Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation And Testing Of Eye, Nose, And Mouth Protection For Biological Hazards To Support A Consensus Standard, Jeremy R Gouzd

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

Methane Decomposition To Carbon Nanotubes And Cox -Free H2 Over Transition Metal Catalysts, I-Wen Wang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

First Principle Study Of Nitrogen Fixation On Molybdenum Containing Semiconductor Surface With A Developed Machine Learning Approach, Alhassan S Yasin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

Phenomenology And Geographic Information Science: Experiencing Landscape Through Geospatial Technologies And Higuchi-Style Indices, L. Jesse Rouse

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Research conducted on cultural landscapes is often divided into two approaches comprising a qualitative description or quantitative measure. The separation is often driven by the difference in the approach and methods utilized. Phenomenology has often been used as the framework with which to consider the experience and quality of a landscape. The descriptive and personal nature of phenomenology seeks to separate the observer from their personal biases to yield a qualitative narrative. Conversely, Geographic Information Science (GIScience) is seen as a set of methods and tools to capture, map, and analyze the quantifiable features of a landscape. However, it is …

Hydrogeology And Water Management In The Arkwright Underground Coal Mine, Pittsburgh Seam, Northern West Virginia, Bryant D. Mountjoy

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Arkwright #1 is a closed underground mine in the Pittsburgh coal seam near Morgantown, West Virginia USA. Arkwright shares perimeter boundaries/barriers with three other closed Pittsburgh seam mines (Osage #3, Jordan #93, Federal #1) and is partially overlain by flooded Sewickley seam mines, 25 m above it. This mine is significant primarily because it manages and treats water diverted from nearly 20 other closed mines over a 600 square kilometer area. This study examines water levels, pump records, and mine maps to describe the hydrogeology of Arkwright Mine. After closure in 1995, Arkwright and the adjacent northern Osage mines began …

Protein And Lipid Characterization Of Acheta Domesticus, Bombyx Mori, And Locusta Migratoria Dry Flours, Emily N. Brogan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cricket (Acheta domesticus), silkworm pupae (Bombyx mori), and locust (Locusta migratoria) dry flours were obtained to examine the biochemical properties and composition of the flours. This study aimed to characterize the protein and lipid components of three insect species utilizing proximate composition analyses, amino acid composition analysis, protein solubility, SDS-PAGE, fatty acid composition analysis, and thin layer chromatography to determine lipid classes, and lipid extraction efficiency. Kjeldahl determined the cricket, locust, and silkworm flours contained 72.0%, 53.1%, and 71.2% protein, respectively. All proximate composition analyses were significantly (p< 0.05) different between species. Amino acid composition analysis revealed that the flours contained 3.6-3.9% and 0.90-1.5% of lysine and methionine, respectively. Many countries have cereal grains and legumes as a staple in their diet that contain these limiting amino acids. Essential amino acids were 22% of total amino acids. Protein solubility revealed that the three species studied were most soluble in alkaline environments with highest protein solubility occurring at pH 13 at 66% solubility in silkworm. Lowest solubility occurred in more acidic conditions between pH 4-5. SDS-PAGE revealed five major protein fractions with estimated molecular weights of 27 (cuticle proteins), 41 (arginine kinase), which has been identified as an allergen in shrimp, 42 (actin), 71 (hemocyanin), and 220 myosin) kDa. Soxhlet extraction determined cricket, silkworm, and locust flours contained 15.4%, 33.3%, and 11.4% lipid, respectively. The only omega-3 fatty acid found in the flours was α-linolenic acid. Silkworm flour contained the most α-linolenic acid at 33.3% of total fatty acids, followed by locust (13.7%), and cricket (0.6%). TLC resolved lipids for typical lipid classes. The four major lipid classes noted were triacylglycerol, free fatty acid, cholesterol, and phospholipid. Lipid extraction efficiency found that the organic solvents chloroform and methanol had the highest lipid extraction yield in both cricket (69.3%) and locust (93.0%). Methyl-tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) extracted lipids most efficiently in the silkworm. Proteins and lipids found in insects need to be isolated to further or commercial use.

