Digital Commons Network^™

Addiction-Informed Immigration Reform, Rebecca Sharpless

Washington Law Review

Immigration law fails to align with the contemporary understanding of substance addiction as a medical condition. The Immigration and Nationality Act regards noncitizens who suffer from drug or alcohol substance use disorder as immoral and undesirable. Addiction is a ground of exclusion and deportation and can prevent the finding of “good moral character” needed for certain immigration applications. Substance use disorder can lead to criminal behavior that lands noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents, in removal proceedings with no defense. The time has come for immigration law to catch up to today’s understanding of addiction. The damage done by failing to …

A Proposal To Improve Washington's Rules On Ex Parte Contact, Connor Rowinski

Washington Law Review

Privilege doctrines play an important role in allowing clients to confide in their trusted attorneys and doctors. The intersection of two privilege doctrines in medical malpractice litigation—physician-patient privilege and attorney-client privilege—places physicians working at corporate hospitals in a catch-22 of allegiances. On one hand, physicians cannot disclose patient information, whereas on the other, they must assist their employer in defending the case. These concerns are heightened when attorneys seek to communicate with non-party physicians ex parte—that is, unsupervised. In Youngs v. Peacehealth, the Washington State Supreme Court allowed corporate defendants to communicate ex parte with the plaintiff’s treating physician under …

Between You, Me, And Alexa: On The Legality Of Virtual Assistant Devices In Two-Party Consent States, Ria Kuruvilla

Washington Law Review

When an Amazon Echo is activated, the device is constantly recording and sending those recordings to Amazon’s cloud. For an always recording device such as the Echo, getting consent from every person subject to a recording proves difficult. An Echo-owner consents to the recordings when they purchase and register the device, but when does a guest in an Echo-owner’s home consent to being recorded? This Comment uses Amazon’s Echo and Washington’s privacy statute to illustrate the tension between speech-activated devices and two-party consent laws—which require that all parties subject to a recording consent to being recorded. This Comment argues that …

Systematic Approach To On-Line Supercritical Fluid Extraction – Supercritical Fluid Chromatography – Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method Development, Alison Paige Wicker

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations - Archive

Coupling supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) on-line with supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) – tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) provides a platform for extraction, separation, and detection in a single analysis. Utilization of this technique simplifies sample preparation while limiting sample loss and/or contamination and significantly decreases total analysis time. SFE-SFC-MS/MS requires consideration of many extraction and chromatographic variables to not only provide the most efficient extraction, but to analytically transfer the extracted analytes to the column for separation. There is a fundamental lack of understanding of how the variables in SFE affect those in SFC. In the first study, on-line SFE-SFC-MS/MS was …

Sub-Synchronous Resonance Analysis And Detection, Igor Brandao Machado Matsuo

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

With the increasing penetration of renewable generation resources, power grids have become more susceptible to sub-synchronous resonance phenomena, especially to sub-synchronous control interaction, which produces fast-growing oscillations. The power system operation requirements for a reliable, fast and accurate detection and monitoring system for protection and mitigation purposes are increasing. Besides, risk assessment analysis during grid planning and update studies can be extremely time-consuming due to a large number of possible grid configurations and small time-steps required for the simulation of detailed electromagnetic transient (EMT) models. The first part of this dissertation aims to provide an optimized tool for SSR risk …

Flexible Ph Sensor For Smart Sensing, Khengdauliu Chawang

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

pH level of biofluid is crucial in understanding physiological health. Commercial glass electrode pH sensors are bulky and cannot provide real time data. In this study, a novel miniature pH sensor capable of continuous wireless communication was developed, which is a promising technology for providing point-of-care diagnosis. Iridium Oxide because of its wide pH sensing range and biocompatibility has attracted attention from biomedical and food industries; high sensitivity of Iridium Oxide based sensor is attributed to its high charge density. Flexible polyamide Kapton substrate (127 µm) is taken as base substrate and E-Beam method is employed to deposit adhesion and …

Physical Educators And Awareness Of Impact: Weight Biases By Gender And Implications On The Well-Being Of Students, Aria Green

2019 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Educators are considered primary socializers for children, meaning they have a significant impact on behavioral, academic and interpersonal development. Physical educators, particularly male educators, have been found to express persistent biases against students who appear or are labeled overweight. These shown biases can negatively affect child development; if educators are aware of their impacts, these negative effects could be prevented. This study looked for evidence on the relationship between influential awareness, expressed weight biases and gender of physical educators. Physical educators were asked to fill out a survey which included an influence awareness scale, demographics, personality measures and then reviewed …

