Digital Commons Network^™

Interactions Of The Naphthalene Radical Cation With Polar And Unsaturated Molecules In The Gas Phase, Sean P. Platt

Theses and Dissertations

Characterizing the interactions of solvent molecules with ions is fundamental in understanding the thermodynamics of solution chemistry. These interactions are difficult to observe directly in solution because the number of solvent molecules far exceed that of ions. This lend the gas phase to be the ideal medium in the study ion-solvent interactions on a molecular level. Ionized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules can readily form hydrogen bonds with neutral solvent molecules in aqueous and interstellar medium. Previous research has been done for stepwise solvation of small molecules such as benzene⁺, pyridine, and phenylacetylene. The similarity in these results …

The Transition From The Psychical To The Psychological: An Examination Of William James’ Influence On Henry James’ “The Turn Of The Screw”, Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will show that, in its original form, “The Turn of the Screw” acted as a monument to the intellectual unity shared between Henry James and his brother William. Through evaluating James’ biography, memoirs, and letters with William, this thesis will illustrate the subtle collaborative inspirations that initially helped James write the first twelve-part serial edition of “The Turn of the Screw” for Collier’s Weekly, which ran from January 27, 1898 until April 16, 1898. I will also demonstrate the effect of William’s philosophy and his death on the revisions James’ made to his story as published in the …

Catching All Passions In His Craft Of Will: Portraits And Pater In Oscar Wilde’S “The Portrait Of Mr. W. H.”, Rebecca E. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” as the product of Wilde’s long interest in critic Walter Pater’s literature and scholarship. From its first iteration published in 1889, through Wilde’s ongoing revision and expansion into the version commonly anthologized today, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” is an evolving work that mirrors Wilde’s enduring relationship with the art and ideas of his former teacher. This relationship is explored in three contexts: Pater’s contribution to Wilde’s understanding of the Renaissance period; the steady influence of Pater’s ideas and persona on Wilde’s other major works from the period …

The Color Of Memory: Reimagining The Antebellum South In Works By James Mcbride Through The Use Of Free Indirect Discourse, Janel L. Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of interior narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and internal monologue in two of James McBride’s neo-slave narratives, Song Yet Sung (2008) and The Good Lord Bird (2013). Very limited critical attention has been given to these neo-slave narratives that illustrate McBrides attention to characterization and focalized narration. In these narratives McBride builds upon the revelations he explores in his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water (1996, 2006), where he learns to disassociate race and character. What he discovers about not only his mother, but also himself, inspires his re-imagination of the people who …

Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with …

The Entertainment Is Terrorism: The Subversive Politics Of Doing Anything At All, Joe Woods

Theses and Dissertations

When the body is observed through a certain combination of technologies, there can be subversive politics to doing anything at all. The nature of media and biopolitics has permitted for a set of systems aimed at total control of the human body; a power which can permeate all facets of life. This thesis is a collection of essays which argues that speculative fiction contains multitudes of approaches to biopolitical discourse, permitting the reader of the text to approach politics from their own set of experiences, but not allowing the political to be ignored. These chapters contain three separate but interrelated …

A Two Host Species Stage-Structured Model Of West Nile Virus Transmission, Taylor A. Beebe

Theses and Dissertations

We develop and evaluate a novel host-vector model of West Nile virus (WNV) transmission that incorporates multiple avian host species and host stage-structure (juvenile and adult stages), with both species-specific and stage-specific biting rates of vectors on hosts. We use this model to explore WNV transmission dynamics that occur between vectors and multiple structured host populations as a result of heterogeneous biting rates. Our analysis shows that increased exposure of juvenile hosts results in earlier, more intense WNV transmission when compared to the effects of differential host species exposure, regardless of other parameter values. We also find that, in addition …

Exploring The Influence Of Socioeconomic Status On The Executive Function And Theory Of Mind Skills Of Preschoolers, Andrea Molzhon

