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The Effects Of Intergroup Contact On Intergroup Anxiety And Transgender Prejudice: An Examination Using Structural Equation Modeling, Yasuko Kanamori

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Background: Evidence suggests that transgender individuals face high levels of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. Despite the known negative impact of transgender prejudice, research is lacking on interventions to reduce transgender prejudice. One possible solution might be found in the intergroup contact theory, which has substantial empirical support as an effective strategy to reduce prejudice across diverse populations and situations. Aims: The present study sought to apply the intergroup contact theory to the study of transgender prejudice. First, the study developed and pilot tested the performance of the Transgender Affect Misattribution Procedure (Transgender AMP), a measure of implicit transgender prejudice. Second, …

An Analysis Of School Administrators Perceptions Of The Role Of School Counselors And The Relationship Between Tvaas Scores And The Student To Counselor Ratio, Ann Keyl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of current school administrators on the roles of the school counselor and the impact it had on TVAAS scores and student-to-school-counselor ratios. The participants were chosen from a survey administered by the Tennessee Department of Education in the spring of 2016. This research was a quantitative correlational study. The researcher implemented an index called the Administrators Perception Index to give value to survey responses to analyze through a linear regression model any correlational data. The research showed that there was no significance with the Index score and student-to-counselor ratio and …

Exposure To Health Warning Labels On Waterpipe Tobacco Packages: An Application Of The Modified Extended Parallel Process Model On Quitting Behavior From Three Waves Of The Path Study, Jayaprakash Kumar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The prevalence of waterpipe (WP) smoking has increased steadily in the United States despite growing evidence of its serious health consequences and addictive potential. Although, health warning labels (HWLs) on cigarette packages are effective in preventing initiation and cessation of smoking, the effect of HWLs on WP tobacco packages have seldom been studied. This study modified the extended parallel process model (EPPM) by adding motivation as a mediating construct and applied to examine if it predicts the effect of health warning label on waterpipe tobacco packages on quitting behavior. Data from the three waves of the Population Assessment of Tobacco …

Laughing Revolutions: The Popular Culture Of Modern Aesthetic Manifestos, Stephen Everett Leet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, a veritable manifesto-craze in the arts swept across Europe and the Americas. Inaugurated by F.T. Marinettis Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909), this phenomenon saw the publication of thousands of manifesto texts and parodic manifestos announcing new aesthetic theories and movements in the form of bombastic and often incredulous rhetoric. This dissertation intervenes in the extant body of literary criticism on the subject of this phenomenon. It argues that, contrary to current analytic trends, these manifestos were irreducible to their generic antecedents in the realm of politics. Rather than seeking legitimacy for …

Influences Of Parent Physical Activity Support And Physical Activity Modeling On Adolescent Physical Activity Engagement And Weight Status, Cardella Lashay Leak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Childhood obesity rates continue to rise with adolescents (12-19 years old) having the highest prevalence (20.6%) across all age groups. Previous studies have indicated the importance of physical activity (PA) to assist with reducing obesity rates among adolescents. Parents influence their adolescents PA as they are typically adolescents first exposure and gatekeepers to both direct and indirect PA behaviors through their support and modeling of PA. This dissertation used parent-adolescent dyads from the Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health, and Eating (FLASHE) study to examine the associations between parent PA support and PA modeling and adolescent moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) engagement …

Deep Learning-Based Visual Crack Detection Using Google Street View Images, Mohsen Maniat

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The need for developing an economical and efficient quality assessment system for pave-ment motivates this study to take advantage of available new technologies and provide a novel approach to address this need. In this study, the utility of using Google Street View (GSV) for evaluating the quality of pavement is investigated. GSV is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas along many streets throughout the world. This technology provides a large data set of pavement images that can be used for pavement evaluation. Advanced deep learning algorithms are utilized to automate the pavement assessment …

The Role Of Executive Function In Supporting Reading Fluency In Students With Dyslexia: A Latent Growth Curve Analysis, Ashley Mayhew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to examine the role of executive function (EF) skills (i.e., working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition) in supporting the development of reading fluency in elementary school students with dyslexia. Participants were 47 students (i.e., second to sixth grade) attending a private school in the Mid-South region of the United States that provides an intensive day-treatment program for students diagnosed with dyslexia. Latent Growth Curve Modeling (LGCM) was used to explore the concurrent and predictive relation between EF and oral reading fluency across a school year. Overall, results from the study indicated that executive function …

Multiaxial Fatigue Behavior Of Additive Manufactured Metals: Experiments And Modeling, Reza Molaei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology has gained significant attention in recent years due to several important advantages. However, design of critical load carrying parts using this technique is still at its infancy, partly due to the inferior performance and lack of sufficient understanding of fatigue behavior of AM metals as compared to their wrought counterparts. Similar to most other components in different industries, AM parts typically undergo cyclic loadings through their service life, therefore, fatigue performance is a key performance criterion. In addition, biaxial and multiaxial stresses are common for many components, even under nominal uniaxial loading conditions where the stress …

