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An Exploration Of How Agency And Socio-Cultural Milieu Support Greater Or Lesser Controlled Gambling And Recovery From Gambling Addiction, Edward Iain Pyle

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

Most gamblers never experience addiction and the majority of those who do eventually recover. This thesis investigates how most maintain control over their gambling and how the majority of those who do experience gambling addiction regain control. Findings are based on 25 qualitative semi-structured interviews with participants who fit one of three ideal-type groups: (i) gamblers who have never experienced addiction; (ii) gamblers who have regained control after experience of gambling addiction; and (iii) gamblers experiencing addiction at time of interview. Participants were recruited who had never engaged in formal treatment because existing research suggests most who experience gambling addiction …

Detection Theory For Accurate And Non-Invasive Skin Cancer Diagnosis Using Dynamic Thermal Imaging, Sebastian E. Godoy, Majeed M. Hayat, David A. Ramirez, Stephen A. Myers, R. Steven Padilla, Sanjay Krishna

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States with over 3.5M annual cases. Presently, visual inspection by a dermatologist has good sensitivity (> 90%) but poor specificity (< 10%), especially for melanoma, which leads to a high number of unnecessary biopsies. Here we use dynamic thermal imaging (DTI) to demonstrate a rapid, accurate and non-invasive imaging system for detection of skin cancer. In DTI, the lesion is cooled down and the thermal recovery is recorded using infrared imaging. The thermal recovery curves of the suspected lesions are then utilized in the context of continuous-time detection theory in order to define an optimal statistical decision rule such that the sensitivity of the algorithm is guaranteed to be at a maximum for every prescribed false-alarm probability. The proposed methodology was tested in a pilot study including 140 human subjects demonstrating a sensitivity in excess of 99% for a prescribed specificity in excess of 99% for detection of skin cancer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest reported accuracy for any non-invasive skin cancer diagnosis method.

Haplós: Towards Technologies For And Applications Of Somaesthetics, Diego Silang Maranan

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

How can vibrotactile stimuli be used to create a technology-mediated somatic learning experience? This question motivates this practice-based research, which explores how the Feldenkrais Method and cognate neuroscience research can be applied to technology design. Supported by somaesthetic philosophy, soma-based design theories, and a critical acknowledgement of the socially-inflected body, the research develops a systematic method grounded in first- and third-person accounts of embodied experience to inform the creation and evaluation of design of Haplós, a wearable, user-customisable, remote-controlled technology that plays methodically composed vibrotactile patterns on the skin in order to facilitate body awareness—the major outcome of this research …

Fisheries, Marine Conservation, Marine Renewable Energy And Displacement: A Fresh Approach, Maria Shauna Campbell

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Fishers are among the biggest commercial resource users in the marine environment. In order to meet international, national and local policies, the UK has to designate a suite of marine protected areas (MPAs) and reach marine renewable energy (MRE) targets. Inevitably, there will be conflict between these two industries and marine conservation. This study uses a multi-disciplinary approach to examine evaluate the suitability of various sources of data, which could be used to detect, assess, and ultimately predict, fishing effort displacement within the different sectors of the > 15 m fleet in the South West of the UK. Gear-specific Vessel Monitoring …

Characterising Futile Autophagosome Based Toxicity And Its Implications In Disease, Robert William Button

Other Faculty of Health Theses

Macroautophagy (‘autophagy’ hereafter) mediates the capture of aberrant cytoplasmic material into vesicles called autophagosomes, which then shuttle to lysosomes for degradation. Autophagy is implicated in numerous diseases, largely in a pro-survival role. However, autophagy has also been suggested as a form of programmed cell death (PCD), from cases of dying cells showing autophagosome accumulations. Debate occurs between whether these vesicles drive the lethality, or are instead a failing rescue attempt. This study aimed to provide clarity on this issue. Via the use of chemical and genetic strategies of inducing autophagosome accumulations, we found combining stimulators of autophagosome biogenesis with lysosomal …

The Impact Of Voice On Trust Attributions, Ilaria Torre

Other Faculty of Health Theses

Trust and speech are both essential aspects of human interaction. On the one hand, trust is necessary for vocal communication to be meaningful. On the other hand, humans have developed a way to infer someone’s trustworthiness from their voice, as well as to signal their own. Yet, research on trustworthiness attributions to speakers is scarce and contradictory, and very often uses explicit data, which do not predict actual trusting behaviour. However, measuring behaviour is very important to have an actual representation of trust. This thesis contains 5 experiments aimed at examining the influence of various voice characteristics — including accent, …

An Alternative Surgical Approach Reduces Variability Following Filament Induction Of Experimental Stroke In Mice, Melissa Trotman-Lucas, Michael E. Kelly, Justyna Janus, Robert Fern, Claire L. Gibson

More Faculty of Health Research

No abstract provided.

