Digital Commons Network^™

Chronic Diseases, Neeraj Gupta

Indian Journal of Research in Homoeopathy

No abstract provided.

Computer Aided Brain Tumor Edge Extraction Using Morphological Operations, Warqaa Shaher Alazawee

Masters Theses

Detecting the precise boundary of the area containing a recognized brain tumor is a complex problem and must be addressed since it applies to many medical modalities and tumor types. The objective of this thesis is to provide an efficient algorithm for detecting edges of brain tumors to help neurosurgeons identify the border of the critical area and distinguish the precise margin of the tumor from the rest of the brain tissue during the surgery. This thesis work exploits MRI brain tumor images as a tool to aid surgeons. MRI image segmentation is an essential step as a preliminary process …

Petrological And Geochemical Evaluation Of The Sturgeon Falls Intrusive Body, Jonathan Michael Haynes

Masters Theses

The Sturgeon Falls Intrusive Body (SFIB) is a gabbroic intrusion located along the Michigan-Wisconsin border just south of the town of Norway, MI. The SFIB is bounded to the north by the Niagara Shear Zone and the Michigamme Formation (Schulz and Cannon, 2006) and to the south by an unnamed thrust fault zone and the Quinnesec Formation (Sims and Schulz, 1993). Field mapping has shown that the SFIB is composed almost entirely of metagabbro metamorphosed to greenschist facies, with isolated outcrops of clinopyroxenite, which are thought to be xenoliths.

The origin of the SFIB is controversial. Schulz and LeBerge (2003) …

An Integrated Framework For Cardiac Sounds Diagnosis, Zichun Tong

Masters Theses

The Phonocardiogram (PCG) signal contains valuable information about the cardiac condition and is a useful tool in recognizing dysfunction and heart failure. By analyzing the PCG, early detection and diagnosis of heart diseases can be accomplished since many pathological conditions of the cardiovascular system cause murmurs or abnormal heart sounds. This thesis presents an algorithm to classify normal and abnormal heart sound signals using PCG. The proposed analysis is based on a framework composed of several statistical signal analysis techniques such as wavelet based de-noising, energy-based segmentation, Hilbert-Huang transform based feature extraction, and Support Vector Machine based classification. The MATLAB …

Advanced Data Analysis Tools And Multi-Instrument Material Characterization, Bhupinder Singh

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on (i) the development of new analysis tools and methodologies for analyzing X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) data, and (ii) the comprehensive characterization of materials (nanodiamonds) using a multi-instrument approach. Chapter 1 contains (i) a discussion of the two techniques I focused on most in my work: XPS and ToF-SIMS, (ii) a discussion of the common chemometrics techniques used to analyze data from these methods, and (iii) the advantages/rationale behind the multi-instrument characterization of materials. Chapter 2 describes various good practices for obtaining reasonable peak fits in XPS, which can also …

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of Russian Word Order Patterns, Stephanie Kay Billings

Theses and Dissertations

Some scholars say that Russian syntax has free word order. However, other researchers claim that the basic word order of Russian is Subject, Verb, Object (SVO). Some researchers also assert that the use of different word orders may be influenced by various factors, including positions of discourse topic and focus, and register (spoken, fiction, academic, non-academic). In addition, corpora have been shown to be useful tools in gathering empirical linguistic data, and modern advances in computing have made corpora freely available and their use widespread. The Russian National Corpus is a large corpus of Russian that is widely used and …

Breaking Bad Law: Meth Lab Investigations Highlight Alaska's Current Approach To Privacy, Victoria Sheets

Alaska Law Review

The right to privacy explicitly provided by the Alaska Constitution has long been broadly interpreted—even protecting Alaskan citizens' right to personal home use and possession of marijuana. Though this right to privacy has been interpreted many times over the last few decades, Alaska currently lacks a coherent approach to application of its privacy laws. As the prevalence of methamphetamine production increases in homes across Alaska, the Alaskan courts' approach to privacy must be reevaluated in light of its delicate interaction with search and seizure policies surrounding methamphetamine labs.

