Digital Commons Network^™

Unsettle Me, Lanie King Anderson

Honors Theses

This book is about my journey of faith in Jesus Christ during my undergraduate studies at the University of Mississippi. I read memoirs about others' spiritual journeys and studied their writing styles and storytelling methods before beginning my own memoir about my moments of spiritual unsettledness in school. I am convinced that the college experience, if whole-heartedly embraced, changes people. As a student, I have grown personally, cognitively, socially, and culturally in four years, such a short time for such change and growth. But I have especially grown spiritually because of my experiences in college. Questions have arisen about my …

High-Resolution Event-Based Data At Diamond Interchanges: Performance Measures And Optimizing Ring Displacement, Alexander M. Hainen, Amanda L. Stevens, Richard S. Freije, Christopher M. Day, James R. Sturdevant, Darcy M. Bullock

Lyles School of Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of The K-12 Black-White Achievement Gap In Mississippi, Timothy O. Abram Ii

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the disparities in educational outcomes of black and white students throughout the state of Mississippi and investigates the steps that other states have taken to close the black-white achievement gap. White students outperform black students in every single measure of academic output, specifically the proficiency and passing rate on the state standardized test, the Mississippi Curriculum Test, the four subject area test (Algebra I, US History, Biology I, and English II), graduation and dropout rates, and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) examinations. This research focuses on the historical environment which produced the current educational inequities …

Statistical Discourse Analysis: A Method For Modeling Online Discussion Processes, Ming Ming Chiu

Department of Educational Studies Faculty Publications

Online forums (synchronous and asynchronous) offer exciting data opportunities to analyze how people influence one another through their interactions. However, researchers must address several analytic difficulties involving the data (missing values, nested structure [messages within topics], non‐sequential messages), outcome variables (discrete outcomes, rare instances, multiple outcome variables, similarities among nearby messages), and explanatory variables (sequences of explanatory variables, indirect mediation effects, false positives, and robustness of results). We explicate a method that addresses these difficulties (Statistical Discourse Analysis or SDA) and illustrate it on 1,330 asynchronous messages written and selfcoded by 17 students during a 13‐week online educational technology course. …

On Harmonic Vibrational Frequency Convergence To The Complete Basis Set Limit In Water Dimers And Hydrogen Fluoride Dimers, Amanda Hardwick

Honors Theses

This work focuses on the convergence of harmonic vibrational frequencies in the water dimer (H2O)2 and the hydrogen fluoride dimer (HF)2 to the complete basis set (CBS) limit. It also evaluates the effect of counterpoise (CP) correction procedures and the effect of sequentially removing diffuse functions from specific basis sets on the harmonic vibrational frequencies of these dimers. Computations were run using second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) with large, flexible correlation consistent basis sets. This research aims to determine if removing diffuse functions can increase the speed of harmonic vibrational frequency computations without sacrificing accuracy. Results indicate that CP-correction procedures …

The Effects Of Population Disbursement, Percentage Of Medicare Beneficiaries, And Per Capita Income On Medicare Fee Schedule Prices, Ann Marie Mercier

Honors Theses

The thesis is an overview of the existing pay disparity in the fee-for-service billing amounts for professional medical services provided by physicians to Medicare patients in the United States. Will improvements in the per capita income, percentage of Medicare participants, or change in the population disbursement result in higher Medicare fee-for-service billing amounts for healthcare providers? Mississippi has one of the fewest primary care physicians per capita rates than any other state. One reason may be the Medicare fee-for-service prices paid to physicians. This paper will show Mississippi Medicare fee-for-service fee schedule prices for a sample of HCPCS codes compared …

Raman Spectroscopic And Computational Analysis Of The Effects Of Noncovalent Interactions On Dmso, Ashton T. Nicholson

Honors Theses

Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is a widely used chemical in synthetic chemistry and also has unique and important biological applications. In the pure liquid, DMSO forms chain like structures of alternating sulfur and oxygen atoms due to its high self-association. However, it is known that DMSO/water mixtures form solutions with unique physical characteristics depending on the mole ratio. For instance, at a 1:2 ratio of DMSO/water a eutectic mixture forms with a freezing point of-70 C. Vibrational spectroscopy allows us to study the effects of noncovalent interactions when water and DMSO interact in solution. Spectral shifts can be analyzed in order …

The Importance Of Formative Assessment In Science And Engineering Ethics Education: Some Evidence And Practical Advice, Matthew W. Keefer, Sara E. Wilson, Harry Dankowicz, Michael C. Loui

