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The Impact Of After-School Programming, Neighborhood Safety, And Neighborhood Support On Adolescent Alcohol Use, Kimberly Moonan

Social Welfare

This study seeks to evaluate the relationship between monitoring and adolescent deviant behaviors, with a specific focus on adolescent alcohol use. It is hypothesized that when community safety and support are low; after-school programming will serve as a protective factor and lower levels of alcohol use will be reported. Data were collected on a sample of 373 using the Student Success Profile. Because research shows that adolescent-report of friend behaviors is actually more reflective of their own behaviors (adolescents project their beliefs about own behaviors onto their peers), this study used adolescent-report on peer behaviors as an indicator of self-use. …

“Tragical History” And “Tragedy” As Inquisitive Vehicles: Examining The Implications Of Marlowe’S Two Faustus Texts, Joseph Sturcken

English

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Progesterone Receptor In Development Of Medial Prefrontal Cortex And Impulsive Behavior, Vanessa Costanzo

Psychology

Human behaviors are regulated by the complex functions of the brain and many behavioral disorders are assumed to be the result of alterations or deficits in neural function. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), characterized by differences in complex behaviors such as attention, memory and impulse control has been linked to alterations in dopaminergic activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Therefore, factors that regulate development of this region may be implicated in ADHD. For example, steroid hormones can alter fundamental processes of neural development through interaction with their nuclear receptors, which act as transcription factors. Progesterone receptor (PR) is transiently …

Lessons From Nuclear Reversal: Why States Reverse Ballistic Missile Policy, Cyndi Mellen

Political Science

Nuclear reversal is the decision by a state, which has a nuclear weapon or the technical capabilities to produce a nuclear weapon, to give up their nuclear weapons program. This paper employs the tenets of nuclear missile reversal to the dismantling of ballistic missile programs through case studies of the six states (Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and South Africa) that have abandoned their missile programs since 1987. The study hopes to promote further research concerning the behaviors associated with abandonment of nuclear reversal to that of ballistic missile reversal. This research concludes that the principles of nuclear reversal do …

Nested Subsets, Scale, And The Distribution Of Abundance: A Macroecological Approach, Elita Baldridge

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

While the canonical nested subset pattern suggests that less species-rich areas will contain a proper subset of the species observed in richer areas, actual data sets do not show perfect nestedness; however, they show a pattern with more structure than would be expected by chance. Biological processes like immigration and extinction have traditionally been thought to produce the nested subset pattern. These processes acting indirectly could cause variation in the distribution and abundance of species that could produce nestedness at a variety of scales. Determining at what scales the pattern is observed might allow inference of processes that are more …

Herpetofaunal Response To Prescribed Burning On Matagorda Island, Texas: With Emphasis On Texas Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma Cornutum), Ashley Inslee

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Texas horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) populations have been in steady decline over the past twenty years due to habitat loss, pesticide use, the pet trade, and invasion of the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta). At Aransas National Wildlife Refuge the P. cornutum population has declined, except for on Matagorda Island. A prescribed burn regime was initiated to maintain the coastal prairie habitat. This closed environment was unique in its composition of arid adapted and wetland species. There was minimal human disturbance, and a single road bisects the length of the island. The island was invaded by S. invicta around …

Climate Change: Implications For Montane Mammals Of The Great Basin, Georgina Yvette Jacquez

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Climate change threatens biodiversity; in particular, species with narrow distributions and specific habitat requirements. The Great Basin provides an excellent model system to evaluate the effects of climate change on species with isolated distributions and specific habitat requirements. I have evaluated the McDonald and Brown (1992) model that examined the effects of climate change on montane mammals of the Great Basin based on its underlying assumptions and model predictions. I have modeled the distributions of twelve montane mammal species found in the Great Basin and identified potential local extinctions by using maximum entropy modeling (Maxent) for two emission scenarios of …

The Differences Of Personality Traits And Competitive Tendencies Between Female Collegiate Athletes And Females Majoring In Professional Competitive Fields, Terra Upham