Creative Project In Storytelling: A Perspective Exploration Of Digital Design, Animation, And Virtual Reality, Vincent Williams Ii

2019 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The impression of youth, their sense of identity and belonging are themes commonly discussed in relation to mass media and societal structures across the globe. Both the risk expectancy and the innovative potential of virtual reality was hypothesized through a number of creative studies. Initially, interviews with developers and local creatives were conducted to better established a common understanding of existing virtual technologies. Studies in narrative storytelling were then utilized to develop concepts, scripts, and a directorial vision for the fictional story “The Years Before.” A short proof of concept film that explores how creators may interact with near-future advancements …

A Robust Controller Design For A Tailless Uav With Effective Control Allocation, Ethem Hakan Orhan

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Attempts to completely remove the tails from aircraft can be dated back to the early days of modern aviation. A number of stability and control problems arising from the unique characteristics of the configuration resulted in poor handling qualities and some dangerous flight characteristics in the early designs. Lately, this configuration is becoming widespread again and the current state-of-the-art of fly-by wire technology and modern control design techniques enable design of tailless aircraft which are safe to fly. In this thesis, a study on the application of modern robust control design techniques on a tailless UAV is presented. A nonlinear …

Preventing, Perceiving, And Post-Venting Suicide: A Guide For Teachers, For Their Students, Justin Vance

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

To aid teachers with intense time constraints, the following summary includes the bolded, most important points in the paper:

• Thank you for caring about your students; by doing more than just teaching your content, you will change lives ... and may save some.

• Teachers are not responsible for student suicide; we carry enough responsibility already.

• Genuine, assertive communication of confidence and support fosters the safe environment needed.

• Improvements to how we view and speak about suicide can help reshape how young people think about it.

• As young men lose what they care about in pursuit …

Modern Uses Of Assistance Animals In The Usa: Definitions, Access, And The Laws That Protect Them, Tina Reisner

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

One of the most arguable issues in our society, and within the field of modern disability policy and law is the epidemic surrounding the use of service animals. With several cases for and against the use of service animals in public entities, there is constant discussion of what is a legitimate service animal and who is able to utilize them. In this thesis, I establish the definition of disability and discuss the laws and policies that legitimized the use of service animals within the public sphere. Specifically, this work will draw upon genres such as policies and laws of disability, …

Police Stress, Depression, And Substance Use Among Police Officers: A General Strain Perspective., Kyra Nicole Fritz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the utility of general strain theory in explaining substance use as a form of coping among a sample of police officers in a Midwestern, metropolitan city. The dissertation is comprised of five chapters, including the introduction, literature review, method, results, and discussion. Chapter one describes the stressful nature of a career in law enforcement, concentrating on the adverse consequences of prolonged stress, including depression and substance use. Chapter one also examines strain, depression, and substance use among police officers using a general strain perspective, highlighting the limitations of existing empirical studies. Chapter two details the theoretical premise …

Addressing The Problem Of Sterile Drug Injecting Supply Acquisition For People Who Inject Drugs., Barbra Ann Cave

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains five chapters, including three manuscripts, covering harm reduction and some of the challenges people who inject drugs (PWID) face in their effort to reduce the risk of injection drug-related harms through sterile injecting supply acquisition and use. Chapter One discusses some background related to PWID and provides an overview of the issues addressed in this dissertation. Chapter Two includes a literature review covering the harm reduction concept, important aspects of syringe exchange programs as a harm reduction tool, and the social determinants of health model as a potential tool for future research. Chapter Three is a two-phase …

Do Lgbtq-Identified, Postsecondary Writing Instructors Come Out In Their Classrooms?, Michael Baumann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation investigates how and why LGBTQ-identified, postsecondary writing instructors perform intersectional identities in their classrooms. Scholars in the field of rhetoric and composition have examined these critical questions as early as 1974 and several times since. However, oppressive, regressive sexual politics; a maelstrom of contemporary public confessions made possible and prolific through new media; and an increasingly intersectional landscape of queer people all provide exigency to update our coming out conversation. This dissertation is the analytical writeup of a national study that I conducted in 2018. I surveyed approximately 100 LGBTQ-identified postsecondary writing instructors in the United States and …

Brokering Words And Work: Complexities Of Literacy Sponsorship In The Oilfields Of South Texas., Jennifer L. Marciniak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an investigation of workforce recruitment language as the “leading edge” of literacy sponsorship as it pertains to blue-collar rig and service workers in the South Texas oilfields. Using Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives as a framework for this study, I conducted interviews with 10 rig and service workers and labor market intermediary administrators about the perceptions and expectations of literacy use in oilfield work. My inquiry begins by first learning about workers’ experiences with recruitment into the industry. Then, to understand more about how the industry communicates literacy expectations to these workers, I look at recruitment …

