Digital Commons Network^™

Hiv-Related Discriminatlon And Cervical Cancer Screening In Zambia, Crystal J. Cazier

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Background: The Republic of Zambia has the third-highest incidence of cervical cancer in the world, where approximately 700,000 women over age 15 are living with HIV. Women living with HIV (WLHIV) are at increased risk for cervical cancer. While literature suggests that discrimination is a barrier to HIV care, no studies have explored if discrimination experienced in HIV clinics is related to cervical cancer screening using nationally representative datasets. Objective: The primary objective of this study was to examine whether perceived discrimination by healthcare workers due to HIV status is related to having been screened for cervical cancer among WLHIV. …

Guidelines On The Diagnosis And Management Of The Progressive Ataxias, Silva R. De, J Greenfield, A Cook, H Bonney, J Vallortigara, B Hunt, P Giunti

More Faculty of Health Research

No abstract provided.

From Actions To Paths To Patterning: Toward A Dynamic Theory Of Patterning In Routines, Kenneth T. Goh, Brian T. Pentland

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper demonstrates a new way of seeing and theorizing about the dynamics of organizational routines through the concept of paths – time-ordered sequences of actions or events in performing work. Empirically and conceptually, paths provide the missing link between specific actions and patterns of action. When routines are represented as a narrative network, tracing the formation and dissolution of action paths can generate new insights about the dynamic patterning of actions in routine performances. We traced action paths using longitudinal field data from a videogame development project and found that action patterns change dramatically over time based on the …

Of Promoting Networking And Protecting Privacy: Effects Of Defaults And Regulatory Focus On Social Media Users’ Preference Settings, Hichang Cho, Sungjong Roh, Byungho Park

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Privacy research has debated whether privacy decision-making is determined by users' stable preferences (i.e., individual traits), privacy calculus (i.e., cost-benefit analysis), or “responses on the spot” that vary across contexts. This study focuses on two factors—default setting as a contextual factor and regulatory focus as an individual difference factor—and examines the degree to which these factors affect social media users' decision-making when using privacy preference settings in a fictitious social networking site. The results, based on two experimental studies (study 1, n = 414; study 2, n = 213), show that default settings significantly affect users' privacy preferences, such that …

The Potential For Using Loyalty Rewards And Incentives Programs To Encourage Transit Ridership And Regional Transportation And Land Use Integration, Christopher E. Ferrell

Mineta Transportation Institute

Transit smart cards can be used as a tool for increasing transit ridership, increasing retail sales in transit-oriented developments (TODs) and eventually, increasing opportunities for retail development in TODs. Instead of providing separate loyalty rewards for each store, or chain of stores, such cards would provide loyalty rewards—in several possible forms, including free transit ride credits, cash rewards, retail purchase discounts, sweepstakes rewards—to all transit riders who patronize TOD retail businesses. Additional rewards could also be given to transit riders who live, work, and shop in TODs, and even to riders who take transit for specific shopping trips in TODs. …

The Physicochemical Properties Of Soy Protein Hydrolysate And Its Formulation And Stability With Encapsulated Probiotic, John Stricklin Edwards

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Soy protein isolate (SPI) and probiotics can serve as a functional ingredient and beneficial supplement, respectively, to food formulations, but few studies focus on the compatibility of these two ingredients. The objective of this study was to prepare soy protein isolate (SPI) from defatted soybean flour and identify an optimal hydrolysis protocol to create soy protein hydrolysates (SPH) with improved solubility and functional properties and achieve an optimum encapsulation technique for probiotics and to determine the in vitro viability of encapsulated probiotic cells with SPH in a gastrointestinal environment. The SPI was prepared using an alkaline extraction procedure for solubility …

Social Media Sentiment Analysis With A Deep Neural Network: An Enhanced Approach Using User Behavioral Information, Ahmed Sulaiman M. Alharbi

Dissertations

Sentiment analysis on social media such as Twitter has become a very important and challenging task. Due to the characteristics of such data (including tweet length, spelling errors, abbreviations, and special characters), the sentiment analysis task in such an environment requires a non-traditional approach. Moreover, social media sentiment analysis constitutes a fundamental problem with many interesting applications, such as for Business Intelligence, Medical Monitoring, and National Security. Most current social media sentiment classification methods judge the sentiment polarity primarily according to textual content and neglect other information on these platforms. In this research, we propose deep learning based frameworks that …

