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Mathematics For Classical Information Retrieval, Dariush Alimohammadi, Mary Bolin , Editor

Zea E-Books Collection

This book is about Information Retrieval (IR), particularly Classical Information Retrieval (CIR). It looks at these topics through their mathematical roots. The mathematical bases of CIR are briefly reviewed, followed by the most important and interesting models of CIR, including Boolean, Vector Space, and Probabilistic.

Mathematics is a foundation and building block of all areas of knowledge. It particularly affects disciplines concerned with information organization, storage, retrieval, and exchange. Information is manipulated using computers, and computers have a mathematical basis. The word “computer” reveals this relationship. Students and practitioners of computer science, library and information science (LIS), and communications need …

Why Would They Try? Motivation And Motivating In Low-Stakes Information Skills Testing, Jeanne M. Brown, Carrie A. Gaxiola

Library Faculty Research

In 2008 the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) University Libraries piloted the Educational Testing Service’s standardised test of information, communication, and technology (ICT) skills (iSkills) in spring and autumn 2008. In the course of administering the test we explored motivational strategies, a critical component in low-stakes, low-personal-consequences testing. Motivational strategies included providing feedback on test performance, highlighting the value of the test for the individual student, and appealing to the student’s willingness to improve the overall performance of the institution. We addressed ways to motivate students in order to enhance their level of participation in and performance …

The Effect Of Adult Sportsmanship And Pro-Social Behavior Modeling On Child Self-Competence In Youth Football Programs, Bryan Scott Wilson

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Youth sports are viewed as a prime venue for teaching social values and life skills. By virtue of their organizing and leadership positions, adults play a critical role in communicating these lessons. Although there is little debate on the criticality of positive sportsmanship, there has been a serious trend in increasingly unsportsmanlike behaviors at youth events. In response, many organizations have implemented programs designed to increase positive adult sportsmanship communications and pro-social behaviors. While studies have shown that training does result in increased sportsmanship, less information is available on the impacts of such programs beyond increasing the “fun factor.” This …

Barriers To Computer Use And Internet Competency Among Homeless Women And Low-Income Women At Risk Of Becoming Homeless, Sondra L. Wildman

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

As our society relies more and more on digital communication methods, the consequences of not having access to computers and the internet will further erode the ability of homeless women to effectively navigate mainstream venues for social and economic interaction. This study strives to explore the barriers that prevent homeless women, and low-income women at risk of becoming homeless, from optimizing their access to computer and internet resources. A group of fifty homeless women was observed using a computer lab at a daytime shelter, and of this group, five women were interviewed. The theoretical framework of the study utilizes Pierre …

Hispanic Males And Declining Enrollment In Higher Education, Julie A. Hecimovich

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Hispanic males, 18 to 35-years, have declining enrollment in institutions of higher learning, falling behind their female counterparts and males in most large ethnic groups in the United States. Why are so many young, Hispanic males not enrolling in higher education? To learn why, surveys were given to Hispanic males, parents, and grandparents to ascertain their educational opinions of and needs for higher education. As viewed through the Hispanic culture and lenses of symbolic interactionism, the third-person effect, and the two-step flow of communication theories; findings were 1). marketing efforts to attract young, Hispanic males to higher education must address …

Performing Impressionistic Autoethnographic Narrative In Text And Pixels To Explore Fear Of Death In End-Of-Life Care-Giving Contexts, Dena M. Rosko

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study explores fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts via impressionistic autoethnographic narrative as performed on a blog with photographs and poems. This study relies on ethical assumptions for communicating dialogue, confirmation, and a performance narrative ethos in end of life. This study employs Terror Management Theory to identify a gap in existing empirical fear and death studies, and fills that gap by embedding its framework and method in the psychotherapeutic tradition to foster creative freedom and psychological safety and so break the cultural silence shrouding grief. Key findings show that the blog coordinated a therapeutic process to assuage …

What Motivates People To Volunteer: A Case Study Using Coastal Cleanup Day In San Luis Obispo, California, Kristine M. Liddie

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Digital And Printed Magazines’ Effects On The Environment, Jeannie Nguyen

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to show how printed magazines affect the environment with their use of paper and how digital magazines affect their environment with their electricity use from servers hosting the digital magazines. It is also to find how the printed magazine industry is reducing their paper use and how digital magazines are reducing the amount of electricity used by servers hosting the digital magazines.

Results show that printed magazines use a massive amount of paper to produce millions of magazines and that the process of getting paper produces a large amount of carbon dioxide which is …

Magazines And The Tablet Interface, Kevin Black

Graphic Communication

No abstract provided.

