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Humdrum Aha!, Dana Odwazny Pell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Following the work of Sara Houghton-Walker and Edward Strickland, this thesis theorizes the "mundane sublime" as encountered in romanticist John Clare's poetry. Instead of being oriented upward, as with Longinus's elevatory sublime, Clare's mundane sublime brings the subject downward to earth. While the sublime of the Burkean tradition begins with terror, I claim that the mundane sublime emerges out of love for that which is commonplace. Still revelatory, it may be further characterized by an engagement with ecosystems, eternity, divinity, and nature as a whole. Clare's style scaffolds images resulting in a profusion of detail that arrests the mind and …

Hydrokinetic Resource Assessment Of The Florida Current, Alana E. Smentek-Duerr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

The Straits of Florida has been noted as a potential location for extraction of the kydrokinetic energy of the Florida Current, in view of the strength of the current and its proximity to the shore. ... This research explores the Florida Current as a potential renewable energy source. By utilizing historical data, in situ observations of the Florida Current, and computer model data, the hydrokinetic resource of the Florida Current is characterized both spatially and temporally. Subsequently, based on the geographic variability of the hydrokinetic power and other factors that impact the economy of a hydrokinetic turbine array installation, the …

Hypoxia-Regulated Glial Cell-Specific Gene Therapy To Treat Retinal Neovascularization, Manas Ranjan Biswal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Diabetic retinopathy is an ischemic retinal neovascular disease causing vision loss among adults. The studies presented involve the design and testing of a gene therapy vector to inhibit retinal revascularization, similar to that found in diabetic retinopathy. Gene therapy has proven to be an effective method to introduce therapeutic proteins to treat retinal diseases. Targeting a specific cell type and expression of therapeutic proteins according to the tissue microenvironment should have an advantage over traditional gene therapy by avoiding unwanted transgene expression. Hypoxia plays a significant role in the pathophysiology of many retinal ischemic diseases. Retinal Mèuller cells provide structural …

Identification Of Others Using Biological Motion, Sara. Manuel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

The literature regarding biological motion suggests that people may accurately identify and recognize the gender of others using movement cues in the absence of typical identifiers. This study compared identification and gender judgments of traditional point-light stimuli to skeleton stimuli. Controlling for previous experience and execution of actions, the frequency and familiarity of movements was also considered. Watching action clips, participants learned to identify 4 male and 4 female actors. Participants then identified the corresponding point-light or skeleton displays. Although results indicate higher than chance performance, no difference was observed between stimuli conditions. Analyses did show better gender recognition for …

Impact Of Satisfaction With Care And Empowerment On Glycemic Control Among Older African American Adults With Diabetes, Bridgette M. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

atisfaction with diabetes care, perceived feelings of empowerment to participate in self-care management, and glycemic control in a sample of older African American men and women with diabetes. A descriptive correlational quantitative design was used. The participants in this study were 73 men and women of African descent who were at least 50 years, English speaking, and diagnosed with diabetes for at least one year. The participants were asked to complete three survey instruments: the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire-18 (PSQ-18), which measured how satisfied the participants were with their medical care; the Diabetes Empowerment Scale-Short Form (DES-SF), which measured attitudes towards …

Impacts Of Queue Jumpers And Transit Signal Priority On Bus Rapid Transit, R.M. Zahid Reza

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Exclusive bus lanes and the Transit Signal Priority are often not effective in saturated peak-traffic conditions. An alternative way of providing priority for transit can be queue jumpers, which allows buses to bypass and then cut out in front of waiting queue by getting an early green signal. Utah Transit authority deployed Bus Rapid Transit system at Salt Lake County, Utah along W 3500 S. This research evaluates the impacts of queue jumpers with TSP on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and private vehicular traffic. Four VISSIM models were developed for analysis : Basic scenario, no TSP with queue jumpers, TSP …

Impact Of Stress On Elementary School Principals And Their Effective Coping Mechanisms, Joyce. Krzemienski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

In today's era of high stakes testing and accountability, school principals are confronted with many difficult challenges in addition to those traditionally experienced by principals given the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the many mandates each school principal must report on annually. With mandated curriculum standards and widespread demand to improve student achievement, principals face a multitude of administrative tasks. As the school accountability deadline to meet the 2014 federal objective of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 rapidly draws closer for the majority of states, this federal legislation has created increasingly high stress levels, …

Inflammatory Response In Stress And The Role Of Autophagy In Breast Cancer, Lillian C. Onwuha-Ekpete

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

We attempted to understand the molecular regulators that impact inflammation using a rat model of human sensation-seeking/risk-taking trait for drug and stress vulnerability, based on their exploratory behavior displaying high rates (HRs) or low rates of locomotor reactivity (LRs) to environmental stress. We found that HRs have a pro-inflammatory phenotype as indicated by increased protein expression of the inflammatory cytokine TNF-(Sa(B. Furthermore, we found that HRs have a lower gene expression of the glucocorticoid receptor and histone deacetylase 2 which are known to play an immunosuppressive role. Autophagy (macroautophagy) is a homeostatic process needed for cell maintenance, growth and proliferation …

