Digital Commons Network^™

Comparative Analysis Between Merra And Updated Mepdg Climate Database In The State Of Tennessee, Abubakr Ziedan

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) addresses climate effects on pavement design in a comprehensive way, which allows for investigating the effect of climate inputs on pavement performance. However, it requires detailed climate inputs, which might not be available for most of the state DOT. The Updated AASHTOWare climate database encompasses twelve stations in the state of Tennessee, which might not well represent all climatic regions in the state of Tennessee. This study compares and evaluates the performance of pavements in Tennessee using Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) and the updated AASHTOWare databases as a source of …

Gender Differences In Policing: A Consideration Of Care Ethics, Whitney Harvey

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Current research on gender differences in policing is somewhat limited. Research studies that examine the relationship between police officers and ethics of care theory are further limited. This study evaluated gender differences in policing to determine whether ethics of care theories apply to female police officers. For the purposes of this study, approximately 400 sworn officers were sampled via survey. The anticipated results were: female officers are more likely to employ ethics of care in their policing methods as opposed to their male counterparts.

Evaluation Of A Tool To Identify The Variables Responsible For Poor Parent Treatment Implementation: The Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Parent, Jamie Villacorta

Theses and Dissertations

In applied behavior analysis, parents are often taught to implement treatment programs in order to decrease their child’s problem behaviors and increase appropriate behaviors. Unfortunately, many parents have trouble implementing these programs correctly. It has been suggested that higher treatment integrity for a specified treatment program may be associated with higher levels of its success. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the use of an assessment tool (i.e., the Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Parent, or PDC-P) to develop a treatment specifically targeted to address the variables responsible for poor program implementation by parents. First, the PDC-P was administered to …

A Qualitative Study Of Group Therapy Incorporating Rap Music With Inmates, Abigail V. Richards

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This study aims to explore the lived experiences of inmates who participate in group psychotherapy incorporating elements of rap music. Rap music includes elements such as emotional expression, songwriting, community building, freestyling, and beat, which can be beneficial for individuals experiencing typical symptoms of incarceration such as anxiety, self-discovery, and difficulties regulating emotion. Ten inmates of a Missouri county justice center (50% male) were recruited on a volunteer basis to participate in a five-week psychotherapy group. The study involves psychoeducation, group-drumming, self-expression, and improvisation. Qualitative data were collected through an interview process with participants, including inmates, facilitators and supervisors. Results …

The Effects Of Teaching Middle School Students Math Using The Gifted Supplementary Curriculum “Mawhiba” On Students’ Academic Achievement And Attitude Toward Math In Public Schools In Saudi Arabia, Ahmed M. Alreshidi

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of a supplementary math curriculum, “Mawhiba,” that was designed for gifted students, would be appropriate for regular students in a mixed-abilities classroom. The researcher investigated the effects of implementing the Mawhiba enriched supplementary math curriculum on students’ achievements in mathematics and on students’ attitudes toward mathematics in Hail State, Saudi Arabia. The research design was an experimental randomized subject pretest, post-test, control group design. Two schools were chosen (a female middle school and a male middle school). The sample consisted of 121 students (60 males and 61 females). The …

Mixed Methods Not Mixed Messages: Improving Libguides With Student Usability Data, Nora Almeida, Junior Tidal

Publications and Research

Objective – This article describes a mixed methods usability study of research guides created using the LibGuides 2.0 platform conducted in 2016 at an urban, public university library. The goal of the study was to translate user design and learning modality preferences into executable design principles, and ultimately to improve the design and usage of LibGuides at the New York City College of Technology Library.

Methods – User-centred design demands that stakeholders participate in each stage of an application’s development and that assumptions about user design preferences are validated through testing. Methods used for this usability study include: a task …

Patients’ Willingness To Participate In Rapid Hiv Testing: A Pilot Study In Three New York City Dental Hygiene Clinics, Susan H. Davide, Anthony J. Santella, Winnie Furnari, Petal Leuwaisee, Marilyn Cortell, Bhuma Krishnamachari

Publications and Research

Purpose: One in eight people living with an HIV infection in the United States is unaware of their status. Rapid HIV testing (RHT) is an easily used and accepted screening tool that has been introduced in a limited number of clinical settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate patient acceptability, certainty of their decision, and willingness to pay for screening if RHT was offered in university-based dental hygiene clinics.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was administered to 426 patients at three dental hygiene clinics in New York City over a period of four months. The survey questionnaire was based …

