Digital Commons Network^™

Development And Testing Of An Assessment To Measure Spatial Thinking About Enhanced Greenhouse Effect, Heather Jean Skaza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Americans, in general, do not behave in environmentally sustainable ways. We drive cars and fly in planes that emit planet-warming carbon. We purchase food in nearly indestructible packaging that is not recycled or repurposed. We do not consider the environmental impact of the “stuff” stuffed into our grocery and department stores, most of which is made of materials that had to be dug out of the ground, leaving rivers and skies full of pollution in its place. Citizens have a responsibility to understand complex global and local environmental problems. A person’s ability to think about the way that an environmental …

The Effect Of Moderate Consumption Of Non-Nutritive Sweeteners On Glucose Tolerance And Body Composition In Rats, Ashley Power Tovar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Effect of Moderate Consumption Of Non-Nutritive Sweeteners On Glucose Tolerance And Body Composition In Rats

by Ashley Tovar

John C. Young, Ph.D., Examination Committee Chair Professor, Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Introduction: A comorbidity often seen with obesity is the development of impaired glucose tolerance. Abnormalities in the ability to metabolize glucose can lead to increased risk of developing pre-diabetes and if continued, diabetes mellitus type 2. To combat the effects of excess energy intake on obesity and glucose intolerance, low- energy and non-nutritive sweeteners have been introduced as a replacement for traditional sucrose and …

Research Express News, Georgia Southern University

Research & Economic Development

• Upcoming Research Workshops and Events

18 Dorset Ct., Allison Catherine Campbell

Dissertations

The following poems and essays were completed by the author between October 2012 and April 2016.

The Economy Of Typography (The Arrangement Or Mode Of Operation Of Typography), Jacqueline Raftery

Masters

The thesis will show that the current research into legibility and readability regarding certain aspects or characters of type is incomplete, and will demonstrate what further research is necessary to complete the analysis of these aspects or characters in the economy of typography in continuous text. Chapter 1 will show that the development of reading depends on the legibility of the typography and characters ‘recognizing patterns, planning strategy, and feeling’ in other words reading and writing are interdependent all depend in some part on the construction of the characters and their relationship to each other. It will also show that …

Bodies Unbroken: Disability In Indra Sinha's Animal's People And Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, Hannah C. Baker

Honors Theses

This project explored the representation of physical disability in modern fiction with the hope to prove that disabled characters are receiving more complex and complete treatment in fiction as a reflection of social change, progress that is also supported by the growing field of disability scholarship. I will explore how two contemporary novels depart from older conventions of representing the disabled as static symbols of good or evil or as broken persons who need to be fixed. Scholars in both English and Disability Studies have commented on these problems, and their insights informed my argument.

Furthermore, I will explore the …

Opposing Roles Of Foliar And Glandular Trichome Volatile Components In Cultivated Nightshade Interaction With A Specialist Herbivore, Lucy Kananu Murungi, Hillary Kirwa, Daisy Salifu, Baldwyn Torto

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Plant chemistry is an important contributor to the interaction with herbivores. Here, we report on a previously unknown role for foliar and glandular trichome volatiles in their interaction with the specialist herbivore of solanaceous plants, the tomato red spider mite Tetranychus evansi.We used various bioassays and chemical analyses including coupled gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-QToF-MS) to investigate this interaction between cultivated African nightshades and T. evansi.We show that, whereas morphologically different cultivated African nightshade species released similar foliar volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that attracted T. evansi, VOCs released …

Reconstructing Ancient Mediterranean Crossroads In Deronectes Diving Beetles, David García-Vázquez, David T. Bilton, Rocío Alonso, Cesar J. Benetti, Josefina Garrido, Luis F. Valladares, Ignacio Ribera

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

Guide To The Graphic, Scrapbook, And Secondary Source Materials In The Milner Library Lois Lenski Collection, Eric Willey, Sean Tippey, Nicole Wolski, Jessica Lavoy, Alexis Foran

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This guide provides newspaper style captions and descriptive terms from the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials for illustrations, photos, and scrapbooks in the Milner Library, Illinois State University, Lois Lenski Collection, circa 1850-1977 and citations for secondary source materials which were not directly created by Lenski or contain brief excerpts from Lenski's work. In addition, there is a spreadsheet (csv) file which contains the raw data used to compile this guide.

Ototopical Quinolones Versus Ototopical Aminoglycosides For Suppurative Otitis Media And Acute Otitis Externa: Summary, Children's Mercy Kansas City

Clinical Critically Appraised Topics

No abstract provided.