Information-Theoretics Based Technoeconomic Growth Models, Raef Rashad Yassin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

This research is concerned with algorithmic representation of technoeconomic growth concerning modern and next-generation telecommunications including the Internet service. The goal of this study thereof is to emphasize efforts to establish the associated forecasting and, the envisioned tasks thereof include : (i) Reviewing the technoeconomic considerations prevailing in telecommunication (telco) service industry and their implicating features; (ii) studying relevant aspects of underlying complex system evolution (akin to biological systems), (iii) pursuant co-evolution modeling of competitive business structures using dichotomous (flip-flop) states as seen in predator evolutions ; (iv) conceiving a novel algorithm based on information-theoretic principles toward technoeconomic forecasting on …

Internal Waves On A Continental Shelf, Arjun. Jagannathan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

In this thesis, a 2D CHebyshev spectral domain decomposition method is developed for simulating the generation and propagation of internal waves over a topography. While the problem of stratified flow over topography is by no means a new one, many aspects of internal wave generation and breaking are still poorly understood. This thesis aims to reproduce certain observed features of internal waves by using a Chebyshev collation method in both spatial directions. The numerical model solves the inviscid, incomprehensible, fully non-linear, non-hydrostatic Boussinesq equations in the vorticity-streamfunction formulation. A number of important features of internal waves over topography are captured …

Interpretation Of Forced And Unforced Choice Behavior, Brian. Vail

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

The current study investigated the interpretation of an agent's actions under the influence of external forces. Participants viewed a series of videos of an agent making a varying series of decisions and forced behaviors and were asked to predict future behavior. Firstly, we found evidence that suggests that perceivers make inferences about an agent that once they have shown a preference toward an object, they will persist with those initial desires, despite, external forces leading them to a different object. Secondly, we found evidence that suggests that submitting to a coerced choice will be perceived as reflecting a conflicting combination …

Proud Elastic Target Discrimination Using Low-Frequency Sonar Signatures, Brenton. Mallen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

This thesis presents a comparative analysis of various low-frequency sonar signature representations and their ability to discriminate between proud targets of varying physical parameters. The signature representations used include: synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) beamformed images, acoustic color plot images, and bispectral images. A relative Mean-Square Error (rMSE) performance metric and an effective Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNReff) performance metric have been developed and implemented to quantify the target differentiation. The analysis is performed on a subset of the synthetic sonar stave data provided by the Naval Surface Warfare Center - Panama City Division (NSWC-PCD). The subset is limited to aluminum and stainless …

Population Distribution, Habitat Selection, And Life History Of The Slough Crayfish (Procambarus Fallax) In The Ridge-Slough Landscape Of The Central Everglades, Der Heiden Craig Van

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Understanding where and why organisms are distributed in the environment are central themes in ecology. Animals live in environments in which they are subject to competing demands, such as the need to forage, to find mates, to reproduce, and to avoid predation. Optimal habitats for these various activities are usually distributed heterogeneously in the landscape and may vary both spatially and temporally, causing animals to adjust their locations in space and time to balance these conflicting demands. In this dissertation, I outline three studies of Procambarus fallax in the ridge-slough landscape of Water conservation Area 3A (WCS-3A). The first section …

Product Placement Within Violent Media, Johanna D. Berger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Despite extensive research into memory and violence, relatively little is known about the relationship between violent media and memory of advertised products. Research has yielded contradictory evidence ; some scholars have found a negative relationship, others a nonexistent one... This research investigated the role of emotion in the relationship between violent media and product placement memory. This study creates insight into inconclusive previous findings by providing evidence that violence influences product memory. Specifically, participants were significantly worse at remembering products placed within violent clips (e.g., free recall, cued recall, recognition. Participants' emotional responses to the violent clips also appeared to …

Psychophysiological Measures Of Aggression And Victimization In Early Adolescence, Christopher D. Aults

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Many cardiovascular psychophysiological studies have found evidence of lower arousal states in aggressive individuals and hyper-arousal states in individuals exposed to chronic stress. However, most of these studies have relied on clinical diagnoses or self-reports to identify aggressive and victimized individuals. The present study used peer nominations to identify aggressive, victimized, and non-aggressive or victimized adolescents (mean age = 12.09 yrs.) to examine if any psychophysiological differences exist during resting and startle conditions. ANOVAs revealed that high aggressive/low victimized adolescents had a lower resting heart period/rate compared to high victimized/low aggressive adolescents. Further analyses revealed a statistical trend of lower …

