Digital Commons Network^™

Structural Model Of Effects Of Cultural Factors On Escalation Of Commitment Through Antecedents, Agency, And Negative Framing Effects, Woo-Sik Danny Choi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to identify and measure the effects of Hofstede‟s cultural factors on escalation of commitment for hospitality managers among American and Chinese managers. Typical cultural factors include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity, and orientation. Escalation of commitment refers to making decisions in risky circumstances. First, the effect of cultural factors on escalation of commitment was measured through antecedents (mediator variables). Second, the first effect of antecedents on escalation of commitment was measured through agency and negative framing effects. Structural equation modeling (SEM) found significant relationships between cultural factors and mediator …

Management Research In The Hospitality And Tourism Industry, Xu Cheng

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to identify the current research trends and clarify the changing direction of scholarly studies on knowledge management. The context of this study is hospitality and tourism research with a focus on research publications between 2006 and 2010. Published scholarly studies within this period are examined through content analysis, using such keywords as knowledge management, organizational learning, hospitality, tourism, tourist destinations, travel industry, hotels, lodging, motels, hotel industry, gaming, casino hotel and convention to search scholarly research journals. All contributions found are then screened for a hospitality and tourism theme and KM as the main …

The Write Moves: An Autoethnographic Examination Of The Media Industry, Danielle Gomes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the current media environment through the use of adaptation theory, political economy theory, and media ecology theory. More specifically, this thesis is an autoethnography of this author‟s attempts to release content into the mass-media.

This thesis expects to find that in the current conglomerate controlled media environment content that has multi-media potential is preferred. Vertical integration is the standard in these massive media corporations. Consequently, the adaptation of content into multiple media is no longer an afterthought to creation, it is forethought.

The Relationship Of Snowmobile Year, Track Length, And Riding Terrain To The Occurrence Of Musculosketetal Symptoms In Recreational Snowmobile Drivers, Erica L. Heisler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this retrospective study was to examine the occurrence of musculoskeletal symptoms in recreational snowmobile drivers and relate them to the manufacture year of the snowmobile, the length of the track, and/or the riding terrain. Participants included 186 males and 57 females (n=243), aged 18 years and older, and were all snowmobile drivers. Subjects were asked to complete either an online survey or a paper survey to gather information about the year of snowmobile they drove, the track length of that snowmobile, the typical riding terrain they drove on, and any musculoskeletal symptoms they developed from driving snowmobile. …

The Multiple-Choice Concept Map (Mccm): An Interactive Computer-Based Assessment Method, Ioan C. Sas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research attempted to bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and educational measurement (Mislevy, 2008; Leighton & Gierl, 2007; Nichols, 1994; Messick, 1989; Snow & Lohman, 1989) by using cognitive theories from working memory (Baddeley, 1986; Miyake & Shah, 1999; Grimley & Banner, 2008), multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001), and cognitive load (Chandler and Sweller, 1991, 1992; Cerpa, Chandler, & Sweller., 1996) to identify potential design weaknesses of traditional select-and-fill-in (SAFI) concept map assessment and then to guide the design of the new and improved multiple-choice concept map (MCCM) assessment method. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the …

Selling Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis Of Attorney Advertisement In Las Vegas, Giselle Velasquez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I analyze how Las Vegas attorneys represent themselves, their associates and clients in televised law firm commercials. I use attorney commercials as a case to explore cultural beliefs in media representations. Using an inductive method, I analyze the textual, visual, and aural symbols that appear most frequently in television commercials to interpret how law firm advertisements convey themes of attorney expertise, knowledge, ethnic and gender stereotyping. I introduce this study with a historical evaluation of the rise of advertisement in the United States. I continue discussing how the media is an important realm of discourse that affects people's identity. Using …

Self-Stabilizing Group Membership Protocol, Mahesh Subedi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we consider the problem of partitioning a network into groups of bounded diameter.

Given a network of processes X and a constant D, the group partition problem is the problem of finding a D-partition of X, that is, a partition of X into disjoint connected subgraphs, which we call groups, each of diameter no greater than D. The minimal group partition problem is to find a D-partition {G1, ... Gm} of X such that no two groups can be combined; that is, for any Gi and Gj, where i ≠ j, either Gi U Gj is disconnected …

“You Can Pick Really Good Literature That Will Lead Them There”: Investigating The Instructional Roles Teachers Utilize When Conducting Literature Discussions, Sophie M. Ladd

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this multi-case study was to investigate the instructional roles teachers utilize in whole group and small group discussion. This study highlights the questioning and response strategies two elementary teachers used during read alouds and literature discussions. Data sources included whole group and small group discussions, interviews, teachers' reflection journals, classroom observations, researcher field notes, and Informal correspondence. Data were analyzed using Merriam's (1998) analytic framework for case study. A within-case analysis was conducted for each case, followed by a cross-case analysis. Through with-in case analysis questioning and response categories were developed. These categories included: appealing, prompting, examination, …

Variability Of Pacing In Marathon Distance Running, Thomas A. Haney Jr.

