Digital Commons Network^™

Determining The Validity Of The Nintendo Wii Balance Board As An Assessment Tool For Balance, Sabrina Mae Deans

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Context. Application of the Nintendo Wii-fit balance board and its games have been used in Physical Therapy clinics, showing success in individuals with neurological disorders, and has been recommended as a minimum baseline assessment of a symptoms checklist and standardized cognitive and balance assessments for concussion management by the NCAA. However, it still faces challenges of being considered a reliable and consistent tool for producing normative data in the allied healthcare. Because there is little to no evidence for the Wii-fit balance board as a valid balance assessment tool for clinical and/or research usage, the significance of this study is …

Job Stress, Mentoring, Psychological Empowerment, And Job Satisfaction Among Nursing Faculty, Catherine Emily Ebersole Chung

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The National League for Nursing (NLN) endorses mentoring throughout the nursing faculty career trajectory as the method to recruit nurses into academia and improve retention of nursing faculty within the academy (NLN, 2006). One way mentoring assists faculty is by easing socialization to the culture of the employing institution and decreasing faculty stress (Lewallen, Crane, Letvak, Jones, & Hu, 2003). Mentoring can also be a facilitating factor of an individual's psychological empowerment. Academia is an environment able to foster psychological empowerment, a state in which faculty may be self-directed, highly productive, confident, and find a meaningful connection to their work …

Hydroclimatic Forecasting In The Western United States Using Paleoclimate Reconstructions And Data-Driven Models, Christopher Allen Carrier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis investigated climate variability and their associated hydrologic responses in the western United States. The western United States faces the problem of water scarcity, where the management and mitigation of available water supplies are further complicated by climate variability. Climate variability associated with the phases of oceanic-atmospheric oscillations has been shown to influence streamflow and precipitation, where predictive relationships have led to the possibility of producing long-range forecasts. Based on literature review, four oceanic-atmospheric oscillation indices were identified in having the most prominent influence over the western United States including the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal …

Analysis Of The Morbidity And Mortality Of Severe Influenza Infection In Clark County, Nevada For The 2010--2011 Influenza Season, Kindra Maureen St. Jacques

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Influenza circulates in the community in a fairly predictable manner each year; however, throughout the duration of any influenza season, influenza strains have the ability to evolve through antigenic mutations, viral reassortment, development of anti-viral resistance, and alterations in virulence. These changes are likely to cause illness among the unimmunized and can result in severe illness or death. Therefore, it is especially important to closely monitor severe influenza-associated hospitalizations and deaths. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas in collaboration with the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD), Office of Epidemiology (OOE) analyzed data from the severe hospitalized influenza morbidity and mortality …

Causes Of Job Turnover In The Public School Superintendency: An Explanatory Analysis In The Western United States, Toby A. Melver

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine the factors that affect public school superintendent turnover in five western states. An explanatory theory was developed to cover all of the possible variables and show the relationship between those variables. The questions that guided this research study were:

(1) What environmental factors influence the tenure of superintendents in western states?

(2) What governance factors influence the tenure of superintendents in western states?

(3) What personal factors influence the tenure of superintendents in western states?

(4) What are the incentives and/or disincentives that influence the tenure of superintendents in western states? …

Methodological Quality Of Quantitative Nursing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Research From 2000 To 2010, Michael Johnson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people constitute one of the largest underserved populations in any nursing setting. Despite the large LGBT populations, very little nursing research has been conducted on these populations. Nurse researchers have recommended that nursing researchers end the silence on LGBT research. To accomplish this, the methodological rigor of LGBT nursing research must be evaluated and improved upon. Currently, no literature examines the methodological quality of quantitative nursing LGBT research. Using a cross-sectional design, it was the purpose of this study to evaluate the methodological quality of quantitative nursing LGBT research from 2000 to 2010 using …

The Relationship Between The Functions Of School Refusal Behavior And Family Environment, Rachel Marie Schafer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The current study examined the relationship between the functions of school refusal behavior and family environment characteristics in a community sample of youth. The primary aim was to determine the family environments most strongly associated with each function of school refusal behavior in an ethnically diverse, community-based sample of youths referred to the legal process for absenteeism. Hypotheses for the current study were based on the premise that family environment characteristics of the community sample of youths with problematic absenteeism would generally resemble those identified in previous clinical samples. The first hypothesis was that youth who refuse school primarily to …