Factors Affecting Food Intake And The Role Of Nutrition Education In The Understanding And Implementation Of Healthy Dietary Habits In Saudi Adolescent Girls, Eman Alamri

School of Health Professions Theses

Over the past two decades, the prevalence of obesity has increased among Saudi adolescents. Amongst the many environmental factors predisposing to obesity is the increase in the quantity of certain foods and changes in food quality. This study was undertaken in two phases. Phase 1 explored factors affecting food intake in Saudi adolescent girls (16-18 years) and findings from this were employed in Phase 2 which investigated a school nutrition education programme in Saudi adolescent girls. In Phase 1, cross-sectional data was gathered from 29 Saudi adolescent girls and their mothers from a single school in Tabouk City. Body mass …

An Exploration Of Slovenian Older People’S Occupations And The Influence Of Transition Into A Care Home On Their Occupational Engagement, Tanja Križaj

School of Health Professions Theses

This research explored older Slovenians’ occupations, including the ways in which the transition into a care home influenced their occupational engagement. The research encompassed three stages. Stage 1 investigated Slovenian older people’s individual experiences of occupational engagement, with a particular emphasis on their personally meaningful occupations. Stage 2 aimed to enhance understanding of the impact of transition into a care home on older Slovenians’ meaningful occupations. Finally, Stage 3 sought to provide an insight into older people’s occupational engagement in one Slovenian care home. The first two stages of this research took a phenomenological approach; focusing on the participants’ individual …

Reflections On Leaking Men And Abject Masculinities: Challenging Representations Of Male Identity In And Through Body-Based Performance Art, Mark Andrew Flisher

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

Towards the end of the last century discussions on the representation of masculinity in male body-based performance art placed emphasis on the deconstruction of normative masculine identities. The focus of these investigations tended to position the image of masculinity within Lacan’s sexuation matrix, and as such, these representations were usually referred to as being phallic. That is, they reinscribed the behaviours, traits and characteristics of normative masculinity into the performance space. The central thrust of this practice-as-research thesis is that while some male artists deconstruct the performance of phallic masculinity, to challenge normative masculine ideologies, they often first reinscribe normativity …

Systematic Review Of Countermeasures To Minimise Physiological Changes And Risk Of Injury To The Lumbopelvic Area Following Long-Term Microgravity, Andrew Winnard, Mona Nasser, Dorothee Debuse, Maria Stokes, Simon Evetts, Mick Wilkinson, Julie Hides, Nick Caplan

More Faculty of Health Research

No abstract provided.

Weatherford: Undergraduate Catalog 2017-2018, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Undergraduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Sayre: Undergraduate Catalog 2017-2018, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Undergraduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Improved Performance Of Gene Set Analysis On Genome-Wide Transcriptomics Data When Using Gene Activity State Estimates, Thomas Kamp, Micah Adams, Craig Disselkoen, Nathan L. Tintle

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Gene set analysis methods continue to be a popular and powerful method of evaluating genome-wide transcriptomics data. These approach require a priori grouping of genes into biologically meaningful sets, and then conducting downstream analyses at the set (instead of gene) level of analysis. Gene set analysis methods have been shown to yield more powerful statistical conclusions than single-gene analyses due to both reduced multiple testing penalties and potentially larger observed effects due to the aggregation of effects across multiple genes in the set. Traditionally, gene set analysis methods have been applied directly to normalized, log-transformed, transcriptomics data. Recently, efforts have …

Causes And Predictors Of Thematic Intrusion On Human Similarity Judgments, Garrett R. Honke

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Most theoretical accounts of psychological similarity maintain that similarity judgments are based on shared features (and shared relations among those features, e.g., the commonalities between spatula and ladle). Accounts rarely include associations between targets of comparison (e.g., the association between egg and spatula) as a contributor to similarity judgments. This position is taken despite the fact that people will often choose associates over things with shared features and relations in similarity judgment tasks. So-called dual-process models - where thematic integration and feature (and relation) based comparison are component processes of perceived human similarity - have been proposed to handle this …

Early Life Factors And Health Outcomes In Children And Mothers, Olubunmi Olufunke Orekoya

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focused on early life exposures and their impact on children and mothers’ health. It consists of three distinct studies with an overarching goal of understanding how early life factors influence health outcomes among children and mothers. The broad aims are: 1) to examine the association between maternal gestational weight gain and offspring weight at 1 year, while assessing the mediating role of birth weight; 2) to determine the association between breastfeeding practices and development of allergic conditions (eczema/skin allergy, hay fever/respiratory allergy, and asthma); and 3) to examine the association between breastfeeding and postpartum weight retention at 12 …

