Digital Commons Network^™

Human Diseases Related To Different Body Systems [Biology], Richa Gupta

Open Educational Resources

This assignment, aligned to LaGuardia Community College’s Global Learning Core Competency and Digital Communication Ability, was designed for the laboratory part of Human Anatomy and Physiology I (SCB203) course. The assignment, “Human Diseases Related to Different Body Systems,” aims to promote students’ learning and preparation towards their future major in STEM and in the Allied Health Programs. SCB203, taught by faculty in the Natural Sciences department, is a program-core course for Liberal Arts-Mathematics and Science majors and a key Pre-Clinical course (prerequisite) for future enrollment of students into several Allied Health majors such as Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Radiologic …

Principal Leadership And The Development Of Teacher Professionalism And Autonomy Within A Collaborative School Culture, Sukinah Ali Al Ramel

Dissertations

This instrumental multiple case study examines the actual activities and behaviors of elementary school principals who are known for building a collaborative school culture. The principals in these case studies were nominated by key informants as leaders who empower and mobilize teachers to grow professionally and interdependently in ways that enhance self-direction and motivation through reflecting on their own practices, practicing authentic self-assessment, and setting goals based on evidence of student achievement. Each Southwest Michigan principal was recruited from a diverse sample that met the study criteria. The study design included data from multiple in-depth interviews and documents shared by …

Histological Evidence Of Annual And Lunar Reproductive Rhythms Of Atlantic Sea Urchin, Arbacia Punctulata In The Gulf Of Mexico: Changes In Nutritive Phagocytes In Relation To Gametogenesis, Eleazar Hernandez Ii

Theses and Dissertations

Environmental phenomena such as temperature, photoperiod, tidal cycle, and lunar rhythm act as external cues that stimulate the reproductive activity of marine organisms. In this study, I report the annual and lunar reproductive cycles, and changes in nutritive phagocytes (NPs) in relation to gonadal maturation of Atlantic sea urchin (Arbacia punctulata, a primeval species). Monthly and weekly changes in gonadal development/maturation were observed histologically. In male, the testicular lobules were densely packed with sperm from June to August. In female, on the other hand, mature eggs first appeared in some ovaries in May, numerically increased from June to …

Identifying The N Sources For Black Mangrove (Avicennia Germinans) In A South Texas Mangrove Forest, Ashley Elizabeth Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

Black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) in south Texas provide ecosystem services and benefits to humans including: habitat for wildlife, prevention of coastline erosion, and mitigation of natural disasters. One step to preserve their ecological functions is to identify and protect the source of their nitrogen (N). Nitrogen stable isotopes were sampled for one year beginning August 2018 and used as tracers to identify how mangroves obtain N. Total N in (A. germinans) and associated (Batis maritima) (plants) (2.1%) was more abundant than in cyanobacteria (0.6%) and sediment (0.1%). Plant d15N signatures (5.52‰) were more similar to sediment (5.21‰) than cyanobacteria (1.98‰), …

Elementary Statistics Instructors' Uptake Of The Teaching Practices Recommended By The American Statistical Association, Marisol Sanchez Cortez

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies point out there has been a wide gap, in the teaching of mathematics, between the practices recommended in the credential programs and the practices teachers actually do. The purpose of this study is to explore how consistent the teaching practices of introductory statistics instructors are to the recommendations endorsed by the American Statistical Association, to understand what their attitudes to the gap are, and to identify the factors that prevent the instructors from implementing the recommended practices. Data were collected from nine statistics instructors at a state university through survey, classroom observations, and interviews. Findings indicate that the …

A Venue To Grow: Researching Professional Growth In The Collaborative Courts Of The Northern District Of California, Wyatt Lim-Tepper

Master's Projects and Capstones

This study examines the professional growth of collaborative court staff in the Northern District of California (NDCA). First, it sets forth a background that reviews the history of collaborative courts and details the development, purpose and structure, and current processes at the federal level. Second, the researcher describes the framework of the NDCA as an institution and further identifies the stakeholders who participate in the NDCA’s two collaborative courts: the Reentry Court and the Conviction Alternatives Program (CAP). Third, the study reviews the literature on professional growth in the legal field, education and academia, and public-health fields. Fourth, this paper …