A Lab-Based Study Of N95 Ffrs Against Cigarette Smoke Under Varying Concentrations And Sealing Conditions, Jacob Davis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Respirators are a common form of protection when working in environments where workers are exposed to harmful agents. One exposure that has not been rigorously tested is cigarette smoke. Air sampling was conducted to test the effectiveness of four different respirators N95 Respirators for various concentrations of cigarette smoke and seal conditions and for different respirators. The Moldex 2200, Moldex 2300 (exhalation valve), Gerson 1730, and 3M 8210V (Exhalation valve) were used for testing. The set concentrations were 100,000: 200,000: and 400,000 cm3 with an error allowance of 20% for each concentration. Different flow rates (15, 30, 50, and 85 …

Meso- And Macro-Scale Facies And Chemostratigraphic Analysis Of Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale In Northern West Virginia, Usa, Thomas J Paronish

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

No abstract provided.

Extremist Speech, Compelled Conformity, And Censorship Creep, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Silicon Valley has long been viewed as a full-throated champion of First Amendment values. The dominant online platforms, however, have recently adopted speech policies and processes that depart from the U.S. model. In an agreement with the European Commission, tech companies have pledged to respond to reports of hate speech within twenty-four hours, a hasty process that may trade valuable expression for speedy results. Plans have been announced for an industry database that will allow the same companies to share hashed images of banned extremist content for review and removal elsewhere.

These changes are less the result of voluntary market …

Four Principles For Digital Expression (You Won't Believe #3!), Danielle K. Citron, Neil Richards

Faculty Scholarship

At the dawn of the Internet’s emergence, the Supreme Court rhapsodized about its potential as a tool for free expression and political liberation. In ACLU v. Reno (1997), the Supreme Court adopted a bold vision of Internet expression to strike down a federal law - the Communications Decency Act - that restricted digital expression to forms that were merely “decent.” Far more than the printing press, the Court explained, the mid-90s Internet enabled anyone to become a town crier. Communication no longer required the permission of powerful entities. With a network connection, the powerless had as much luck reaching a …

Saving Face: Unfolding The Screen Of Chinese Privacy Law, Tiffany Li, Jill Bronfman, Zhou Zhou

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy is often a subjective value, taking on meaning from specific social, historical, and cultural contexts. Western privacy scholars have so far generally limited academic study to focus on Western ideals of privacy. However, privacy – or some notion of it – can be found in almost every culture and every nation, including the growing economic powerhouse that is the People’s Republic of China. Focusing on China as a case study of non-Western privacy norms is important today, given the rapid rise of the Chinese economy and its corresponding impact on worldwide cultural norms and law. Simply put, it is …

Abolishing Ius Sanguinis Citizenship: A Proposal Too Restrained And Too Radical, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

Costica Dumbrava maintains that ius sanguinis citizenship is a historically tainted, outmoded, and unnecessary means of designating political membership. He argues that it is time to abandon it. Dumbrava limits his challenge to ius sanguinis citizenship per se, and even suggests that family-based migration rights could be used to minimise the disruptive effect of abolishing citizenship-by-descent. But his core complaints about ius sanguinis citizenship – the mismatch of biological parentage and political affinity, the difficulties of determining legal parentage – can be, and have been, levied against these various family-based preferences and statuses, which are likely found in every nation’s …

Eyes Wide Open: What Social Science Can Tell Us About The Supreme Court's Use Of Social Science, Jonathan Feingold, Evelyn Carter

Faculty Scholarship

In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rendered statistical evidence of racial disparities doctrinally irrelevant to a criminal defendant’s equal protection claim. Fifteen years later in Grutter v. Bollinger, Chief Justice Rehnquist—part of the McCleskey majority—invoked admissions data to support his conclusion that the University of Michigan Law School had unconstitutionally discriminated against White applicants. This facially inconsistent treatment of statistical data invites the following inquiry: Why do judges (including Supreme Court Justices) rely on social science in some cases, yet reject it in others? We suggest that one answer lies at the intersection of Critical Race Theory and empirical …

The New Health Care Federalism On The Ground, Abbe R. Gluck, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, part of a symposium investigating methods of empirically evaluating health policy, focuses on American health care federalism, the relationship between the federal and state governments in the realm of health care policy and regulation. We describe the results of a five year study of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) from 2012-2017. Our study focused on two key pillars of the ACA, which happen to be its most state-centered — expansion of Medicaid and the implementation of health insurance exchanges — and sheds light on federalism in the modern era of nationally-enacted health …

Crowdsourcing & Data Analytics: The New Settlement Tools, Bernard Chao, Christopher Robertson, David Yokum

