Digital Commons Network^™

Mismatched Identities: Experiencing White Womanhood And White Motherhood As An Exotic Dancer, Phoenicia S. Sweeney-Summers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this paper I examine the work of exotic dancers in the Rocky Mountain West, focusing on their identities, identity conflict, identity threat, and overcompensation. In over twelve hours of recorded interviews, I asked ten exotic dancers working in Montana about their work, families, and communities as well as their perceptions of themselves and their work. I found that this marginalized group that resides in places that have rural characteristics, often face identity threat because their identities are known within their communities. The identity threat arises as a result of expectations and stereotypes of dancers, and in order to deal …

Reproduction Of Space In The Mountains Of Morocco: A Case Study In The Western Rif, Ismail Medkouri

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The environmental history of the mountains in Morocco was written under the French colonial administration; and its revision upon independence was biased toward an Arabist perspective. These historical narratives significantly influence the study of contemporary spatial phenomena, typically by undermining the validity of the vernacular mode of production of space. This study (1) reviews key myths pertaining to the spatial history and transformation in mountainous areas in Morocco; and (2) analyzes the contemporary mountain settlement of Ain Mediouna, Province of Taounate in light of a revised environmental narrative. Methods include the following: (1) historical document analysis; and (2) morphogenetic analysis …

Metabolic Energy Requirements During Load Carriage: Implications For The Wildland Firefighter Arduous Pack Test, Jeffrey T. Strang, Christopher J. Alfiero, Charles Dumke, Brent Ruby, Matthew Bundle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite extensive and ongoing scientific study into the metabolic requirements of load carriage, an understanding quantifying the effect of speed, load, sex and body mass has yet to come forth and the extent to which established models predict these requirements is largely untested. Specifically, because existing experimental efforts have typically focused on relatively modest walking speeds using loads representing a fixed portion of the subject’s mass, extending the available predictions to applications where individuals complete a common task carrying an identical absolute load provides estimates of unknown accuracy. PURPOSE: Here, we measured the energy use in a large subject group …

It Takes A Village To Raise A Child: Perceived Community Support And Parenting Satisfaction And Efficacyamong American Indian Young Mothers, Ann Marie Douglas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although there has been a decline in teen pregnancy in White, African American, and Hispanic teens, American Indian teen pregnancies have stayed relatively stable. According to Indian Health Services (2014), young women under the age of 24 years old account for 80 percent of births in the American Indian population. With a high percent of young mothers in this population and the stigma associated with young parenting, it is important to explore American Indian young mothers’ satisfaction and efficacy associated with parenting. It is also important to see how American Indian communities can support young mothers. The present study examined …

Demographics And Growth History Of Whitebark Pine On Undisturbed Sites Across The Northern Us Rocky Mountains, Sarah Flanary

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Along with fluctuating precipitation and temperatures in the form of climate change, whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) has seen a territory wide increase in mortality leading to a decline in population. While the most direct influences on whitebark pine health and mortality are mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks, fire exclusion policies, and the spread of white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola), climate change can impact the intervals and severity of such beetle, rust, and fire disturbances, and may affect the growth and health of whitebark pine directly. The objectives of this study were to identify whitebark pine stands within the …

Life On The Edge: Risk Of Predation Drives Selection Of Habitat And Survival Of Neonates In Endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, Shannon Forshee

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Long-term viability of endangered populations requires development of effective management strategies that target the population vital rate with the highest potential to influence population trajectories. When adult survival is high and stable, juvenile recruitment is the vital rate with the greatest potential to improve population trajectories. For my thesis I examined how lactating Sierra Nevada Bighorn sheep (Ovis Canadensis sierra) balance forage and predation risk during the neonatal period. I first identified resource selection strategies employed by lactating females to promote survival of neonates and then determined the primary factors affecting survival of neonates. I found lactating females selected for …