Two-Photon Excitation, Fluorescence Microscopy, And Quantitative Measurement Of Two-Photon Absorption Cross Sections, Fredrick Michael Dearmond

Dissertations and Theses

As optical microscopy techniques continue to improve, most notably the development of super-resolution optical microscopy which garnered the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014, renewed emphasis has been placed on the development and use of fluorescence microscopy techniques. Of particular note is a renewed interest in multiphoton excitation due to a number of inherent properties of the technique including simplified optical filtering, increased sample penetration, and inherently confocal operation. With this renewed interest in multiphoton fluorescence microscopy, comes an increased demand for robust non-linear fluorescent markers, and characterization of the associated tool set.

These factors have led to an experimental …

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy For Children With Autism, Tiffany Thomas

Theses

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive lifelong developmental delay with a prevalence of 1 in 68 children. This growing epidemic occurs for unspecified causes and researchers continue to explore evidence-based treatments available. Parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT) is a parent training program, initially developed for implementation with typically-developing children. PCIT has shown effectiveness in increasing child compliance, minimizing disruptive problem, improving parent-child relationship satisfaction, and communication. The present study investigated the efficacy of PCIT as an evidence-based practice (EBP) for children with ASD by implementing a non-concurrent multiple baseline design across three participants. Results indicated socially significant increases in child …

Creating A Clinical Practice Guideline For Women Who Have Had A First Trimester Miscarriage: A Psychological Aspect Of Care, Natalie Marie Sheehan

Doctoral Scholarly Projects & Capstones

One in four women will experience a miscarriage in the United States alone (Geller, Psaros, & Kornfield, 2010). Miscarriages can cause an increased distress to the women experiencing the loss and her partner (Nikčević, Kuczmierczyk, Tunkel & Nicolaides, 2000). This type of loss is not usually talked about, leaving women in great distress and suffering alone. Currently, no clinical practice guideline exists dealing with the psychological aspects of a miscarriage and how to properly care for this population. The PICOT question that guided this capstone was: (P) In women, who have had a first trimester miscarriage, (I) does an established …

Screening For Diabetes In At-Risk Populations In Primary Care: A Practice Guide, Vera Louise Pillitteri

Doctoral Scholarly Projects & Capstones

Diabetes mellitus (DM), a disease with far-reaching cardiovascular and physiological consequences, continues to grow at epidemic proportions despite efforts by the medical community to manage the disease, placing an enormous financial burden on the healthcare system. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report in 2014 reporting 29.1 million people in the United States have diabetes including 8.1 million undiagnosed cases. Colorado is one of eight states with the most significant increases in DM diagnoses, nearly doubling between 2003 and 2014. An estimated 300,000 adults have diabetes in Colorado and an estimated 110,000 more are undiagnosed (Colorado Department …

Barriers To Managing Childhood Overweight/ Obesity In American Indian Children, Amanda Gerise Vignaroli

Doctoral Scholarly Projects & Capstones

The number of overweight and obese children continues to rise in the United States and across the world, creating a growing need for providers to practice evidence- based interventions for this population of children and adolescents. An estimated 17% of children and adolescents in the United States are affected by being overweight or obese (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2016a). Obesity puts these children and adolescents at risk for physical complications such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, asthma, joint pain, gastroesophageal disease, and fatty liver disease (CDC, 2016b). Obesity is even higher among ethnic groups …

Sell Side Benchmarks, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Sell-side analysts employ different benchmarks when defining their stock recommendations. For example, a ‘buy’ for some brokers means the stock is expected to outperform its peers in the same sector (“sector benchmarkers”), while for other brokers it means the stock is expected to outperform the market (“market benchmarkers”), or just some absolute return (“total benchmarkers”). We explore the validity and implications of the adoption of these different benchmarks. Analysis of the relation between analysts’ recommendations and their long-term growth and earnings forecasts suggests that analysts indeed abide by their benchmarks: Sector benchmarkers rely less on across-industry information, and focus more …

The Perceptions And Attitudes Of Hispanics Toward Law Enforcement Officers, Brittany N. Pugh

