Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Pleistocene Glacial - Interglacial Cycles On Patterns Of Genetic Diversity And Differentiation Of Populations Of Leptodactylus Albilabris (White-Lipped Frog) In The Puerto Rican Bank, Andre Nguyen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The historical distributional shifts of various species have been attributed to the glacial-interglacial cycles of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 mya – 10,000 ya). Sea level changes caused by Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles impacted the total area of landmasses, particularly in island systems. Cooler, glacial periods increased emergent (subaerial) island area via lower sea levels. Adjacent islands may have become connected through emergent land bridges, resulting in a larger subaerial landmass. Warmer interglacial periods led to higher sea levels, which in turn reduced island area, and in some cases, submerged land bridges, fragmenting larger islands into separate, smaller units. The Puerto Rican …

Sizing A New Bike Sharing System For The University Of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nesley Orochena

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The strategic planning objectives for a novel Bike Sharing Systems (BSS) are to locate the BSS stations, size the stations, and determine the bicycle fleet size, among others. Current guidelines to design BSS programs are tailored to city centers with large coverage areas and high bicycle to population ratios, and thus not directly transferable to a university setting. An ordered probit model was created using data from a university online stated preference survey to determine the key factors that affect the uptake rates for the UNLV BSS program and to estimate the potential demand. The demand analysis was incorporated into …

On Action Quality Assessment, Paritosh Parmar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this dissertation, we tackle the task of quantifying the quality of actions, i.e., how well an

action was performed using computer vision. Existing methods used human body pose-based features to express the quality contained in an action sample. Human body pose estimation in actions such as sports actions, like diving and gymnastic vault, is particularly challenging, since the athletes undergo convoluted transformations while performing their routines. Moreover, pose-based features do not take into account visual cues such as water splash in diving. Visual cues are taken into account by human judges. In our first work, we show that using …

Impact Of Design Cost Percentage On Cost Growth, Schedule Growth, And Construction Intensity Of Road Construction Projects, Elina Prajapati

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The performance of construction projects is measured in terms of cost and schedule variation. Studies have identified that such variations are mainly due to design changes, which are more frequent on projects executed through the design-bid-build (DBB) delivery method. Thus, the design factor is identified as one of the major parameters affecting the performance of DBB projects. Despite the majority of road projects being constructed following the DBB method, the impact of design cost on the performance of road projects has not been sufficiently studied yet. Therefore, this study focuses on determining the effect of design cost on the performance …

Benson’S Relaxation Response: Psychological And Physiological Responses Among Patients With Copd, Crista Reaves

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death in the United States. In patients with COPD, distress is significantly prevalent and can have adverse psychological and physiological effects. Considering the increased rate of COPD, a mind-body intervention focusing on the reduction of both psychological and physiological responses such as anxiety, elevated blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), dyspnea, and respiratory rate must be integrated into the patient’s plan of care. The relaxation response (RR) is a term coined by Dr. Herbert Benson in the 1970s describing the body’s ability to counter the fight-or-flight response to decrease …

Carbon Management And Volatile Fatty Acid Production In Primary Clarifiers At A Wastewater Treatment Plant, Brittany Nicole Radke

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An increasing number of treatment plants are required to remove nutrients from domestic wastewater to lessen the impact of nutrient loading to water bodies. Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (EBPR) is one of the processes commonly used to remove phosphorus from domestic wastewater. The presence of an adequate quantity of volatile fatty acids (VFA) in the wastewater influent to EBPR is important for process efficiency and stability. The objective of this research was to investigate the production of VFAs through fermentation of sludge in primary clarifiers as it related to improving nutrient removal, primarily targeting phosphorus.

The research tested, in full-scale, …

Examination Of Maskelynite Through Static Recompression And Dynamic Compression, Justin James Reppart

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This is an experimental study that aims to clarify the possible formation mechanisms of maskelynite. Maskelynite is a diaplectic glass, that forms during shock compression of feldspar far below the melting point, and without fusion. Maskelynite also paramorphises precursor feldspar grains. Maskelynite is an important probe of shock-pressures at terrestrial impact sites and in many meteorites. Two mechanisms of formation of maskelynite are examined here: 1) maskelynite is result of a pressure-induced amorphization of feldspar compressed beyond its mechanical stability where the formation of thermodynamically stable phases is kinetically inhibited [1, 2]. 2) Feldspar transforms upon dynamic compression into a …