Physical Disabilities And Theatre: We Discover What It Is To Be Human And What Is Possible For Humans To Be., Jennifer Annette Nettleton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This dissertation examines the portrayal of physically disabled characters in dramatic literature over the course of the late nineteenth through the twentieth into the twenty-first century. My core argument is that performance art, sideshows, and theatre are safe means by which people have been able to look fixedly at those who are different. Additionally, this project will address the historical context of certain plays productions and how our evolving understanding of, representations of, and conceptions about those who are different change over time. Theatre allows individuals to be seen and to see; thus, by utilizing the core concepts and ideas …

Assessing The Factor Structure And Classification Accuracy Of The College Alcohol Problems Scale Using A Population Of Students With Disabilities, Kristi L. Nobbman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Alcohol use on college campuses is an issue of public health. Sixty percent of college students consume alcohol on a monthly basis. Identifying students risk of alcohol related problems is compounded when working with academically at-risk students. Students with disabilities (SWD) are considered an at-risk group and make up 11% of student population on college campuses. The College Alcohol Problems Scale (CAPS) is widely used on college campuses and has shown versatility with African American students, deaf and hard of hearing students, and Spanish speaking students. The purpose of this study was to determine if the two-factor model of CAPS …

Pap Testing Screening Experiences Of Hiv-Positive Women, Siri Alicia Ogg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted disease, and is known to cause genital warts, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), and cervical cancer. HIV-positive women are at greater risk of contracting HPV, experiencing CIN, having more advanced-grade CIN, and developing cervical cancer due to their compromised immune status. Since becoming an essential part of womens preventive healthcare, the Papanicolaou test, commonly known as the Pap smear, has helped to reduce cervical cancer incidence and mortality; however, many HIV-positive women do not meet recommended Pap test screening guidelines. This study addressed the following research question: What psychosocial, cultural, contextual, …

Ambient Awareness On A Sidewalk For Visually Impaired, Faruk Ahmed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Safe navigation by avoiding obstacles is vital for visually impaired while walking on a sidewalk. There are both static and dynamic obstacles to avoid. Detection, monitoring, and estimating the threat posed by obstacles remain challenging. Also, it is imperative that the design of the system must be energy efficient and low cost. An additional challenge in designing an interactive system capable of providing useful feedback is to minimize users' cognitive load. We started the development of the prototype system through classifying obstacles and providing feedback. To overcome the limitations of the classification-based system, we adopted the image annotation framework in …

A Mechanism Design For Crowdsourcing Multi-Objective Recommendation System, Eiman Aldahari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Crowdsourcing is an approach whereby requesters call for workers with different capabilities to process a task for monetary reward. The emergence of crowdsourcing has drawn increasing attention in recent years as a revolutionary phenomenon. Although crowdsourcing is still considered a developing approach, early signs expectations are promising. The advantage of crowdsourcing resides in its ability to facilitate access to diverse skilled workers to process the outsourced tasks at reduced time and cost. Moreover, crowdsourcing helps reduce unemployment by offering on-demand employment opportunities. With the vast amount of tasks posted every day, satisfying the workers, requesters, and service providers who are …

Investigating Sequential Vocabulary Learning Strategies As A Means Of Improving L2 Vocabulary Acquisition, Adel Marzouq Alharbi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

One of the key aspects to learning a language is building good vocabulary knowledge. However, building vocabulary is considered to be as hard a process as developing the language itself in the long term. In second language acquisition (SLA), the larger vocabulary size has been connected to intelligence and as a major determinant of successful language use. With the constant use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs), language learners have reported successful growth of their language learning. The current study investigated SpanishEnglish bilingual speakers beliefs and practices about sequential VLS processes as a means of improving second language vocabulary acquisition. The …

Professors And Students Perceptions About English As An International Language (Eil) In Speaking Instruction In Saudi Arabia, Shatha Ahmed Alkhalaf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

AbstractAlkhalaf, Shatha. Ph.D. The University of Memphis. May 2018. Professors and Students Perceptions about English as an International Language (EIL) in Speaking Instruction in Saudi Arabia. Major Professor: Emily Thrush, Ph.D.Driven by the critical period hypothesis (CPH), Kachrus (1985) World Englishes paradigm, and Krashens (1982) theory of second language acquisition (SLA), this study examined instructors and learners attitudes toward English as an International Language (EIL) speaking instruction in Saudi Arabia and whether exposure to EIL speaking instruction influenced participants beliefs. Participants consisted of 23 professors teaching in the Department of English at Qassim University and 30 Saudi undergraduate students majoring …