Honors Theses

Relationships between racial / ethnic minorities and law enforcement officers in the United States have long been a topic of concern. Given that Hispanics represent the largest racial / ethnic minority population in the United States, the nature of their collective and individual relationships with law enforcement is a topic worthy of empirical examination. Surprisingly, however, there is limited research specifically focusing upon the beliefs, perceptions and attitudes of Hispanics regarding law enforcement officers. This exploratory study examines the beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes of 101 Hispanics in South central Mississippi toward local law enforcement agencies and officers. Furthermore, the study …

Hattiesburg’S Unforeseen Legacies: Industrial Remnants And Their Influence On Historic Districts, Courtney E. Grinnell

Honors Theses

Contaminated property is a significant limiting factor to urban development, specifically in the old economic centers of cities. This study is a spatial analysis of contaminated property in the Downtown district of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Historic archives are used to create a land-use history of various sites that are presented as case studies in the thesis. These sites provide a unique historical perspective of Hattiesburg’s industrial development while also illustrating the general trends of brownfields in the city. Using a combination of archival information and publicly available spatial data, a series of maps are created that display the source of financial …

Tone In Acatlán Mixtec Nouns, Esteban I. Méndez-Hord

Theses and Dissertations

Varieties of Mixtec (an Oto-Manguean language group spoken in southern Mexico) have often been analyzed as having a three-way tonal distinction: Low, Mid and High. I present evidence from original research on simple, alienable nouns, that only two lexical tones, /H/ (corresponding to the traditional Mid tone) and /L/, where some H tones are floating, are needed to describe noun roots in Acatlán Mixtec. In essence, the extra-H tone (corresponding to the traditional Hi tone) only occurs in derived environments, which involve the interaction of tones from two or more morphemes. The bulk of the analysis uses H and L …

Baptism, Susan K. Wood

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

This chapter surveys commonalities and divergences with regard to the theology and practice of baptism that are reflected in the World Council of Churches convergence document on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, and considers in particular the Anabaptist, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Orthodox, Quaker, and Reformed traditions. Major topics treated include: the role of faith with regard to baptism, interconnections between baptism, faith, and justification; the relationship between baptism and patterns of initiation in various traditions; and elements of the ancient catechumenate in contemporary rites. The chapter argues that in the expansive theology of baptism in the catechumenal tradition baptism is …

Recurrent Biatrial Myxoma In A 41-Year-Old Woman After Left Atrial Myxoma Resection, Xiaoming Jia, Anjali Kohli, Jane Jarjour, Chung-Jiah Justin Chen, Brendan Gilmore, Rashed Tabbaa, Edward Lee Poythress

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Bilateral recurrence of atrial myxoma has been reported only a few times. We describe the case of a 41-year-old woman who had undergone left atrial myxoma resection and presented 9 years later with myxomas in both atria. The patient underwent successful resection of both masses with resolution of symptoms. We discuss the phenomenon of recurrent biatrial myxoma.

A Blueprint For Life And Love, Marilyn Todd

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

No abstract provided.

Bioresorbable Scaffolds In Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection: Long-Term Follow-Up In 4 Patients, Santiago Jesús Camacho Freire, Antonio Enrique Gómez Menchero, Jessica Roa Garrido, Javier León Jiménez, Rosa Cardenal Piris, José Francisco Díaz Fernández

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is a rare condition, and diagnosis and treatment are challenging among patients who present with acute coronary syndrome. Typically, the condition affects young females who have no underlying atherosclerotic disease. To date, few cases of bioresorbable scaffold implantation for the treatment of spontaneous coronary artery dissection have been reported. Therefore, we describe the cases of 4 patients whom we treated with scaffolds. We evaluated the long-term results by using intravascular ultrasound and optical coherence tomographic scanning.

Case Law, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

Although case law plays a crucial role in the American legal system, surprisingly little consensus exists on how to determine the “law” that any given “case” generates. Lawyers, judges, and scholars regularly note the difference between holdings and dicta and between necessary and unnecessary parts of a precedent-setting decision, but such concepts have eluded coherent application in practice. There remains considerable uncertainty about which aspects of a judicial decision impose prospective legal obligations as a matter of stare decisis and to what extent.