Theses and Dissertations

Executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) skills develop rapidly during the preschool years and have been found to directly and indirectly contribute to school readiness. Evidence indicates that EF may influence ToM development, though this relation may not be consistent across children from different backgrounds. Additionally, socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to affect preschoolers’ EF, while the literature is mixed regarding the effects – if any – that SES may have on ToM development. Though the relation between EF and ToM appears robust across the literature, the possible effects of SES on this relation have yet to …

Sulfated Dehydropolymer Of Caffeic Acid For Repair Of Lung Damage And Emphysema, Tien M. Truong

Theses and Dissertations

The complex pathobiologic mechanisms of emphysema are not fully understood, leaving this deadly disease without effective pharmacotherapy for a cure. This project hypothesized that the sulfated dehydropolymer of caffeic acid (CDSO3) exhibits Fe²⁺ chelation-based hypoxia inducible factor-1a (HIF-1a) up-regulatory protective activities against in vitro emphysematous cell death and for in vivo reversal of emphysema induced with SU5416, a vascular endothelial growth factor blocker.

Using in vitro chromogenic competitive inhibition assays, CDSO3 was shown to chelate Fe²⁺ (IC₅₀ of 23 µM), but not Fe³⁺ ions. The trypan blue exclusion and lactate

dehydrogenase assays were then employed to …

Methcathinone Analogue Activity At The Human Serotonin Transporter, William Drake Varn

Theses and Dissertations

In the last few years, there has been continued concern about synthetic drug abuse in both the United States and worldwide. Small adjustments in drug compound structure often allow synthetic drug makers to manufacture a legal product that can produce the same highs as illegal counterparts. Unfortunately, this is happening faster than the government can outlaw the drug compounds, and a wide variety of synthetics are now appearing on the street. This study evaluated the effects on the human serotonin transporter of six different 4-para substituted methcathinone compounds. Using a Xenopus oocyte model, the efficacy of each MCAT analogue …

Examining Genetic And Environmental Influences On Alcohol Use And Externalizing Behaviors In African American Adolescents, Neeru Goyal

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to expand our understanding of the etiology of alcohol misuse and related disorders in African Americans using genetically informative study designs. Specifically, we take advantage of the candidate-gene approach and polygenic score analysis to extend the literature specific to African American populations. Chapter 2 explores gene x environment (GxE) interactions through the candidate gene approach to explore the relationship between two genes chosen on their potential relevance to stress response and adolescent alcohol use and misuse, among African American youth living in highly impoverished neighborhoods, as moderated by stressful life events. Chapter 3 implements …

An Extension Of Penalized Ordinal Response Models, Qing Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

Ordinal responses are commonly seen in medical research. Many pathological evaluations and health status outcomes are reported on an ordinal scales. Some examples of ordinal outcomes include cancer stage (I, II, III and IV), or stage of liver disease (normal liver, chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and end of stage liver disease or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)).

In recent years, there has been a demand to understanding the pathogenic association between ordinal clinical outcomes and molecular characteristics. Genomic characteristics are often assayed using a high-dimensional platform where the number of interrogated sites (P) exceeds the number of samples (n). Unfortunately, traditional ordinal response …

Perspectives, Beatrice Modisett

Theses and Dissertations

My paintings are linked to a thirst for exploring new landscapes and perspectives, my interest in the extremes and subtleties of geological phenomenon and a desire to create, chase after, and teeter on a brink. Here I will discuss these topics and work to unpack my interest in avoiding comfort, my relationship to control and the creation and function of my paintings. To extract myself from my tactile and visual world of process and paint and enter the world of written language presents very different challenges than the ones fostered in the studio. The goal in both is to reveal …

Collective Cadence, Alicia Dietz

Theses and Dissertations

Collective Cadence

Stories that start at birth,

end with death,

and include everything in-between.

A Medal of Honor recipient,

A mistake.

Morning coffee;

a late night call.

Whispered first names;

an off-key chorus;

deafening explosions;

silence.

One child playing;

another lifeless.

On the battlefield,

concealment is a survival skill.

Off that battlefield,

transparency enables survival.

Stories that shape the fabric of our experience

The threads that bind us

Through the telling of each,

we are united as one.

In the telling of the collective,

We find our own.

These are our stories.

This is our story.