Do Elevation And Aspect Predict Functional Trait Values In Alpine Plant Populations?, Karen Analiesa Bach

Biological Sciences

Alpine regions are among the hardest hit by global climate change, experiencing rising temperatures at a faster rate than lowland areas. Such fast rates of warming are predicted to cause rapid changes in alpine plant communities, including shifts in plant functional traits along elevation gradients. To investigate these effects within species, we examined the relationship between elevation, aspect, and functional traits of three common alpine plants in California; the shrub Holodiscus discolor var. microphyllus, the forb Calyptridium umbellatum, and the grass Trisetum spicatum. Functional traits examined included plant height, plant width, and Specific Leaf Area (SLA). These …

A Synthesis And Analysis Of Anhydrous Hydroxide Ion Conducting Polymer Electrolytes, Stanton Heydinger

Honors Theses

This project investigates the synthesis and physical properties of polyethylene glycol monomethyl ether (MePEGn where n=3 or 7) based polymer electrolytes. The two polymer electrolytes explored in the experiments were designed from two different MePEG chains that varied in their overall length and degree of polymerization. The first MePEG backbone contained three polymerized ethoxy groups and the second contained seven. Both MePEGn polymers were modified by substituting an imidazolium group in place of the alcohol functional group at the end of the PEG chain. This modification was made to create a polymer electrolyte with an attached positive charge that could …

Comparing Functions, Costs And Rewards Of Quality Engineers And Six Sigma Black Belts, C. Grant Short

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The respective Bodies of Knowledge (BoKs) as described by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) for Certified Quality Engineers (ASQ, 2015a) and Certified Six Sigma Black Belts (ASQ, 2015b) are quite similar, yet anecdotally, six sigma black belts are recognized and consequently rewarded more highly than are quality engineers. While Quality Engineering work is typically regarded as preventive in nature, work performed by six sigma black belts is in the realm of improvement, hence is reactive in nature. Consequently, a dichotomy exists in that preventive actions, which are less costly by their nature, are not rewarded as well as costlier …

Managing The Effects Of Wireless Sensors On Vehicle Ad Hoc Network (Vanet) Safety, Melvin Hayes

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper proposes to conduct research on the vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) with a focus on investigating safety methods that will significantly reduce passenger vehicle collisions which ultimately will help to save lives and reduce property losses. Key areas of this ITS research will include highway infrastructure or wireless sensor networks (WSN) to the cloud (web service) and the cloud (web service) to highway infrastructure or wireless sensor network (WSN). In turn, the cloud (web service) will communicate with passenger vehicles as components of a highway infrastructure (WSN) to vehicle (I2V) systems and …

A Causal-Comparative Study Of Burnout Among Rural Elementary, Middle, And High School Teachers, Keisha N. Hamby

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There is a prevalent shortage of school teachers in the United States. Teacher burnout is a chronic issue that plagues school districts. Burnout is one of the primary causes of teachers leaving the profession altogether. The purpose of this study was to determine differences of burnout among elementary, middle, and high school teachers in a rural area. A gap in literature was addressed by comparing the burnout levels of teachers in a rural school district across all grade levels. The chosen research design for this study was a causal-comparative design. The independent variable was teachers’ grade across three levels (elementary, …

Machine Learning For Robust Understanding Of Scene Materials In Hyperspectral Images, Utsav B. Gewali

Theses

The major challenges in hyperspectral (HS) imaging and data analysis are expensive sensors, high dimensionality of the signal, limited ground truth, and spectral variability. This dissertation develops and analyzes machine learning based methods to address these problems. In the first part, we examine one of the most important HS data analysis tasks-vegetation parameter estimation. We present two Gaussian processes based approaches for improving the accuracy of vegetation parameter retrieval when ground truth is limited and/or spectral variability is high. The first is the adoption of covariance functions based on well-established metrics, such as, spectral angle and spectral correlation, which are …

Methods And Algorithms For Cardiovascular Hemodynamics With Applications To Noninvasive Monitoring Of Proximal Blood Pressure And Cardiac Output Using Pulse Transit Time, Yashar Seyed Vahedein