The Context For Change: Reconceptualising The 3rs In Education For Indigenous Students, Elizabeth M. Jackson-Barrett

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract

In 2011, three years on from the Apology given by Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd to the Stolen Generations and coupled with the Federal Governments agenda to ‘close the gap’ in education for Aboriginal students, perhaps it is time to retrospectively look at the issues and challenges that have moulded the terrain of Aboriginal education in Western Australia. It is clear that over the last 200 years there has been progress in improving the access of schooling for many Aboriginal students. However the retention and successful completion of compulsory schooling still remain at unacceptable levels. It is these current performance …

This Is Your Brain On Acetylcholine, Ksenia Vlasov

The Synapse: Intercollegiate science magazine

No abstract provided.

Mike Got A Bigger Bike: Mike Rauscher On Nuclear Space Travel, Quinton Steele

The Synapse: Intercollegiate science magazine

No abstract provided.

Hipaa Compliance Resources, Paul M. Birch

Law Faculty Publications

As health care consumers, attorneys may need no introduction to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). It may have introduced itself to you already in the form of a refused request for your spouse’s pharmacy receipts without signed authorization, or lengthier patient information forms to fill out before seeing a new doctor. On the other hand, the legislation may have facilitated your own access to your personal health records that otherwise would have been denied, or shielded those records from public disclosure by deterring a mass data spill. Along with establishing portability requirements for employee health …

Success In One High-Poverty, Urban Elementary School: A Case Study, Shavonna L. Holman

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the efforts implemented in a high-poverty, urban elementary school in order to increase academic achievement. The central research question was:

1. How do teachers and administrators in a high-poverty, urban school describe the strategies they use to achieve academic success?

The sub-questions were:

1. What are the aspects of the instructional program that assure student success for all students?
2. What changes occurred in the school to achieve its current status?
3. How have the changes been implemented to assure student success?
4. What resources have been instrumental to achieve student success in the school? …

Hydrologic Evaluation Of Established Rain Gardens In Lincoln, Nebraska Using A Storm Runoff Simulator, Andrew R. Anderson

Department of Environmental Engineering: Theses and Other Student Research

Increased urbanization has resulted in water quality and flooding problems for many receiving waters in the United States. Bioretention, or rain gardens, is one of the most widely popular and effective best management practices in low impact development (LID), which strives to return a watershed to a predevelopment hydrologic regime. Many studies have evaluated large bioretention cells in research settings. There is little information on the effectiveness of homeowner-maintained rain gardens that rely on deep percolation as the method for water exfiltration. Additionally, few studies address rain garden performance in cold, arid, or semi-arid climates found in the Midwest U.S. …

A Comparison Of The Effectiveness Of Scent Lures On Attracting Mesopredators, Tom Batter

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

A mesopredator is a medium-sized middle trophic level predator such as a raccoon (Procyon lotor), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis), or coyote (Canis latrans; Crooks and Soule 1999). Mesopredators have long been trapped for recreational, economic, or academic reasons. Throughout human history trapping has been used to capture animals for food and skins, as well as to prevent personal harm and property damage from predators. In order to increase the probability of success, scent lures are often used as an attractant (Geary 1984, Mills et al. 2010, Schlexer 2008).

Mapping Potential Crp Land And Determining Crp Profitability In Lancaster County, Jamie Pesek

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Annually 17 tons of soil is lost due to the erosion of agriculture land. A majority of the soil lost is fertile topsoil, which can render the land unproductive. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was enacted to reduce the high erosion rates on agriculture land by giving landowners a monetary incentive to let their land lay idle and allow the soil to regenerate. Although there is awareness of the benefits of CRP, little effort has been put toward delineating CRP eligible land. In this project, Geographical Information Systems were used to map CRP eligible land in Lancaster County, Nebraska based …

The Urban Fabric Of The Great Plains, Andrew Becker

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

To most Americans the Great Plains region of North America is mysterious place. There are disagreements when defining its limits, and some people just refer to it as the Midwest. The Great Plains has been a place under an ocean, a place under glaciers, and a place on fire. It was once dubbed “the Great American Desert,” but is now known for its agricultural viability. The Great Plains sparks imagination because it is so massive and was one of the final frontiers for Euro-American settlement. The Great Plains is seen as a rural place but the majority of the region’s …

