Digital Commons Network^™

Working With Families To Promote Safe Sleep For Infants 0-12 Months Of Age, Registered Nurses' Association Of Ontario

General Submissions: Community and Population-based Materials

This guideline has been developed to address the question of how health-care providers can partner with families to promote safe sleep for infants 0-12 months of age to reduce known risk factors for injury and death. It provides evidence-based recommendations for nurses and the interprofessional teamG who provide care, in all health-care settings, to parents/caregivers and families of infants. This guideline is intended to be applicable to all nursing domains, including clinical, administration, and education.

Achieving Cultural Competency With Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender (Lgbt) Patients Through Application Of Carper's Fundamental Patterns Of Knowing In Nursing, Joseph R. Giancola

General Submissions: Community and Population-based Materials

Vulnerable groups with respect to health care are those susceptible to heightened adverse physical, psychological, or sociological health because of their particular status within society (De Chesnay & Anderson, 2008). Nurses and other health care professionals who work with non-institutionalized patients regularly provide care for members of vulnerable groups (Bailey, 2010). "Vulnerable populations include individuals living in poverty, those having immigrant status, people of color, and people who are marginalized by their sexual preference and/or religion" (Bailey, 2010, p. 55).

Isncc Tobacco Position Statement, International Society Of Nurses In Cancer Care

General Submissions: Organizations - Position Statements, White and Resource Papers

The International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (ISNCC) published a position statement on tobacco control in July 2014. ISNCC believes that prevention of tobacco use, prevention of exposure to second hand smoke, assessment of nicotine dependency and support for smoking cessation are valuable approaches for nurses in order to decrease tobacco-related health problems. Furthermore, ISNCC is committed to maximizing the potential that nurses, the largest group of healthcare professionals, have in reducing adult and youth tobacco use, promoting cessation, actively protecting all people against exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke, and helping to increase access to tobacco use prevention and …

Assessing Ecological Condition Of Large Landscapes With Limited Human Impacts, William James Kleindl

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Our ability to measure global climate change has generated dire predictions in global ecosystem conditions. These predictions have inspired efforts to develop assessment metrics that examine alterations in ecological condition resulting from climate dynamics. As climate change drives future watershed- or regional-scale assessment model development, many questions will need to be addressed concerning potential tool constraints. Chief among these will be: to what degree is ecosystem condition affected by anthropogenic disturbance, climate-driven disturbance or natural variability, both individually and in combination? As a first step toward assessing impacts on ecological condition resulting from climate driven spatial or temporal disturbance gradients, …

Service-Learning As A Way Of Developing Pre-Service Teachers’ Knowledge, Perceptions, And Cultural Awareness Of Aboriginal Education, Glenda Cain

Theses

This research explored service-learning as a way of developing pre-service teachers’ pedagogical literacy skills and cultural perceptions with regard to Aboriginal education through involvement in an Aboriginal educational setting. The purpose was for pre-service teachers to gain a better understanding of Aboriginal education whilst developing their own literacy knowledge and instructional skills. Service-learning was the teaching method chosen as it involves experiential learning with structured opportunities for critical thinking and reflection.

A qualitative approach was favoured whereby investigations occurred in a naturalistic setting. As such, the direct experiences of pre-service teachers formed the basis of data gathering and analysis. Field …

Multiple Intelligences And Therapeutic Alliances: Counsellors' Experiences Of Incorporating A Multiple Intelligence Approach To Counselling, Mark Pearson

Theses

Counselling clients display many ways of reflecting and communicating within therapy. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI), while applied widely in the field of education, has only recently been applied to the field of counselling, and has the potential to support flexible responses to client’s different styles. In this study, counsellor experiences with introducing a MI approach to counselling are investigated. A focus on the impact of MI on therapeutic alliances is highlighted as therapeutic connection has been shown to contribute significantly to positive therapy outcomes. Recent research highlights the positive impact from modifying treatment in response to individual client …

Molecular Markers Of Weight Loss In Sleeve Gastrectomy Patients: A Prospective Cohort Study, Tamara C. Preda

Theses

Background:

Obesity is a polymorphic chronic disease that has reached epidemic proportions. Bariatric surgery including sleeve gastrectomy (SG) has an increasingly important role in long-term management of these patients. The molecular mechanisms post SG are complex and not fully understood.

