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2017

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Intrinsic Factors Affecting Decomposition Changes In Archaeological Head Hair From Kellis 2 Cemetery, Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, Kathleen Cole Jan 2017

Intrinsic Factors Affecting Decomposition Changes In Archaeological Head Hair From Kellis 2 Cemetery, Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, Kathleen Cole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Post-mortem hair root degradation, and associated characteristics such as post-mortem root banding, brush-like ends, and hard keratin points, has remained a little understood phenomenon in the forensics discipline since its discovery in the 1800's. At present, the underlying causes of these characteristics are still unknown. In addition, there is no standardization for preparing samples for forensic or archaeological analysis. In this study, 1200 hairs from a total of 51 individuals (males, n = 22; females, n = 29) ranging in age from 16 to 60+ and interred at the Kellis 2 cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt are examined microscopically …


A Comprehensive Study Of The Learning Styles Of Student Athletes And Academic Advisors At Three Institutions In The American Athletic Conferences And The Tools And Resources Used To Ensure Academic Success., Dianna Lampitt Jan 2017

A Comprehensive Study Of The Learning Styles Of Student Athletes And Academic Advisors At Three Institutions In The American Athletic Conferences And The Tools And Resources Used To Ensure Academic Success., Dianna Lampitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collegiate athletics plays an important role in higher education. As a result of this importance student athletes also play a significant role in higher education. However, due to their athletic responsibilities they face a number of challenges while enrolled in a college or university. An academic advisor for student athletes is responsible for not only helping the student athletes with their academics, they also play an important role in ensuring the eligibility of college student athletes so they are able to compete. As a result, academic advisors for student athletes use a number of tools and resources that help ensure …


83 Orange Peels, Klara Hammoud Jan 2017

83 Orange Peels, Klara Hammoud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

83 ORANGE PEELS is a feature-length film written and directed by Klara Hammoud and produced by Biddayat as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The project aims to challenge existing conventions of the documentary filmmaking on multiple levels – aesthetic, narrative, and technical– while also examining growing importance of workflow throughout all aspects of production. These challenges were both facilitated and necessitated by the limited resources available to the production team and the academic context of the production. This thesis is a record of the …


Social Media And Stakeholders' Relationship In Nonprofit Organizations, Wanzhu Shi Jan 2017

Social Media And Stakeholders' Relationship In Nonprofit Organizations, Wanzhu Shi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social media tools, as the advanced technology, have penetrated into nonprofit management field prevalently. Nonprofit organizations adopt social media tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest for attracting potential supporters, raising advocacy, and running fundraising campaigns. Social media tools break the limitation of time and space through the Internet. They change the way of how people communicate and interact with each other. The philanthropy industry hopes that social media tools could bring them the new opportunities to engage with their stakeholders, such as donors, volunteers, and customers. However, since this technology is still developing, the studies of using social …


Impacts Of Workplace Violence: The Role Of Inequality, Lindsey Singer Jan 2017

Impacts Of Workplace Violence: The Role Of Inequality, Lindsey Singer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2011 the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reported that of people who are employed and aged 16 and older, 24% of nonfatal violent incidents happened at work. To understand the magnitude of the problem, from 2005 to 2009, 572,000 nonfatal workplace crimes occurred against people aged 16 or older. Annually, the rate of workplace violence was about 5 victimizations per 1,000 employed persons aged 16 and older (Harrell 2011). The impact of crime on victims is a topic that deserves attention because it extends our understanding beyond descriptive rates of violence. Workplace victimization, like most other types of victimizations …


"Why You Gotta Be So Mean?" Examining The Impact Of Underlying Social Factors On Traditional And Cyberbullying Offending, Emily Strohacker Jan 2017

"Why You Gotta Be So Mean?" Examining The Impact Of Underlying Social Factors On Traditional And Cyberbullying Offending, Emily Strohacker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Instances of traditional school yard bullying among adolescents have been examined by researchers for decades. More recently, cyberbullying has been introduced among adolescents and has begun to be seen as a counterpart to traditional offending behaviors. Scholars have examined the rates of these types of offending, as well as the negative outcomes that result from victimization. However, studies examining the underlying factors that lead to these types of offending, specifically a comparison and combination of the two, are few and far between. This research examines how factors of strain, association with deviant peers, alcohol and/or drug use, and time spent …


Black, White, And Read All Over: Exploring Racial Bias In Print Media Coverage Of Serial Rape Cases, Lauren Wright Jan 2017