Summer Eckley Scholars Develop Research Skills, University Communications

News and Events (Discontinued Series)

No abstract provided.

Perinatal Pcb Exposure Alters The Behavioral Response To Psycholstimulants In Adult Rats: Potential Involvement Of The Dopamine And Vesicular Monoamine Transporters, Mellessa Michelle Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The reinforcing properties of psychostimulants are typically modulated via the dopaminergic system. Developmental exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in rats has been shown to produce alterations in the dopamine system that persist into adulthood. This research has been able to demonstrate that perinatal PCB exposure: a) enhances the acute motor activating effects of cocaine, b) decreases the time course for establisment of cocaine behavioral sensitization, c) enhances the acquisition of intravenous cocaine self-administration, and d) affects the expression of two dopaminergic trasporters: the dopamine transporter (DAT) and the vesicular monoamine transporter (VMAT). Both PCBs and cocaine act on these two …

University Honors Program Newsletters, Honors Program, Georgia Southern University

Honors College: News & Publications (2008-2020)

• Honors Welcomes the New Year
• Assisted Therapy at the Council for Undergraduate Research
• Alumni Update: Kurt McGee
• A Summer Internship with Sea Turtles

A Collective Case Study On Elementary School Administrators’ And Teachers’ Perceptions Of A School-Wide Positive Behavior Intervention And Supports Framework, H. David Cawthon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this collective case study was to explore and understand administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions on how a school-wide positive behavior intervention and supports (SWPBIS) framework influences school climate at the elementary school level. The theory guiding this study was grounded in B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant behavior and applied behavior analysis, which supports the use of positive reinforcement to increase desired behavior in a real world setting. A rich description of the perceived influence a SWPBIS framework has on school climate was constructed by answering the central research question: “How do administrators and teachers perceive the influence of …

Learning In The Real World: Constraints On Cost, Space, And Privacy, Matt J. Kusner

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The sheer demand for machine learning in fields as varied as: healthcare, web-search ranking, factory automation, collision prediction, spam filtering, and many others, frequently outpaces the intended use-case of machine learning models. In fact, a growing number of companies hire machine learning researchers to rectify this very problem: to tailor and/or design new state-of-the-art models to the setting at hand.

However, we can generalize a large set of the machine learning problems encountered in practical settings into three categories: cost, space, and privacy. The first category (cost) considers problems that need to balance the accuracy of a machine learning model …

Reader Engagement With Data Journalism: Comparing The Guardian And Washington Post's Coverage Of People Killed By Police, Dan Michalski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The issue of people killed by police has become a focus of current political and social discourse related to criminal justice reform in the United States. Two data journalism projects attempting to track previously missing data have been central to a changing discussion. The Guardian’s The Counted and The Washington Post’s Investigation: Police Shootings have each attempted to create a running log of fatalities resulting from law enforcement activities. Such endeavors have added to a collective consciousness about the scope and commonality of deadly police encounters, and has provided empirical reference points for various legislative pushes related to police accountability. …

Perceiving Hierarchical Musical Structure In Auditory And Visual Modalities, Jessica Erin Nave-Blodgett

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When listening to music, humans perceive underlying temporal regularities. The most perceptually salient of these is the beat, what listeners would tap or clap to when engaging with music, and what listeners use to anchor the events in the musical surface to a temporal framework. However, we do not know if people perceive those beats in hierarchically ordered relationships, with some beats heard as stronger and others as weaker, as proposed by musical theory. These hierarchical relationships would theoretically be advantageous in orienting attention to particular locations in musical time, and facilitate synchronizing musical behavior such as performing or dancing. …

The Proof Is In The Pots: Residue Analysis Of Virgin Branch Puebloan Ceramics, Brenna Lynn Wilkerson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study focuses on better understanding diet and subsistence strategies among Virgin Branch Puebloan groups living in the Moapa Valley in southern Nevada and on the Shivwits Plateau in northwestern Arizona. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to identify absorbed food residues in three types of Virgin Branch Puebloan ceramics (Moapa Gray Ware, Shivwits Ware, and Tusayan Virgin Series). The data produced by the residue analysis were used to compare patterns of subsistence between Virgin Branch Puebloan sites in the lowlands along the Muddy River and at upland sites on the Shivwits Plateau as these two areas have different environments …

Mechanisms For Aerobic Degradation Of Commercial Naphthenic Acids, Samuel Louis Muller