Aims:

The primary study aim is to investigate the hormonal mechanisms by which SG effects weight loss and related health benefits by examining the association between SG weight loss and biochemical/hormone levels. A secondary aim was to assess the improvements in obesity related chronic disease states following SG.

Methods:

We conducted a prospective cohort study of obese patients undergoing SG …

Practice-Led Theology Or Thinking Theology Through Practice, Neil Ferguson

Theses

Following a series of economic and political changes beginning in the late 1980s, art/design schools and performing arts academies were incorporated into the university system. The disciplines these schools offered were then faced with the requirement to justify some of what they did as academic research.

As a result, a new methodology was developed called practice‐led research. This methodology has two key foundations. The first is the recognition that artistic practice is a site of academic research and the second is that the results of that practice–the creative output–are a legitimate carrier of knowledge. Practice‐led research recognises the validity of …

The Role Of Values Education In Primary School Bullying Prevention And Mediation, Janine Brown

Theses

This study explores the incidence and implications of bullying in primary school and the beliefs parents and educators share about the explicit application of a values based approach to bullying interventions and mediations. Interviews and focus group discussions explored current anti-bullying practices employed by teachers and principals. The study also examined specific values perceived to be relevant by parents and educators, in the endeavour to successfully resolve the growing incidence of bullying conflict situations and the serious implications for both victims and bullies.

Individual interviews and focus group discussions were administered in three Catholic systemic primary schools to a sample …

Developing Tomorrow's School Leaders: The Western Australian Catholic Education Aspiring Principals Program, Shane A. Glasson

Theses

The Aspiring Principals Program is a two-year principal preparation program convened by the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia. The program targets selected primary school assistant principals and secondary school deputy principals aspiring to principalship of Western Australian Catholic schools. The eight aspirants who commenced the program in January 2011 and graduated in December 2012 participated in the research. The purpose of the research was to explore aspirant perceptions of Catholic principalship before, during and upon completion of the program together with the influences provoking discernible perception changes. Specifically, four aspirant perceptions were explored by the research: Catholic principalship role …

The Same But Different: How People With A Partial Capacity To Work Are Governed In Recent Policy Changes To The Australian Income Support System And The National Disability Insurance Scheme, L St Guillaume

Theses

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Relationship Between Self-Advocacy Skills And College Freshmen First Semester Grade Point Average For Students With Disabilities, Lee A. Barnett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study was important in evaluating the relationship between self-advocacy skill and college freshman Grade Point Average (GPA) in Montana for students with disabilities. Research in this area was found to be incomplete and limited. The purpose of this study was to discover if there are inadequacies in students with disabilities preparation for higher education as per self-advocacy skills and how they related to GPA Individuals considered to have a disability in secondary education may be deemed ineligible for services and supports as adults. Secondary and post-secondary institutions rarely collaborated to establish consistent standards. The contrast between the relatively high …

The Effect Of Fluoxetine On Self-Control In Betta Splendens, Kathryn Gwen Lamp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The present study examined the effect of fluoxetine on self-control in Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens). The subjects included 17 male Betta splendens that were exposed to varying levels of fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that increases levels of serotonin, and instrumental choice trials were run. A subject began each trial in the start box and, when a guillotine divider door was lifted, entered one side of a divided goal box. The checkerboard side of the choice door represented either the smaller-sooner choice (SS) or the larger-later choice (LL). When the subject had entered one side of the goal …

Examining The Effectiveness Of The Circle Of Security Parenting Dvd Program, Whitney Rostad

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Child maltreatment continues to occur at alarming rates, and while several interventions currently exist for use with parents to minimize the incidence of child maltreatment (Daro & McCurdy, 2007), many can be time consuming for service providers and consumers. One program, the Circle of Security (COS), lasts 20 weeks with weekly sessions lasting approximately 2 hours each (Marvin, Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell, 2002). To make the program more accessible, the program’s originators modified it into a DVD protocol comprising only 8- weeks (Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell, 2009). The current study evaluated the effectiveness of the COS DVD program in improving …

Front Matter

Michigan Journal of Public Health

No abstract provided.