Theses

Advanced health monitoring and diagnostics technology are essential to reduce the unrivaled number of human fatalities due to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Traditionally, gold standard CVD diagnosis involves direct measurements of the aortic blood pressure (central BP) and flow by cardiac catheterization, which can lead to certain complications. Understanding the inner-workings of the cardiovascular system through patient-specific cardiovascular modeling can provide new means to CVD diagnosis and relating treatment. BP and flow waves propagate back and forth from heart to the peripheral sites, while carrying information about the properties of the arterial network. Their speed of propagation, magnitude and shape are …

Comparing Hecke Coefficients Of Automorphic Representations, Liubomir Chiriac, Andrei Jorza

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We prove a number of unconditional statistical results of the Hecke coefficients for unitary cuspidal representations of over number fields. Using partial bounds on the size of the Hecke coefficients, instances of Langlands functoriality, and properties of Rankin-Selberg -functions, we obtain bounds on the set of places where linear combinations of Hecke coefficients are negative. Under a mild functoriality assumption we extend these methods to . As an application, we obtain a result related to a question of Serre about the occurrence of large Hecke eigenvalues of Maass forms. Furthermore, in the cases where the Ramanujan conjecture is satisfied, we …

Effects Of Environmentally Relevant Concentrations Of Microplastic Fibers On Pacific Mole Crab (Emerita Analoga) Mortality And Reproduction, Dorothy Horn, Elise F. Granek, Clare Steele

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Microplastics are ubiquitous in marine systems; however, knowledge of the effects of these particles on marine fauna is limited. Ocean-borne plastic debris accumulates in littoral ecosystems worldwide, and invertebrate infauna inhabiting these systems can ingest small plastic particles and fibers, mistaking them for food. We examined the effect of microplastic fibers on physiological and reproductive outcomes in a nearshore organism by exposing Pacific mole crabs (Emerita analoga) to environmentally relevant concentrations of microsized polypropylene rope fibers. We compared adult gravid female crab mortality, reproductive success, and embryonic developmental rates between microfiber-exposed and control crabs. Pacific mole crabs exposed to polypropylene …

Stem And The Skilled Labor Shortage In The United States, Nicolo Tetsuo Hoshizaki

Construction Management

There is a growing shortage of skilled labor in the United States construction industry. As the baby boomer generation prepares to leave the workforce, this problem is getting exponentially worse. As Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics programs have become the U.S. Department of Education’s top priority, more young adults are pursuing higher education and entering the STEM workforce. Using quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, this paper provides an explanation as to why a logical method to assuage the labor shortage in construction is to employ vocational programs that prepare young adults to enter the industry similar to how STEM programs …

Feasibility And Acceptability Of A Rural, Pragmatic, Telemedicine‐ Delivered Healthy Lifestyle Programme, John A. Batsis, Auden C. Mcclure, Aaron B. Weintraub, David F. Kotz, Sivan Rotenberg, Summer B. Cook, Diane Gilbert-Diamond, Kevin Curtis, Courtney J. Stevens, Diane Sette, Richard I. Rothstein

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: The public health crisis of obesity leads to increasing morbidity that are even more profound in certain populations such as rural adults. Live, two‐way video‐conferencing is a modality that can potentially surmount geographic barriers and staffing shortages. Methods: Patients from the Dartmouth‐Hitchcock Weight and Wellness Center were recruited into a pragmatic, single‐arm, nonrandomized study of a remotely delivered 16‐week evidence‐based healthy lifestyle programme. Patients were provided hardware and appropriate software allowing for remote participation in all sessions, outside of the clinic setting. Our primary outcomes were feasibility and acceptability of the telemedicine intervention, as well as potential effectiveness on …

Exploring The State-Of-Receptivity For Mhealth Interventions, Florian Künzler, Varun Mishra, Jan-Niklas Kramer, David Kotz, Elgar Fleisch, Tobias Kowatsch