Use Of Social Media For College Athletic Events: Analysis And Implementation For The Cal Poly Women’S Basketball Program, Krista Lee Scarbrough

Journalism

No abstract provided.

The Immune Inhibitor A1 Protease Of Bacillus Anthracis, Kathryn Pflughoeft

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Bacillus anthracis, an organism ubiquitous in the soil and the causative agent of anthrax, utilizes multiple mechanisms to regulate secreted factors; one example is the activity of secreted proteases. One of the most abundant proteins in the culture supernates of B. anthracis is the Immune Inhibitor A1 (InhA1) protease. Here, I demonstrate that InhA1 modulates the abundance of approximately half of the proteins secreted into the culture supernates, including substrates that are known to contribute to the ability of the organism to cause virulence. For example, InhA1 cleaves the anthrax toxin proteins, PA, LF, and EF. InhA1 also targets …

Stress-Induced Targeting Of Molecular Chaperones In The Yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Hugo Tapia

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The eukaryotic stress response is an essential mechanism that helps protect cells from a variety of environmental stresses. Cell death can result if cells are not able to properly adapt and protect themselves against adverse stress conditions. Failure to properly deal with stress has implications in human diseases including neurodegenerative disorders and distinct cancers, emphasizing the importance of understanding the eukaryotic stress response in detail. As part of this response, expression of a battery of heat shock proteins (HSP) is induced, which act as molecular chaperones to assist in the repair or triage of unfolded proteins. The 90-kDa HSP (Hsp90) …

Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Sense Skin Injury And Promote Wound Healing Through Type I Interferons, Josh D. Gregorio

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) are a rare population of circulating cells, which selectively express intracellular Toll-like receptors (TLR)-7 and TLR-9 and have the capacity to produce large amounts of type I IFNs (IFN-a/b) in response to viruses or host derived nucleic acid containing complexes. pDCs are normally absent in skin but accumulate in the skin of psoriasis patients where their chronic activation to produce IFN-a/b drives the disease formation. Whether pDCs and their activation to produce IFN-a/b play a functional role in healthy skin is unknown. Here we show that pDCs are rapidly and transiently recruited into healthy human and …

Network To Pology In Human Protein Interaction Data Predicts Functional Association, Hua Li

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

High-throughput assays, such as yeast two-hybrid system, have generated a huge amount of protein-protein interaction (PPI) data in the past decade. This tremendously increases the need for developing reliable methods to systematically and automatically suggest protein functions and relationships between them. With the available PPI data, it is now possible to study the functions and relationships in the context of a large-scale network. To data, several network-based schemes have been provided to effectively annotate protein functions on a large scale. However, due to those inherent noises in high-throughput data generation, new methods and algorithms should be developed to increase the …

Characterization Of The Agrobacterium Tumefaciens Virb2 Pilin Of The Virb/D4 Type Iv Secretion System, Jennifer Kerr

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirB/D4 type IV secretion system (T4SS) delivers oncogenic T-DNA and effector proteins to susceptible plant cells. This leads to the formation of tumors termed Crown Galls. The VirB/D4 T4SS is comprised of 12 subunits (VirB1 to VirB11 and VirD4), which assemble to form two structures, a secretion channel spanning the cell envelope and a T-pilus extending from the cell surface. In A. tumefaciens, the VirB2 pilin subunit is required for assembly of the secretion channel and is the main subunit of the T-pilus. The focus of this thesis is to define key reactions associated with the T4SS …

Agrobacterium Virb10 Contributions To Type Iv Substrate Secretion, T-Pilus Biogenesis, And Outer Membrane Pore Formation, Isaac Garza

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The VirB/D4 type IV secretion system (T4SS) of Agrobacterium tumefaciens functions to transfer substrates to infected plant cells through assembly of a translocation channel and a surface structure termed a T-pilus. This thesis is focused on identifying contributions of VirB10 to substrate transfer and T-pilus formation through a mutational analysis. VirB10 is a bitopic protein with several domains, including a: (i) cytoplasmic N-terminus, (ii) single transmembrane (TM) α-helix, (iii) proline-rich region (PRR), and (iv) large C-terminal modified β-barrel. I introduced cysteine insertion and substitution mutations throughout the length of VirB10 in order to: (i) test a predicted transmembrane topology, (ii) …

Analyzing The Role Of Αvβ8 Integrin In Glioma-Induced Angiogenesis, Jeremy H. Tchaicha