Health Service Use And Expenditure Patterns Of Dual Eligibles In Michigan, Cristian Meghea, William Corser, Qi Zhu

Michigan Journal of Public Health

Objective: The objective is to provide a statewide population-based comparison of Michigan beneficiaries dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid (duals) to Medicare-only beneficiaries, including the public health expenditures by service type, and to focus on the LTC service use patterns of elderly duals receiving care in various settings. Data Sources: Data sources were linked 2005 and 2006 individual Medicaid and Medicare claims from all Michigan duals. Methods: CMS provided Medicare claims and beneficiary data. Michigan Department of Community Health provided Medicaid claims data. Design: We compared characteristics and health expenditures across various categories of beneficiaries and LTC care settings. Principal …

Expressed Best Communication Practices At Television Station X, James Keith

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

American news organizations are evolving as new technologies emerge and alter the way information is reported. The same electronic tools that help connect television news providers with their audiences are being utilized internally between managers and employees. Using an electronic survey, face-to-face interviews, and ethnographic based observations, this study set out to determine best perceived communication practices in a television news environment. The research subjects were all employees at one San Antonio television station that for the sake of anonymity is referred to as Station X. Participants were asked their preferred means of communication for resolving conflict or addressing issues …

The Benefits And Detriments Of Non-Profit Organization Work In Underdeveloped Countries Across Africa, Collyn Mccarty

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Bandwidth Aggregation Across Multiple Smartphone Devices, Bradley R. Zeller

Master's Theses

Smartphones now account for the majority of all cell phones in use today [23]. Ubiquitous Internet access is a valuable feature offered by these devices and the vast majority of smartphone applications make use of the Internet in one way or another. However, the bandwidth offered by these cellular networks is often much lower than we typically experience on our standard home networks, leading to a less-than-optimal user experience. This makes it very challenging and frustrating to access certain types of web content such as video streaming, large file downloads, loading large webpages, etc.

Given that most modern smartphones are …

Effect Of Increased Temperature And Decreased Food Quality On Metabolism And Growth Of An Algivorous Cichlid, Tropheus Duboisi And Effect Of Food Habit On The Field Metabolism Of African Cichlids., Lesley Yu-Jung Kim

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The metabolic rate of an organism is influenced by mass, temperature, and diet. Climate change is anticipated to increase ambient temperatures of aquatic systems and decrease the quality of food available to algivorous fish. We conducted a lab experiment and a field study to quantify the influence that temperature and diet have on standard and field metabolic rate of cichlids from Lake Tanganyika. The lab experiment demonstrated the effects of increased temperature and decreased food quality on the relative growth rate (RGR) and standard metabolic rate of an algivorous cichlid, Tropheus duboisi. We found that in all temperature treatments fish …

Chemosensitive Neurons Of The Locus Coeruleus And The Nucleus Tractus Solitarius: Three Dimensional Morphology And Association With The Vasculature, Cathy D. Graham

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

We studied the 3 dimensional structure of LC and cNTS neurons from neonatal rats. Neurons were identified as either chemosensitive or nonchemosensitive based on their firing rate response to hypercapnia, using whole-cell patch clamping and were passively loaded with Lucifer Yellow. The identified, loaded neurons were reconstructed and analyzed using Neurolucida Neuron Tracing Software. Chemosensitive LC neurons have less rounded soma than nonchemosensitive neurons, and they have dendrites arising from two poles to produce a fusiform appearance. The dendritic branches extend a greater distance from the soma of chemosensitive than nonchemosensitive neurons. Conversely, chemosensitive cNTS neurons were found to have …

A Sers-Based Investigation Of The Molecular Interaction Between Natural Organic Matter And Colloidal Silver Nanoparticles In Porous Media, Jessica L. Fraley

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The significant presence of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in numerous consumer products and various applications of today’s society raises major concerns with respect to their release into the environment. Because groundwater represents an important transport pathway from contamination sources to human and environmental receptors, it is critical to understand how natural organic matter (NOM), a main component of groundwater, interacts with colloidal AgNPs and influences their stability and mobility. Thus, this study uses Raman and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to examine the possible molecular interactions between widely-used Creighton AgNPs (11 mg L-1) and NOM (0-160.0 mg L-1 of humic and fulvic …

Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Activity Of Phospholipase D2 And Its Regulation, Madhupriya Mahankali

