Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Online And Offline Sex Seeking Behavior Among Young Men Who Have Sex With Men: Implications For Hiv/Aids Interventions, Winston Eromosele Abara

Theses and Dissertations

Men who have sex with men (MSM), especially in the southeastern US are disproportionately impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Young MSM and African American MSM are particularly burdened accounting for a greater proportion of HIV/AIDS diagnoses. Factors such as risky sexual behavior, perception of sexual risk, ignorance about HIV sero-status, internalized homonegativity/homophobia (IH), stigma, and alcohol and illegal drug use have been advanced as reasons for this disproportionate burden. HIV/AIDS prevention efforts aimed at stemming the epidemic among MSM have focused on locations where MSM meet other men for sex such as parks, beaches, bathhouses, adult book stores, clubs, and …

Investigating Developmental Patterns Of Symptom And Impairment Change Among Youth With Adhd, Subthreshold Adhdand Youth Without Adhd, Lorie Love Geryk

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction. Despite a substantial prevalence of subthreshold Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and research indicating that many youth with this disorder have impaired functioning and negative outcomes, few studies have considered patterns of symptom and functioning change for youth with probable ADHD, subthreshold ADHD and youth without ADHD transitioning from childhood to adolescence. Additionally, we are not aware of any studies examining predictors of impairment severity among youth with subthreshold ADHD, and few studies have examined predictors of treatment utilization and patterns of symptom and functioning change based on medication status for youth with subthreshold ADHD compared to youth with ADHD. Methods. …

Modeling Ultrasonic Field Emanating From Scanning Acoustic Microscope For Reliable Characterization Of Pathogens (Biological Materials), Rowshan Ara Rima

Theses and Dissertations

Acoustic microscopy provides extraordinary advantages over state-of-the-art invasive imaging techniques to determine the mechanical properties of living colonies of pathogens and micro-organisms. It is possible to obtain the morphomechanical parameters of the pathogenic colonies e.g. variation of thickness, stiffness and the coefficients of attenuation, using scanning acoustic microscope (SAM). However, the process requires an expert with extensive understanding of SAM and ultrasonic signals which is very time consuming and expensive for complex form of analysis. Due to lack of a suitable computational tool, presently the ultrasonic wave scattering, reflection and transmission through the biological specimens cannot be properly visualized. Without …

Biomechanics Of Porcine Renal Artery And The Development Of A Replacment Vessel, Mohamed Gabr

Theses and Dissertations

Mechanical characterization of biological soft tissues is essential in the field of biomedical engineering. In this study several loading experiments have been performed to efficiently characterize the passive mechanical response of both native porcine renal arteries and newly developed tissue constructs. The first aim of these studies is to determine whether there is a difference in mechanical response between the main renal artery and its first branch. After fitting the bi-axial data to a Holzapfel-type constitutive model, the results show that there is no statistical difference between the model parameters for renal artery and the first branch. The only significant …

An Institutional History Of The Higgins Armory Museum And Its Relationship With Worcester, Massachusetts, Kary Ashley Pardy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the institutional history of the Higgins Armory Museum through its connection with the industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It documents the museum's beginning as a commercial museum connected with the Worcester Pressed Steel Company and analyzes both Worcester and the Armory's survival methods when their affiliated industries folded under economic pressures following World War II. The thesis follows the Higgins' attempted transformation to a nationally-recognized museum of arms and armor, and concludes with the Armory's identity struggles and eventual merger with the Worcester Art Museum.