Alaska And Vergara V. California: Evaluating The Constitutionality Of Teacher Tenure In Alaska, M. Rebecca Cooper

Alaska Law Review

In the summer of 2013, California's teacher tenure statutes were found to violate the equal protection clause of the state's Constitution. The statutes called for tenure to be granted after two years of teaching, contained significant due process protections in case of dismissal, and required that new hires be laid off before teachers with tenure. The group that brought the lawsuit, Students Matter, is considering filing lawsuits in other states. This Note examines Alaska's tenure statutes to assess the state's vulnerability to a copycat lawsuit. While most of Alaska's tenure statutes seem safe from challenge, the state should evaluate its …

Bowery Presents: South (Internship Report), Olivia Rose Alman

Arts Administration Master's Reports (1984-2016)

This internship report documents the for--‐profit concert promoter, Bowery Presents: South (Bowery South) and its New Orleans office. An overview of Bowery South and the duties and responsibilities of the internship, performed from January 2015 to June 2015, are detailed within this report. The report also provides an analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (S.W.O.T.), an examination of best practices in the concert promoting industry, and recommendations for the company based on the intern’s observations.

The Ogden Museum Of Southern Art: An Internship Report, Sara A. Beale

Arts Administration Master's Reports (1984-2016)

This internship report documents and outlines my time with the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, from January to May of 2015. It closely outlines the history and structure of the organization, as well as its strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. This report also includes a detailed description of all tasks and responsibilities assigned to me as an intern, an analysis of its current state, research of best practices in the field, and an educated analysis of its probable trajectory.

An Organizational Review Of The Nocca Institute, Sharyn Booker

Arts Administration Master's Reports (1984-2016)

This review is an academic report used to provide recommendation and an in-depth look into The NOCCA Institute. The report includes an analysis of the organization’s structure, programs, finances, and my internship activities; Spring - Summer 2015. Additionally the report includes a SWOT Analysis and my recommendations based on the analysis and best practices of similar organizations.

New Orleans Auction Galleries: An Internship Academic Report, Grace Elizabeth Connors

Arts Administration Master's Reports (1984-2016)

This internship academic report is the result of a 480--‐hour internship at New Orleans Auction Galleries completed from February--‐September 2015. New Orleans Auction Galleries is a for--‐profit arts organization located in the Arts District of New Orleans, Louisiana. During my internship, I worked closely with the Art Department and Office Administration, as well as preview receptions andauctions. This experience provided me with a valuable education of the inner workings of New Orleans Auction Galleries from its day--‐to--‐day operations to its vision as an organization. His report begins with the history and goals of New Orleans Auction Galleries and moves forward …

French Quarter Festivals, Inc.: An Analysis Of Festival Operations (Internship Academic Report), Emily Osterholt

Arts Administration Master's Reports (1984-2016)

French Quarter Festivals, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that annually produces three festivals in the New Orleans area with the intention of promoting the Vieux Carré and the culture of the city. My internship began near the beginning of preparations for the 2015French Quarter Festival and concluded just after the event had passed. While the organization is very successful and French Quarter Festival has grown to be the largest free music festival in the United States, there remains room for improvement and growth within the organization. The following report serves as a case study of the organization and addresses issues …

Studio Theatre: An Internship Report, Eugenia Siero

Arts Administration Master's Reports (1984-2016)

The following internship report is a documentation of my work with Studio Theatre in Washington DC during the summer and fall of 2015. This report is based on my experience as an intern with the Marketing Department, where I had the opportunity to develop several large projects for the theater’s 2015--‐2016 season. Studio Theatre is a strong organization that produces excellent modern plays and strives to present the best work to its audience with every single show. This paper will discuss the different duties of the internship, as well as the organization’s history and structure, organizational strengths and weaknesses, and …

Functional Characterization Of Aggregatibacter Actinomycetemcomitans Qsebc : A Bacterial Adrengeric Receptor And Global Regulator Of Virulence., Whitney Weigel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order for a pathogen to successfully colonize the host, it must be able to acquire essential nutrients and regulate gene expression to respond to environmental fluctuations. One mechanism bacteria have evolved in order to detect these fluctuations and respond is the two component signal transduction systems (TCS). Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, a dental commensal associated with localized aggressive periodontitis, contains a TCS designated QseBC that was previously shown to regulate expression of several iron acquisition genes, biofilm formation and virulence, but the activating signal was unknown []. QseBC is a conserved TCS in the Enterobacteriaceae and Pasteurellaceae, but the activating signal …

Parent-Implemented Pivotal Response Treatment To Promote Social Communication Skills In Children With Autism, Rehab Hassan Al-Zayer