This Article develops a counterintuitive, but productive, way to conceptualize case law: the lawmaking content of a …

Hablando De Negocios: Three Rio Grande Valley Businesses During The Great Depression, 1929-1939, Karla A. Lira

Theses and Dissertations

The Rio Grande Valley is in the South most tip of Texas and borders Northern Mexico, it includes Willacy, Cameron, Hidalgo, and Starr Counties. Scholars have focused on gender, agriculture, and labor of the area. However, historians have failed to research the region through a business perspective during the Great Depression. This thesis then seeks to analyze ways in which the Great Depression affected the Rio Grande Valley through the research of two stores and one business in the area: The Manuel Guerra Store, Edelstein’s furniture store, and John Shary’s land selling business. Its objective will fill an existing gap …

Coding The Discourse And Translingual Strategies Of Collaborative Writing Of Secondary Education Students, Zane Lee Arredondo

Theses and Dissertations

Kenneth Bruffee used collaborative writing pedagogy to help reacculturate students’ discoursal identities to help them adhere to the expectations of the academic community. Although studies have shown that reacculturation may not exactly happen, Collaborative writing pedagogy still has maintained its presence within Composition studies since then and has been adapted into being implemented into digitally shared spaces. However, one aspect has been overlooked about physical shared spaces, the conversations themselves being studied. This study explores Kenneth Bruffee’s constructive conversations among secondary students within collaborative writing pedagogy. The collaborative sessions are recorded and viewed with a translingual lens applying Johnny Saldana’s …

The Smuggler Journals: Transgressing And Policing The Border In The Rio Grande Valley, Lupe Alberto Flores

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis summarizes recent human smuggling scholarship and provides ethnographic insights into migrant smuggling in a border zone that is my home. Through exploring my own experiences and observations of smuggling and militarized border policing, and those of other interlocutors in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, I advance nuanced understandings of the symbiotic processes of irregular migration and of the people who brokerage a great deal of these journeys across militarized borders. I analyze fieldnotes that highlight the quotidian realms in which gender and power play out when irregular migration takes place and argue that acts of border …

Effect Of Land Use Change On South Texas Bats, Katharine Leigh Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Bats were acoustically recorded in South Texas over the summer of 2017. Nine species of bats were recorded and identified.

One Good Plaintiff Is Not Enough, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Article concerns an aspect of Article III standing that has played a role in many of the highest-profile controversies of recent years, including litigation over the Affordable Care Act, immigration policy, and climate change. Although the federal courts constantly emphasize the importance of ensuring that only proper plaintiffs invoke the federal judicial power, the Supreme Court and other federal courts have developed a significant exception to the usual requirement of standing. This exception holds that a court entertaining a multiple-plaintiff case may dispense with inquiring into the standing of each plaintiff as long as the court finds that one …

Justice Scalia's Other Standing Legacy, Tara Leigh Grove

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Parenting Stress And Emotion Dysregulation In Children With Dd: The Role Of Parenting Behaviors, Neilson Chan

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Parents of children with developmental delays (DD) report higher levels of parenting stress compared to parents of typically developing children. High levels of parenting stress have been associated with negative outcomes for their children, including higher levels of emotion dysregulation. However, this relationship between parenting stress and child emotion dysregulation has rarely been examined in families of children with DD. Additionally, the mechanisms through which parenting stress influences child emotion dysregulation remain unclear; it may be that parenting stress impacts parenting behaviors (i.e., sensitive and intrusive parenting), which in turn influence the development of the child’s emotion regulatory abilities. In …

Textual Equivalence In The Arabic Javanese Translation: Case Study In Al-Hikam Sufism Book Of Aphorism, Muhammad Yunus Anis

Al-Arabi: Journal of Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language

Ibn Athaillah As-Sakandariy is a writter of Al-Hikam. He was Egyptian mystical author and hagiographer. He was a follower of Shafi’i and/or Maliki religious scholar, and also prominent member of the Shadililiya thariqah . The most influential of the

Comparison Of Antibacterial Activity Of Ozonated Olive Oil And Chlorhexidine Gluconate, Changmin Lee

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Aim: The aim of this in vitro disk diffusion susceptibility test is to compare the antibacterial activity of ozonated olive oil (OzOO) with chlorhexidine gluconate (CHX) against periodontal pathogens, Porphyromonas gingivalis and Aggregatibacter Actinomycetemcomitans. Materials and Methods: The antibacterial activity of two antiseptics, OzOO and CHX, and, two controls, olive oil and normal saline was assessed by disk diffusion susceptibility test. For disk diffusion susceptibility test, two periodontal pathogens, 20 petri dishes for P. gingivalis and 18 petri dishes for A. actinomycetemcomitans, were used. To assess the antibacterial activity, the diameters of the growth inhibition zone were measured with a …