Exploring The Resting State Neural Activity Of Monolinguals And Late And Early Bilinguals, Carrie Elizabeth Gold

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals who speak more than one language have been found to enjoy a number of benefits not directly associated with the use of the languages themselves. One of these benefits is that bilingual individuals appear to develop symptoms of dementia 4-5 years later than comparable individuals who speak just one language. Studies on this topic, however, do not consistently account for factors including if the individual learned their second language as a child or later in life, or their language proficiency. In an attempt to more carefully examine these variables, this study looks at structural and resting-state functional MRI scans …

Marketing Plan For Columbus State University, Kaylyn Cockrell

Theses and Dissertations

Marketing is an important tool for capturing customers and sales in business, and it’s equally as important to an institution like Columbus State University (CSU) aiming to capture student customers. The development of a marketing plan through extensive research and planning will contribute to the success of all involved marketing efforts. This marketing plan will include all the standard essential elements: business mission statement, situation (SWOT) analysis, objectives, marketing strategy, implementation, and evaluation control. For the mission statement, the current statement from the 2018-2023 Strategic Plan will be used. The situation analysis will include looking at the current strengths, weakness, …

Improving Estuarine Water Quality In South Florida: A Quantitative Evaluation Of The Efficacy Of A Local Nutrient Ordinance, Kerstin Motsch

Theses and Dissertations

Degraded coastal water quality is a concern in Florida, in part due to nutrient enrichment of aquatic ecosystems causing eutrophication and excessive algal growth. In 2010, a fertilizer ordinance was enacted in Cape Coral located in Lee County Florida with the objective of reducing nutrient loads from local fertilizing practices in order to improve water quality within the city. In order to assess its efficacy, a before after control impact (BACI) design was implemented using Fort Lauderdale in Broward County Florida as a reference location. A total of twenty estuarine canal sampling locations were identified in both Lee and Broward …

Using Maximum Entropy To Model The Distribution Of An Endangered, Endemic Crayfish Cambarus Harti (Hobbs), James Kiourtsis

Theses and Dissertations

Cambarus harti is a state-listed endangered, endemic crayfish found only in three counties in mid-west Georgia. Several studies have attempted to characterize the biology and ecology of this crayfish, however data regarding the distribution of this rare, endemic crayfish remains limited. The International Union for Conservation of nature stated that in order to create an effective conservation plan, the known distribution must be expanded. Species distribution models are a cost-effective way to identify locations that have similar habitat characteristics to those with known populations. One species distribution model, Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt), is the preferred approach when modeling species, like C. …

Antibiotic Effects Of Dimethyl Sulfoxide And Synthetic Polyphenols On E. Coli Cells, Camila Cardenas

Theses and Dissertations

There is increasing interest in polyphenols due to their potential medicinal and antibiotic applications. Naturally occurring polyphenols, such as curcumin, have garnered tremendous attention. However, synthetic polyphenols commonly used in biochemistry experiments have not been sufficiently explored. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of dimethyl sulfoxide on the cellular uptake of synthetic polyphenols. Three synthetic polyphenols (Phenol Red, Congo Red, and Bromophenol Blue) were tested for their antibiotic properties and compared to the antibiotic activity of curcumin. Our results show that phenol red does not interact with the bacterial membrane even in the presence of 30% …

Carbon Limitation In Periphytic Algal Wastewater Treatment Systems, Brandon J. Furnish

Theses and Dissertations

As global eutrophication poses an ever increasing threat to water quality new techniques must be implemented to improve the sustainability of natural resource consumption. Wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) are designed to destroy pathogens, remove particulates, lower oxygen demanding substances, and reduce nutrients from influent waste water to avoid the degradation of receiving waters. WWTF are generally effective, however they are mostly inadequate at removing nutrients. When wastewater derived nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate are discharged to receiving waters, they stimulate algal blooms. Algal blooms can reduce dissolved oxygen, block sunlight for submerged aquatic plants, and render state waters unusable …