Exploring Wheelchair Service Delivery In A Dedicated Seating Department, Cara E. Masselink

Dissertations

This study is a series of three studies aimed at exploring wheelchair service delivery in a department of physical and occupational therapists dedicated to wheelchair seating. The three studies utilized a retrospective analysis to investigate the clinical documentation written by the practicing clinicians between 2007 and 2017. The first study aimed to describe the wheelchair and accessory recommendations made in the 11-year period, in relationship to age and gender. The majority of recommendations in the dedicated seating department were for complex wheelchairs. The results indicated the ratio between standard and complex power mobility devices and four complexities of cushions changed, …

Leadership, Satisfaction, Commitment, And Turnover Intention In The United Arab Emirates Public Sector, Mohammed Humaid Aljanahi

Dissertations

This study sheds light on the Abu Dhabi Public School employee’s perception, transformational, and transactional leadership style and their nuanced effects on satisfaction, commitment, and turnover intention. The study found that transformational leadership increased satisfaction and commitment, and decreased turnover intention. Also, diverging from theoretical expectation, only some aspects of transactional leadership such as passive management by expectation had a decreased satisfaction, and increased turnover intention. Moreover, the study proved that to an extent western instruments, such as the MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 2004), TCM (Allen & Meyer, 2004), and MSQ (Weiss, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1967), do work in …

Comparing The Results Of And Evaluating Preferences For Functional Analyses And Concurrent Operant Analyses, Marrisa B. Allen

Dissertations

It is recommended that a functional analysis (FA) be conducted before treating serious problem behaviors. However, it is not always feasible or desirable to do so. For example, the problem behavior may be too dangerous, or the setting may not allow procedures that evoke problem behavior. An alternative solution may be to identify reinforcers for adaptive behavior in order to develop a treatment plan to reduce problem behavior by increasing socially appropriate/adaptive behavior. Berg et al. (2007) evaluated whether the same social events identified as reinforcers for adaptive behavior by a concurrent operant (i.e., choice) analysis (COA) would be identical …

Teacher And Parent Perspectives On Alignment To The Next Generation Science Standards Following Teacher Professional Development, Adam C. Channell

Dissertations

Science teachers are receiving professional development (PD) since the introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013. Following PD, teachers are facing several challenges while attempting to implement NGSS in their classroom, some of which include budget constraints, administrative support, and student preparedness (Banilower et al., 2013). Additionally, Channell and Cobern's (2018) study on teachers’ experiences aligning to NGSS following PD adds parent pushback to this list of challenges. This study seeks to address a set of interconnected issues related to teachers creating and administering lessons aligned to the NGSS that they have created following PD, and subsequent …

Karczma/Taberna: Public Houses In Cracow During The Jagiellonian Dynasty, Peter Paul Dobek

Dissertations

Public houses—inns, taverns, and alehouses—during the Jagiellonian Dynasty (1385-1572) in the city of Cracow and its immediate surroundings functioned as important establishments in the everyday life of the city. While the city continued to grow and prosper as the preferred residence of the dynasty, inhabitants, travelers, and migrants increasingly relied on the public houses of the conurbation to meet their many needs and desires. Although scholars have studied these establishments throughout Europe during various epochs, they have neglected to analyze the public houses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian era.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of a multitude of sources, …

The Effects Of Energy Dashboards And Competition Programming On Cyclic Electricity Consumption On A College Campus, Katherine Jane-Binder Martini

Dissertations

This report examined issues pertaining to the efficacy and cost effectiveness of energy dashboards in the effort to influence electricity-related behavior change on college campuses. Given the increasing popularity of energy dashboards along with a lack of data to support their effectiveness, more rigorous research to evaluate the efficacy of this technology is necessary. An intervention including the installation of physical and internet based energy dashboards along with an energy reduction competition was evaluated. A literature review and long term cyclical data on energy use is included that provides arguments against the potential for long-term effectiveness of these interventions despite …

Finding The Right Words: Exemplary Educators Essence Of Vocabulary Instruction, Mackenzie W. Sheahan

Dissertations

This study was warranted in order to deeply understand the exemplary teacher and the complexity of beliefs, challenges, and overall essence of vocabulary instruction in early elementary. By using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis the study illuminates how exemplary second-grade teachers make meaning of their own daily experiences in relation to vocabulary instruction. Specifically, the study allows insight into the perceptions and daily actions that meet the needs of all students, with and without disabilities, through vocabulary instruction.