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purposes of this study were to describe variability of pacing during a marathon and to determine if there is a relationship between variability of pacing and marathon performance. A total of 301 race profiles that contained personal global positioning system (GPS) from the Rock „n‟ Roll Las Vegas (Race 1) and San Diego (Race 2) marathons were downloaded (http://connect.garmin.com) and analyzed. Each marathon finish time was placed into one of three finish time bins: Bin 1: 2.5 – 3.9 hrs, Bin 2: 4.0 – 4.6 hrs, Bin 3: 4.7 – 7.2. The coefficient of variation of velocity (Velcov) was …

Recent Accelerated Second-Degree Baccalaureate Graduates’ Perceptions Of Educational Preparation, Susan Candelaria

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As of 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor is predicting a need for greater than one million new registered nurses by the year 2016 (American Associations of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2008). One way that nursing schools around the country are dealing with this issue is through the creation of accelerated second-degree programs for non-nursing graduates.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the perceptions of educational preparation of accelerated second-degree baccalaureate graduates, who have been out of school for at least one year, but no longer than four years. The sample consisted of 54 graduates from an …

Environmental Influence On Brain, Behavior, And Gene Expression In Drosophila, Xia Wang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Brain development and behavior are sensitive to environmental stimuli. To gain an understanding of how and to what extent environmental variations, particularly with regard to thermal stress and sensory input, affect brain development, function, and genomic activity, in this dissertation, three interrelated studies were conducted in Drosophila melanogaster.

The first study examined the effects of ecologically-relevant hyperthermia stress on development of the Drosophila mushroom body (MB), a conserved sensory integration and associative center in the insect brain. A daily hyperthermic episode throughout larval and pupal development was shown to severely disrupt MB anatomy by reducing intrinsic Kenyon cell neuron …

Bridging The Gap: Self-Directed Staff Technology Training, Quinn Galbraith, Kayla L. Quinney, Sara D. Smith

Faculty Publications

Undergraduates, as members of the Millennial Generation, are proficient in Web 2.0 technology and expect to apply these technologies to their coursework—including scholarly research. To remain relevant, academic libraries need to provide the technology that student patrons expect, and academic librarians need to learn and use these technologies themselves. Because leaders at the Harold B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University (HBLL) perceived a gap in technology use between students and their staff and faculty, they developed and implemented the Technology Challenge, a self-directed technology training program that rewarded employees for exploring technology daily. The purpose of this paper is …

Traffic Scene Understanding Using Sound-Based Localization, Svm Classification And Clustering, Shreyas Kodasara Rajagopal

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The thesis is about an embedded system application aimed at identifying the semantics of traffic based on acoustic data. Sound localization, classification and clustering are used for scene understanding. The report presents a set of experiments used to simulate different traffic scenarios. An alternative implementation for sound localization is also explored, where fixed point representation of rational numbers is used instead of floating point numbers. The results for both the implementations are compared in terms of execution speed and accuracy for a Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoC). | 43 pages

An Algebraic Representation Of The Task Mapping For Parallel Computing, Yuxiang Gao

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Task mapping has been explored intensively by computer and computational scientists for the purposes of maximizing utilization of computing resources by reducing communication and load imbalance. Task mapping is known to be NP-complete as a combinatorial optimization problem and, thus, many efforts intending to search for optimal solutions are not succeeding. All proposed mapping models to date represent parallel computers and applications as graphs with the networking capability abstracted as a supply matrix whose entries represent the inter-node communication costs and the communication requirements of the sub-tasks abstracted as a demand matrix whose entries represent the inter-subtask communication loads. The …

Life After Beanbag Genetics: Theoretical And Empirical Studies On Epistasis And Penetrance, Joseph Lachance

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Population genetics reduces the description of a population to a set of genotype frequencies. Because of this, it has been called"beanbag genetics.". However, greater complexity and biological realism can be incorporated into this framework. Two examples of this include interactions between different genes (epistasis) and individuals with the same genotype that have different phenotypes (incomplete penetrance). During the course of my Ph.D. work, both of these topics were investigated using theoretical population genetics and Drosophila genetics. One unifying theme was that genes do not exist in isolation: they occur within genetic and environmental contexts. In turn, these contexts were found …

Measurement Of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Array Compression Response, Changhong Cao