Formative Assessment Strategies For Mathematical Thinking: A Qualitative Action Research Study, Benjamin J. Sinwell

Theses and Dissertations

Developing Formative Assessment Strategies for Mathematical Thinking is a qualitative action research study that investigates how one mathematics teacher implements formative assessment strategies aimed at impacting students’ mathematical thinking in two geometry classes a southern Title I public high school. This study is predicated on the notion that when students share their mathematical thinking in class, it stimulates classroom discussion and discourse and provides evidence vis-à-vis formative assessments that the teacher can use to improve mathematics curriculum and instruction. The study is theoretically grounded in Wiliam and Thompson’s (2007) Five Key Formative Assessment Strategies that include: 1. Clarifying and Sharing; …

Recipients’ Perspectives Regarding Expanded Carrier Screening Of Gamete Donors, Erika Kristy Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: This study explored the perspectives of intended parents regarding genetic carrier screening of a gamete donor. The main goal of this study was to determine how much genetic carrier screening information a recipient would prefer to receive about potential donors. The study also aimed to identify factors that potentially influence a recipient’s choice of donor based on genetic screening results. Methods: An online questionnaire was developed to assess intended parents’ preferences regarding expanded carrier screening (ECS) of their donors. Participants were recruited from various online support groups and were eligible if they had previously utilized or were currently utilizing …

Synergism Of Quercetin And Sodium Butyrate For Controlling Growth Of Glioblastoma, Matthew Alan Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), or simply glioblastoma, is the most common and aggressive primary brain tumor, with a prevalence of approximately 20,000 new cases per year in the United States and a 3-year survival rate of just 2%. Quercetin (QCT) is a dietary flavonoid that can be found in common foods such as red kidney beans, cilantro, and onions. Despite little evidence showing any benefits through dietary intake of QCT, various studies show its promising anti-cancer results in vitro. In glioblastoma, QCT is able to cause significant amounts of apoptosis through a variety of mechanisms. These include activation of caspase-9 and …

Engendering Ethics Through Practice In The Project-Based Business Communciation Course, Jonathan H. Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Business related degrees perennially make up roughly 20% of all college degrees awarded. At the same time, business ethics continues to be a much-discussed problem. I capitalize on the close connection between communication and ethics in order to offer a partial solution to the problem in the form of a project-based business communication class. After establishing a complementary view of business ethics, I go on to suggest the ethical focus for the project-based communication class. I then argue for the special suitability of business communication for such an approach, after which I go on to discuss the work of Wittgenstein …

Rebirth Of The House Museum: Commemorating Reconstruction At The Woodrow Wilson Family Home, Jennifer Whitmer Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

Rebirth of a House Museum traces the transformation of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) in Columbia, South Carolina from an eighty year-old presidential shrine to the nation’s first museum of Reconstruction. A semi-guided house tour with limited objects and grounded in a specific time and place modernized an outdated historic house museum (HHM). The house became the primary artifact, supported by a panel exhibit and five original Wilson family objects. Critical to the exhibit’s success were the docents, who also steer this manuscript via their oral histories and fill a void in public history literature. Like Reconstruction, the reinterpretation …

Manifestations Of Corporal Oppression – Embodiments Of Culturalpolitical Resistance: The Representation Of The Body In German Literature Of The Long Nineteenth Century, Hans Niehues

Theses and Dissertations

The “long nineteenth century” was subject to various social, economic, political and cultural changes that were propelled by the Enlightenment and industrialization. This alteration of human life also had a physical dimension. It generated new bodypolitics and conceptions of labor which had a significant impact on the human body. This project is concerned with the changing experience of human physicality in the long nineteenth century and how it is reflected in German literature of the time. I study the trope of the body in Gerhart Hauptmann’s Die Weber, Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck and Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung. I reveal how the …

Robustness Evaluation For Phylogenetic Reconstruction Methods And Evolutionary Models Reconstruction Of Tumor Progression, Jun Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

During evolutionary history, genomes evolve by DNA mutation, genome rearrangement, duplication and gene loss events. There has been endless effort to the phylogenetic and ancestral genome inference study. Due to the great development of various technology, the information about genomes is exponentially increasing, which make it possible figure the problem out. The problem has been shown so interesting that a great number of algorithms have been developed rigorously over the past decades in attempts to tackle these problems following different kind of principles. However, difficulties and limits in performance and capacity, and also low consistency largely prevent us from confidently …

Endocrine Disruption In Largemouth Bass (Micropterus Salmoides) From A Pcb-Contaminated Reservoir, Stephanie B. Laplaca