Dissertations

Providing children with autism with early intensive behavioral interventions has become a research priority. Specifically, early and intensive behavioral intervention of Pivotal Response Training (PRT) has been targeted as an effective natural behavioral intervention. The present study extended the use of PRT to teaching parents to implement this intervention in their home natural settings and was hypothesized to intensify and increase the time access to the intervention; hence, enhance maintenance and generalization of social communication skills for children with autism. A multiple-probe-across-setting design was used in this study to determine if training parents of children with autism to use Pivotal …

Effects Of Resistance Training And Creatine Monohydrate On Doxorubicin-Induced Muscle Dysfunction, Eric Christopher Bredahl

Dissertations

Doxorubicin (DOX) is a powerful chemotherapy agent that is associated with a number of deleterious side effects, including skeletal muscle dysfunction. The exact mechanisms behind the observed skeletal muscle dysfunction have yet to be fully understood. Nonetheless, the observed myotoxicity is believed to be the result of an increased oxidative stress. Resistance training (RT) has been shown to preserve skeletal muscle function in DOX treated muscles. Conversely, creatine (Cr) has been shown to improve skeletal muscle function. Yet, there has been no investigation into the effect of combined RT and Cr on DOX-induced muscle dysfunction. Thus, the possibility exists that …

Exploring Male Counselors’ Experiences With Vulnerability In The Counseling Relationship, Hannah Edith Davis Kreider

Dissertations

While existing literature clearly indicates that the relationship between counselor and client is important and crucial for therapeutic progress (e.g., Norcross & Wampold, 2011), little research has been done on the experiences of counselors within the therapeutic relationship. Vulnerability has been noted as an important component of growth-fostering relationships (e.g., Jordan, 2008), however research is lacking on how counselors experience vulnerability with their clients. Within the field of counseling, men are underrepresented (Michel, Hall, Hays, & Runyan, 2013) and little research exists exploring their unique experiences as counselors. Additionally, due to gender role socialization, men are likely to struggle with …

Physical Education Teacher Education Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions About And Implementation Of Caring, Tanjian Liang

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine physical education teacher education (PETE) teacher candidates’ perceptions about and implementation of caring during eight-week student teaching experiences. The specific research questions were: (a) How do caring teacher candidates perceive and define caring? and (b) How do caring teacher candidates implement caring behaviors throughout their eight-week student teaching assignments? In line with the research questions, a qualitative case study approach was used. Participants were two PETE caring physical education teacher candidates from the same program. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, informational conversational interviews, field notes, documents, and research journals. Data were analyzed …

School Policy And Practice To Tackle A Public Health Problem: Sudden Cardiac Arrest, Leigh Lynn Mcgown-Kauffman

Dissertations

Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a leading cause of death in the United States. While the medical research has exhaustively documented that immediate response directly impacts survival rates in SCA and that schools could be the best catalyst for creating change by bystanders, there is little to no educational research addressing school policy or practices in regards to cardiac emergencies in schools. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and describe characteristics of the Colorado schools that offer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training and onsite automated external defibrillators (AED). Two research questions were answered, Of respondents, what are the characteristics …

All Families Are Unique: Experiences Of Lesbian-Parented Families, Rachel Tova Gall

Dissertations

This study explored the experiences of families with lesbian mothers and elementary school-aged children residing in metropolitan areas of the United States. This phenomenology aimed to transcend comparative and binary research to include the voices of sexual minorities and children. Eight whole-family interviews were conducted in alignment with the study’s systemic-constructivist approach. A number of themes emerged from the data that were generally consistent with prior research. Mothers were intentional about the communities in which they surrounded themselves, the process of having children, and having discussions with children about potential discrimination. Participants saw themselves as advocates and were typically out …

Heterogeneous Sensor Signal Processing For Inference With Nonlinear Dependence, Hao He

Dissertations - ALL

Inferring events of interest by fusing data from multiple heterogeneous sources has been an interesting and important topic in recent years. Several issues related to inference using heterogeneous data with complex and nonlinear dependence are investigated in this dissertation. We apply copula theory to characterize the dependence among heterogeneous data.