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the form of vertically aligned arrays or films has been of interest due to the super-compressible response and the ability to be used as electrical and thermal contacts. CNT arrays have shown the remarkable ability to react as foam-like structures and exhibit localized, coordinated buckling within specific regions. An understanding of the buckling region evolution and the resulting effects on the bulk CNT array response are important, unanswered fundamental questions necessary for the future application of CNT arrays. Here, we report on the low-cycle compression of bulk vertically aligned CNT arrays to observe …

The Role Of The Hemopexin Domain Of Matrix Metalloproteinases In Cell Migration, Antoine Hugues-Olivier Dufour

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The biological functions of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) extend beyond extracellular matrix degradation. Non-proteolytic activities of MMPs are just beginning to become understood. The role of proMMPs in cell migration was herein evaluated using transfected COS-1 cells with various proMMP cDNAs employed in a Transwell chamber migration assay. Latent MMP-2 and MMP-9 enhanced cell migration to a greater extent than latent MMP-1,. 3,. 11 and. 28. To examine if proteolytic activity is required for MMP-enhanced cell migration, three experimental approaches including a fluorogenic substrate degradation assay, transfection of cells with catalytically inactive mutant of MMP cDNAs, and addition of MMP inhibitors …

Winter 2010 E-Certi Newsletter, Center For Educational Research And Teaching Innovation

CAFE Faculty Newsletters

Hello S&T faculty and welcome to another edition of the CERTI newsletter, dedicated to celebrating excellence in the classroom. In this issue, you’ll find articles on a unique method for students to ask questions and how to make history a hands-on learning experience. Also, here are tips from the Curators’ Teaching Professors on working toward balance in your career.

A Quantitative Analysis Of Racial/Ethnic Disparities In Health Care Usage: The Roles Of Perceptions Of Care & Expected Longevity, Jeffrey Alfred Jones

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Countless studies have documented the existence of disparities byrace and ethnicity in the health care system in the United States.However, not many have sought to explicitly quantify the relativeimportance of each of the proposed determining factors. Thisdissertation thus sought to identify the major causes of disparitiesin health care usage by employing an adaptation of theBlinder/Oaxaca decomposition method originally used in theliterature on wage differentials.Specifically, this study sought to investigate the roles that racialdifferences in patients' perceptions of care and expected longevity(as they relate to expected gains) might play in the observeddisparities in usage. Perceptions of care measures (trust andfear/dislike) were …

Ceramic Nanomaterials For Energy, Gagan Jodhani

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

In this work we try to synthesize MoO3 and WO3 nanoceramics by understanding the effects of precursor parameters on the electrospinning process. We synthesized polymer based composites with molybdenum oxide and Tungsten oxide under straight polarity i.e. keeping needle charged and collector grounded; as well as reverse polarity i.e. keeping the needle grounded and collector charged. We observed MoO3 nanotubes after heat treatment of the composite mats spun in reverse polarity. The reason for formation of nanotubes is the presensce of molybdenum oxide particles as an outer shell surrounding the polymer fiber core in the spun mats, this core shell …

The Microstructure And Properties Of Plasma Sprayed Ceramic Composites, Kerry James Lapierre

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The microstructure and properties of plasma-sprayed ceramics and ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) have been investigated. Substrate-free deposits were fabricated by plasma spraying onto expendable graphite substrates. The deposits were evaluated in the as-sprayed and heat-treated conditions. X-ray diffractometry (XRD) was used in conjunction with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to examine the phase content and transformation temperatures of plasma-sprayed Al2O3. Mechanical properties were measured using three-point flexural testing and density measurements were made for both the as-sprayed and heat treated conditions. Significant increases in modulus and strength were achieved as a result of post. spray heat treatment.Having established baseline properties with …

Visual Game Tuning: Integrating Interactive Visualizations Into Game Development, Markus Elliot Lacay

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Game development is a rapidly evolving area of study that blends together a broad spectrum of technical and creative influences. Through their systematic use of rules, mechanics and multimedia assets, games can be thought of as an increasingly complex set of multivariate state data. Often, the interactions between these variable sets and their affect on game behavior are not readily apparent to the system architects at the time of development. These details can easily be overlooked until much later in the development cycle, when the refactoring of their implementations can result in significant overhead. To combat this problem project managers …

Joint Application Of Concentration And Isotope Ratios To Investigate The Global Atmospheric Carbon Monoxide Budget: An Inverse Modeling Approach, Key Hong Park