Detection And Discrimination Of Natural And Synthetic Polysaccharides In A Solid-State Nanopore, Jonathan Nichols

Open Access Master's Theses

In 2007-08 over 100 people died as a result of a contaminated batch of the polysaccharide heparin, an otherwise life-saving anticoagulant drug. After the contaminant was discovered, the development of assays that detect the contaminant, a structurally similar molecule, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate, became a necessity. Solid-state nanopores, which can, with appropriate experimental design, readily detect single molecules of analyte, may be able to help distinguish the two with greater ease than conventional assays, and with greater throughput even at concentrations well below that of USP assays. Polysaccharides, especially naturally occurring polysaccharides, have a vast range of structures characterized by widely …

The Effects Of Child Literacy And Self-Control On School Readiness Based On Teacher Report, Alyssa Ribeiro

Open Access Master's Theses

School readiness has been identified as one of the major determinants of an individual’s later academic success (Cappelloni, 2011; Kim, 2008; Lunenburg, 2011). School readiness encapsulates academic readiness and socio-emotional development, and is impacted not only by the child, but also by the child’s family, the early environment, the school, and the community (Cavanaugh, Lippitt, & Moyo, 2000; Huffman, Mehlinger, & Kerivan, 2000; Maxwell & Clifford, 2004; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000; Peth-Pierce, 2000; Raver, 2002).

Despite a plethora of studies in school readiness, there has been a lack of examination of school readiness through the lens …

Triggering A Diverse Seafood Diet: Exploring Perceptions Of Sustainable Seafood Systems In New England, Taylor Macdonald Witkin

Open Access Master's Theses

New England’s seafood production systems involve social relationships with food that are at odds with ecosystem health and longevity. Customers continue to demand, fishers continue to catch, and suppliers continue to sell species from increasingly threatened populations instead of abundant species that can be harvested sustainably. Harvesters and markets have been trapped, forced to depend on a narrow range of species despite opportunities to diversify marine food system markets and tastes. The aim of this study is to build a better understanding of how New England’s local seafood movement and market can foster a sustainable socio-ecological seafood system. The argument …

Fishery And Biological Characteristics Of Jonah Crab (Cancer Borealis) In Rhode Island Sound, Corinne L. Truesdale

Open Access Master's Theses

Jonah crab (Cancer borealis) is a demersal crustacean distributed throughout continental shelf waters from Newfoundland to Florida. The species supports a rapidly growing commercial fishery in southern New England, where landings of Jonah crab have increased more than six-fold since the early 1990s. However, management of the fishery has lagged its expansion; the first Fishery Management Plan for the species was published in 2015 and a stock assessment has not yet been created due to a lack of available data concerning the species’ life history and fishery. Fishing effort in the crab fishery is necessarily tied to fishing …

Efficacy Measures Of Tolfenamic Acid In A Tau Knock Out Model: Relevance To Alzheimer’S Disease, Allison Leso

Open Access Master's Theses

In the healthy human brain, the protein tau serves the essential function of stabilizing microtubules. However, in a diseased state, tau becomes destabilized and aggregates into a pathogenic form that ultimately creates one of the two major hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques and tau tangles. Multiple neurodegenerative diseases, termed tauopathies, such as Pick’s disease, and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), are also linked to mutations in tau. While AD does include a second hallmark in the form of Aβ plaques, to date all therapeutics aimed at this hallmark have failed. However, the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) tolfenamic acid …

Evolving Encoded Marking For Glove-Based Pose And Posture Recognition, Joshua V. Gyllinsky

Open Access Master's Theses

The feasibility of encoding pose and posture information within surface textures for digital reconstruction of the inverse-mapping problem of computer vision was explored. This was done using a combination of three biology-inspired artificial intelligence techniques. Initial steps were conducted in this pursuit and the path to further research is laid out. It was found that textures can be used to encode information on a 3D surface to supplement computer vision systems.