Using Norms To Help Make Collaborative Learning More Inclusive, Jessica Kohout-Tailor

Presentations

No abstract provided.

La Priorización De Comportamientos Para Mejorar Programas De Cambio Social Y De Comportamiento Durante Una Emergencia De Salud Pública: Un Llamado A La Acción, Breakthrough Research

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

A medida que los especialistas en desarrollo internacional continúan trabajando en los desafíos de la salud pública y nuevas enfermedades emergentes, es de suma importancia la priorización de comportamientos. Este breve informe tiene como objetivo argumentar por qué es importante la priorización de comportamientos para fortalecer los programas de cambio social y de comportamiento (CSC). El documento finaliza con un llamado a la acción a que diferentes actores interesados aboguen por y participen en procesos que prioricen comportamientos como parte del diseño, planificación y adaptación de programas de cambio social y de comportamiento.

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As the international development community continues …

Rethinking Elementary Physical Education: Creating Time For Physical Activity, Adam B. Hanson

Leadership Education Capstones

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of K-5 elementary principals in scheduling curricular time for physical education programs. This exploration examined the potential curricular scheduling impact upon physical education delivery systems, as reported by elementary school administrators.

Normalization Of Unconstrained Handwritten Words In Terms Of Slope And Slant Correction, Suman Kumar Bera, Akash Chakrabarti, Sagnik Lahiri, Elisa H. Barney Smith, Ram Sarkar

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In offline handwritten text slope (or skew) and slant are inevitably introduced, but to varying degrees depending on several factors, such as the writing style, speed and mood of the writers. Therefore slope and slant detection in offline handwritten text and their subsequent correction have become the critical preprocessing steps for document analysis and retrieval systems to neutralize the variability of writing styles and to improve the performance of word and character recognition systems. In this paper, we present new methods that use two novel core-region detection techniques to estimate both the slope and slant angles of offline handwritten word …

Western Corporate Fiscal Citizenship In The 21st Century, Alex Freund

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

For the Western world, the challenges of the 21st Century are numerous, from climate change’s effects on food production and coastal cities to underfunded social safety nets to automation’s impact on the middle class. To handle such costly problems, government intervention will be required. Government intervention, however, always comes at a cost to either individuals or corporations. To determine who should bear these costs, scholars and experts should turn to notions of fiscal citizenship – the social contract between the state and private parties through taxation and the provision of goods and services. By applying principles of individual fiscal citizenship …

Charging Infrastructure Of Electric Vehicle - An Overview, Vi George Dr.

Manipal Journal of Science and Technology

Since fuels like petrol, coal, and diesel are non-renewable sources of energy, there will be a deficiency of fuels in the future because of the increasing demand for mobility. The latest vehicles for the gasoline and petrol engine technology yield substantial greenhouse gas emissions and therefore create environmental issues. Electric vehicles will give a solution to this problem. Plug-in electric vehicles are implemented, to achieve environment-friendly transport and reduce greenhouse gases. Apart from the advantages, defects such as wear and tear of devices, electric spark, and carbon deposition make electric vehicle’s wired charging less efficient. To make power transfer more …

Characterization Of The Dimerization Domains On The Mannose-6-Phosphate/Insulin-Like Growth Factor Ii Receptor, Tyler Degener

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The mannose-6-phosphate/insulin-like growth factor II (M6P/IGF2) receptor is a transmembrane protein known to sequester growth factors from the extracellular matrix. This behavior suggests a mechanism of tumor suppression. Structurally, the receptor’s extracellular region is segmented into 15 homologous repeats, which are divided further into 5 triplet domains, labelled 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, and 13-15. What is notable about the triplets is their propensity to form dimers with triplets on a second M6P/IGF2 receptor. In fact, previous studies indicate that this protein functions optimally when dimerized. Thus, the purpose of this experiment is to characterize these domain interactions. Using a urea …

