compares structure features of organism genomes. With respect to new scientific results, this dissertation describes a quantitative trait locus that is associated with ecologically and evolutionarily relevant …

Pore Engineering Of Surfactant Templated Nanoporous Silica Using Supercritical Carbon Dioxide, Kaustav Ghosh

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The use of compressed CO2 processing to alter the pore size, structure and timescale of silica condensation in surfactant templated silica thin films and powders is investigated by systematically varying the template structure and CO2 processing conditions. Tailoring the mesoporous materials increases its potential applications, as demonstrated in catalysis, drug delivery, chromatographic and electrode applications. This work demonstrates for the first time the applicability of fluorinated surfactants as templates for the synthesis of mesoporous silica thin films by dip coating. Well-ordered films with 2D hexagonal close-packed pore structure are synthesized in an acid-catalyzed medium using three cationic fluorinated templates of …

Antibacterial Targets In Fatty Acid Biosynthesis, H. Tonie Wright, Kevin A. Reynolds

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

The fatty acid biosynthesis pathway is an attractive but still largely unexploited target for development of new anti-bacterial agents. The extended use of the anti-tuberculosis drug isoniazid and the antiseptic triclosan, which are inhibitors of fatty acid biosynthesis, validates this pathway as a target for anti-bacterial development. Differences in subcellular organization of the bacterial and eukaryotic multi-enzyme fatty acid synthase systems offer the prospect of inhibitors with host vs. target specificity. Platensimycin, platencin, and phomallenic acids, newly discovered natural product inhibitors of the condensation steps in fatty acid biosynthesis, represent new classes of compounds with antibiotic potential. An almost complete …