I Reach Toward The Ground I Reach Toward Space, Kristen A. Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

Imagine one million and six hundred thousand years ago — a prehistoric character points. There in the moistened soil, the hominid Homo habilis draws a line, inscribing with her finger the first mark. At the core of my work is a meditation on this very scene as the otherwise unknowable origins of image making. And at the center of this discovery is a prehistoric woman — a previously invisible character within human evolution. My work aims to insert these characters into the origins of tool use, image making, and other supposed markers of humanness while also examining historical representations of …

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove, Devin Kylie Harclerode

Theses and Dissertations

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove is an engagement in magical thinking that proposes a displacement of swamp methodologies into the virtual realm, existing during the fourth wave. In doing so the cyborg and goddess are united in a re-routing of essentialism and the neo-liberal domination of technology. The metaphorical swamp is the possibility of a mushy danger zone that harnesses the absorption of an unwanted space: a disintegration of the binary and the soft-coded awareness of the body as a process, not a site.

Interhouse: A Place For Growing Up And Growing Adults, Nilufar Makhamatova

Theses and Dissertations

Society has become increasingly segregated by age which lessens the opportunities for communication between generations. Before the Internet, children and adolescents typically learned through traditional means - their parents, school teachers, and life experiences. Adults believed they were capable of recognizing and addressing the needs of children and adolescents. (Strom & Strom, 2012) Now, the global media is widely accessed by people of all ages which gives it the ability to influence a large population in different ways. This has led to children and adolescents being more heavily influenced and educated by the media than other traditional sources. Adolescents, in …

The Exchange: Curating Authenticity + Interaction, Sarah Webb

Theses and Dissertations

For a physical space to have an emotional impact on those who experience it, we must consider the connection and relationship between objects and experience, and how people make individual connections to insentient places. It is this symbiotic relationship that allows a building or space to attain a “soul”.

Through the adaptive re-use of a Richmond, Virginia building, this thesis project explores strategies of staging physical interaction and organic experiences through art and culture in the context of a mixed-use niche hotel.

Virtual / Reality: Designing Permeable Spaces For Social Well-Being In The Digital Age, Thomas R. Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

The digital age has pushed people closer together than ever before. A device that fits in the palm of your hand allows instantaneous communication with billions of other human beings. People share everyday experiences, passing thoughts, personal photos, sometimes privately, often publicly. Distances between people and places feel reduced. Never has it been so easy to be so emotionally close to so many people.

But as digital experiences become routine, our collective perceptions of closeness and distance shift. As virtual communities become larger, so does our awareness of the actual distance between things. Even though humans can be genuinely close …

Heritage Hotel: A Marriage Of Heritage Tourism And Boutique Hospitality, Leah A. Embrey

Theses and Dissertations

As defined by Wai Mun Lim and Mel Endean in 2009 in their article “Elucidating the aesthetic and operational characteristics of UK boutique hotels” in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Boutique hotels have less than 100 rooms, have an individualistic and unique design, are often in historic buildings, and have highly personalized service for guests. I found that a boutique hotel that focuses on historic preservation and heritage tourism does four things. First, it respects the history of the building it is housed in, preserving as much of the original structure as possible. It also takes advantage of …

Boomerang Studio: Community Design For Action, Jessica Walton

Theses and Dissertations

An arts education space, focusing on concepts of design thinking aimed at providing low income middle and high school teens of color the opportunity to learn about interior design, architecture and crafts. Ultimately, Boomerang Studio hopes to engage students in the world of design as a means of creating greater diversity within these disciplines.