The Good Life In Psychotherapy: Implicit And Influential, Emily Lonas Morris

Theses and Dissertations

The good life, or a flourishing life, is a vision of how people ought to best live their lives. Though this vision is vital to the conduct of psychotherapy, it is generally overlooked, and thus unexamined. The therapist's vision of the good life for the client guides his or her implicit and explicit interventions. Despite this, there is relatively little discussion about this vital topic, and relatively little training into the various approaches to the good life. In this thesis, I argue that this relative lack of examination and training is due to the lack of perceived options regarding conceptions …

Gendered Livelihoods And The Politics Of Socio-Environmental Identity: Women’S Participation In Conservation Projects In Calakmul, Mexico, Claudia Radel

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

A livelihoods approach positions individuals, situated within households, as active agents within processes occurring at various scales. Environmental conservation efforts represent one such process with direct implications for local sustainable livelihoods and the gendered nature of livelihood strategies. In this article, I examine collective processes of socio-environmental identity construction as gendered sustainable livelihood strategies, articulated in and through the activities of women's agricultural organizations in communities bordering the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in rural southern Mexico. I present group histories and visual evidence from group activities – adapted from participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methodology – to highlight two important concepts. These …

Corporate Philanthropy And Corporate Financial Performance: The Roles Of Social Response And Political Access, Heli Wang, Cuili Qian

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate philanthropy is expected to positively affect firm financial performance because it helps firms gain sociopolitical legitimacy, which enables them to elicit positive stakeholder responses and to gain political access. The positive philanthropy-performance relationship is stronger for firms with greater public visibility and for those with better past performance, as philanthropy by these firms gains more positive stakeholder responses. Firms that are not government-owned or politically well connected were shown to benefit more from philanthropy, as gaining political resources is more critical for such firms. Empirical analyses using data on Chinese firms listed on stock exchanges from 2001 to 2006 …

Longevity Risk Management In Singapore's National Pension System, Joelle H. Y. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although annuities are a theoretically appealing way to manage longevity risk, in the real world relatively few consumers purchase them at retirement. To counteract the possibility of retirees outliving their assets, Singapore’s Central Provident Fund, a national defined contribution pension scheme, has recently mandated annuitization of workers’ retirement assets. More significantly, the government has entered the insurance market as a public sector provider for such annuities. This article evaluates the money’s worth of life annuities and discusses the impact of the government mandate and its role as an annuity provider on the insurance market.

Differential Effects Of Various African Nightshade Species On The Fecundity And Movement Of Tetranychus Evansi (Acari: Tetranychidae), L. K. Murungi, M. Knapp, D. Salifu, J. Wesonga, A. Nyende, P. Masinde, B. Torto

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The tomato red spider mite Tetranychus evansi Baker & Pritchard is a serious pest of solanaceous plants worldwide. Management of this oligophagous pest in African nightshades has been a challenge to smallholder African farmers due to its high reproductive rate and rapid development of resistance to synthetic pesticides. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of leaf trichomes on T. evansi by comparing its fecundity and movement on the leaf surfaces of five African nightshade species, namely Solanum sarrachoides Sendter, S. villosum Miller, S. tarderemotum Bitter, S. americanum Miller and S. scabrum Miller. Data were recorded …

The Structure Of Energy Production And Redistribution Among Tsimane' Forager-Horticulturalists, Paul L. Hooper

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation constitutes an integrated analysis of the Tsimane' economic subsistence system. Its analyses are guided by a body of evolutionary theory which posits that life history traits, the structure of social relationships, and nature of economic production co-evolve in patterned and predictable ways. This theory specifically suggests that, for humans, the returns to embodied capital development and declines in reproductive efficiency late in life interact to produce: prolonged development, extended lifespan, menopause, and a predominantly downward three-generational system of energetic provisioning. The current analyses of Tsimane' work effort, production, and transfers are consistent with this theory in the following …

Increasing Profitability Of Small Scale Cocoa Farmers Through Optimizing Replacement Rate, Mahrizal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study is to empirically estimate the optimum annual replacement rate and age of replacement of cocoa trees in order to maximize the net present value of four production practices over time. The study examines the costs and returns of four common cocoa production systems in Ghana associated with changes in cocoa prices, fertilizer prices, inflation rates, and labor prices. While this study focuses on cocoa, the method is applicable to any tree crop industry. This study uses empirical yield curves and cost of production data from Ghana to determine when and what percentage of a cocoa …