Faculty Scholarship

By protecting the right to a jury, the State and Federal Constitutions recognize the fundamental value of having civil and criminal disputes resolved by laypersons. However actual trials are relatively rare, in part because parties seek to avoid the risks and cost of trials, and courts seek to clear dockets efficiently. Even as settlement may be desirable, it is sometimes difficult to resolve a dispute. Parties naturally view their cases from different perspectives, and these perspectives often cause both sides to be overly optimistic, seeking unreasonably large or unreasonably small resolutions.
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Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Zahr K. Said, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Decades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital …

Adr And Access To Justice: Current Perspectives, Ellen E. Deason, Michael Z. Green, Donna Shestowsky, Rory Van Loo, Ellen Waldman

Faculty Scholarship

Access to justice is a broad topic, and we cannot cover everything. You will notice a few major omissions. Most notably, we are not going to emphasize consumer pre-dispute arbitration agreements. This is not because they are not important, but because much has been written and said on this topic, and it could easily swallow the whole discussion. Also, we are probably not going to say very much about restorative justice, and I am sure you will notice some other holes. We invite you to raise missing issues in your comments.

Let me start with a few opening remarks. We …

The Moscow We All Seek: Performing The Role Of Vershinin In Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Richard Mugrage

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this document, I will give a detailed account of my preparation, rehearsal and performance process, and finally, will evaluate and assess the outcome of my contributions and experiences as I performed the role of Vershinin in Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters. Throughout the duration of this production, I was challenged and also rewarded by my struggles and discoveries while creating a complex character for the stage. The preparation for my role in the play consisted of using different acting techniques that I studied while at West Virginia University as well as research I compiled about life in Russia during …

East Or West? Understanding Strategic Alignment In The Post-Soviet Space, John A. Mowchan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This comparative foreign policy dissertation examines small state alignment in the post-Soviet space. Specifically, I ask what explains change and continuity in the strategic alignment patterns of former Soviet states with the United States and Russian Federation since the end of the Cold War? To answer this question, I analyze the alignment trajectories of ruling governments in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine from 1995 to 2015. While neorealists expect these materially weak states to bandwagon with Russia because of threat or power considerations, the empirical reality does not consistently support these theoretical expectations. What has occurred is that at different …

Integrated Circuits For Programming Flash Memories In Portable Applications, Mir Mohammad Navidi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Smart devices such as smart grids, smart home devices, etc. are infrastructure systems that connect the world around us more than before. These devices can communicate with each other and help us manage our environment. This concept is called the Internet of Things (IoT). Not many smart nodes exist that are both low-power and programmable. Floating-gate (FG) transistors could be used to create adaptive sensor nodes by providing programmable bias currents. FG transistors are mostly used in digital applications like Flash memories. However, FG transistors can be used in analog applications, too. Unfortunately, due to the expensive infrastructure required for …

The(Y), Michael Oliver

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This MFA thesis addresses work completed and presented in a thesis exhibition at West Virginia University. It expresses the personal motivations, the process and the inspirations behind the exhibit. Through the use of abstraction, I was searching for a personal change in perspective, and a way to identify with people on a level that mirrors my long-term experience in the military. This was explored by uniformly adding Adobe Photoshop filters, in a step by step manner, to a selected series of portraits., to a selected series of portraits. The hope was by removing the surface characteristics of an individual what …

Understanding The Impact Of Stimulation Treatment On Gas Production From A Horizontally Drilled Marcellus Shale Well, Matthew Dean Carl Perrella

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The Marcellus shale is one of the largest unconventional gas shale plays in the United States. It underlies much of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York and even extends under Lake Erie and into Canada. The most effective methods to produce from this play is to drill horizontally into the shale formation and use hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing creates pathways for the hydrocarbon to flow from the shale into the wellbore. These lateral sections of the well are typically completed from toe to heel over a number of stages using a plug and perforate method.;This research focuses on a Marcellus …

The Determination And Evaluation Of Pyrolytic Products: A Focus On Synthetic Cannabinoids, Stephen Raso

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Synthetic cannabinoids have become a ubiquitous challenge in forensic toxicology and seized drug analysis. Acute toxic effects associated with these drugs include tachycardia, seizures, depression, possible suicidal tendencies, and the onset of psychotic episodes. Synthetic cannabinoids were initially synthesized for research purposes in understanding the receptor-ligand interactions at the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors. They are similar to Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and also act as agonists at the cannabinoid receptors. Originally it was hoped that this class of drug would be useful for pain relief, but instead this class of compounds has become widely abused, typically via smoking or heated vapor …