All Theses

Naphthenic acids (NAs) are a class of thousands of carboxylic acids associated with petroleum degradation. They become dissolved in oil sands process waters (OSPW) during the bitumen extraction process, and the resulting process waters can elicit toxicity to aquatic organisms. NAs are weakly biodegradable, but have half-lives of months to years, making it difficult to treat NAs with bioremediation. Two methods for promoting aerobic degradation (cometabolism and mycoremediation) were investigated as proof of concept for effectiveness in degrading commercial NAs. A reciprocating reactor inoculated with a white rot fungus, Pleurotus pulmonaris, was built and compared to an uninoculated reactor to …

A Suture Training System With Synchronized Force, Motion And Video Data Collection, Naren Nagarajan

All Theses

Suturing is a common surgical task where surgeons stitch a particular tissue. There is an increasing demand for a tool to objectively quantify and train surgical skills. Suturing is particularly difficult to teach due to various multi-modal aspects involved in the task including applied forces, hand motion and optimal time for suturing. Towards quantifying the task of suturing, a platform is required to capture force, motion and video data while performing surgical suturing. This objective data can potentially be used to evaluate performance of a trainee and provide feedback regarding improving suturing skill. In the previous prototype of the platform, …

An Exploration Of Environmental Values In The Asian, Developing-World Context Of Dong Van Karst Plateau Global Geopark, Vietnam, Madeline Duda

All Theses

It has been generally assumed that individuals’ environmental values are influenced by culture, experiences, social norms, economic standing, among others. However, to date research on held environmental values has focused primarily on the developed world context. To address this gap, this research explores the environmental values of local people in a developing world context, specifically the Dong Van Karst Plateau Global Geopark (DVKPG) in Ha Giang Province, Vietnam. To examine individual’s value orientation related to sense of place and held environmental values we asked residents of DVKPG a set of two open-ended questions: (1) what is most important to you …

Hyberbranched Polymers As Biocompatible Oil Dispersants: Influence Of Salinity, Ph, And Concentration On Dispersion Effectiveness, Kristen Mae Carpenter

All Theses

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 marked one of the biggest spills in history. Like many other oil spills, Corexit 9500 was used to attempt to prevent some of the environmental impacts of the spill. The abundant use of Corexit during this spill raised public awareness and called into question the dispersant’s toxicity and long-term impacts on the environment. These concerns brought to light the need to discover less toxic, more biodegradable oil dispersants. This research helps determine the feasibility of using hyperbranched polymers (HBP) as oil dispersants by comparing their oil dispersion effectiveness to that of the commonly …

An “Act Of God”? Rethinking Contractual Impracticability In An Era Of Anthropogenic Climate Change, Myanna Dellinger

UC Law Journal

“Extreme” weather has become the new normal. Previously considered to be inexplicable and unpredictable “acts of God,” such weather can no longer reasonably be said to be so. They are acts of man. The current doctrine of contractual impracticability rests on the notion that a party may be exculpated from contractual liability if supervening events render a performance impracticable, unless they have implicitly or explicitly assumed the risk. To a large extent, courts still consider the foreseeability of the event and an a party’s ability to control it. However, it makes little logical or legal sense to continue to allow …

Experimental Modeling Of Nox And Pm Generation From Combustion Of Various Biodiesel Blends For Urban Transport Buses, Ashok Kumar, Dong-Shik Kim, Hamid Omidvarborna, Manideep Yarlagadda, Sudheer Kumar Kuppili, Nader Sawtarie

Mineta Transportation Institute

Biodiesel has diverse sources of feedstock and the amount and composition of its emissions vary significantly depending on combustion conditions. Results of laboratory and field tests reveal that nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) emissions from biodiesel are influenced more by combustion conditions than emissions from regular diesel. Therefore, NOx and PM emissions documented through experiments and modeling studies are the primary focus of this investigation. In addition, a comprehensive analysis of the feedstock-related combustion characteristics and pollutants are investigated. Research findings verify that the oxygen contents, the degree of unsaturation, and the size of the fatty acids in …

Quickpsy: An R Package To Fit Psychometric Functions For Multiple Groups, Daniel Linares, Joan López-Moliner

The R Journal

quickpsy is a package to parametrically fit psychometric functions. In comparison with previous R packages, quickpsy was built to easily fit and plot data for multiple groups. Here, we describe the standard parametric model used to fit psychometric functions and the standard estimation of its parameters using maximum likelihood. We also provide examples of usage of quickpsy, including how allowing the lapse rate to vary can sometimes eliminate the bias in parameter estimation, but not in general. Finally, we describe some implementation details, such as how to avoid the problems associated to round-off errors in the maximisation of the …