A City Winery - Revealing Process + Promoting Interaction, Eline Warren

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project is an exploration of process in both design and winemaking. Wine has long been a part of Virginia’s history and culture and in recent years has influenced architecture and design that is specific to winemaking and hospitality. Through an interior intervention, this project addresses the many challenges of marrying production and hospitality design criteria under one roof. The final design encourages understanding of process through links between production and consumption with both a winemaking facility and laboratory that are integrated into the surrounding hospitality-oriented spaces. This visual exposure to the facility stimulates patron interest and intuitive knowledge …

It's Slapstick Design, Thanks! Wait! No "Thanks"- Just Slapstick Design ..., Curtis A. Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

I'm arguing for an approach to generating graphic form based on slapstick. Slapstick is a genre of physical comedy involving humorous portrayals of clumsiness, mistakes, and nonsense. I investigate it as an approach to form, content, process, and communication. These methods were used to construct an immersive installation loosely based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Graphic design is expected to function. It does this by conditioning users to its particular patterns or by skillfully implementing familiar patterns. A slapstick approach to graphic design is valuable as a critical tool for disrupting conditioned experiences for promoting empathy by relating …

No Woman Is An Island, Adele Ball

Theses and Dissertations

We have gathered the following pages to archive our time here in Richmond, Virginia. We have been here for two years, growing slowly, moving when needed to new anchorholds to avoid detection or arrest. We scrutinize the urban environment like modern archeologists. We collect stories and speculate about new uses of old things. It is imperative to be resourceful here, and we do so out of necessity but also in the spirit of practice. These pages were made en route, each an exploration of the tools at hand when on the move. The method of creation is just as important …

"Fuck Off, Get Free, Love And Love's The Only Thing", David S. Moré

Theses and Dissertations

A child, angry at concrete and strip malls, enjoying coffee from too many styrofoam cups.

Loosely Bound, Alexander Martin

Theses and Dissertations

I take a poetic approach to graphic design practice. It is a subjectivist approach, which recognizes our human right to willful interpretation. Designers navigate form, culture, and history like poets through language. We are subjective, exploratory engines drawing formal inspiration from figural and analogical associations. Subjectivity in graphic design practice is complex, however. Subjectivity privileges the interaction between object and individual. When we designers interpret the literal world with the poet’s omni-directional sensitivity, we intentionally and intuitively create objects that accrete inexhaustible, extra-literal value for their audience.

Choreographic Space, Kelsey Sheaffer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, Choreographic Space, and accompanying exhibit is an arrangement of contemporary work being done in the cross-over between movement, drawing, sound and architecture. The thesis develops a lineage of choreographic thinking through a fissure in the classification of a dance as necessarily the body in motion. Through the link of the “choreographic object,” Choreographic Space asks how an interdisciplinary exploration of the principles of movement can reveal novel ways to think about the body in space.

The Curiosity Of Con, Petrified Breath, And An Accident Known As Blue., Steven Randall

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis installation emerged from an interest in visualizing breath. The resulting work came to exist at the intersection between art, biology, and performance.

The unicorn tapestries were used as a generative point of departure to explore the preservation and transformation of images through time, by time, and with time. Reproductions of the six tapestries were each etched into paper and then submerged into solutions of Phenol Red dye, Ferric Ferrocyanide (also known as Prussian Blue), and various forms of sodium chloride. Exhaled breath was used to encrust these images of the tapestries into physical objects which gradually crystallized and …

Design Thinking For The Development Of Formal Operations: A Team-Based Middle School Design Curriculum, Stephanie K. O'Dell

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I propose a team-based design curriculum that aligns with the cognitive development of middle school age students. The ability to think abstractly develops at a specific time in development, according to widely accepted cognitive theory. The middle school years are the launching pad of abstract thinking. At this age, students are also primed for learning through social activity. The design process often includes abstract problem solving challenges, and working within a team structure. These ideas build a foundation for a research question—could a team-based design curriculum in middle school strengthen students’ natural cognitive development by providing opportunities …

A (Dis)Assemblage Of The Gallery-Growlery, Levester R. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

A (dis)Assemblage of the Gallery-Growlery exhibition and writing presents itself as a site of a morphological exploration of language, sound, and objects in tandem with the irreducibly venting black expression. Venting, the black expression never seeks wholeness within objects or language itself for it is a thing-in-itself. Its presence affords critical reception to a residue of delimiting forms. All growls eschew verbal objects for the manifestation of pure phonetics. A growl in a gallery is the growl. The growl resounds through the physicality of the objects and gallery. Also, it unwinds the object-among-objects as the phono-present stretches the discursive …