Black, White, And Read All Over: Exploring Racial Bias In Print Media Coverage Of Serial Rape Cases, Lauren Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The discussion of race and crime has been a long-standing interest of researchers, with statistics consistently showing an overrepresentation of non-white offenders compared to their white counterparts – specifically in relation to violent crimes such as murder and rape. Prior research has found that about 46 percent of serial rapists are black, a fact that correlates with other sensationalized violent crimes such as mass murder and serial murder. The news media are the primary sources of this kind of information for the general public, with previous studies acknowledging that the media primarily focus on discussing non-white offenders in their crime-based …


Los Heroes Y Minerva En La Narracion Del Libro De Caballerias Cristalian De Espana De Beatriz Bernal, Lorena Ascencio Jan 2017

Los Heroes Y Minerva En La Narracion Del Libro De Caballerias Cristalian De Espana De Beatriz Bernal, Lorena Ascencio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Los heroes y Minerva en la narracion del libro de caballerias Cristalian de Espana de Beatriz Bernal" adds to the advancement of knowledge due to the novelty of the topic and findings that have been incorporated throughout this research. This work analyzes the first two volumes of the Cristalian de Espana, which is one of the few novels of chivalry written by a woman in Spain during the 16th century. The main objective of this investigation resides in exploring the role of hero in relation to the classic hero portrayed in chivalry novels using Amadis de Gaula as a point …


A Comparison Of Final Grade Outcomes Of Veterans Enrolled In English I Through Online And Face-To-Face Instructional Modalities At A Public Four-Year College, Thomas Hoke Jan 2017

A Comparison Of Final Grade Outcomes Of Veterans Enrolled In English I Through Online And Face-To-Face Instructional Modalities At A Public Four-Year College, Thomas Hoke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the passing of the first GI Bill in 1945, the community college, now two-and-four-year college, has provided access to veterans in pursuit of postsecondary education. As the college system has grown and expanded during the second half of the 20th Century, online learning has become increasingly important to the development of four-year colleges. Research into online learning has yet to reach an agreement on its effectiveness compared to traditional face-to-face instruction. Additionally, little research into the academic outcomes of veterans taking courses through use of the online instructional modality has been conducted. To address this gap, the current study …


The Workplace Consequences Of Obesity: Impacts On The Organization, The Employee, And The Proximal Coworker, Michael Johnson Jan 2017

The Workplace Consequences Of Obesity: Impacts On The Organization, The Employee, And The Proximal Coworker, Michael Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Obesity is a condition affecting billions of people around the world. Its societal, psychological, and health outcomes have been well documented across multiple disciplines. Moreover, obesity leads to serious workplace outcomes for the organization, the obese individual, and the coworkers working around the obese employee. With this multi-chapter dissertation, I review the literature on the workplace consequences of obesity and extend one potentially fruitful area within this literature base: obesity's impact on a proximal employee. Chapter 1 reviews the workplace consequences associated with obesity. The purpose is to evaluate and integrate this multidisciplinary literature so that management scholars can take …


Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures In The Age Of Convergent Technologies, Daniel Powell Jan 2017

Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures In The Age Of Convergent Technologies, Daniel Powell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The first two decades of the new millennium have witnessed an abundance of change in the areas of textual production, digital communication, and our collective engagement with the Internet. This study explores these changes, which have yielded both positive and negative cultural and developmental outcomes, as products of digital dissonance. Dissonance is characterized by the disruptive consequences inherent in technology's incursion into the print publication cultures of the twentieth century, the explosion in social-media interaction that is changing the complexion of human contact, and our expanding reliance on the World Wide Web for negotiating commerce, culture, and communication. This study …


Cathepsin B Regulates Vldl Secretion Through Lfabp Cleavage, Simeon Thibeaux Jan 2017

Cathepsin B Regulates Vldl Secretion Through Lfabp Cleavage, Simeon Thibeaux

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The liver is tasked with managing the concentration of various metabolites in the blood, and of particular importance is the uptake of free fatty-acid (FFA), as elevated concentrations of FFA are toxic to cells. FFAs are transported across the cell membrane by CD36 and distributed by LFABP to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where they are esterified to glycerol, yielding more chemically inert triglyceride (TAG), which is essential to the process of VLDL assembly. VLDL secretion distributes energy rich TAG to peripheral tissues, and its dysfunction leads to hepatic steatosis, which may progress into hepatocellular carcinoma. The present study examined the …