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Recent research in ethics education shows a potentially problematic variation in content, curricular materials, and instruction. While ethics instruction is now widespread, studies have identified significant variation in both the goals and methods of ethics education, leaving researchers to conclude that many approaches may be inappropriately paired with goals that are unachievable. This paper speaks to these concerns by demonstrating the importance of aligning classroom-based assessments to clear ethical learning objectives in order to help students and instructors track their progress toward meeting those objectives. Two studies at two different universities demonstrate the usefulness of classroom-based, formative assessments for improving …

Development Of An Instrument To Assess Attitudes Toward Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (Stem), Tamara J. Moore, Selcen Guzey, Michael Harwell

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

There is a need for more students to be interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers to advance U.S. competitiveness and economic growth. A consensus exits that improving STEM education is necessary for motivating more students to pursue STEM careers. In this study, a survey to measure student (grades 4-6) attitudes toward STEM and STEM careers was developed and administered to 662 students from two STEM-focused and three comprehensive (non-STEM focused) schools. Cronbach’s alphas for the whole survey and subscales indicated a high internal consistency. Statistically significant difference in means between students attending the STEM-focused and comprehensive schools …

Synthesis Of An Unsymmetrical Ccc-Nhc Pincer Ligand Precursor, Brian Spurlock

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to synthesize a 3-butyl-1-(3-(3-butyl-1H-imidazol-3-ium-1-yl)phenyl)-4,5-dichloro-1H-imidazol-3-ium salt using an Ullmann-type copper coupling reaction. This salt would subsequently be metallated and evaluated for C-H bond activation and luminescence. However, NMR and MS spectra did not show evidence of conversion to the desired product under standard conditions so a model reaction was designed making use of recent findings concerning the Ullmann-type coupling of imidazoles to aryl halides. Specifically, an activated aryl halide with a larger leaving group was used with a more soluble base and a ligand for the copper. The desired product appears by ESI-MS to have …

In Another Day: The Historical And Cultural Relevance Of Gone With The Wind, Cody Rentz

Honors Theses

Although it was a massive success in its time and won a Pulitzer Prize, critics today tend to discard Gone with the Wind as a piece of low-quality, racist, historically inaccurate literature. However, the novel, through no intent of its author, parallels the Great Depression in many ways, a fact that likely contributed to its popularity. As such, the novel can be a useful tool in studying the culture of the 1930s. To study the cultural connections, I began by reading the novel, watching the film, and speculating as to the connections to Depression-era culture. I then researched the author, …

Dynamic Feature Extraction And User Classification Using Touchanalytics™, Clay Mcleod

Honors Theses

Security systems for modern computing devices suffer from a multitude of weaknesses that can render users helpless against an attack on their system. Various attempts at incorporating human characteristics into security systems have achieved varying levels of success in improving security. In this paper, we study the usefulness of TouchAnalytics™ - a second-level security system that attempts to authenticate a user based on touch-data gathered from an interaction with the device. Through the use of machine learning algorithms, we developed a system that is successful at au- thenticating users, achieving under 0.05% False Authentication Rate (FAR). We conclude that the …

Energy Drinks And Caffeine: The Science Behind The Billion- Dollar Industry, Eric Villarreal

Honors Theses

Ask any college student how he or she gets through long study sessions, all-nighters, and the always grueling finals week and he or she will most likely reference some caffeine-containing beverage as the antidote, with energy drinks becoming an ever increasing option. The effects, both physiological and psychological, of the ingredients in energy drinks (caffeine and, to a lesser degree, glucose) dictate their usefulness to consumers. A review of the available research literature from http://scholar.google.com using the following keywords: caffeine, energy drink, Red Bull, caffeinated beverage, caffeine drink, energy drink industry, energy drink company, and glucose yielded the references that …

Activating Actavis: Economic Issues In Applying The Rule Of Reason To Reverse Payment Settlements, Sumanth Addanki

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Interaction Between A Low-Iron Diet And Early-Life Methylmercury Exposure In Daphnia Pulex, Sherri Hudson

All ETDs from UAB

Methylmercury (MeHg) is a known neurotoxicant and bioaccumulates in fish, with exposure to humans in utero being of highest concern. Iron deficiency (ID) accounts for approximately 50% of anemia cases. Anemia is estimated to affect 1.62 billion people worldwide, and is particularly problematic during pregnancy and early life. Previous studies have shown that ID exacerbates toxicity associated with exposure to metals, including lead, manganese, and cadmium. The overall purpose of this thesis research is to investigate the interaction between a low-iron (Fe) diet and early-life exposure to MeHg in Daphnia pulex. I hypothesized when D. pulex are fed a low-Fe …