Dartmouth Scholarship

Recent advancements in sensing techniques for mHealth applications have led to successful development and deployments of several mHealth intervention designs, including Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAI). JITAIs show great potential because they aim to provide the right type and amount of support, at the right time. Timing the delivery of a JITAI such as the user is receptive and available to engage with the intervention is crucial for a JITAI to succeed. Although previous research has extensively explored the role of context in users’ responsiveness towards generic phone notiications, it has not been thoroughly explored for actual mHealth interventions. In this …

Topological Magnetoelectric Effect As Probed By Nanoshell Plasmonic Modes, Railing Chang, Huai Yi Xie, Ya-Chih Wang, Hai-Pang Chiang, P.T. Leung

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Axion electrodynamics is applied to study the response of a plasmonic nanoshell with a core made of topological insulator (TI) materials. The electric polarizability of such a system is calculated in the long wavelength limit via the introduction of two scalar potentials satisfying the various appropriate boundary conditions. Our focus is on the topological magneto-electric effect (TME) as manifested in the coupled plasmonic resonances of the nanoshell. It is found that for a TI with broken time-reversal symmetry, such TME will lead to observable red-shifts in the coupled plasmonic modes, with more significant manifestation of such shifts for the bonding …

Process Improvement And Lift Design For The Installation Of A Metrology Machine Assembly, Dalt J. Lasell, James Mitchell O'Meara, Matthew Steensma

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The objective is to work with Onto Innovations, a leading provider of semiconductor metrology and manufacturing solutions, to develop a system that safely installs a 250lb optics plate into the Atlas III: one of their metrology machines. Based in Milpitas, CA, Onto Innovations utilizes a variety of operations to create different products and assembles each product on site. The 250lb optics plates are WIP that are transferred between fixtures and the Atlas III using a combination of lifts and human workers. The WIP have long lead times, high tolerances, and large costs associated with their manufacturing process.

Onto Innovations identified …

Testing The Retrospective Pretest With High School Youth In Out-Of-School Time Programs, Jill Young, Leanne Kallemeyn

Journal of Youth Development

Practitioners and evaluators face several constraints in conducting rigorous evaluations to determine program effect. Researchers have offered the retrospective pretest/posttest design as a remedy to curb response-shift bias and better estimate program effects. This article presents an example of how After School Matters (ASM) tested the use of retrospective pretest/posttest design for evaluating out-of-school time (OST) programs for high school youth participants. Differences between traditional pretest and retrospective pretest scores were statistically significant, but effect sizes were negligible, indicating that both pretests yielded similar results. Interviews with youth led to 3 key findings that have implications for ASM using retrospective …

Using Experience Industry Strategies To Increase Quality Of Youth Program Experiences, Allen Taggart, Gary Ellis, Jingxian Jiang, Andrew Lacanienta

Journal of Youth Development

We evaluated 4 “experience industry” strategies for enhancing the quality of immediate experiences for 4-H youth: theming, adding multisensory experiences, personalizing interactions, and providing memorabilia. These strategies are commonly used by theme parks, restaurants, resorts, attractions, and other experience industry organizations, but their application to youth services is sporadic. 4-H youth (n = 30) participated in a series of 8 outdoor recreation activity sessions. Each activity session, 1 per week for 8 consecutive weeks, was structured using a unique combination of the 4 strategies. Participants completed questionnaires measuring 5 dimensions of experience quality after each activity session. Theme and personalization …

Lesson Study Model Of 4-H Professional Development: Data-Driven Improvements To Educator Practice, Lynn Schmitt-Mcquitty, Steven Worker, Martin Smith

Journal of Youth Development

Educator professional development in the 4-H Youth Development Program needs improvement. Lesson study, an iterative and educator-centered approach to professional development, has proven to be effective in school-based settings; however, research on the model in youth development programs is limited. The present study investigated the use of lesson study with professional Cooperative Extension staff, adult 4-H volunteers, and teenage 4-H volunteers in different 4-H contexts in 3 state programs. Findings revealed improvements in educators’ data-driven decision-making, content knowledge, lesson planning and implementation, and social connections across all contexts. To work effectively within the 4-H context, however, some adaptations to the …

Learning From The Past To Educate The Future: An Analysis Of The Modern Classical School, Miranda Boljat

Senior Honors Theses

Classical schooling combines the wisdom of thousands of years of learning with the knowledge necessary to succeed in today’s world. Despite the antiquity of some of these ideas, the movement has continued to grow in both number of schools and also number of students attending, measuring almost 100 new schools each decade since 1993. One of the motives for this growth is how Classical schools utilize a curriculum which includes the trivium, Latin, and the Great Books of Western Civilization. Together, these elements of the curriculum lead to improved test scores and general college readiness.