Perceptions Of Restorative Practices Among Black Girls: Talking Circles In An Urban Alternative Middle School., Vanessa Marie Mcphail

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research suggests that Restorative Justice approaches have shown promise in terms of their impact on school climate, student behavior, and relationships. The purpose of this study is to explore Black female students’ perceptions of Restorative Practice (RP) talking circles at an alternative school. The study examined literature on Zero Tolerance, School Discipline Disparities, African American Female students, Intersectionality, Restorative Justice, and Alternative Schools. A qualitative case study method was used for this study, drawing from two sources: (a) face-to-face interviews and (b) observations of the Black female students who attend the alternative school and participate in the talking circles. Analyses …

Exploring Normalization Of Deviance And Examining Factors That Predict Culture Of Safety In The Operating Room., M. Imelda Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Patient safety in the operating room is a prodigious responsibility of OR nurses as the OR environment is complex and laden with risk, which increases surgical patients’ risk for adverse events. The dissertation presents the topic of patient safety in the operating room (OR), the concept of normalization of deviance, and a mixed-methods study with an exploratory sequential design that involved three phases. The dissertation comprises of five chapters. Chapter One presents an introductory overview of the salience of patient safety as well as its relevance to the unique environment of the OR. Chapter Two presents a concept analysis of …

Gpu-Accelerated Demodulation For A Satellite Ground Station, Emily Clark Young

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

One consequence of the increasing number of small satellite missions is an increasing demand for high data rate downlinks. As the satellites transmit at high data rates, ground-side receivers need to demodulate the transmitted data as quickly as possible. While application specific hardware can be designed, software defined radio solutions for ground stations are attractive for their flexibility, adaptability, and portability.

Another industry trend is the increasing use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in general-purpose processing. By performing many operations simultaneously, GPUs are capable of accelerating processing when given a problem that can be implemented in a parallel manner. Furthermore, …

Redefining Ceremony And The Sacred: Short Stories From The Dinétah, Stacie S. Denetsosie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This is a creative thesis comprised of three short stories centered on the experiences of three Navajo protagonists living on the Navajo reservation. The short stories fit within the field of Native American Literature and highlight issues of mortality, sexuality, and ceremony. The stories illustrate the experiences of modern-day Navajo youth grappling to understand how to connect traditional knowledge with modernity. The three stories featured within this thesis are offered as a way to understand these challenges. Each protagonist is faced with an issue of morality, sexuality, or ceremony, and each reach differing conclusions about these topics within their lives. …

Staff Perceptions Of Quality Interactions In Dementia Care, Rebecka A. Schultz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The national aging trend suggests that population of those aged 65 and older will reach 83.7 million by the year 2050. With increasing age comes the growing possibility of one getting some form of dementia. The Alzheimer’s Association expects the number of American’s with dementia to triple from the reported 5 million cases in 2014 by 2050. With a rise in this cognitively impaired population there is reason to look closely at the needs of persons with dementia living in residential facilities and whether or not they are being met. The main focus of residential facilities is to provide aid …

Responding To Microaggressions: Evaluation Of Bystander Intervention Strategies, Tianyi Xie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ethnic minorities often experience microaggressions that cause psychological distress and increase health risks. Bystander interventions are good ways to intervene when microaggressions take place and provide emotional support for ethnic minority targets. White interveners and interventions that pose low threats to White aggressors are perceived more positively than ethnic minority interveners and interventions that are more confrontational and direct. Furthermore, a support-based intervention that validates White aggressors’ good intention and effort without judgement may help White aggressors feel less defensive and more receptive to the intervention. Asian Americans face unique microaggressive themes and their racial experiences are influenced by the …

Foreground Removal In A Multi-Camera System, Daniel T. Mortensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Traditionally, whiteboards have been used to brainstorm, teach, and convey ideas with others. However distributing whiteboard content remotely can be challenging. To solve this problem, A multi-camera system was developed which can be scaled to broadcast an arbitrarily large writing surface while removing objects not related to the whiteboard content. Related research has been performed previously to combine multiple images together, identify and remove unrelated objects, also referred to as foreground, in a single image and correct for warping differences in camera frames. However, this is the first time anyone has attempted to solve this problem using a multi-camera system. …

Activity Tracker Measurement Of Physical Activity And Sedentary Time In The Workplace Including An Intervention Involving Reminders To Move, Cassie Dance