Picosecond Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifier, Weibin Zhu Jan 2017

Picosecond Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifier, Weibin Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to its versatility, rare earth doped fiber amplifier (RDFA) has attracted a lot of researchers worldwide in recent years. Depends on different kinds of rare earth ion, RDFA can be categorized into neodymium doped fiber amplifier (NDFA), erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), thulium doped fiber amplifier (TDFA), and so forth. Among many kinds of RDFA, the ytterbium doped fiber amplifier (YDFA) has received even more interest, especially in high power application, mainly because of its broad gain bandwidth and high conversion efficiency which are due to its relatively simple electronic structure. The purpose of this research is to study …


The Impact Of Ongoing Science Professional Development On Standardized Assessments Of Student Achievement, Leah Torres Jan 2017

The Impact Of Ongoing Science Professional Development On Standardized Assessments Of Student Achievement, Leah Torres

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify how ongoing science professional development impact students' achievement on standardized assessments. The students' end-of-year assessment and State Science Assessment data were collected from a Central Florida school district. The student data were divided into categories based on teachers' participation in on-going professional development opportunities. The teachers were categorized by the number of types of professional development opportunities they attended. The mean assessment scores of students whose all teachers did or did not participate were calculated, and t-tests were run to find the significance between the means. There was no significance in the …


A Study Of Internet Spending And Graduation Rates: A Correlational Study, Diana Violette Jan 2017

A Study Of Internet Spending And Graduation Rates: A Correlational Study, Diana Violette

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school district spending on Internet access and student achievement, defined by graduation rates, in the state of Florida. Internet funding received for Internet access from E-rate funding administered by the Universal Service Administration Company (USAC) and graduation rates of the 67 school districts in the state of Florida were compared. Further, the data were adjusted for socio-economic status (SES) to determine the relationship between school districts' SES and spending on Internet access. Lastly, school district connectivity and bandwidth were examined to determine whether the ConnectED initiative requirements were related …


Hippieland: Bohemian Space And Countercultural Place In San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood, Kevin Mercer Jan 2017

Hippieland: Bohemian Space And Countercultural Place In San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood, Kevin Mercer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the birth of the late 1960s counterculture in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Surveying the area through a lens of geographic place and space, this research will look at the historical factors that led to the rise of a counterculture here. To contextualize this development, it is necessary to examine the development of a cosmopolitan neighborhood after World War II that was multicultural and bohemian into something culturally unique. It was within this space that a wellspring of drop-out culture evolved from a combination of psychedelic drugs, experimental lifestyles, and anarchistic thought. The contention of countercultural place was …


Predicting Gun Ownership In America: Birth Cohort, Political Views, And Attitudes Towards Gun Control Legislation, Jared Adams Jan 2017

Predicting Gun Ownership In America: Birth Cohort, Political Views, And Attitudes Towards Gun Control Legislation, Jared Adams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With mass shootings occurring with frightening regularity, research into gun ownership behavior is becoming increasingly important for public policy creation and public safety. While extant research tells us that firearm ownership is woven deep into the historical fabric of American culture, scholarship has yet to fully explore predictors for gun ownership. Employing 2015 Pew Research Center political survey data, this study examines the predictive effects of birth cohort, political ideology, and attitudes towards gun control legislation on gun ownership, with and without controls, using hierarchical binary logistic regression models. The presented models examine three separate cohorts: The Millennials, Generation X, …


An Examination Of Inclusive Practices For Junior Secondary Students With Learning Disabilities In Gaborone, Botswana, Samantha Mrstik Jan 2017

An Examination Of Inclusive Practices For Junior Secondary Students With Learning Disabilities In Gaborone, Botswana, Samantha Mrstik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The country of Botswana has passed laws to support the human rights of their citizens. In accordance with the UN's guidelines, Botswana's human rights initiatives, and the international movement towards inclusive education, inclusive educational reform is taking place. In this ethnographic study, the researcher has examined the inclusive practices currently in place to support junior secondary students with learning disabilities (LD) in Gaborone, Botswana over a four-month period. Participants included administrators, general and special education teachers, and students with LD. The themes of routine, academic activities, classroom life, and accommodations for students with LD emerged upon analysis and are discussed …


A Snapchat Marketing Perspective: Examining The Personality Traits And Motives That Predict Attitudes Toward And Engagement With Non-Sponsored And Sponsored Content In Snapchat., Tiany Sousa Garnica Jan 2017