Principals' Knowledge Of Special Education Policies And Procedures, Lindsay. Jesteadt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Research has shown that most school leaders lack the knowledge necessary to deal with the many different aspects and issues that special education programs encompass. This lack of knowledge ultimately places special education teachers, programs, and students with disabilities at a clear disadvantage. With The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 and the reauthorization of The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) in 2004, schools and school leaders are being held accountable for the learning gains of all students, including students with disabilities. This study sought to assess the knowledge of Florida school principals in the area …

Constitutional Gaps In Bankruptcy, S. Todd Brown

Journal Articles

Federal bankruptcy law incorporates a broad range of commercial and related matters that are otherwise left to the States under the Constitution, follows an efficiency-centered process model that may implicate due process, and relies upon a judicial structure that appears to be inconsistent with Article III. In spite of the crushing volume of bankruptcy cases and proceedings each year in which the resolution of one or more of these questions may be relevant, the Supreme Court has had few opportunities to tackle them directly. Indeed, after more than two centuries, the Court has provided precious few insights into the limits …

Race And Representation In Friday Night Lights, Keisha. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

This thesis will highlight the significance and representation of race in the film and television show Friday Night Lights. The core claim of my thesis will show that representation of race was different in the film as compared to the television show due to their various settings, one historical (1980s) and the other contemporary (2000s). While both the film and the television show were produced in the 2000s, their use of two different historical periods allows for contrasting representations of race even they both draw from the book Friday Night Lights. The film's representation of race is reflective of its …

Quantifying The Energetic Cost Of Disorientation In Loggerhead (Caretta Caretta) And Green (Chelonia Mydas) Sea Turtle Hatchlings, Sean. Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

The photopollution of beaches caused by artificial light sources can interfere with sea turtle hatchlings' ability to orient properly towards the sea. Exhaustion due to extended disorientation crawling may then increase hatchling mortality. This study evaluated the energetic consequences of long-distance crawls in green and loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings. Turtles crawled for 200 m or 500 m on a treadmill, followed by a 30 minute evaluation of swim performance. Metabolic activity was quantified via measures of blood glucose, blood lactate, and oxygen consumption. No significant changes in metabolism resulted from long-distance crawling activity in loggerheads ; however, loggerheads rested for …

Public Speaking As The Last Battlefield, Shaundi C. Newbolt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

Communication scholars are in disagreement over the presence of online public speaking courses in higher education. Despite limited research on the Online Public Speaking model, it is quickly replacing the traditional public speaking model in American colleges and universities. This study used Burkean Cluster-Agon Analysis to uncover core concepts from four contemporary public speaking textbooks used in various classroom models (traditional, online and hybrid). Concepts were then compared with traditional core concepts of early speech communication to determine if technology has influenced contemporary core concepts. Results determined that contemporary core concepts from three of the four public speaking textbooks reflected …

Religious Violence In Frank Herbert's Dune Series, Kenton Taylor Howard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

This thesis examines the first two novels of Frank Herbert's Dune series, Dune and Dune Messiah, in order to consider these two novels from the framework of postcolonial theory and analyze how religious violence becomes a source of subjugation, military power, and colonialism within the works. The three chapters of this thesis chart the creation of a colonial project through epistemic violence, physical power, and cultural control enabled by religion. This thesis argues that, in the Dune novels, religious violence functions as a colonial project that closely resembles the goals of real-world colonial enterprises, and the failure to manage this …

Relationship Bertween Wellness And Burnout Among Novice Counselors, Jennifer. Bilot

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019

The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between wellness and burnout among novice counselors. This research was carried out in order to gain a better understanding of the experience of the novice counselor as well as to gain insight into the effects of wellness and burnout on these experiences. The significance of this research lies in the need to understand the novice counselor's journey, the factors that can contribute to or prevent burnout, and the potential prevention and intervention strategies that can be employed in response to burnout. The data of a final sample of 144 participants' …

Assessing Environmental Inequality In Portland, Oregon: An Exploration Of Local Environmental Justice Struggles, Jordan Douglas Folks

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores patterns of environmental inequality in Portland, Oregon; both the existence of spatial environmental inequalities and the structural and local forces which contribute to them. Research on environmental inequality, or inequitable exposure to toxins, has shown that minority and low-income populations experience the bulk of the exposure to environmental hazards. Although Portland is often cited as the archetype of a sustainable city, environmental inequality is a pervasive issue. This thesis examines the health inequalities that characterize underserved communities in Portland. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the researcher uses 1) logistic regression to statistically assess the relationship between race, …