Effect Of Relative Humidity And Temperature Control On In-Cabin Thermal Comfort State, Ali Alahmer

All Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the effect of manipulating the relative humidity RH levels inside vehicular cabins on the thermal comfort and human occupants' thermal sensation. Three different techniques are used to investigate this effect. Firstly, thermodynamic and psychometric analyses are used to incorporate the effect of changing RH along with the dry bulb temperature on the human comfort window. Specifically, the study computes the effect of changing the relative humidity on the amount of heat rejected from the passenger compartment and the effect on occupants comfort zone. A practical system implementation is also discussed in terms of an evaporative cooler design. …

Highly Conductive Carbon Nanotube Fibers For Biomedical Applications, Vijoya Sa

All Dissertations

We developed a wet spinning process for the formation of polymeric fibers with high loading of single walled carbon nanotubes. The dissertation consists of five chapters. In the first chapter, the research goals were formulated and the art and technologies of fiber spinning from carbon nanotubes were critically analyzed. The next three chapters report the original results. Last chapter summarizes all the findings.
In the second chapter, we describe a surfactant based method of stabilization of carbon nanotube dispersions. The conditions of stability of nanotube dispersions in aqueous solutions of sodium dodecyl sulfate were analyzed. Using surface tension isotherms, the …

Fatty Acids And Lipogenesis In Ruminant Adipocytes, Taber Burns

All Dissertations

Obsesity, the excess deposition of white adipose tissue, is a growing problem in the U.S. and other developed countries. Formerly thought to be inert, adipose tissue is now recognized as a dynamic endocrine organ with its secretion of adipokines and a newly proposed class hormone class 'lipokine'. Adipocytes are the functional unit of adipose tissue and can influence the tissue through hyperplasic and hypertrophic growth. In order to investigate the mechanisms involved in adipogenesis and lipogenesis of adipose tissue, stromal vascular cultures were isolated from adipose tissue of finishing cattle for use in experiments.
There is a positive relationship between …

Time-Interval Analysis For Radiation Monitoring, Peng Luo

All Dissertations

On-line radiation monitoring is essential to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management Science Program for assessing the impact of contaminated media at DOE sites. The goal of on-line radiation monitoring is to quickly detect small or abrupt changes in activity levels in the presence of a significant ambient background. The focus of this research is on developing effective statistical algorithms to meet the goal of on-line monitoring based on time-interval (time-difference between two consecutive radiation pulses) data. Compared to the more commonly used count data which are registered in a fixed count time, time-interval data possess the potential …

Electrical Coupling Between Micropatterned Cardiomyocytes And Stem Cells, Zhen Ma

All Dissertations

To understand how stem cells functionally couple with native cardiomyocytes is crucial for cell-based therapies to restore the loss of cardiomyocytes that occurs during heart infarction and other cardiac diseases. Due to the complexity of the in vivo environment, our knowledge of cell coupling is heavily dependent on cell-culture models. However, conventional in vitro studies involve undefined cell shapes and random length of cell-cell contacts in addition to the presence of multiple homotypic and heterotypic contacts between interacting cells. Thus, it has not been feasible to study electrical coupling corresponding to isolated specific types of cell contact modes.
To address …

The Toxicity Of Carbon Nanotubes To Daphnia Magna, Aaron Edgington

All Dissertations

A particle is classified as nano in size if it has at least one dimension less than 100 nm which gives them chemical and physical characteristics that are different from the bulk material. Over the last twenty years nanotechnology has exploded as an industry. It has been estimated that there are 1000 consumer products on the market today that contain nanomaterials and 2 million jobs worldwide will be devoted directly to nanotechnology research, development, and product manufacturing by 2015. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be visualized as sheets of graphene rolled into a cylinder. Carbon nanotubes small diameter (nanometer scale) and …

Thermal Inactivation Of Stress Adapted Pathogens In Compost, Randhir Singh

All Dissertations

In the United States, 1.3 billion tons of animal wastes are produced annually. Disposal of this huge amount of waste on agricultural land without proper treatment is a public health safety issue as animal waste is a potential source of several human pathogens. Therefore, composting of animal wastes is an economical solution to this problem. The high temperature reached during this process also brings about inactivation of pathogens in the waste. However, survival of pathogens has still been reported from different composting studies, indicating the complex nature of this process. The objectives of this study were to: 1) study thermal …