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

In this study we aimed to determine the functional roles for αvβ8 integrin in astrocytoma-induced angiogenesis. These studies originate from our analyses of αvβ8 integrin in developmental brain angiogenesis. αv and β8 knockout (KO) mice develop brain-specific vascular phenotypes that resemble vascular pathologies observed in the malignant astrocytoma, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Indeed, a murine xenograft model of astrocytoma suggested a role for the integrin in glioma-induced angiogenesis. Primary mouse astroglia were cultured from wild type (WT) and β8 KO neonates and were immortalized (HPV:E6/E7) and transformed (HRas:G12V). WT and β8 KO transformed astroglia were intracranially injected into athymic mice. WT …

Elucidating The Role Of Cd44 Expression On Mesenchymal Stem Cells Within The Tumor Microenvironment, Erika L. Spaeth

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The tumor microenvironment is comprised of a vast array of heterogeneous cells including both normal and neoplastic cells. The tumor stroma recruitment process has been exploited for an effective gene delivery technique using bone marrow derived MSC. Targeted migration of the MSC toward the tumor microenvironment, while successful, is not yet fully understood. This study was designed to assess the role of CD44 in the migration of MSC toward the tumor microenvironment and to determine the implications of CD44-deficient MSC within the tumor stroma. Inhibition of MSC migration was evaluated through a variety of methods in vitro and in vivo …

14-3-3sigma Negatively Regulates The Stability And Subcellular Localization Of Cop1, Chun-Hui Su

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Mammalian constitutive photomorphogenic 1 (COP1), a p53 E3 ubiquitin ligase, is a key negative regulator for p53. DNA damage leads to the translocation of COP1 to the cytoplasm, but the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We discovered that 14-3-3σ controlled COP1 subcellular localization and protein stability. Investigation of the underlying mechanism suggested that, upon DNA damage, 14-3-3σ bound to phosphorylated COP1 at S387, resulting in COP1 translocation to the cytoplasm and cytoplasmic COP1 ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. 14-3-3σ targeted COP1 for degradation to prevent COP1-mediated p53 degradation, p53 ubiquitination, and p53 transcription repression. COP1 expression promoted cell proliferation, cell transformation, and …

Policy Relevant Heterogeneity In The Value Of Statistical Life: New Evidence From Panel Data Quantile Regressions, W. Kip Viscusi, Thomas J. Kniesner, James P. Ziliak

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost per expected life saved cut-off for health and safety regulations is $7 million to $8 million per life saved, but the VSL varies considerably across the labor force. Our results reconcile the previous discrepancies between hedonic VSL estimates and the values implied by theories linked to the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Because the VSL varies elastically with income, …

Optimizing The Mechanical Properties Of Partially Yttria Stabilized Zirconia With Alumina Additions, Ramanaganapathy Kandaswamy

All Theses

Zirconia is one of the extensively studied solid oxide ceramics with respect to its use in various industrial applications like electrolyte in fuel cells, sensors, refractories and exhaust chamber in automobile industry. It can be found from the literature 1-4 that are contradictory results on the mechanical properties when alumina is added. There are several factors like microstructure, phase composition and method of processing that affects the mechanical properties of the material. The focus of this research is to examine how hardness, tensile strength and other properties varies with alumina content and deduce the optimal amount of alumina that is …

Response Of Warm Season Turfgrasses To Reduced Light Environments, Jeffrey Atkinson

All Theses

Shade or low light tolerance is an increasingly important issue to turf managers as they are often expected to grow turf in less than ideal agronomic conditions. As permanent structures such as residential buildings add to already problematic shade caused by trees, and other barriers, new solutions are needed to help turf managers provide acceptable turf conditions. The plant growth regulator trinexapac-ethyl (TE) can lessen negative responses of turfgrass to shade.
Two experiments were conducted during the summers of 2008 and 2009 to evaluate various grasses under a reduced light environment (RLE). In the first study, performance of `Diamond' zoysiagrass …

Chemical Composition And Antioxidant Properties Of Maya Nut (Brosimum Alicastrum), Hatice Kubra Tokpunar

All Theses

ABSTRACT
Maya nut was investigated in term of its moisture, ash content, antioxidant activities, phenolic components by high pressure liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV) and fatty acid composition by gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The results showed that Maya nut was mainly composed of 55.06% linoleic acid (C18:2 n6), 27.2% palmitic acid (C16:0), 6.26% stearic acid (C18:0), 9.9% linolenic acid (C18:3 n3), and 3.36% Cis-11-Eicosenoic (C20:1). Maya nut possesses a higher content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) (linoleic and linolenic acid), but lower content of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) than canola oil and olive oil. The antioxidant capacities and total phenolic …

The Dependence Of Electrical Resistivity, Saturation And Saturation Exponent On Multi-Phase Flow Instability, Zuolin Liu