Parent Perceptions Of Audiology And Speech-Language Services And Support For Young Children With Cochlear Implants, Patrick Michael Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Parents of children diagnosed with severe-profound sensorineural hearing loss are selecting cochlear implants at an increasing rate and when their children are very young. Audiologists and speech-language pathologists are typically involved in habilitation activities following implantation in an effort to increase children's access to listening and spoken language. These clinicians depend upon parents to participate in habilitation activities that may lead to favorable outcomes for children. However, little evidence exists regarding parents' perspectives on the services and supports audiologists and speech-language pathologists provide in this team effort. Parents can offer valuable feedback to clinicians regarding the type and quality of …

Determining The Differences In Hurricane Perception And Evacuation Behavior In The Elderly Of South Carolina, Gregg C. Bowser

Theses and Dissertations

The United States is becoming a "grayer" nation. U.S. Administration of Aging projections indicate that by 2030 nearly 20 percent of the national population will be aged 65 or older, with a significant portion of this growth occurring along the hurricane-prone Atlantic and Gulf coasts. This demographic shift creates new challenges for emergency management. Previous research shows that the elderly do not perceive risks and warnings the same way as other groups, and as a result may react differently to risk. Disproportionately high fatality rates for the elderly in recent disasters indicate that these differences are a key determinant of …

Functional Block Copolymers For Applications In Advanced Materials, Energy Storage, And Lithography, Christopher George Hardy

Theses and Dissertations

Block copolymers spontaneously self-assembly into a wide variety of ordered nanostructures on the length scale of 5 - 100 nm due to the thermodynamic immiscibility between the covalently linked, chemically distinct polymer chains. Incorporating desirable functional groups into block copolymer systems can lead to confinement of the functional group to a specific domain upon microphase separation of the block copolymer. The resulting materials display desirable characteristics of the functional group in a well-ordered nanostructure. Such systems have been utilized in a wide variety of applications including catalysis, ceramic materials, and membranes. This dissertation is focused on the synthesis, characterization, self-assembly …

Social Media, A New Revolution In The Field Of Marketing: The Effect Of Information Sharing, Peer Pressure, Entertainment And Emotional Connection On The Attitude Towards The Brand And In Turn The Purchase Intention From The Brand, Sradha Narendra Sheth

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media has today become one of the fastest and strongest networking and communication tools. Companies realizing the importance of this new marketing revolution have also ventured into the world of social media. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social media marketing on user's attitude towards the brand present on social media and their purchase intentions from the brand. The relevance of this study will provide great insights to retailers with regard to using multiple social media sites and their features to successfully market their products, retain and grow their customer base.

Environmental Effects On Mechanical And Thermal Behaviors Of Zinc Oxide Nanobelts And Dispersion Of Carbon Nanostructures, Yingchao Yang

Theses and Dissertations

One-dimensional (1-D) nanostructures, such as nanowires, nanobelts, and nanotubes of different materials, have significant applications as nanoscale interconnects and active/functional components of electronic and optoelectronic devices, sensors, actuators, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), and energy generation/conversion systems. The thermal and mechanical stabilities of those nanodevices and nanoenabled energy systems are of both theoretical and practical interests. Thermodynamic properties of nanomaterials are different from those of bulk materials. As the size of a solid particle reduces to the nanometer scale, the surface-to-volume ratio increases and the melting temperature may remarkably decrease. The functionality and/or reliability of those nanodevices and nanoenabled energy systems are …

Multi-Physicochemical Modeling Of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells And Electrolyzer Cells, Yuanyuan Xie

Theses and Dissertations

Multi-physicochemical models are developed for solid oxide fuel cells and electrolysis cells. The models describe the complicated transport processes of charge (electron/ion) conservation, mass/species conservation, momentum conservation, and energy conservation. Transport processes are coherently coupled with chemical reforming processes, surface elementary reaction processes, as well as electro-oxidation processes of both hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The models are validated with experimental data and utilized for fundamental mechanism studies of SOFCs fueled with different type of fuels, such as hydrogen, hydrocarbon, e.g., methane, H2S, and their mixtures. The fundamental mechanisms associated with syngas generation using electrolysis cell are also extensively investigated using …

A Teacher's Perceptions Of Inquiry: Where Inquiry Experiences, Beliefs And Practice Intersect, Michelle Avila Vanderburg