Saudi Esl/Efl Learners Metacognitive Online Reading Strategies In Arabic And English, Hamad Mohammed Alluhaydan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Historically, Saudi readers have demonstrated poor metacognitive reading skills and literacy practices. This study investigates what online metacognitive reading strategies ESL and EFL Saudi learners believed they used more frequently in Arabic and English. It also shows perceived differences between Saudi male and female ESL/EFL learners in their strategy use while reading online texts. The lack of practice reading in Arabic or English affects comprehension skills; less than 25% of participants felt they could answer reading comprehension questions in class. Male and female participants did not differ in their use of global, support, and problem-solving metacognitive online reading strategies when …

The Impact Of School Profiles With The Competing Values Framework (Cvf) On The Decision Of Educators To Leave The Profession Entirely, Erika M. Ashford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between the perceived ways in which 248 Tennessee high schools address the organizational tensions, trade-offs, and conflicts (Cameron, Quinn, DeGraff, & Thakor, 2006, p. 50) embodied in the Competing Values Framework (CVF) and the percent of educators at those schools intending to leave education entirely. To this purpose, item-, scale, and quadrant-level responses aligned with the CVF were selected from data derived from the 2013 administration of the Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning survey in Tennessee (TELL Tennessee). To control for school characteristics that might confound the aforementioned relationships, …

Becoming A Science Teacher Together: Course Creation And Exploration Through Participatory Action Research, Rachel Diane Askew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

States across the nation are reporting a shortage in teachers, with science being a particular area of need (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, & Carver-Thomas, 2016). Research has been done, and is still taking place, centered around elementary school teachers and their beliefs on science teaching (Avraamidou, 2014; 2016), due in part to a noticeable trend in low science teaching self-efficacy, which can impact students beliefs in science (Bergman & Morphew, 2015; Krajcik, Czerniak, & Berger, 2003; Menon & Sadler, 2016; Ramsey & Howe 1969;).Studies on science teacher identity are not often representative of elementary education teachers (Mensah, 2016); nor do they approach …

Sovereign Justice: Royal Prerogative And Justice In The Works Of Spenser, Shakespeare, And Milton, Melissa Haickel Bagaglio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

My dissertation joins a vibrant conversation in the intersection of literature and law to investigate the changing attitude towards the royal prerogative as it relates to law, mercy, and equity in the English early modern period. The royal prerogative, the sovereigns rights and privileges under English law, has long been a contentious aspect of the British legal system with many attempts over the centuries to limit the use of these powers. During Tudor times, royal prerogative was closely associated with the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber, which were highly regarded courts of equity. However, the same courts became associated …

Southeast U.S. Severe Thunderstorm Climatology And 1932 Tornado Outbreak, Bradley Wayne Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

There is a poor understanding of severe thunderstorm variability over the Southeast U.S. due to the lack of a reliable, homogeneous, long-term observational records. A potential avenue to address severe thunderstorm variability involves computing environmental indices derived from reanalysis datasets and use those as proxies for severe thunderstorm days. Unfortunately, reanalysis datasets have known issues with inhomogeneity that are not related to climatology. Thus, this research first sought to reconstruct a climatology of severe thunderstorm days back to 1925 from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) dataset, while developing methods that potentially minimize non-climatic inhomogeneities. Severe thunderstorm day proxies were reconstructed …

Building A Case For Culturally Responsive Practices Used With Response To Intervention Models To Reduce Disproportionate Representation Among African Americans In Special Education, Sonia Perry Barber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The federal law, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was enacted to provide funds to states to support special education programs and to ensure that children and parents rights are protected, has been reauthorized several times. Yet, despite the multiple amendments to improve the law, there remains a disproportionate representation of minority students in special education. Such disparity creates a plethora of problems for African-American students. This study extends a previous case study in relation to using culturally responsive practices to reduce disproportionate representation among African Americans in special education. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent …

Assessment Of Psychometric And Empirical Differences Between The Population Of Male General Inmates And The Population Of Male Inmate Hso's (History Of Sex Offense) Within A Sample Of U.S. Prisons, Rickey Lee Bates

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

As research concerning males with a history of sex offense has increased, dynamic risk factors have become a primary focus. This leads to a need for instruments that can measure these dynamic factors in the male HSO population. The purpose of this study was to determine if it was possible to identify dynamic factors that are characteristic of males with a history of sex offense using an existing instrument developed for and normed on a wide geographic U.S. prison sample. Dynamic risk factor differences between136 males in the general inmate population and 139 male inmates with a history of sex …

Don't Touch Me Like That: Masculinity, Touch, And The Role Of Affect In Media Representations Of Animal Attacks, Carolyn Grace Block