All Theses

Multiphase flow channeling in oil reservoirs during water floods reduces oil recovery. Electrical methods may be used to monitor reservoirs and detect the onset of channeling, but the dependence of electrical resistivity on reservoir flow conditions is complex. The present study is directed toward understanding how the parameters of Archie's law, a commonly assumed relationship between electrical resistivity and water saturation in a porous medium, depends on multiphase flow instability leading to flow channeling. In this research a series of 34 flow experiments were conducted in a thin, two-dimensional tank (55cm x 55cm x 3.75cm) packed with 2mm glass beads …

Molecular Characterization Of Enrichment Cultures That Grow On Tetrachloroethene, 1,2 Dichloroethane And Ethylene Dibromide, Hari Shankar Peethambaram

All Theses

Halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons are among the most common contaminants in soil and groundwater found at hazardous waste sites throughout the United States. Among them are tetrachloroethene (PCE), 1,2-dichloroethane (1,2-DCA) and ethylene dibromide (EDB). Organohalide respiration of each compound has been reported. However, considerably less information is known about EDB than PCE and 1,2-DCA, including the yield that occurs during growth with EDB as the sole TEA. The main objective of this project was to determine which types of chlororespiring microbes predominate during growth of enrichment cultures when PCE, 1,2-DCA and EDB served as the TEA, and what their yield is. …

Style And Electronic Communication: The Accommodation Of Scientific Risks In The Sierra Magazine, Erin Dalton

All Theses

This thesis focuses on how style accommodates scientific risks for public audiences in Magazine articles. Language has previously been unexplored in risk communication; in accommodation research, style has not been investigated. Responding to these gaps in research, this study combines two unexplored dimensions--risk communication and accommodation--to show how syntax, diction, and metaphor resituate technical language and ideas in scientific risk studies for readers. First, interviews with editors and writers will provide a rich understanding of how their editing and composition practices influence accommodation processes. From there, an electronic communication analysis will illustrate how this medium can accommodate beyond text to …

Development Of A Carbohydrate Microarray System And A Microcantilever-Based Biosensor For Detection Of Target Bacteria, Yunyan Cheng

All Theses

The increasing number of disease outbreaks results in a demand for novel pathogen detectors. Carbohydrates serving as receptors for pathogen lectins have become the focus of such research. Two primary sugars, ‡-D-mannose and ‡-L-fucose, as receptors for Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, respectively, are of great interest to researchers due to their high affinity. These interactions can be studied using carbohydrate microarrays, which are also suitable platforms for detecting bacterial pathogens. In addition, carbohydrates have the potential to act as sensing molecules in microcantilever-based biosensors. The goal of this research was to design a carbohydrate microarray system to study the …

Experiencing Transition, Kara Renfro

All Theses

ABSTRACT
My sculpture offers visual cues and displayed experiences for the viewer to reflect
upon past experiences and recognize the transitions that have occurred throughout their
lives because of those memories or adventures that become important due to their fragile and brief nature. These transitions from one place to another shed light on our past and unfold a journey that leads us through the inevitably constant changing circumstances of everyday life.
The artifacts and documents displayed throughout this body of work speak to the
human need to memorialize the past through collecting, documenting, and performing. It
is through observing this …

The Effects Of A Course On Statistical Literacy Upon Students' Challenges To Statistical Claims Made In The Media, Rose Martinez-Dawson

All Dissertations

Statistical literacy involves critically evaluating and questioning statistics encountered in everyday life. The purpose of this study was to evaluate students' questions (challenges) concerning statistics encountered in everyday life and how these challenges differed before and after taking an undergraduate statistics course, entitled Statistics in Everyday Life 200 (SIEL), which focused on statistical literacy. One hundred forty-four students were given three media articles to indicate questions they had concerning statistics cited in the articles and explain why these questions were important to ask. Students' responses were categorized based on the topic and were assessed using the Statistics Literacy Components Rubric …

Packet Error Rate Predictive Model For Sensor Radios On Fast Rotating Structures, Lei Tang

All Dissertations

Wireless sensing technologies have raised widespread interests in the applications for monitoring fast rotating or moving machinery structures in manufacturing environments. Over the past five years, a few wireless sensor systems have been implemented and proven to feasibly work under fast rotation conditions. However, few of these studies evaluated data transmission performance of the wireless communication systems. Although the manufacturing environments are known to be harsh for wireless communication, in many cases, an excellent data throughput is critical for such systems. Conventional statistical methods for studying wireless communication channels are not sufficient in this specific field.
This dissertation presents systematic …