Theses and Dissertations

Linda Darling-Hammond (2008), a member of President Obama's education transition team, published a collection of chapters, each written by prominent researchers in the field of education. Throughout this compilation, the idea of using inquiry in the classroom was heralded again and again. Darling-Hammond argued for the "implementation of inquiry-based curriculum that engages children in extended, constructive work, often in collaborative groups, and subsequently demands a good deal of self-regulated inquiry" (p. 13). Significant in Darling-Hammond's message was that educators need to provide students with experiences that allow them to become inquirers who can construct their own knowledge. However, while the …

An Investigation Into The Influence Of Dietary Saturated Fat And Quercetin Supplementation On Adiposity, Macrophage Behavior, Inflammation, And Non-Alcoholic Fatty-Liver Disease, Reilly Enos

Theses and Dissertations

The overall objective of this dissertation was to examine the degree to which manipulation of the saturated fat content of a high-fat diet influenced obesity-related outcomes as well as to see if the naturally-occurring flavonoid, quercetin, could attenuate the resulting obesity and related metabolic and inflammatory side effects. Specifically, these studies examined 1) the influential role of saturated fat on macrophage function, inflammation, and other obesity-related comorbidities, including non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease, and 2) the potential benefits of quercetin supplementation. Overall, results from these studies suggest that adiposity, macrophage behavior, inflammation, insulin resistance, and non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease progression can be greatly …

Syntactic And Semantic Interoperability Among Hydrologic Models, Mostafa Mohamed Elag

Theses and Dissertations

Development of integrated hydrologic models requires coupling of multidisciplinary, independent models and collaboration between different scientific communities. Component-based modeling provides an approach for the integration of models from different disciplines. A key advantage of component-based modeling is that it allows components to be created, tested, reused, extended, and maintained by a large group of model developers and end users. One significant challenge that must be addressed in creating an integrated hydrologic model using a component-based approach is enhancing the interoperability of components between different modeling communities and frameworks. The major goal of this work is to advance the integration of …

Characterization Of The Role Of Fro6 In Metal Homeostasis In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Margo Ellen Maynes

Theses and Dissertations

Iron deficiency is the most common human nutritional disorder in the world today, affecting approximately 2 billon people worldwide, almost a third of the world's population. For most of the world's population, plant foods serve as the major source of dietary iron. One approach that may contribute towards the solution of iron deficiency is the development of crop plants that contain higher levels of bioavailable iron. This project focuses on FRO6, a ferric chelate reductase in Arabidopsis thaliana that is thought to reduce apoplastic iron for transport across the plasma membrane in leaf cells. We hypothesize therefore that FRO6 controls …

Environmental Pre-Conditioning Of Bacterial Populations And Communities To Extreme Acidity, Gabriel Joseph Swenson

Theses and Dissertations

The ability of opportunistic enteric pathogens to cause disease is effected by their ability to survive the variable and lethal acidity of the mammalian host gastrointestinal milieu. In many of these pathogens, survival is conferred by an acid stress response (ASR). ASR is elicited when bacterial cells are pre-conditioned in sub-lethal acidity (pH 4-6) which induces rapid biochemical and physiological modifications and facilitates survival when extreme acidity (pH 1-3) is encountered. In Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of the diarrheal disease Cholera, ASR was initially investigated in an effort to determine how this ubiquitous aquatic bacterium is capable of causing …

Gelation Characteristics And Osteogenic Differentiation Of Stromal Cells In Inert Hydrolytically Degradable Micellar Polyethylene Glycol Hydrogels, Danial Barati

Theses and Dissertations

The use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogels in tissue engineering is limited by their persistence in the site of regeneration. In an attempt to produce degradable PEG-based hydrogels while preserving the unique properties of PEG, linear (LPELA) and star (SPELA) poly(ethylene glycol-co-lactide) acrylate, star (SPEDA) poly(ethylene glycol-co-dioxanone), star (SPEGA) poly(ethylene glycol-co-glycolide) acrylate as the least hydrophobic and (SPECA) poly(ethylene glycol-co-caprolactone) as the most hydrophobic macromonomers with short hydrophobic segments were synthesized. The hydrogels were characterized with respect to gelation time, modulus, water content, sol fraction, degradation, and osteogenic differentiation of encapsulated marrow stromal cells (MSCs). Chain extension of PEG with …