Environmental Factors Affecting Methane Cycling In Narragansett Bay, Christopher James Mcaleer

Open Access Master's Theses

Wetlands and estuaries are strong sources of methane to the atmosphere due to high rates of methanogenesis. These environments contain diverse and extensive microbial communities that are responsible for processing organic matter, with tidal flow responsible for exchange between marine, freshwater, and estuarine sources. While most methane is produced in sediment, as methanogenic Archaea generally require anoxic conditions, methane oxidizing bacteria (methanotrophs) regulate emissions in oxygenated waters through the consumption of methane. Therefore, flood tide has the potential to provide wetlands – salt marshes, in particular – with organic matter and methanotrophic communities, creating a unique environment which features the …

Influence Of Environmental Factors And Fishing Effort On Demersal Fish Species In Ghana, Vida Samantha Osei

Open Access Master's Theses

Separating effects of fishing from responses of environmental factors is a key problem for fisheries scientists. I used data from fishery-independent trawl surveys (6 years data from 1999 – 2016) to test influences of fishing effort and environmental factors (temperature, oxygen salinity) on the abundance and spatial distribution of two species groups: 5 economically important species and 3 non-commercial species on the continental shelf of Ghana. Fishing effort, measured for the entire study area, affected year-to-year changes in the abundance of all but one species (5 species negatively, 2 positively, and 1 species unaffected). All species also showed significant spatio-temporal …

Isopycnal Mixing In The North Atlantic Oxygen Minimum Zone Revealed By Rafos Floats, Donald William Rudnickas Jr.

Open Access Master's Theses

The Eastern Tropical North Atlantic Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) is a biogeochemically important area in the vicinity of the Cape Verde Islands formed by a combination of biological and physical processes. We use data collected from isopycnal RAFOS oats that were precisely ballasted into two groups and deployed at five locations near the edge of the OMZ. One group was ballasted to drift on the isopycnal where oxygen is at its minimum, and the other group about 300 m deeper. Nearly every six hours for 600 days the oats recorded their positions, temperature, pressure, and (at the isopycnal aligned with …

Positioning By Road Feature Correspondence, Tyson Demarest

Open Access Master's Theses

This research analyzes a new method to localize a moving vehicle within a known road network using differential odometry and a digital road map. The technique proposes geometrically hashing road features whose curvature is great enough to represent a distinct, measurable, real-world phenomenon. Several other strategies using road map data to constrain a localization search are discussed. In the recognition phase, this research proposes using a modified particle filter provides a way to maintain, test, and resample multiple hypotheses of the vehicle’s dead-reckoned location.

Sentiment Features For Yelp Not-Recommended Online Reviews Study, Na Li

Open Access Master's Theses

Nowadays, online reviews have become an important source of opinions that people refer to while making decisions. For instance, there are more and more people who refer to Yelp reviews to judge the quality of services that are provided by local businesses. Due to the popularity and guidance of online reviews, many reviews have been imposed for the purpose of either promoting or downgrading target services. Yelp develops its own automatic review recommendation algorithm, which has marked many suspicious reviews as Not-recommended Reviews. Yelp has automatically grouped its online reviews in two different categories, and it is a common …

The Old Rhode Island Farm: History, Memory, And Interpretation At Bristol's Coggeshall Farm Museum, Michelle M. Just

Open Access Master's Theses

While larger living history museums have been frequently studied by scholars, smaller museums, like Coggeshall Farm Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island receive far less attention. Utilizing historical and institutional records, historical monographs, and literature from the fields of museum studies and anthropology, this study examines authenticity in the museum setting using Coggeshall Farm Museum as a case study, suggesting that despite the museum’s search for historical accuracy, the institution remains inauthentic to recorded history. It argues that the history and interpretation of Coggeshall Farm Museum was intimately intertwined and influenced by the historical perceptions, biases, and dynamics of the museum’s …

The Effect Of Humidification On Artificially Aged Tin-Weighted Silks, Sarah Gilcrease

Open Access Master's Theses

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a variety of weighting agents were applied to silk yarns and fabrics to increase their weight in an attempt to make a greater profit on their sale. In addition, the weighting process imparted a more desirable drape to silk, making it more popular with consumers. Consequently, weighting became an almost ubiquitous practice during this time until sanctions on the amount of acceptable weighting were enacted in the 1930s due to concerns around the rapid deterioration of heavily weighted silks.