A Snapchat Marketing Perspective: Examining The Personality Traits And Motives That Predict Attitudes Toward And Engagement With Non-Sponsored And Sponsored Content In Snapchat., Tiany Sousa Garnica

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social networking sites (SNS) have revolutionized the communication between consumers and brands, publishers, and marketers. These platforms have become a way for advertisers to communicate directly and engage users with content that is innovative and less intrusive. The aim of this research is to examine the personality traits and motives (based on the uses and gratifications theory) that predict attitudes toward and engagement with non-sponsored and sponsored content in Snapchat. An online survey with 606 participants showed that the main motives of using Snapchat were social information seeking, entertainment, and impression management. Multiple regression analyses were used to determine what …


Quantification Of Non-Stoichiometry And Impurities In Transparent Yag Ceramics By Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (Libs), Sudeep Pandey Jan 2017

Quantification Of Non-Stoichiometry And Impurities In Transparent Yag Ceramics By Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (Libs), Sudeep Pandey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transparent ceramics are an important class of optical materials with applications in street-lighting, high-strength windows, electro- and magneto-optical isolators, high-power laser gain media and nuclear radiation detectors. Compared to single-crystal growth, ceramic processing enables size scalability, near net-shape forming and prevents issues associated with dopant segregation and inhomogeneity, such as stress-induced birefringence and wavefront distortions. The fabrication of high optical grade ceramics by route of powder sintering, relies on a controlled set of techniques preventing the formation of scattering centers (pores and secondary phases) and harmful point defects (color centers, charge-carrier trapping sites). This thesis work investigates a novel approach …


Determinants Of Terrorist Target Selection: A Quantitative Analysis, Taylor Haywood Jan 2017

Determinants Of Terrorist Target Selection: A Quantitative Analysis, Taylor Haywood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Existing research on the subject of terrorism is vast, spanning causes of terrorism, the membership of terrorist groups, types of terrorist attacks, and more. One area of terrorism research, though, has received only limited consideration: terrorist target selection. What research does exist explains target selection almost exclusively as a function of ideology (Asal et al. 2009, 270 and 274; Drake 1998b, 54-56 and 58). However, such a limited causal focus obscures other possible, and probable, explanations of terrorist target selection. This paper proposes an alternative explanation of terrorist target selection that includes ideological and terrorist group capability variables, as well …


Discovery And Characterization Of Antimalarials With Novel Mechanisms Of Action, Bracken Roberts Jan 2017

Discovery And Characterization Of Antimalarials With Novel Mechanisms Of Action, Bracken Roberts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Malaria kills over 500,000 people each year and over a third of the global population is at risk of infection. Though the human race has been fighting the malaria war for over 4,000 years and we have made great strides in eliminating malaria from many countries, we are treading on the edge of what could be another malaria epidemic primarily due to widespread drug resistance. There are documented cases of resistance for every known antimalarial in use today, including Artemisinins. It is critical that we open a new window of discovery in development of next generation antimalarials that circumvent current …


A Phenomenological Study On The Implementation Of Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory And Its Impact On Teacher-Efficacy For Literacy Instruction In An Online Environment, Marcus Vu Jan 2017

A Phenomenological Study On The Implementation Of Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory And Its Impact On Teacher-Efficacy For Literacy Instruction In An Online Environment, Marcus Vu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study sought to examine the teacher-efficacy for literacy instruction (TELI) of instructors who teach in an online environment. The phenomenological methodology sought to answer the following research questions: (1) What pedagogical practices do instructors use to provide literacy instruction in an online environment? (2) How do instructors perceive their TELI in an online environment? and (3) What impact, if any, will a Professional Learning Community (PLC) focused on Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory have on TELI in an online environment? The study consisted of a group of seven online instructors. The researcher the acting as facilitator administered the initial interviews …


An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study Of Student Awareness In Expressing Emotions And Identifying The Emotions Of Others: Through The Mirror Looking Glass, Christine K. Duff Jan 2017

An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study Of Student Awareness In Expressing Emotions And Identifying The Emotions Of Others: Through The Mirror Looking Glass, Christine K. Duff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research was to determine how the self-awareness process of expressing emotions and identifying emotions of others was impacted during a mirror-based intervention for first grade students from inclusive classrooms. The study investigated the extent that a two-way mirror display helped eight students increase their level of awareness when expressing emotions and identifying the emotions of others. Traditional assessment measures for assessing empathy and accuracy in perception of emotions of others have relied on binary, forced choice responses that have not addressed a student's level of awareness, or increased awareness in identifying the emotions of others. Further, …