Using Incidental Teaching To Teach Mands To Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Katherine S. Robinson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Children with autism display deficits in three core areas; communication, social interaction, and restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Deficits in communication often manifest in the form of maladaptive behaviors that serve to have the individuals needs and wants met. Additionally, children with autism may have difficulty generalizing learned skills to novel environments and with novel items. Naturalistic teaching procedures, such as incidental teaching, can promote generalization through the use of naturally occurring learning opportunities and reinforcers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate an incidental teaching procedure on the acquisition of both rate of manding behavior as well as a …

Study Of The Resonance Spectrums Of The Flute And The Effect Of Different Stable Vowels On Formant Tuning With Violin And Clarinet, Alyssa M. Schwartz

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

"In the long history of scientific investigation of musical instruments, the flute has been given particular attention, primarily because of its apparent simplicity. Yet many of the physical factors that determine its behavior have not been well documented." This is especially true when it comes to modern understanding of the way in which changes in the shape of the oral cavity affect the resonance spectrum of the flute.;Creating different monophthongs, or stable-vowel positions, while playing the flute changes the spectral slope and strength of the overtones in the flute tone. This affects the ability of the flute to successfully blend …

Personality, Sleep, And Mortality, Shantel Spears

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Personality traits and sleep are associated with health and longevity; however, no investigation has examined whether sleep is a pathway linking personality to mortality risk. Thus, we tested this effect across a 20-year mortality follow-up period in the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) cohort (N = 3,253; M age = 47.03 years, SD = 12.39, range = 20-75), using proportional hazards in a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. Openness was the only trait predictor of death risk. Daytime sleepiness and short and long sleep duration also emerged as predictors of mortality risk. We found indirect effects for neuroticism, …

Market-Based Aid And Economic Reform, Neron R. Thomas

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study examines the empirical links between market-based aid and economic reform in sub-Sahara Africa. My research question: Is market-based aid necessary for economic reform across sub-Sahara Africa? To answer that question, I applied both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Specifically, regression analyses were conducted to determine whether or not causality could be established between my dependent and independent variables. 22 sub-Saharan states were used. In addition, two case studies (Ghana and Senegal) were conducted to help explain some of the cultural nuances that may be missing from the statistical analysis. As a result of the Washington Consensus, International Financial Institutions …

Temporal Bisection And Effects Of D-Amphetamine Administration In Lewis And Fischer 344 Rats, Marissa Turturici

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Temporal control concerns the discrimination of intervals of time. Individuals with various psychological disorders have shown differences in temporal control when compared to control populations. It is unknown whether and how temporal control might be linked with impulsivity, another measure that predicts problem behavior such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Because Lewis (LEW) rats reliably show greater impulsive choice relative to Fischer 344 (F344) rats, the present study examined responding in these two strains under a temporal-bisection procedure that assesses temporal control. In the temporal-bisection procedure, rats are trained to discriminate between two durations. Intermediate durations are subsequently presented to determine the …

Regulator Of G Protein Signaling-21 (Rgs21) In Peripheral Taste Physiology., Adam Bryant Schroer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The gustatory system subjects ingested food to ‘quality control’ that prevents consumption of harmful compounds while also regulating nutrient intake. A better understanding of the physiological regulation of taste will enhance our ability to facilitate the appropriate consumption of nutrients and improve overall health. Bitter, sweet, and umami tastes are detected by a family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that associate with heterotrimeric G proteins and initiate intracellular signaling cascades after activation by tastant binding. ‘Regulators of G protein Signaling’ (RGS proteins) act as Ga-directed GTPase-accelerating proteins (GAPs) and thereby accelerate inactivation of GPCR-mediated signaling. Rgs21 is selectively expressed in …

Antibacterial Activity Of Current Endodontic Repair Materials Against Enterococcus Faecalis., Michael A. Tran

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Introduction: Root canal perforations caused by pathologic or iatrogenic means have been shown to cause serious complications leading to overall tooth loss. Bacterial infection of the affected site results in failure of the root canal as well as an inflammatory response leading to the destruction of supporting tissues. Although a multitude of endodontic repair materials have been tested over the past several decades, recent introduction of bioceramic materials have shown favorable outcomes to repairs. Bioceramics not only exhibit excellent biocompatibility, but also may possess antibacterial properties due to their strong alkaline pH. The aim of this in vitro study was …