Understanding The Emission From Semiconductor Nanoparticles, Beth Ann Manhat

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation describes the synthesis and characterization of fluorescent semiconductor nanoparticles (NPs) in order to optimize their biomedical utility for imaging and sensing applications. While both direct and indirect bandgap semiconductor NPs have been studied, control over their emission properties vary. Quantum confinement (QC), which primarily controls the emission wavelength of nanosized semiconductors, dictates that as the size of semiconductor NPs decrease, the magnitude of the bandgap increases, resulting in changes in the observed emission wavelength: smaller NPs have a larger bandgap, and thus a bluer emission. However, surface, interfacial, or shell defects can act as non-radiative or radiative recombination …

Relativistic Causal Ordering A Memory Model For Scalable Concurrent Data Structures, Josh Triplett

Dissertations and Theses

High-performance programs and systems require concurrency to take full advantage of available hardware. However, the available concurrent programming models force a difficult choice, between simple models such as mutual exclusion that produce little to no concurrency, or complex models such as Read-Copy Update that can scale to all available resources. Simple concurrent programming models enforce atomicity and causality, and this enforcement limits concurrency. Scalable concurrent programming models expose the weakly ordered hardware memory model, requiring careful and explicit enforcement of causality to preserve correctness, as demonstrated in this dissertation through the manual construction of a scalable hash-table item-move algorithm. Recent …

Supranationalism In The Fight Against Transnational Threats: A Comparative Study Of Asean And Eu Policy Responses To Human Trafficking, Nicholas M. Klynn

Dissertations and Theses

Transnational security threats are among the most pressing and complicated problems facing both governmental and non-governmental actors in today's world. Human trafficking is one example of contemporary transnational security threat that is relatively less studied compared to other transnational security threats. Because transnational security threats such as human trafficking exist above and outside the boundaries of state control, it may be supposed that a greater degree of supranationalism in the policy responses to them would yield better results in combatting these modern-day ills. Anti-trafficking efforts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the European Union are examined to assess …

Neurofibromatosis 2011: A Report Of The Children's Tumor Foundation Annual Meeting., Michel Kalamarides, Maria T. Acosta, Dusica Babovic-Vuksanovic, Olli Carpen, Karen Cichowski, Dg Evans, Filippo Giancotti, Co Hanemann, David Ingram, Alison C. Lloyd, Debra A. Mayes, Ludwine Messiaen, Helen Morrison, Kathryn North, Roger Packer, Duojia Pan, Anat Stemmer-Rachamimov, Meena Upadhyaya, David Viskochil, Margret R. Wallace, Kim Hunter-Schaedle, Nancy Ratner

Peninsula Medical School

The 2011 annual meeting of the Children's Tumor Foundation, the annual gathering of the neurofibromatosis (NF) research and clinical communities, was attended by 330 participants who discussed integration of new signaling pathways into NF research, the appreciation for NF mutations in sporadic cancers, and an expanding pre-clinical and clinical agenda. NF1, NF2, and schwannomatosis collectively affect approximately 100,000 persons in US, and result from mutations in different genes. Benign tumors of NF1 (neurofibroma and optic pathway glioma) and NF2 (schwannoma, ependymoma, and meningioma) and schwannomatosis (schwannoma) can cause significant morbidity, and there are no proven drug treatments for any form …

Producing Multimedia Resources For Teaching Medical Students About The Social Context Of Medicine: A Partnership Approach, Tracey Collett, Priska Schoenborn

Peninsula Medical School

No abstract provided.

Prevalence And Determinants For Overweight And Obesity Among Residents Of A Mining Township In Kitwe, Zambia, In 2011: A Population-Based Survey, Cosmas Zyaambo, Olesegun Babaniyi, Peter Songolo, Adamson S. Muula, Emmanuel Rudatsikira, Victor M. Mukonka, Seter Siziya

Faculty Publications

Background: Obesity and overweight in Africa have been attributed to demogra- phic and nutritional changes that have resulted from urbanization and sedentary lifestyles and increased caloric intake without much physical activities. This has put populations at an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, Diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, dyslipidemia, and cancer. The objective of this study was to deter- mine the prevalence and associated factors for combined overweight and obesity among residents of a mining town, Kitwe, in Zambia.

Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted using a modified WHO glo- bal Non Communicable Diseases Surveillance Initiative STEPs 1 and 2 method of …

Designing Wise Communities That Engage In Creative Problem Solving: An Analysis Of An Online Design Model, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Ludmila Layne, Casey Frechette

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Addressing the conference theme of “design thinking,” this paper discusses an instructional design model, WisCom (Wisdom Communities) that we developed to build a wise learning community online, to solve open-ended, ill-structured problems such as solving a health crisis or an environmental disaster, which requires the exchange of multiple perspectives, inter-disciplinary thinking, creative problem solving, and social construction of knowledge. Based on socio-constructivist, sociocultural theories of learning and mediated cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995; Pea, 1993), group cognition (Stahl, 2006), research on how people learn (Bransford, Vye, Bateman, Brophy, & Roselli, 2004), and distance education design principles (Moore & …