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The purpose of this investigation was to compare the differences between collegiate female athletes to females majoring in professional competitive fields to (1) specific personality factors, (2) levels of competitiveness, and (3) differences in competitive levels with regard to classification year. Methods included discriminating the Big Five personality traits and competitive tendencies to ascertain if personality and competitiveness measures differed between, 23 female collegiate athletes and 27 female majors in traditionally competitive professions. Participants ranged from ages 18 through 43. Participants self-reported their individual demographics, personality traits, and levels of competitiveness through survey tests. The personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, …

Flooding Tolerance Of Native And Nonnative Grasses: Variation In Photosynthesis, Transpiration, Respiration, And Carbon Isotope Discrimination, Elizabeth Waring

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Invasion by nonnative plants is particularly prevalent in wetlands. While the ecological patterns in wetland plants are well known, it is less well known how flooding-related soil conditions influence the physiological success of introduced species in wetlands. In chapter 1, effects of flooding were measured in invasive common reed (Phragmites australis), reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea), Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense), and native prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata). The four species were kept at four levels of flooding (deep flooding, medium flooding, low flooding, and dry conditions), and their responses were measured after 7 and 28 days of treatment using by a …

Variation In The Southern Short-Tailed Shrew, Blarina Carolensis, Jennifer O'Neill

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The southern short-tailed shrew (Blarina carolinensis) inhabits the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, the Gulf Coastal Plain, Florida, and the Atlantic Coastal Plain as far north as Virginia. Since its description by Bachman in 1837, this species has been widely studied and has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. Many of the morphometric studies were performed in different geographic locations and used different methodologies. These differences have made it difficult to make broad statements about the relationships within this species. Recently, a study of cranial measurements of specimens from the three subspecies of B. carolinensis found in Florida, identified a small population …

The College Football Student-Athlete's Academic Experience: Network Analysis And Model Development, Kyle Young

All Dissertations

A grounded theory research study employing network analysis as a means of facilitating the latter stages of the coding process was conducted at a selective university that competes at the highest level of college football. The purpose of the study was to develop a better understanding of how interactive dynamics and controlling mechanisms, such as NCAA eligibility standards, influence the academic experience of college football student-athletes. The study resulted in the development of a model that depicted the college football student-athlete's academic experience along a path of engagement that is influenced by dynamics and processes over the course of his …

Digest Of The Philadelphia College Of Osteopathic Medicine (Summer 2010), Philadelphia College Of Osteopathic Medicine

Digest

The Summer 2010 issue of the Digest of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine includes the following articles:

Opening Remarks

• PCOM Updates
• Development News
• Overweight Nation
• Learning from Disaster
• 2010 Mason W. Pressly Memorial Medal (GA–PCOM)
• 2010 Simmy Ginsburg Humanitarian Award
• Class Notes
• In Memoriam
• My Turn Essay
• Services for Alumni

Fire Effects On Wildlife In Tallgrass Prairie, Maria Gaetani, Kayla Cook, Sherry Leis

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

In the tallgrass prairie region of North America, grasslands are often burned on a rotational schedule to prevent the encroachment of woody species and maintain the vigor of plant communities. Although prescribed fire practitioners often consider the effects of fire on plant communities, the effects of fire on wildlife are also important. Practitioners as well as park visitors inquire about the effects of fire on birds, deer, and other animals of interest. Many wildlife species focus on vegetation structure in choosing suitable habitats, and fire can temporarily alter that structure. Wildlife species have varying habitat needs, and therefore, a …

Embryo Fundamentalism, June Carbone, Naomi Cahn

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Defining "Sexual Abuse Of A Minor" In Immigration Law: Finding A Place For Uniformity, Fairness, And Feminism, Kate Barth

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Power, Structure, Gender Relations And Community-Based Conservation: The Cawswe Study Of The Sariska Region, Rajasthan, India, Maria Costanza Torri

Journal of International Women's Studies

Most current community development projects have a built in gender component. Despite the WID, WED and GAD schools of thought there is still however a long way to go in order to effectively implement these principles in conservation projects. Merely getting women a place on the policy-making agenda is not enough, especially if it comes at the cost of promoting a simplistic and often wildly inaccurate picture of gender-environment relations. This article analyses the repercussions of community-based conservation on women in terms of use, access, and control of natural resources. The area chosen is the Sariska region of Rajasthan, India. …

Gene Regulation And Function Of Icp0 In Herpes Simplex Virus Infected Cells, Mingyu Liu