Theses and Dissertations

There are numerous cases of intersex condition in fish, specifically immature oocytes in testicular tissue, documented in recent literature. Typically, these cases identify a point source input of endocrine disrupting compounds impacting the fish, such as wastewater treatment effluent. Legacy contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been suggested as endocrine disruptors in fish species. The objective of this study was to assess endocrine disruption in wild largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) from exposure to PCBs at a Superfund site in South Carolina on Lake Hartwell (SV-107), where high levels of PCBs in sediment and fish tissue samples have been detected …

Impact Of Medicare Reimbursement Policy Change On The Utilization, Risks, And Costs Associated With Erythropoiesis-Stimulating Agents In Cancer Patients With Chemotherapy-Induced Anemia, Minghui Li

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) are biological drugs used to stimulate the production of red blood cells. ESAs are commonly prescribed for cancer patients with chemotherapy-induced anemia and chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with low levels of hemoglobin. Due to the increasing safety concerns, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Medicare reimbursement policy change for ESAs in cancer patients to regulate the utilization of ESAs. For chemotherapy-induced anemia, when patients had solid tumors, multiple myeloma, lymphoma, or lymphocytic leukemia, ESA treatment is reimbursable by CMS only when the hemoglobin level is < 10g/dL.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were …

Mechanistic Studies Of Nucleic Acid Chaperone Activities Of Retroviral Nucleocapsid Protein, Lichao Sun

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I have used single molecule Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (sm-FRET), as a nanoscale spectroscopic ruler to gain quantitative, molecular-level understanding about the kinetics and mechanism of NC-chaperoned TAR sequence rearrangements. Firstly, I have resolved the complex kinetics and underlying reaction pathways of TAR sequence annealing in the presence of HIV-1 NC over a broad NC concentration by performing the time-resolved sm-FRET measurements in a unique aggregation-free environment. I have further gained the insights that the NC-induced secondary structural changed of TAR hairpins modulate the annealing pathways and consequently affect the overall kinetics of the TAR sequence annealing. …

The Impact Of Capturing Kids' Hearts On New Teachers’ Perceptions Of Classroom Management, Stephanie L. Burgess

Theses and Dissertations

The present action research study explored how incorporating the classroom management model of Capturing Kids’ Hearts (CKH) impacted first year teachers’ perceptions of classroom management. The problem of practice indicated first year teachers historically had large numbers of discipline referrals. The guiding questions were 1) What is the impact of Capturing Kids’ Hearts on first-year teachers’ perceptions of classroom management? And 2) How can participant feedback after CKH preparation be used to improve current classroom management policy at BHS? The primary purpose of this action research was to determine the impact of CKH professional development on four first-year teachers’ perceptions …

Buy For The Sake Of Your Baby: Guardian Consumerism In Twentieth Century America, Mark Vandriel

Theses and Dissertations

“Buy For the Sake of Your Baby” argues that consumerism for infants in twentieth century America was an exceptional type of consumer society. Because the parents who bought the consumer goods could not effectively communicate with their children who used these products, parents frequently purchased items for their babies as acts of good parenting. These parent consumers wanted to do what was right for their children, but because they could not effectively communicate with their children, they were particularly susceptible to influence from outside groups. Businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and the federal government recognized throughout the twentieth century how to effectively …

Queer Practices, Queer Rhetoric, Queer Technologies: Studies Of Digital Performativity In Gendered Network Culture, Gerald Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

The question of gender and gender representation has been an issue for STEM fields like computer science and software engineering for decades. This dissertation argues that the impact of labor practices in such fields promotes gender disparity by masking gender, and often sexuality, behind myths of mastery and correctness. In this dissertation, I approach technical objects like computer code and protocol specifications from the BitTorrent and Bitcoin software packages, and argue that gendered forms of labor that have existed since the inception of computer programming as a profession are evident in technical documents like code. Furthermore, I argue that this …

Investigating The Feedstock Properties And Process Conditions Influencing The Characteristics Of Products Generated From The Hydrothermal Carbonization Of Organic Feedstocks, Liang Li

Theses and Dissertations

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a novel environmentally beneficial thermal conversion process for the transformation of organic feedstocks to value-added products. However, little is known about the role of feedstock properties and/or process conditions during carbonization. This study was conducted to determine the parameters most influential during the HTC of organic feedstocks. Experiments and statistical analyses were conducted to: (1) determine the effect of specific feedstocks, feedstock interactions, and process conditions on carbonization product characteristics; (2) understand how initial liquid characteristics influence product characteristics and evaluate the significance of these initial liquid characteristics in predicting product characteristics; and (3) develop statistical …