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Phospholipase D2 (PLD2) is a cell membrane lipase that catalyzes the break down of phosphatidyl choline (PC) to phosphatidic acid (PA) and choline. PA is one of the major lipid second messengers that modulate a wide variety of signaling pathways, which are crucial for various cellular functions. In addition to this, PLD2 via binding to a large number of proteins and thereby regulates them independent of its lipase activity. Whereas PLD2 is involved in plethora of cellular functions, high levels of protein and/or activity of PLD2 are reported in variety of disease conditions, such as cancer metastasis and chronic inflammation …

A Probabilistic Technique For Open Set Recognition Using Support Vector Machines, Matthew Scherreik

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Classification algorithms trained using finite sets of target and confuser data are limited by the training set. These algorithms are trained under closed set assumptions and do not account for the infinite universe of confusers found in practice. In contrast, classification algorithms developed under open set assumptions label inputs not present in the training data as unknown instead of assigning the most likely class. We present an approach to open set recognition, the probabilistic open set SVM, that utilizes class posterior estimates to determine probability thresholds for classification. This is accomplished by first training an SVM in a 1-vs-all configuration …

Hierarchical Modulation Detection Of Underwater Acoustic Communication Signals Through Maximum Likelihood Combining, Josh Sanderson

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Modulation detection is important to many communication applications. Much research has been done in this area for radio frequency (RF) signals, but until recently little has carried over to the underwater communication world. Traditional methods include the use of fourth order cumulants or second order cyclostationary features to determine the modulation scheme being used. Many of these methods fail due to the complex and varying nature of the underwater channel. This thesis proposes a new form of hierarchy modulation detection for underwater acoustic communication signals using maximum likelihood combining. The proposed method for hierarchical modulation detection for this research is …

In Situ Measurement Of Mercury Ecotoxicological Effects On Stream Periphyton In Southwest Ohio, Jaclyn Elizabeth Klaus

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Periphyton are of ecological importance because of their critical role at the base of aquatic food webs as primary producers and as a significant source of energy to higher trophic levels in many stream ecosystems. This study examined the toxicity of mercury (Hg) to fluvial periphyton with in situ chemical exposure substrates. Two endpoints were used to measure toxicity of either total Hg or monomethylmercury (MMHg) to periphyton: periphyton biomass and metabolic activity, as a function of Hg concentrations in either periphyton or their exposure to the contaminants from two contrasting sediment types, a low-organic, sandy sediment type (SC) and …

The Curing And Degradation Kinetics Of Epdm Rubber, Robert J. Wehrle

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Ethylene-propylene-diene (EPDM) rubbers containing varying amounts of diene were cured with sulfur using either a moving die rheometer (MDR) or a rubber process analyzer (RPA). The effect of removing curatives and how the curing reaction changed was explored. Kinetic data was extracted from the rheology plots and reaction rate constants were determined by two separate ways: manually choosing points of interest or by a computer model.

Mining And Understanding Regret Tweets, Lu Zhou

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Inappropriate tweets may cause severe damages on the authors' reputation or privacy. However, many users do not realize until publishing them after a while. Once published, such tweets have lasting effects that may not be completely eliminated by simple deletion, because other users may have read them or third-party tweet analysis platforms have cached them. In this paper, we study the problem of identifying regret tweets for normal individual users, with the ultimate goal to reduce the occurrences of regret tweets. We develop a machine learning approach to extract a large collection of regret tweets from noisy deleted tweets. We …

Java Implementation Of Grounded Circumscription For Owl, Ali Akhavan Karbasi

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The semantic web is a new development in the World Wide Web (WWW) supporting machine-readable and machine-understandable data in order to add the "understanding" aspect to current capabilities. This technology involves the use of semantic reasoners, which are software that can infer logical consequences from a set of facts or axioms. Inference can be done in different ways, e.g. based on what is called the open world assumption in which what is not known to be true is simply unknown, and its closed world assumption opposite, which considers what is not known to be true as false. Each of these …

Amyna: A Security Generator And Performance Estimator Framework Against Memory-Based Attacks, Anna Trikalinou

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

As we become more and more dependent on computer networks, using them for everything from banking and investing to shopping and communicating, computer security has emerged to be an increasingly important concern, due to undesirable cyber-security attacks. Thus, in response to this issue many efforts have been made towards accurate and robust computer security protection; however, the general problem is very challenging, diverse and ever-changing and remains still open. In this PhD dissertation we offer protection on one of these cyber-security attacks, the memory-based attacks, caused by one of the most critical software errors according to the MITRE ranking. When …