The Effect Of Bi-Polar Plate And Membrane Materials On Water Transport In Pemfcs, Visarn Lilavivat

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of liquid water transport and removal in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) as affected by different membranes and the geometry and surface roughness of bipolar plates on is presented. Four topics are considered. First, the channel dimension and shape of various flow fields have been shown to affect the cell performance and the uniformity in the distributions of current. Typical variations in the channel width, height, and undercut that may occur with manufactured metal plates are studied. These sample-to-sample variations and distributions are studied and compared with laboratory-scale graphite plates. The goal of the work is to …

Literacy Crisis, Technology, And The Radical Reversal Of Power, Erin Michelle Cromer

Theses and Dissertations

As new media is changing the way individuals communicate, efforts have already been made within universities to, once again, construct new literacy standards in the digital age, producing the appearance of a literacy crisis. I argue that rather than producing another literacy crisis, the fundamental reversal of the power structure concerning who dominates standard literacy places greater expectations on composition scholars and practitioners--rather than students--ultimately providing the conditions of possibility for using power productively to imagine a new pedagogy of rhetorical dexterity that reverses the role of expectations from standards to invention. Such a pedagogy offers rhetoric and composition a …

A Veterinary Science Initiative: An Analysis Of Impact And Future Directions For Humane Education And Collaborative Partnerships, Brittany Watson Tisa

Theses and Dissertations

Humane education research is limited in its scope and structure and this has led to its inability to find a place in standard curriculum. As resources become scarcer for school districts and shelters, proving efficacy of programs is essential for successful partnerships and program achievements. VSI: Veterinary Science Initiative is a program developed by the education team at the Charleston Animal Society as a model for cooperative education between shelters, veterinarians, and other private organizations to collaborate with local school districts, while also conducting research about how this curriculum benefits student knowledge, organizational awareness, and community engagement.

Dislocation Reduction In Silicon Doped High Aluminum Content Algan Layers For Deep Uv Optoelectronic Devices, Hung-Chi Chen

Theses and Dissertations

III-Nitride based deep ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LEDs) are prospective candidates to replace the conventional bulky, expensive and environmentally harmful mercury lamp as new UV light sources, used in the applications of water and air purification, germicidal and biomedical instrumentation systems, etc. Due to the lack of native substrates and poor carrier injection, AlGaN-based deep UV LED is suffering from low optical power and low overall efficiency, which prevents the availability of low cost, high efficiency deep UV LED on the market.

This dissertation is focused on improving the efficiency of deep UV LEDs, by improving the base template …

Ulysses In The Age Of Digital Remediation, Melissa Hart Higgins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an in-depth study of the implications of digital technologies and information literacy for the reading and scholarly study of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Because the reading experience of Ulysses depends heavily on both its physicality and the interaction of the reader with the text, the changes in reading practices and scholarly study brought about by digital adaptations and hypermediations of this novel can offer new modes of understanding and characterizing readers relationships with text, as well as how the readers' digital interactions with Ulysses might engender or inhibit potential interpretations.

Each of the three chapters in this …

Going Hard, Going Easy, Going Home: Death And Dying In 20th Century African American Literature, Chayah Amayala Stoneberg-Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation answers the question: How can art represent the essential human experience of death, particularly when the creative context is one of extreme violence? And, what can be learned about the risks and rewards of the living's relationship with the dead by way of these artistic representations? Further, how do these aesthetic renderings of death construct the ethics of life for survivors? In the case of African America, discussion of, and responses to, these questions have been primarily explored in novelist and creative writing. This dissertation examines these novelistic treatments of death-tropes, or thanatropes in eight novels written by …

An Essay On Musical Narrative Theory And Its Role In Interpretation, With Analyses Of Works For Saxophone By Alfred Desenclos And John Harbison, Ian Macdonald Jeffress