Development Of A High-Throughput Self-Interaction Chromatography System, David Johnson

All ETDs from UAB

The first recombinant human protein drug, insulin expressed in e.coli cells, was approved by the FDA in 1982. Since then, protein therapeutics have become the fastest growing segment of the pharmaceutical industry and include immunoglobulin-g (IgG) directed cancer and immune disorder treatments. A major difficulty to bring protein drugs to market is the requirement that they be concentrated up to 150 mg/ml without aggregation for efficacy in a small injection volume. One way to improve protein drug solubility is to include additives that reduce protein-protein attraction and increase protein-protein repulsion thereby preventing protein molecules from coming together to form aggregates. …

An Investigation Of Organizational Health And Student Achievement In Urban Title I Elementary Schools In Alabama, Lora Ann Johnson-Perry

All ETDs from UAB

pattern similar to that of sea turtles. The results indicate that daily water treatments

Damping Enhancement Of A Pneumatic Inflatable Structure, Gabriel D. Judd

All ETDs from UAB

In vehicles with stiff or no suspension systems, the pneumatic tires play a greater role in vibration control. The challenge is to find an approach that enhances vibratory damping in the tires without increasing the power losses due to rolling resistance effects. The goal of this thesis is to experimentally prove a novel concept of active damping within the tire while maintaining the rolling resistance found in a typical pneumatic tire. The pneumatic structure containing two chambers connected by orifices can enhance vibration damping using the force induced when air flows through the orifices. Passive damping is produced when a …

A Low-Power Multichannel Telemetry System For High-Speed Wireless Neural Recordings, Yang-Guo Li

All ETDs from UAB

The advances in microelectronics and wireless communication are going to change our lifestyles and benefit our healthcare system in the foreseeable future. New conception named "Ubiquitous Healthcare" has been proposed. It envisions a continuous, real-time, remote monitoring on the health conditions of people through the wireless communication network. Traditional biosignal monitoring devices need wire-connections for the recording, which may cause skin rupture and body infection. The physical connections also limited the number of the integrated recording channels. A low-power implantable multichannel telemetry system which can be implanted in the body and transmit recordings wirelessly can solve the problem of the …

L∞-Extremal Mappings In Amle And Teichmüller Theory, Luca Capogna

Mathematics Sciences: Faculty Publications

These lecture focus on two vector-valued extremal problems which have a common feature in that the corresponding energy functionals involve L ∞ norm of an energy density rather than the more familiar L p norms. Specifically, we will address (a) the problem of extremal quasiconformal mappings and (b) the problem of absolutely minimizing Lipschitz extensions.

The Role Of Ih In 4-Aminopyridine Induced Epileptiform Activity, Steven Patrick Palladino

All ETDs from UAB

significantly different from sex ratios of control groups produced at constant incubation

Ghosts I : A New Faint Very Isolated Dwarf Galaxy At D = 12 ± 2 Mpc., Antonela Monachesi, Eric F. Bell, David J. Radburn-Smith, Roelof S. De Jong, Jeremy Bailin, Julianne J. Dalcanton, Benne W. Holwerda, H. Alyson Ford, David Streich, Marija Vlajic, Daniel B. Zucker

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

We report the discovery of a new faint dwarf galaxy, GHOSTS I, using HST/ACS data from one of our GHOSTS (Galaxy Halos, Outer disks, Substructure, Thick disk, and Star clusters) fields. Its detected individual stars populate an approximately 1 mag range of its luminosity function (LF). Using synthetic color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) to compare with the galaxy’s CMD, we find that the colors and magnitudes of GHOSTS I’s individual stars are most consistent with being young helium-burning and asymptotic giant branch stars at a distance of ∼12±2 Mpc. Morphologically, GHOSTS I appears to be actively forming stars, so we tentatively classify …

Morphological Parameters Of A Spitzer Survey Of Stellar Structure In Galaxies., Benne W. Holwerda, J. C. Munoz-Mateos, S. Comeron, S. Meidt, K. Sheth, S. Laine, J. L. Hinz, M. W. Regan, A. Gil De Paz, K. Menendez-Delmestre, M. Seibert, T. Kim, T. Mizusawa, E. Laurikainen, H. Salo, J. Laine, D. A. Gadotti, D. Zaritsky, S. Erroz-Ferrer, L. C. Ho, J. H. Knapen, E. Athanassoula, A. Bosma, N. Pirzkal