The Complexity Of Asian Americans In Higher Education, Akampreet Kaur

Publications and Research

The Complexity of Asian Americans in Higher Education: What impacts & motivates Asian American students to select a particular major choice?

For my AACS 370 course, I have done to focus my research topic on Asian Americans within Higher Education. Through this data, I hoped to find the factors that contributed to Asian Americans in regards to their major. My research purpose was: To gather information about Asian American students & the choices they make about pursuing higher education. I have decided to do this since I believe there is limited data in regards to why Asian Americans are …

Shell Potentials For Microgravity Bose–Einstein Condensates, N. Lundblad, R. A. Carollo, Courtney Lannert, M. J. Gold, X. Jiang, D. Paseltiner, N. Sergay, D. C. Aveline

Physics: Faculty Publications

Extending the understanding of Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) physics to new geometries and topologies has a long and varied history in ultracold atomic physics. One such new geometry is that of a bubble, where a condensate would be confined to the surface of an ellipsoidal shell. Study of this geometry would give insight into new collective modes, self-interference effects, topology-dependent vortex behavior, dimensionality crossovers from thick to thin shells, and the properties of condensates pushed into the ultradilute limit. Here we propose to implement a realistic experimental framework for generating shell-geometry BEC using radiofrequency dressing of magnetically trapped samples. Such a …

Iterative Kernel Technique To Solve System Fredholm Integral Equation First Kind For Degenerate Kernel, Talhat Ismael Hassan

Polytechnic Journal

Many problems associated with the engineering technology field can be transformed into Fredholm integral equations of the first kind to achieve problem-solving strategies. In this paper, the iterative kernel technique was reformulated to treat the numerical solution for the system of Fredholm integral equations of the first kind for the degenerate kernel. Three new theorems have been proposed and proved. This technique was programmed via Matlab and achieved a good result

Measurement Of The Production Cross Section Of Four Top Quarks In Proton–Proton Collisions At 13 Tev, Caleb Fangmeier

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The field of particle physics involves not only searches for new particles and measurements of their interactions, but also the design and construction of advanced particle detectors. This thesis presents the measurement of the production cross section of four top quarks in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV using 137 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This analysis considers events in the final state of a same-sign pair of leptons, notable for being a final state with relatively few Standard Model background events. A boosted decision tree is utilized to discriminate …

Improvement For Generating High-Order Harmonics And Attosecond Pulses With Ultrashort Laser Fields, Dian Peng

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nonlinear processes of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) produced by ultrashort few-cycle laser pulses possess interesting features which HHG produced by long pulses of many cycles may not have. First, HHG spectra produced by ultrashort pulses are extremely sensitive to the driving pulse waveform, which can be controlled by laser parameters such as carrier-envelope phases (CEPs), time delays or frequency chirps. Second, HHG spectra produced by ultrashort pulses can exhibit broad uneven peaks which are different from usual odd-ordered harmonic peaks that long pulses produce.

Based on the high sensitivity on pulse waveform of HHG spectra produced by ultrashort pulses, we …

A Phenomenological Study Of Leadership Outcomes In Short-Term Study Abroad, Jeanette Milius

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The impact of global citizenship is far-reaching and encompasses skills and outcomes beyond simple economic and business success. Enhancing all students’ knowledge and ability to navigate a global community is not just of interest to governmental units, policymakers, and global organizations, but also to universities who wish to adhere to accreditation standards. The purpose of this phenomenological study is to identify characteristics related to an individuals’ motivation to complete a short-term study abroad (one to three weeks in duration) and the impact that experience had on their personal and leadership growth. Eighteen self-identified leaders enrolled in a college degree or …