However, many of these textiles have been accessioned by museums and other cultural …

Instrumentation Of Measuring Cellular Capacitance Via Signal Processing Tool, Mosa Al Zowelei

Open Access Master's Theses

This master thesis pertains to a systematic testing and evaluation of three neuroscience instruments previously developed at the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory of the University of Rhode Island. The three instruments are the Universal Clamp (UC), the Neuron Emulator (NE), and the Cell Capacitance Emulator (CCE). The UC is an innovative instrument that employs a fast-digital signal processor to deliver and integrate various experimental tools for electrophysiology. The NE is an electronic device that uses a capacitance source to represent the passive and active electrical properties of a neuron. The CCE presents a dynamic resistance-capacitance model of a neuron with the …

Behavior Of Frp Pedestrian Bridges Under Human Induced Excitation, Laura Schmidt

Open Access Master's Theses

The prediction of the dynamic response of pedestrian bridges under human-induced excitation is a challenge in the design of pedestrian bridges, caused by the wide range of variables and the complex interaction effects. The use of new, lightweight materials, like FRP, and the trend to design long span and slender constructions lead to structures more sensitive to dynamical impact, which caused some vibrational problems at newly built bridges in the recent past. This brought increased attention to this topic.

The present thesis aims to analyze the dynamic properties of the new material fiber reinforced polymer (FRP), to estimate the changes …

Quantifying Fisheries Balance With A Novel Production Estimation Method, Joseph Zottoli

Open Access Master's Theses

Balanced harvest is a controversial Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) concept conceived with intent to minimize ecosystem disruption and maximize human benefits compared to traditional management. However, most marine ecosystems lack comprehensive production estimates necessary for implementation. We developed and tested two new methods for estimating fish production at the species level with minimal data requirements. Application of our techniques to four ecological production units in the Northwest Atlantic (Mid-Atlantic Bight, Georges Bank, Gulf of Maine, and western Scotian Shelf) from 1991-2013 provided a direct estimate of 2032 kt yr^-1 of total fish production. The degree of balance between catch …

Carbon Nanotube Interactions With Human Cells Under Shear Using Microfluidics, Rolf Staud

Open Access Master's Theses

In recent years, nanotechnology has attracted significant interest in cancer therapeutics for its touted ability to offer innovative solutions to existing problems associated with chemotherapeutic agents. Specifically, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have garnered recent attention in the fields of bioimaging and biosensing. SWCNTs possess an intrinsic and unique near-infrared (nIR) photostable fluorescence and biocompatibility. Several past studies have revealed how SWCNTs interact with biological systems in vitro and in vivo. In this study, the specific effect of flow and shear stress on the interactions between SWCNTs and live cells in vitro are more closely investigated. The nature of binding …

Passive Object Detection Via An Artificial Lateral Line And A 2-D Viscous Flow Model, Jack H. Clark

Open Access Master's Theses

In the field of ocean exploration and marine vehicle design there is a heavy reliance on the use of acoustic and visual sensors for mapping, maneuvering, and obstacle avoidance. In low light regions, constricted spaces, or areas where water is turbid, however, passive systems similar to the lateral line of fish can be advantageous. Using a set of measurements like these, a digital twin could be constructed such that it represents the true physical system for use in mapping, control system design, or tracking the loading of a structure over time. For moving bodies in the presence of solid boundaries …