An Evaluation Of Factors Associated With The Perceptions Of Diabetes In A Filipino American Sample Residing In Clark County, Nevada, Lawrence Nartatez Sagadraca

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study assessed beliefs about the contribution of the Filipino diet and genetics to diabetes burden and its ability to control it without medical interventions. The data from a need’s assessment survey of 200 Filipino Americans residing in Clark County, Nevada, were analyzed by using the logistic regression model. A significant proportion of the participants believed that diabetes is a problem in the Filipino community (79%) and is related to the Filipino diet (75%) and genetics (69.0%), and that it can be controlled without medical intervention (52.4%). In univariate analyses, age (Odds ratio [OR]: 1.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01 …

Application Of Data-Driven And Process-Based Modeling Approaches For Water Quality Simulation In Lakes And Freshwater Reservoirs, Ali Saber Sichani

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Lakes and freshwater reservoirs often serve as the primary drinking and irrigation water sources for surrounding communities. They provide recreational and tourism opportunities, thereby promoting the prosperity of neighboring communities. Reliable estimates of water quality in lakes and reservoirs can improve management practices to protect water resources.

Seasonal water temperature and solar shortwave radiation variations, and their subsequent interactions with water column aquatic life, combined with seasonal variations of mixing intensity throughout the water column, result in variations of water quality constituents with depth during the annual cycle. The complexity of these variations entails the use of advanced water quality …

Cfd Simulation Investigating The Effects Of Groove Geometry On Heat Transfer For Internally Grooved Tubes, Richard Zaven Saroukhanoff

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This numerical study investigates the thermal performance of internally grooved tubes used in heat exchangers. In order to enhance the performance of heat exchangers, turbulence promoters are inserted along the streamwise flow. The use of inserts, grooves, and augmentations along the axial length of the tube creates disturbances that improve the overall heat transfer due to enhanced fluid mixing and greater surface contact boundary walls. However, the implementation of tube wall augmentations creates an increase in pressure drop across the tube which must be compensated for with additional pumping power for the working fluid. Therefore, in order to analyze the …

Neural Network In Hardware, Jiong Si

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation describes the implementation of several neural networks built on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and used to recognize a handwritten digit dataset – the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) database. A novel hardwarefriendly activation function called the dynamic ReLU (D-ReLU) function is proposed. This activation function can decrease chip area and power of neural networks when compared to traditional activation functions at no cost to prediction accuracy.

The implementations of three neural networks on FPGA are presented: 2-layer online training fully-connected neural network, 3-layer offline training fully-connected neural network, and two solutions of Super-Skinny …

A Community Of Care: Patterns Of Pathology And Trauma With A Focus On The Bioarchaeology Of Care At Carrier Mills, Il (10,000 – 1000 Bp), Alecia Schrenk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Illness and injury are universal human experiences which are endowed with cultural meaning. Bioarchaeology has only recently begun to engage with the socioeconomic impacts of illness, injury, impairment, and healthcare provisioning in the past. This study examines how the Middle Archaic (6000 – 300 BC) and Early Woodland (1000 – 200 BC) hunter-gatherer community of Carrier Mills, Illinois was affected by and managed the socioeconomic burdens of poor health. The data presented in this study used bioarchaeological analyses to reveal patterns of poor health and healthcare provisioning within the Carrier Mills community. Bioarchaeology is ideally situated for such investigations since …

Living On The Move: The Digital Nomad Mobile Phenomenon Identity And Practice, Virginia Rachele Smercina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following exploratory project used a qualitative mixed method approach by means of a preliminary blog analysis of thirty-seven blogs and twenty-five semi-structured interviews for data collection on individuals known as digital nomads. The theoretical foundations of this study are centered on practice theory, structuration theory, as well as discussions surrounding cultural identity. The project’s aim is to increase our understanding of the digital nomad phenomenon by asking four research questions: Who are the digital nomads? How is digital nomadism practiced? Why choose to live on the move? Is digital nomadism sustainable? The discussion includes how the digital nomad identity …

Balys Dvarionas: A Brief History, Analysis Of His Concerto For Horn And Orchestra, And The First Recording Of The Concerto, Jonathan Lewis Snyder

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document will concentrate on the currently unpublished and incomplete manuscript of the orchestral version of Concerto for Horn and Orchestra [Koncertas valtornei su orkestru], composed by Lithuanian composer Balys Dvarionas (1904–1972). Despite his popularity and importance in Lithuania, Dvarionas’s music is not as well known throughout the rest of the world. This document aims to redress this situation.