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the field of semiotics has increasingly been applied to musicology, with particular attention paid to the area of narrative theory. This study will provide an introduction to the essential concepts of semiotics and narrative theory, the development of a methodology of narrative analysis with examples from the saxophone repertoire, and the application of that analytical approach to Alfred Desenclos' Prélude, Cadence, et Finale and John Harbison's San Antonio. The goal of this study will be the demonstration of narrative theory's applicability to a variety of styles pertinent to the concert saxophone repertoire. It is hoped that this …

Plant Virus Based Materials For Cell Alignment And Differentiation, Elizabeth Balizan

Theses and Dissertations

This research focused on developing and using plant virus based scaffolds to understand substrate control over cell alignment and differentiation. The first part of this work centered on development of virus based patterns that were then used to align and elongate aortic smooth muscle cells (SMCs). Virus patterns were generated in capillary tubes via a simple drying method. Three experimental parameters were used to control pattern formation: (1) protein concentration, (2) salt concentration, and (3) hydrophobicity of the pre-deposition surface. By controlling these parameters several aspects of the final virus patterns were controlled. First, virus orientation was controlled. Patterns were …

Putting Place Back Into Displacement: Reevaluating Diaspora In The Contemporary Literature Of Migration, Christiane Brigitte Steckenbiller

Theses and Dissertations

In order to improve the engineering properties of soft soils, materials, such as cement and fiber, can be introduced to the soil mass. Currently, design criterion for a cement-soil mixture requires only the measurement of unconfined compressive strength. This simple measurement may not be adequate to describe the behavior that results from differing field loading conditions. A series of consolidation tests and unconfined compression tests were conducted with special attention being paid to the effects of curing time and vertical curing stress. It is shown that the introduction of cement into soft soils results in decreased compressibility and increased unconfined …

Renew, Reuse, Recycle: One University’S Multi-Front War On The High Cost Of Textbooks, Ann Agee, Christina Mune

Faculty and Staff Publications

The rising price of tuition and books is pricing some students out of the market for college. While struggles for affordable tuition take place in state legislatures, universities are taking the movement for affordable classroom materials into their own hands. Seven out of ten students forgo required textbooks due to cost (Redden, 2011). This creates inequality in the classroom as economic privilege determines access to necessary learning materials. To counteract this trend, the California State University system began the Affordable Learning Solutions initiative, designed to encourage faculty to adopt low-cost classroom materials. San Jose State University implemented this initiative on …

Media Literacy, David Kamerer

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Emergency Nurses' Knowledge, Attitudes And Preventive Practices Regarding Firearms And Firearm Injury Prevention For Children, Dorothy Ann Gomez

Dissertations

In 2010, there were 134 deaths attributed to unintentional firearm injuries of children under 19 year and 3,019 nonfatal injuries (CDC, 2011). Nurses are expected to identify potential dangers in the community and protect those at risk. It was found that there is limited research on the effectiveness of current firearm injury prevention practices of nurses. The study was designed to examine the knowledge, attitudes and practice characteristics of Emergency Nurses toward firearm prevention practices. A convenience sample of 189 emergency nurses completed a voluntary, anonymous survey on practices regarding childhood gun safety. Seventy-one percent of respondents agreed that firearm …

A Grounded Theory Of How Jewish Experiential Education Impacts The Identity Development Of Jewish Emerging Adults, Scott Turberg Aaron

Dissertations

The Jewish community has increasingly relied upon Experiential Education as a pedagogical approach to instilling Jewish identity and communal affiliation over the past twenty years. The Experiential Education format of travel programs has specifically been emphasized and promoted for Jewish Emerging Adults for this purpose, and outcome studies of these trip programs have demonstrated success in instilling identification and affiliation with both the Jewish community and the state of Israel among their participants. However, little is actually empirically known about the processes that impact the participant during the trip experience - the so-called "black box" - or how significant a …