Dissertations

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a clinically important virus, whose life cycle alternates between productive replication and latency. Infected cell protein 0 (ICP0) is generally believed to play a key role in determining the outcome of HSV infections. Synthesis of ICP0 promotes the productive replication of HSV, whereas absence of ICP0 renders HSV prone to establish latent infections. In the first part of the dissertation, I attempt to address the question how is ICP0 gene regulated. To tackle this question, we constructed recombinant HSV that encodes GFP-tagged ICP0 so that the regulation of ICP0 gene can be visualized in real …

Effects Of Enrollment In Co-Teaching Classes On The Academic Performance Of High School Students Without Disabilities, Linda Elaine Buerck

Dissertations

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Linda Elaine Buerck, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Curriculum and Instruction, presented on November 12, 2009, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EFFECTS OF ENROLLMENT IN CO-TEACHING CLASSES ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WITHOUT DISABILITIES MAJOR PROFESSOR: D. John McIntyre, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, Ed.D., University of Syracuse This study examined the impact of enrollment in co-teaching classes on the grades earned by high school students without disabilities. The study also included analyses of teacher responses to a survey regarding their experience with the co-teaching model at the …

Breeding Productivity, Nest Distribution, And Population Ecology Of Wood Ducks In Floodplain And Upland Forests Of Southern Illinois, Robert Gray Anderson

Dissertations

Wood ducks are thought to depend on mature hardwood forests juxtaposed with palustrine wetlands but these habitats have been continuously degraded or destroyed since European settlement. Wood ducks are adaptable and the use of marginal habitats and nest boxes has extended their range and probably was important to the recovery of wood duck populations. Until now no study has analyzed the contribution of upland nesting to local population growth and maintenance. I investigated predation effects on nest site selection using wood duck nests and simulated nests placed in natural cavities. Using demographic data collected on wood ducks in southern Illinois, …

The Modulation Of Covert Attention By Emotion: Automatic Processing Of Emotional Versus Neutral Valenced Cues In A Covert Attention Paradigm, Jonathan Hammersley

Dissertations

Selective attention has been studied extensively and it is shown, for example, that individuals with conditions such as anxiety show attention bias to threat-related stimuli. It has been proposed that humans are predisposed or that it is naturally adaptive to selectively attend to emotional stimuli (Lang, 2000). Similarly, LeDoux (1996) and others have proposed limbic brain networks allowing for quick and automatic, but sometimes inaccurate, processing of emotion which bypasses primary cortical areas. Along these lines, automatic attention bias to subliminal image cues in an adapted Posner Covert Attention Task was examined in the current study. A sample of 64 …

Counting Us In: Problems And Opportunities In Health Research On Transgender And Gender Nonconforming Communities, Christoph Hanssmann

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Immunomodulatory Properties Of Noni (Morinda Citrifolia), Madhukar Lohani

All Theses

Noni (Morinda citrifolia) is a popular medicinal plant of family Rubiaceae. Its fruit is rich in various phytochemicals and polysaccharides. Anecdotal evidence indicates that it was used to stimulate the immune system and, thus, to fight various infections. Limited in vitro studies also support the immunomodulatory role of Noni, however only one study utilized an animal model. The purpose of this study was to examine the immunomodulatory properties of Noni fruit the broiler chicken.
Different concentrations of dietary Noni were added to diets and fed to day-old broiler chickens for 3 to 6 weeks. Gut tissue and blood were sampled …

Acceleration Of Biomolecular Simulations Using Fpga-Based Reconfigurable Computing, Ananth Nallamuthu

All Theses

A paradigm shift is occurring in the way compute-intensive scientific applications are developed. Thanks to advancements in commercially viable hybrid architectures for High-Performance Computing (HPC), the focus has shifted from improving performance by merely scaling algorithms on von Neumann computing nodes to fully exploiting additional computational capabilities provided by accelerators such as FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) and GPGPUs (General Purpose Graphical Processing Units).
Computational chemists use Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations like LAMMPS (Large Scale Atomic Molecular Massively Parallel Systems) and NAMD (NAnoscale Molecular Dynamics) to simulate biomolecular behaviour such as protein folding and small molecule docking to proteins. MD …

A Nonparametric Method For Ascertaining Change Points In Regression Regimes, Alfreda N. Rogers