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This dissertation analyzes masculinity and touch in three highly publicized cases where men intentionally interacted with wild animals and were harmed in the process. I focus predominately on the first week of media coverage following Steve The Crocodile Hunter Irwin who was killed by a massive stingray while filming for a television series off the Great Barrier Reef, Roy Horn of the famed Las Vegas magician duo Siegfried and Roy who was mauled by one of his performing tigers in front of a live audience, and Antoine Yates, an African American man bitten by the pet tiger he kept in …

Problems In Graph Theory And Partially Ordered Sets, Stephen Gene Zane Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This dissertation answers problems in three areas of combinatorics - processes on graphs, graph coloring, and antichains in a partially ordered set.First we consider Zero Forcing on graphs, an iterative infection process introduced by AIM Minimum Rank - Special Graphs Workgroup in 2008. The Zero Forcing process is a graph infection process obeying the following rules: a white vertex is turned black if it is the only white neighbor of some black vertex. The Zero Forcing Number of a graph is the minimum cardinality over all sets of black vertices such that, after a finite number of iterations, every vertex …

Three-Dimensional (3d) Image Formation And Reconstruction For Structured Illumination Microscopy Using A 3d Tunable Pattern, Hasti Shabani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Specific needs in live-cell microscopy necessitate moving fluorescence microscopy toward 3D imaging with enhanced spatial and temporal resolution. Exciting the sample by non-uniform illumination instead of uniform illumination is the main idea of developing techniques to address Abbes diffraction limit in the conventional widefield fluorescence microscopy. In this dissertation, we characterized a novel tunable structured illumination microscopy (SIM) system using a Fresnel biprism illuminated by multiple linear incoherent sources (slits), in which the lateral and axial modulation frequencies of the 3D structured illumination (SI) pattern can be tuned separately. This is a unique feature, which is not the case of …

Medical Condition Or Childcare Choice? Breastfeeding And Lactation Discrimination After Young V. Ups, Madeleine Gyory

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Women returning to work after giving birth, and who wish to breastfeed their child often need modest adjustments to their job or workplace that allow them to pump breast milk at work, such as break time and a clean, private room. But what if an employer denies this request or fires a woman for asking? The federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act ("PDA") prohibits employers from discriminating against workers based on their pregnancy, childbirth, or "related medical conditions." Under the PDA, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Young v. UPS, employers must grant pregnant workers accommodations only if they grant similar …

What Am I Really Saying When I Open My Smartphone: A Response To Orin S. Kerr, Laurent Sacharoff

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

In his forthcoming article in the Texas Law Review, Compelled Decryption and the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Orin S. Kerr addresses a common question confronting courts. If a court orders a suspect or defendant to enter her password to open a smartphone or other device as part of a law enforcement investigation, does that order violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination?

To answer this question, Kerr appropriately looks by analogy to existing Fifth Amendment case law as applied to document subpoenas, the “act of production” doctrine, and its mysterious cousin, the “foregone conclusion” doctrine. From these materials, he gleans a …

A Feminist Epistemological Framework: Preventing Knowledge Distortions In Scientific Inquiry, Karina Bucciarelli

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how scientific knowledge claims can become distorted due to socially constructed conceptions of gender. Further, it delves into the key components of an epistemological framework that will minimize these distortions.

To set up the analysis, I first explore how ‘traditional’ scientific explanations of human fertilization map stereotypes of the passive female and the active male onto the scientific participation of the egg and the sperm in human reproduction, thus rendering this knowledge claim problematic. We then turn to arguments presented by prominent feminist epistemologists. I argue that in order to produce knowledge claims free of distortions due …

Written In Bone: Damage Patterns In Agonopsis Vulsa Armor, Morgan Stewart

Scripps Senior Theses

Naturally occurring armor has evolved in many different classes of organisms, often in response to predation, although other factors may play a part. In this study, the scales of the benthic armored fish Agonopsis vulsa were examined for damage patterns in order to illuminate the life history and environmental interactions of the fish. Scales from the fish were systematically destroyed in the lab, and observations made from the damaged scales were used to create a categorical damage rating, which was applied to 34 specimens ranging in trunk length from 2.3 cm to 14.2 cm. The specimens were rendered as three-dimensional …

Deep Learning Of Human Apparent Age For The Detection Of Sexually Exploitative Imagery Of Children, Jared Rondeau

Open Access Master's Theses

Over the last decade, advancements in deep learning and computer vision have led to a tremendous growth in performance at the tasks of automated human age estimation and nudity detection. Modern machine learning models can predict whether or not an image contains nudity or the presence of a minor with startling accuracy. When used in conjunction, these technological advancements can be used to identify new instances of child pornography without ever coming into contact with the illicit material during model training.

In this thesis, a label distribution learning framework for modeling human apparent age is proposed. Instead of directly modeling …