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Sedentary time and physical inactivity have negative impacts on health and health costs as well as an impact on workplace wellbeing. There is evidence that people are more sedentary and engage in less physical activity on work days. Additionally, sedentary behavior has been found to increase distress and negative mood. Activity trackers such as Fitbits are a useful way to collect and intervene on sedentary behavior and potentially impact other factors of workplace wellbeing in real time and promote self-monitoring. The reminder to move prompts that are now part of Fitbit models provide an innovative and simple way to intervene …

In Defense Of The Modern Company Town: Wyoming's Uranium Communities, Zachary R. Larsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Most people are at least aware that, in the past, companies that owned mines, lumber mills, and other large-scale industrial projects in isolated areas also ran company towns. For many people, such towns conjure up images miserable working conditions, exploitative company stores, and inadequate shacks for most workers, while managers live in relative luxury up on “snob knob.” Most people are also fairly certain that such towns, at least in the United States, died out about the same time as the horse and buggy. Several industries in Wyoming, however, continued to support company towns through the end of the 20th …

Implementation And Effects Of University College Algebra Growth Mindset Structured Assessments In Large Lectures, Hannah Mae Lewis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Recent scientific evidence shows the incredible potential of the brain to grow and change. Students with a growth mindset view errors and obstacles as opportunities for growth. These students welcome challenges and the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Although some university instructors are incorporating growth mindset into their lectures, attitudes, and exams in small classes, the traditional exam method used in large lecture undergraduate mathematics classrooms follows a fixed mindset model. The growth mindset structured assessments developed for this study incorporate a testing center portion (matching, short answer, fill in the blank and free response) with structured rework opportunities, …

Plug-And-Play Web Services, Arihant Jain

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The goal of this research is to make it easier to design and create web services for relational databases. A web service is a software service for providing data over computer networks. Web services provide data endpoints for many web applications. We adopt a plug-and-play approach for web service creation whereby a designer constructs a “plug,” which is a simple specification of the output produced by the service. If the plug can be “played” on the database then the web service is generated. Our plug-and-play approach has three advantages. First, a plug is portable. You can take the plug …

Konaway Nika Tillicum Native American Youth Academy: Cultural Identity, Self-Esteem, And Academic Optimism, Tamara Barrett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Through using a Positive Youth Development framework and culturally based education program, Konaway Nikka Tillicum Native American Youth Academy aspires to mentor and prepare Native youth through high school and on to higher education. This collaborative research partnership investigated cultural identity, self-esteem, and academic optimism of Native American youth attending the academy. The results of this program evaluation found that cultural identity, self-esteem, and academic optimism were all closely related to each other as well as that they increased significantly when measured before and after the academy. GPA was found to not be predictive of cultural identity, self-esteem, or academic …

The Processes Of Collective Buy-In, Actuation, And Deep Social Learning In Seminary Classes, Donald B. Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This phenomenological study explored a common essence of collective class actuation (CCA) among six seminary teachers in a Western state. CCA is an optimal learning state of a class collective. Data were gathered through interviews, observations, and a focus group. Data analysis yielded themes, textural and structural descriptions, an overall essence, and a model explaining the processes of buy-in and actuation.

Findings indicate that seminary teachers seek to actuate their classes by leading them toward agentic, collective buy-in. This requires management of two social environments: the internal social environment (the heart) and the external social environment. The internal social environment …

The Determinants Of Municipal Minimum Wage Ordinances: An Analysis Of 100 Large Cities From 2012-2017, Nicholas S. Hilton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The city of Seattle, Washington made headlines in 2014 when its city council enacted the highest minimum wage in the history of the United States. The ruling appeared to begin a trend as similar policies began diffusing in cities across the country. In reality, however, municipal minimum wage ordinances have existed since the early 1990’s. Yet, despite over two decade’s worth of data on the subject, little research has been conducted to understand the characteristics that influence cities to enact minimum wages in the first place. This study contributes to our understanding of the predictors of minimum wage ordinances by …

Coaching Parents To Use Positive Behavior Support: Function-Based Interventions For Preschool Children With Challenging Behavior, Lauren E. Pace

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Parents who have children with challenging behavior may feel stressed, overwhelmed and at a loss for solutions. Challenging behavior can cause problems with children’s relationships with others and their school success. There are many resources for schools and children with special needs; however, resources for parents for young children (ages 3 to 5) with challenging behavior are limited. This study examined the impact of a 6-week intervention to coach parents to use strategies that encouraged children to develop skills that helped them to express frustration and solve problems in positive ways. Parents were better able to understand what the children …