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Since carbon monoxide is one of the major sinks of hydroxyl radicals, it has been used as a proxy of hydroxyl radicals, which largely control the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere. Thus, CO-related chemistry directly or indirectly affects the abundance of other atmospheric trace gases including methane, halocarbons and tropospheric ozone. Carbon monoxide has also been shown its usefulness as a tracer of transport of pollution and fire emissions and as an additional constraint for CO₂ fluxes. Variations in the global CO cycle are closely related to the change of total source strengths. Previously, to estimate the global CO …

From Sin To Sickness: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Four Major American Newpapers' Representations Of Alcoholism, Amy Platt

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

AbstractFrom Sin to Sickness: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Four Major American Newspapers' Representation of AlcoholismByAmy PlattSchool of Social Welfare The purpose of this study is to explore how four major American newspapers represent alcoholism. These newspapers are: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal. Articles were collected over a five year period (2004-2008) using a constructed, random sample. The principal research questions are: (1) How do different newspapers portray alcoholism?, (2) How much emphasis do the articles place on the moral model of addiction? (3) How much emphasis do the articles place …

Investigation Of Factors Involved In The Interaction Between Quahog Parasite Unknown (Qpx) And Its Host, The Hard Clam Mercenaria Mercenaria, Mickael Perrigault

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

QPX (Quahog parasite unknown) is a protistan parasite affecting the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria along the Northeastern coast of the United States. The geographic distribution and occurrence of disease epizootics suggests the involvement of environmental parameters and host genotype in disease development. Field investigations and laboratory transmission studies revealed some variations in the susceptibility of different hard clam stocks to QPX infection. Histological observations demonstrated that clams mount marked inflammatory responses against the infection that can sometimes lead to the healing of infected individuals. This study investigated host-pathogen interactions in QPX disease by studying individual components of the tripartite interaction: …

Analysis Of Supercomputers And Development Of A Novel Network, Reid Powell

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

As supercomputers have reached nearly 300,000 cores with 2 petaflops in Linpack performance in June 2010, energy consumption and temperature control are posing a developmental bottleneck. We retrospectively and comparatively examine all of the available data contained in the Green500 list that launched in November 2007, and the Top500 list, and propose a novel representation and analysis of the data, highlighting major evolutionary trends.With these new insights, we introduce a new technique for generating more efficient networks by systematically interlacing bypass rings to torus networks (iBT networks). The resulting network can improve the original torus network by reducing the network …

Shear-Induced Platelet Sensitization And The Development Of An Activation Model, Jawaad Sheriff

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Increased shear stresses are a hallmark of flow conditions in blood recirculating devices, and patients implanted with such devices require lifelong anticoagulation to counteract the high risk of thromboembolism. Despite this limitation, manufacturers only test for hemolysis in order to optimize device design. This is primarily due to the paucity of data regarding platelet damage, a major precursor of thromboembolism. Several studies have shown that platelets exposed to constant shear stress for a specified duration become activated. However, post high-shear stress activation behavior of platelets, which is critical to understanding increased thrombotic risk associated with blood recirculating devices, is poorly …

Reading Into Race: Unsettled Reading And The Performance Of"Race", Julie Burton Swift

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Reading, race, and the primary productive link between the two--performativity--are the subject of this dissertation. By reading the formative discourse of phrenology and Ethnology, as well as nineteenth-century textbooks which teach reading, I suggest a context in which reading operates as an expressive framework for the problematics of race. In considering selected works of Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Herman Melville, I examine the uses to which reading is put, not only to elaborate, but to perform race. By looking at unsettled reading--breakdowns of reading, failures to read, readings that prove unaccountable to the text--I emphasize the …

Classification Problems For Mdps And Optimal Customer Admission To M/M/K/N Queues, Fenghsu Yang

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

My dissertation addresses the unichain classification problem for any finite Markov decision process (MDP) with a recurrent or stopping state and the optimal admission problem for an M/M/k/N controlled queue with holding costs. In the first chapter, we study the unichain classification problem for MDPs. The unichain classification problem is to detect whether an MDP with finite states and actions is unichain or not. This problem has been proven to be NP-hard. We study this problem while an MDP contains a state which is either recurrent under all deterministic policies or absorbing under some action. We introduce the definitions of …

Design And Optimization On Mobile Data Gathering In Wireless Sensor Networks, Miao Zhao

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged as a new information-gathering paradigm for taking spatial and temporal measurements of a given set of real-word parameters. In these applications, sensors monitor the environment and route their sensing data back to a static data sink. As the routing task depends purely on sensors themselves, the sensors near the sink need to relay much more packets than the sensors far away from the sink. As the result, it would incur substantial and non-uniform energy consumption among sensors. Therefore, how to efficiently aggregate the information from scattered sensors, generally referred to as data gathering, is …