In centralized detection, where sensor observations are available at the fusion center (FC), we study copula-based fusion. We design detection algorithms based on sample-wise copula selection and mixture of copulas model in different scenarios of the true dependence. The proposed approaches are theoretically justified and perform well when applied to …

Eliciting Bootstrapping: The Development Of Introductory Statistics Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning Via Resampling, Jeffrey Allen Mclean

Dissertations - ALL

Bootstrapping has become an important tool for statisticians, who assert that it is intuitive to novice statistics students. The process of collecting bootstrap resamples was once time demanding, but technology now allows data collection to be performed nearly instantaneously. This study focuses on the construction and development of secondary and tertiary introductory statistics students' (n=68) reasoning about bootstrapping and informal inference. Students engaged in a four-week instructional unit designed as two model development sequences. Through the use of hands-on manipulatives and technology, students constructed and developed reasoning of sampling, the resampling process of bootstrapping, and inference. The focus of my …

Policy Through Rhetoric: An Analysis Of Cyber Security And Privacy Policy, Alec Davis

Washington Semester Program

No abstract provided.

The Legends Of Bigfoot: Or How I Regained My Manhood, Blaine Mccarty

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Masculinity is a culturally defined identity that exists with no single way to express it. However, the cultural politics police masculinity to appear natural and non-changing, but masculinity changes over history influenced by events and the culture from which it gets its definition. Because of this twofold influence on the identity, there is a constant struggle of the appropriate ways to express masculinity in its attempt to normalize itself by defining what is and is not masculine. This work examines how Bigfoot, the hairy fabled monster, embodies conversations about masculinity during a shift in the masculine identity in a constantly …

Investigation Of Quatitative Image Features From Pretreatment Ct And Fdg-Pet Scans In Stage Iii Nsclc Patients Undergoing Defintive Radiation Therapy, David Fried

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The purpose of this work was to determine if quantitative image features (QIFs) extracted from computed tomography (CT) and flourodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) could provide prognostic information to improve outcome models. Our goal for this work was to determine if it may one day be feasible to incorporate QIFs into personalized cancer care. QIFs were used to quantitatively characterize patient disease as seen on imaging. A leave-one-out cross-validation procedure was used to assess the prognostic ability of QIFs extracted from CT and PET in addition to conventional prognostic factors (CPFs). QIFs were found to improve model fit for …

Person-Corporate Social Responsibility Fit: Considering The Effects Of Corporate Values On Fit Within The Organization, Brittney Winters

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an expanding trend as more organizations have adopted various CSR policies. Due to this, CSR has been a growing topic in Business and Psychology research, especially on the micro-level of CSR’s effects on individual employee outcomes. In this study, we proposed a new sub-dimension of Person-Organization (P-O) fit, such that there’s a Person-CSR (P-CSR) fit: the perceived congruence between an individuals’ values with an organization’s CSR initiatives. We predicted that P-CSR fit would explain additional variance over and beyond P-O fit for organizational outcomes: organizational commitment, organizational identity, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Further, …

Dispositional Employability And The Relationship To Career Success: A Meta-Analysis, Alisha M. Jasmer

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This meta-analysis focuses on the willingness to work aspect of the RAW model of employability of Hogan et al. (2009), in relationship to career success. Willingness to work (W) can be defined as favorably disposed to work hard and take initiative at one’s job. The variables I used to structure the W are proactive personality, conscientiousness, work ethic, job involvement, adaptability, and ambition.

I used the Hunter and Schmidt method to analyze the data applying a random effects model. All calculations were conducted in Excel. The overall sample consisted of 100 effect sizes (r) derived from 41 studies. The total …

Building A Community Of Practice For English-As-A-Foreign Language Tutors During Private Tutoring, Doaa S. Mahrous

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The creation of a community of practice of tutors--a shared practice among a group of people who share the same domain--enables second-language learners to facilitate their acquisition of English by embracing new learning strategies while they learn the target language. The community of tutors’ perspective allows for the incorporation of the individual’s particular second-language-acquisition needs and goals. This presentation presents a proposed study that took place at the Yasuda Center at California State University, San Bernardino in the summer of 2015. Students in the English Language Program housed in the College of Extended Learning were asked to participate in tutoring …

Lethal And Legal? The Ethics Of Drone Strikes, Shima D. Keene Dr.

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

While supporters claim that drone warfare is not only legal but ethical and wise, others have suggested that drones are prohibited weapons under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) because they cause, or have the effect of causing, indiscriminate killings of civilians, such as those in the vicinity of a targeted person. The main legal justification made by the Barack Obama Administration for the use of armed drones is self-defense. However, there is ambiguity as to whether this argument can justify a number of recent attacks by the United States. In order to determine the legality of armed drone strikes, other factors …