The document provides a more thorough English-language biography about the composer than those that currently exist in print. It discusses various aspects of the concerto, including its place in Dvarionis’s output and a brief analysis, a core aspect of which is …

Evaluation Of Titanosilicate Materials For The Sorption Of Cesium And Strontium From High Level Wastes, Matheus Tolentino Lauar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Treatment of high-level waste (HLW) stored in the U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) sites of Hanford and Savannah River involves the separation of radioactive cesium (137Cs) and strontium (90Sr). Challenges in treating the liquid HLW includes high alkalinity or acidity, and high salt content, many orders of magnitude above Cs and Sr concentrations. Ion exchange is the preferred process for removing these compounds, due to the availability of selective media and large volume-processing capacity by column operations. The crystalline silicotitanate (Na2Ti2O3SiO4·2H2O), i.e. CST, which structure is analog to the mineral sitinakite, is considered the reference material for this application. …

On The Human Factors Impact Of Polyglot Programming On Programmer Productivity, Phillip Merlin Uesbeck

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Polyglot programming is a common practice in modern software development. This practice is often considered useful to create software by allowing developers to use whichever language they consider most well suited for the different parts of their software. Despite this ubiquity of polyglot programming there is no empirical research into how this practice affects software developers and their productivity. In this dissertation, after reviewing the state of the art in programming language and linguistic research pertaining to the topic, this matter is investigated by way of two empirical studies with 109 and 171 participants solving programming tasks. Based on the …

Forgetting Distractors: Inhibition Or Decay?, Laura Werner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research on forgetting irrelevant information in working memory (WM) has supported two

conflicting theories, inhibition (Oberauer & Lewndowsky, 2016) and decay (Dagry et al., 2017;

Dagry & Barrouillet, 2017). However, these conflicting results may be due to the fact that different methods were used to assess each model. In Experiment 1, we combined those methods to create a modified distractor span task that allows for a direct comparison of the models. Participants processed words that were to be remembered (targets) and others that were to be forgotten (distractors); the amount of free time after each distractor varied, with total trial …

The Perplexing Paradox Of Clostridioides (Clostridium) Difficile Infection (Cdi) - Analysis Of Anti-Germinants As Part Of Cdi Prophylaxis, Christopher Yip

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile infections (CDI) have become the leading cause of nosocomial antibiotic-associated diarrhea worldwide. Under normal circumstances, bacteria found in the gastrointestinal tract provide a barrier against C. difficile colonization. Upon antibiotic therapy, the protective barrier is lost as the microbial community becomes depleted thus providing the opportunity for C. difficile to colonize the human gut. Exposure to taurocholate, a bile acid produced within the mammalian gastrointestinal tract, causes C. difficile spores to begin their transition, a process known as germination, from metabolically dormant structures to toxin-producing cells. As germination is required for the onset of CDI, anti-germination compounds …

Minimizing The Dangers Of Air Pollution Using Alternative Facts: A Science Museum Case Study, David H. Lee

Publications and Research

A science museum exhibition about human health contains an exhibit that minimizes health impacts of air pollution. Relevant details, such as the full range of health risks; fossil fuel combustion; air quality statutes (and the local electrical utility’s violations of these statues), are omitted, while end users of electricity are blamed. The exhibit accomplishes this, not through outright falsification, but through selected “alternative facts” that change the focus and imply misleading alternate explanations. Using two classical rhetorical concepts (the practical syllogism and the enthymeme) allows for the surfacing of missing evidence and unstated directives underlying multimodal rhetoric. By stating multimedia …

Cosmology And Practice In Amazonia: The Inspiring Career Of Stephen Hugh-Jones, Chloe Nahum-Claudel, Olivier Allard

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Stephen Hugh-Jones’s ethnographic and collaborative engagement with the peoples of the Pirá-Paraná and, more widely, the Vaupés and Upper Rio Negro today spans 50 years. In this Introduction we chart the evolution of Hugh-Jones’s hybrid identity as iconoclast scholar, knowledgeable elder, and long-term collaborator. A biographical sketch identifies phases in this anthropological life: that of the ethnographer and initiate, steeped in the intellectual world of Barasana shaman-priests; that of lecturer and theorist in anthropology; and that of areal specialist, developing a synthesis of the ethnography of North West Amazonia through an engagement with Brazilian and indigenous intellectuals. We characterize the …

Project F.O.C.U.S, Justin Munoz

Second-Year Seminar Posters (COE 202)

No abstract provided.