Learning Robot Manipulation Tasks Via Observation, Michail Theofanidis

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The coexistence of humans and robots has been the aspiration of many scientific endeavors in the past century. Most anthropomorphic or industrial robots are highly articulated and complex machines, which are designed to carry out tasks that often involve the manipulation of physical objects. Traditionally, robots learn how to perform such tasks with the aid of a human programmer or operator. In this regard, the human acts as a teacher who provides a demonstration of a task. From the data of the demonstration, the robot must learn a state-action mapping that accomplishes the task. This state-action mapping is often addressed …

Feature Extraction In Noise-Diverse Environments For Human Activities Recognition Using Wi-Fi, Sheheryar Arshad

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

With the rapid development of 802.11 standard and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) has emerged as the most widely used wireless communication technology. Wi-Fi based sensing has found widespread use cases involving activity recognition, indoor localization, design of smart spaces and in healthcare applications. This dissertation presents the study of human activities’ sensing and recognition using channel state information (CSI) of Wi-Fi. We highlight the limitations of existing methods and consequently design the frameworks for collecting stable CSI and monitoring different indoor and outdoor environments for human activities. Specifically, this dissertation provide means to define and extract …

Ucf Libraries Application For The 2020 Acrl Excellence In Academic Libraries Award, Ucf Libraries

Libraries' Documents

No abstract provided.

University Of Dayton Magazine, Winter 2019-20, University Of Dayton

University of Dayton Alumni Publications

The University of Dayton Magazine is published quarterly by the Office of Communications for alumni, parents, students, faculty/staff, trustees and other friends of UD. In the past the magazine was known as UD Alumnus, Focus, Dimensions and UD Quarterly. Articles include "Faces of Faith", "Pointe Person", and "Capital Investment".

A New Age Of Evolution: Protecting The Consumer’S Moral And Legal Right To Know Through The Clear And Transparent Labeling Of All Genetically Modified Foods, Halie M. Evans

Journal of Law and Health

The United States government, until recently, did not require the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). On July 29, 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS). This law directs the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to create regulations that require manufacturers to disclose certain bioengineered products on food labels. On December 20, 2018, the USDA released the final regulations for the NBFDS, which requires food manufactures, importers, and certain retailers to ensure bioengineered foods are appropriately disclosed. The final regulations include provisions that will leave the majority of GMO derived foods unlabeled. …

Physical Activity Patterns Among Undergraduate Colleges At The University Of Texas At Arlington, Jeanne Bandalaria

2019 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The correlation between undergraduate majors/colleges and their corresponding levels of physical activity was investigated at the University of Texas at Arlington. The relationship between the two subjects of research was determined by the method of a survey, as inspired by the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). The IPAQ serves to analyze data through a series of questions that determine an individual’s weekly average of vigorous to moderate exercise based on their job, major, leisure activity, and time spent sedentary. Pie charts and tables are presented to depict the survey’s findings of undergraduate major, college, and times of physical and sedentary …

The Effect Of Perinatal Depression Upon Neonatal Outcome In A Population Of Adolescent Latinas, Jocelyn Ruiz

2019 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The purpose of this secondary analysis was to explore the prevalence of perinatal depression and effects of depression upon neonatal outcomes among Latina adolescents. The subjects included Latina adolescents (13-19 years old; N=183) giving birth at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, TX. The study design was a secondary analysis of data originally collected over nine months postpartum to explore adolescents’ (N=303) mental health and birth experiences. Depression variables were measured via a one-item rating scale for prenatal depression and the Edinburg Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS). A composite variable of this data defined perinatal depression. Adverse infant outcomes included …

Opening French Doors: An Examination Of French Business Executives’ Perspectives On Work Disparities Between American And French Work Cultures In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Yahaira Arneros

2019 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The United States is no stranger to hosting foreign business subsidiaries in our evergrowing international business world. As the US opens its doors to native French business executives, one asks how their culture perceives US workers and how to ensure that business relations between the two flow as smoothly as possible. Qualitative data was gathered from three native French business executives, in three native French subsidiaries in the DFW Metroplex. Data was gathered in face-to-face personal interviews conducted in French about disparities between French and American work culture. Similarities in perception of US work culture by the French were found …

The Bureaucratic Politics Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation, Cooper Hearn

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

This is a comprehensive study of how the administrative powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have evolved in response to external political forces. To analyze the changes made to FBI administrative powers, this project will assess theories of public administration, bureaucratic politics, various congressional statutes, court rulings, and executive policies that have affected the bureau’s capacity to perform investigations and intelligence operations.