Analysis Of The Effects Of Formative Assessment In Promoting Transfer Of Learning In An Undergraduate General Microbiology Laboratory Course, Andrea Rediske Jan 2017

Analysis Of The Effects Of Formative Assessment In Promoting Transfer Of Learning In An Undergraduate General Microbiology Laboratory Course, Andrea Rediske

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The undergraduate microbiology lab serves an important role in establishing a foundation of best practices in aseptic technique and infection control for pre-medical, pre-nursing, pre-pharmacy, or pre-allied health students. The high incidence of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) in the US and evidence in the literature of less effective implementation of proper aseptic technique among apprentice doctors and nursing students suggests that more effective transfer of learning could improve implementation of these procedures in the clinical setting. The research described in this study aimed to assess learning transfer as it applied to aseptic techniques and infection control skills learned in the undergraduate …


Photothermal Lensing In Mid-Infrared Materials, Justin Cook Jan 2017

Photothermal Lensing In Mid-Infrared Materials, Justin Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A thorough understanding of laser-materials interactions is crucial when designing and building optical systems. An ideal test method would probe both the thermal and optical properties simultaneously for materials under large optical loads where detrimental thermal effects emerge. An interesting class of materials are those used for infrared wavelengths due to their wide spectral transmission windows and large optical nonlinearities. Since coherent sources spanning the mid-wave and long-wave infrared wavelength regions have only become widely available in the past decade, data regarding their thermal and optical responses is lacking in literature. Photothermal Lensing (PTL) technique is an attractive method for …


Filament Wavefront Evolution, Daniel Thul Jan 2017

Filament Wavefront Evolution, Daniel Thul

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Filamentation is a complex process that gives rise to many nonlinear interactions. However, the fundamentals of filament formation and propagation can be explained in terms of two dominant mechanisms: Kerr self-focusing and plasma defocusing. The first to occur, self-focusing, is responsible for an increase in irradiance through beam collapse. This process requires sufficient initial peak power, on the order of gigawatts for near infrared beams in air. Plasma defocusing then arrests the collapse process once the irradiance reaches the ionization threshold of the medium. These two processes balance each other in an extended plasma channel known as a filament. A …


Dialectics Of Microbudget Cinema, Milos Ajdinovic Jan 2017

Dialectics Of Microbudget Cinema, Milos Ajdinovic

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Magic Kingdom is a feature-length, microbudget motion picture, produced, "written", directed, and edited by Milos Ajdinovic as a part of the University of Central Florida's Masters in Fine Arts program in Digital Entrepreneurial Cinema. Its narrative is a product of the collective improvisation between a group of collaborators – Chealsea Anagnoson, Henry Gibson, Mikaela Duffy and Marcus Nieves – moderated by Milos Ajdinovic. This written dissertation is an attempt to document the concepts and processes that surrounded the production of this film.


Rhetoric Of Imagery: Gendering And Consumption Throughout Interwar American Advertisment, Natalie Delgado Jan 2017

Rhetoric Of Imagery: Gendering And Consumption Throughout Interwar American Advertisment, Natalie Delgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interwar American advertising rose alongside new levels of hygiene, personal appearance, and technology in order to sell their products to target audiences. Despite the abundance of scholarship on media and gender, few studies have examined the gendered techniques through which interwar advertisers communicated with consumers in response to changing social norms and economic stability. The question this thesis explores is how these changes and communication shifted in response to consumer culture and how advertisers utilized early market research and persuasion techniques to target their audiences. Building on the studies of gender, consumption, and identity, this thesis examines the relationship between …


School Has A Bad Storyline: Gamification In Educational Environments, Irene L. Pynn Jan 2017

School Has A Bad Storyline: Gamification In Educational Environments, Irene L. Pynn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

School often has low engagement and frustrating or absent options for the kind of agency the Federal Government's 2016 National Education Technology Plan now recommends educators include in their curriculum. Video games offer opportunities for people to participate in critical problem solving through creative projects. From balancing character statistics, to collaborating with other players, to making ethical and tactical decisions that can change the outcome of the story, successful games draw on the player's interest in learning and analyzing numbers, locations, visual clues, narrative elements, people, and more. One useful example may be found in visual novels (VNs), a medium …