The Shuar Writing Boom: Cultural Experts And The Creation Of A "Scholarly Tradition", Natalia Buitron, Grégory Deshoulliere

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In dialogue with Stephen Hugh-Jones’s work on Tukanoan writing, this article analyzes the boom in patrimonial writing among Chicham (Jivaroan)-speaking Shuar people. Patrimonial writing foregrounds collective identity and understandings of culture as group property common to the Tukanoan speakers of the Upper Rio Negro but foreign to the pre-missionized Shuar. We argue that the Shuar interest in patrimonial writing can be explained through the history of missionization and the recent shift to intercultural exchange within the plurinational project of state-building spearheaded by the indigenous movement. By analyzing the wider context of knowledge production and the forms of knowledge Shuar scholars …

Representations Of Romanticism In The Novel Broken Wings, Sajid Kamel Yassin, Kifah Eabd Nasif

Uruk Journal of Human Sciences

The research deals with the representations of romance in the novel (Broken Wings) from an intellectual, social and psychological point of view, trying to make this effect clear in this novel. The name of this writer is not one of the names that passes in front of the memory a regular passage, but rather it requires a contemplative pause, because it is truly a prominent sign in the history of literature, not only the Arab but the international, because of his literary achievements and intellectual opinions that have its impact on culture and society as well as his influence on …

Archibald Pitcairne's Liturgical Year, Kelsey Jackson Williams

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses a series of short Latin poems by the Edinburgh physician and Jacobite sympathizer Dr Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713), based on the liturgical year and on special services in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer then recently legalized for use by Scottish Episcopalians.

Carlyle And Calvinism, Joanna Malecka

Studies in Scottish Literature

A survey of how critics have treated Carlyle's religious beliefs, arguing that his Calvinist upbringing needs more consideration.

Losing His Religion: The Neglected Catholicism Of A.J. Cronin, Gerard Carruthers

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reexamination of the Scottish-born bestselling novelist A.J. Cronin (1896-1981), briefly recounting his Catholic upbringing and education at St, Aloysius College, Glasgow, with primary focus on his novel about a maverick Catholic priest, The Keys of the Kingdom (1941), popularized by the film version with Gregory Peck.

A Revision Of Power: Religion In Fionn Mac Colla’S And The Cock Crew, Brooke Mclaughlin Mitchell

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the treatment of the central character, the Gaelic-speaking minister Maighstir Sachairi, in And the Cock Crew (1945), by Fionn Mac Colla (Thomas Donaldson, 1906-1975), a historical novel about the Highland clearances(the evictions of the local crofting inhabitants in the north of Scotland to make way for sheep-farming), and argues (1) that, although the novel condemns the Presbyterian clergy for colluding in the evictions and preaching submission to those evicted, Mac Colla's novel is deeply imbued with the Calvinism it might seem to reject, and (2) that the central scene, a debate between Sachairi and a Gaelic bard, is structured …

Calvinism, Catholicism, And Fascism In Muriel Spark’S The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Richard Rankin Russell

Studies in Scottish Literature

A reassessment of the intertwined roles of Scottish presbyterianism, Italian Catholicism, and the rise of fascism, in Muriel Spark's 1961 novel about an Edinburgh schoolteacher in the 1920s and 1930s.

Hearing Competing Voices In James Robertson’S The Fanatic, Alison Jack

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses critical responses to James Robertson’s novels The Fanatic (2000) and The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006), and with particular reference to the character of John Lauder in The Fanatic, arguing that, rather than the political and psychological aspects represented by other characters, the religious perspective of Lauder offers a relevant creative alternative.

Afterword: Finding Religion In Scottish Literary History, Crawford Gribben

Studies in Scottish Literature

Looks back at the author's original article on the marginalization of Calvinist beliefs in earlier Scottish literature and comments on issues raised by the contributors to the SSL symposium.