Development Of A Sandwich Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (Elisa) For Detection Of Macadamia Nut Residues In Processed Food Products, Charlene Gan

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Macadamia nut is considered a priority food allergen and undeclared macadamia nut residues pose a potential food safety risk to individuals with macadamia nut allergies. To date, there are a limited number of immunochemical methods that are available for detection of processed macadamia nut residues. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a reliable and robust sandwich ELISA for detection of macadamia nut residues. Raw and roasted macadamia nuts were used for immunization in three different species of animals (sheep, goat, and rabbits). Macadamia nut specific IgG antibodies produced by each animal were tested for their specificity and …

Whole Genomic Sequence Analysis Of Bacillus Infantis: Defining The Genetic Blueprint Of Strain Nrrl B-14911, An Emerging Cardiopathogenic Microbe, Chandirasegara Massilamany, Akram Mohammed, John Dustin Loy, Tanya Purvis, Bharathi Krishnan, Rakesh H. Basavalingappa, Christy M. Kelley, Chittibabu Guda, Raúl G. Barletta, Etsuko N. Moriyama, Timothy P.L. Smith, Jay Reddy

Jay Reddy Publications

Background: We recently reported the identification of Bacillus sp. NRRL B-14911 that induces heart autoimmunity by generating cardiac-reactive T cells through molecular mimicry. This marine bacterium was originally isolated from the Gulf of Mexico, but no associations with human diseases were reported. Therefore, to characterize its biological and medical significance, we sought to determine and analyze the complete genome sequence of Bacillus sp. NRRL B-14911.

Results: Based on the phylogenetic analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, sequence analysis of the 16S-23S rDNA intergenic transcribed spacers, phenotypic microarray, and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-offlight mass spectrometry, we propose that this …

Mucosal Vaccination By Adenoviruses Displaying Reovirus Sigma 1, Eric A. Weaver, Zenaido T. Camacho, Matthew L. Hillestad, Catherine M. Crosby, Mallory A. Turner, Adam J. Guenzel, Hind J. Fadel, George T. Mercier, Michael A. Barry

Nebraska Center for Virology: Faculty Publications

We previously developed adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) vectors displaying the sigma 1 protein from reovirus as mucosal vaccines. Ad5-sigma retargets to JAM-1 and sialic acid, but had 40-fold reduced gene delivery when compared to Ad5. While weaker at transduction, Ad5-sigma generated stronger T cell responses than Ad5 when used for mucosal immunization. New Ad5-fiber-sigma vectors were generated here by varying the number of fiber β-spiral shaft repeats (R) fused between fiber tail and the sigma. Ad5 virions encoding R3, R14, and R20 chimeras were rescued. Increasing chimera length led to their decreasing encapsidation of these proteins in the virions. Ad5-R3 …

Common Platforms And Devices Used To Access News About Native Americans, Rebekka J. Schlichting

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

The opening story about Ictinike and the buzzard is a traditional oral story from my Ioway Tribe culture. It represents the way in which Native American people historically shared information and stories. Today, Native stories are shared in multiple ways: oral, written, video, audio, websites, social media, etc. This research explored the ways in which Native Americans receive their stories today, specifically news stories about Native Americans. This research was done in order to see how news outlets could better serve Native populations in the U.S. In addition, I looked at which platforms and devices are most effective for Natives …

The Effect Of Manganese (Mn) On Cell Proliferation And Migration In The Michigan Cancer Foundation-7 (Mcf-7) Human Breast Cancer Cell Line In Vitro, Justin Lloyd Wendel

Theses and Dissertations

Manganese (Mn) is a common environmental element necessary for mammalian physiological processes. However, dietary excess or deficiency can lead to detrimental health effects. Therefore, I investigated the effect Mn has on breast cancer progression in vitro. Utilizing MCF-7 breast cancer cells an MTT assay was performed to identify proliferative potential. After 5 days, results showed 100 nM manganese chloride (MnCl2) had a significant (p<0.01) increase in cell number over control. Using a scratch wound-healing assay, 100 nM MnCl2 was found to increase cellular motility as well as induce a possible change in morphology and cytoskeletal organization. Given Mn was shown to localize in the mitochondrial, we investigated Mn-induced ROS expression. 500 nM Mn significantly decreased (p<0.05) ROS levels. Collectively, I provide evidence that Mn may potentially drive less aggressive cancer cells towards a more invasive phenotype.