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The morphology of galaxies can be quantified to some degree using a set of scale-invariant parameters. Concentration (C), asymmetry (A), smoothness (S), the Gini index (G), the relative contribution of the brightest pixels to the secondorder moment of the flux (M20), ellipticity (E), and the Gini index of the second-order moment (GM) have all been applied to morphologically classify galaxies at various wavelengths. Here, we present a catalog of these parameters for the Spitzer Survey of stellar structure in Galaxies, a volume-limited, near-infrared (NIR) imaging survey of nearby galaxies using the 3.6 and 4.5μm channels of the Infrared Array Camera …

Exploring Intrinsic Biomarkers For Optical Assessment Of Outer Retina, Rongwen Lu

All ETDs from UAB

The retina suffers pathological changes after attacked by eye diseases. The objective of my PhD dissertation is to explore intrinsic biomarkers for noninvasive assessment of retinal morphological structure and physiological function. Fundus autofluorescence (FAF), optical coherence tomography (OCT), etc. have provided indispensable information for eye disease detection. However, better understanding of the intrinsic biomarkers in FAF and OCT is desirable for quantitative interpretation of clinical outcomes. The first specific aim of the dissertation research was to characterize FAF signals across the whole retinal depth using two-photon excitation. FAF signals are usually attributable to fluorophores from the choroidal vessel and the …

The Inverse Volatility Problem For American Options, Ajay Mahato

All ETDs from UAB

The inverse problem of determining equity volatility from a knowledge of American option prices for a range of exercise prices and expirations is solved by minimization of a convex functional. This variational approach has distinct advantages over traditional least squares techniques in that, as the associated functional is convex, one typically has a unique global minimum, so that one is not concerned about the steepest descent minimization process "getting stuck" in spurious local minima. This is an enormous advantage numerically in difficult situations. We illustrate the method using examples drawn from recent market data.

Night Comes Early To The Valley, Caitlin Murphree Miller

All ETDs from UAB

Night Comes Early to the Valley is a collection of short stories about vulnerable, flawed people trying to discover the best way to live their lives. They are well-meaning mothers, fathers, children, and lovers, yet all struggle to balance the fulfillment of their personal responsibilities with the realization of their deepest individual desires. The collection highlights characters who are desperate to atone for their mistakes, build brighter futures, and live up to the expectations of their loved ones--only to realize, over time, that the most formidable judge they'll ever face is their own conscience.

The Classification Of V -Transverse Knots And Loose Legendrians, Patricia Cahn, Vladimir Chernov

Mathematics Sciences: Faculty Publications

We classify knots in a 3-manifold M that are transverse to a nowhere zero vector field V up to the corresponding isotopy relation. When V is the coorienting vector field of a contact structure, these knots are the same as pseudo-Legendrian knots, which were introduced by Benedetti and Petronio. We show that two loose Legendrian knots with the same overtwisted disk in their complement are Legendrian isotopic if and only if they are pseudoLegendrian isotopic.

V -transverse knots are naturally framed. We show that each framed isotopy class corresponds to infinitely many V -transverse isotopy classes whose elements are pairwise …

American Options And Semilinear Parabolic Partial Differential Equations In Weighted Sobolev Spaces., Terrence K. Muthoka

All ETDs from UAB

To value an American option as a function of time t and price of the underlying asset S is currently a major research problem in both Financial Markets and for academic purposes. Options and more general financial derivatives (also known as contingent claims) are now an important tool in risk management. One of the earliest models used in pricing derivatives is the Black-Scholes model, for which the movement in the price of the underlying asset on which the claim is based is modeled by geometric Brownian motion. Other models used for theoretical and numerical analysis of American options include the …

Quantum Computation Approach To Information Theoretic Modeling And Analysis Of Systems, Luai Najim

All ETDs from UAB

The modeling of systems has been addressed in the physical sciences from the perspective of Energy and matter. The 3rd original idea of Communication as a means of modeling systems has been established and applied. In this study, we apply the 3rd original idea of communication to systems on a quantum level. By marrying Shannon's noisy communication channel to Feynman QED and Quantum Computing, we realize a visual model for the representation of the entropy of a noisy communication channel on a quantum scale. We also use that visual representation concept to define a geometric view into the superposition of …

Valuation In Light Of Uncertainty: How Stock Option Pricing Models Can Inform More Accurate Valuation Discounts For Built-In Gains, Rebecca N. Morrow

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.