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Of interest is the specific model called the joinpoint two regime regression or broken line model composed of one regression line and a horizontal ray. This is a very restricted but highly useful subset of the well-researched change point problem. The usual approach to a more general model was first presented by Quandt (1958) who found the maximum likelihood estimates of the slope, intercept and joinpoint by assuming that the error terms are generated under the usual assumptions, that is, from a normal distribution with constant variance and are uncorrelated. We develop a method that does not rely on this …

Veterinary Anatomy Laboratory Impact Study, Bess Catherine Hammill

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study examines the scholastic impact and opinion of learning in the anatomy laboratory as it relates to the lecture. The teaching of Animal Anatomy in the Animal Science department has traditionally been taught via classroom lecture and supported with a textbook. This study compares one scholastic semester without a laboratory and another scholastic semester offering a laboratory in partnership with the traditional lecture. The students without a laboratory were examined by means of their final grades in comparison with the laboratory and lecture combination. In order to acquire perspectives on the impact the laboratory had on student learning a …

Sex Differences In The Myocardial Response To Prenatal And Behavioral Stress, Heather Rose Mullenax

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Prenatal stress (PS) has been shown to exert profound effects on many organs in a variety of species. There is considerable evidence for sex-specific effects of prenatal stress. Our laboratory is the first to report effects of prenatal stress on myocardial function in male rats. The purpose of this study was to confirm our previous evidence of differences in myocardial function among prenatally stressed male and female rats and to explore possible mechanisms responsible for this difference. In this study, male and female Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to prenatal stress (mother was stressed on day 14--21 of gestation) followed by …

The Effect Of Aging And Resveratrol Supplementation On Bone Mass And Strength In Hindlimb Suspended Male Rats, Stephanie Wright

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Resveratrol has recently become a popular dietary supplement because of its potential for reducing the effects of aging and various age-related diseases. However, few studies have investigated the role of resveratrol in improving bone loss associated with aging. It has been widely reported that mechanical unloading increases bone loss. The elderly experience a prevalence of reduced mechanical loading due to declining activity levels and increased incidence of bed rest. In rats, hind-limb suspension (HLS) simulates mechanical unloading of bone. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the effects of aging and resveratrol supplementation on bone health in HLS …

Alterations In T Cell Function And Activation During Exposure To The Herbicide 3,4 Dichloropropionanilide (Dcpa) And Its Metabolites, Tricia L. Lewis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Approximately 5.3 billion pounds of pesticides are applied annually across the United States and 15 of the top 25 most used pesticides are herbicides. Total herbicide use the in the United States represents 28% of all worldwide herbicide use. DCPA (3,4 dichloropropionanilide, common name propanil) is a post emergent herbicide that is used extensively for control against several broadleaf plants and grasses. It is the 17th most common herbicide in the United States and 6--9 million pounds are applied annually to 2 million acres of rice fields. In mammals, DCPA is metabolized in the liver and produces 3,4-dichloroaniline (DCA) and …

The Natural And Social Production Of A Lake Shore Environment: The Case Of Erie And Presque Isle, Pennsylvania, Christopher R. Schaney

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this research has been to combine geographic traditions of physical and human geography to investigate the role each play in the conceptualization of place utilizing the City of Erie and Presque Isle as a case study. From its inception, the economic structure associated with the City of Erie has been primarily centered on the presence of Presque Isle. Early industry focused on shipbuilding, shipping related to heavy industry. By 1907, the shipping industry at Erie was third largest on the Great Lakes, behind only Buffalo and Chicago. When the shipping industry began to wane in the mid …

Cytochrome P450 1a-Ligand Interactions: Implications For Substrate Specificity And Inhibitor Susceptibility, Qingbiao Huang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cytochromes P450 are heme-containing enzymes that are involved in the metabolism of a variety of clinically important drugs, endogenous and exogenous compounds, including a number of procarcinogens. P450 1A subfamily has two members: 1A1 and 1A2. P450 1A1 and 1A2 show high sequence identity (>70%), but display different substrate specificity and inhibitor susceptibility. P450 1A2 is one of the major hepatic P450s, which metabolizes more than 11% of drugs currently on the market. Thus, we focused our attention on studies of this particular P450.;The five key active site residues that are different between P450 1A1 and 1A2 have been …