Digital Commons Network^™

Revisiting The Advertisement Call Features Of Scinax Montivagus (Anura: Hylidae), André Gomes Lopes, Davi Lee Bang, Ariovaldo Antonio Giaretta

Neotropical Biodiversity

In the present study, we revisit the advertisement call of Scinax montivagus based on new recordings from Rio de Contas, state of Bahia, Brazil. The species’ call consists of a single type of multipulsed note of relatively short duration (mean = 192 ms), having two non-harmonically related emphasized frequency bands. The dominant frequency corresponds either to the lower or the higher band, or it may shift between both along call emissions. Herein, we assess and discuss call features that diverge from what is in the literature and also provide further details on the species call. We reinforce that detailed and …

Patient Care In High-Level Containment Care Units: In A Resourced Setting, Angela M. Vasa, Kate C. Boulter, Jolene M. Horihan, David S. Cates, Craig A. Piquette, James N. Sullivan, Daniel W. Johnson, Angela L. Hewlett

Books and Book Chapters: Nebraska Medicine

Vasa, A., Boulter, K., Horihan, Cates, D., Piquette, C., Sullivan, J., Johnson, D, & Hewlett, A. (2019). Patient Care in High-Level Containment Care Units. In T. Cieslak, M. Kortepeter, C. Kratochvil, & J. Lawler (Eds.), Nebraska Isolation and Quarantine Manual (pp. 87-101). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Spectrum 2019, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Post-Fall Huddles On Repeat Fall Rates And Perceptions Of Safety Culture: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation Of A Patient Safety Demonstration Project, Katherine J. Jones, John Crowe, Joseph A. Allen, Anne M. Skinner, Robin High, Victoria Kennel, Roni Reiter-Palmon

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background: Conducting post-fall huddles is considered an integral component of a fall-risk-reduction program. However, there is no evidence linking post-fall huddles to patient outcomes or perceptions of teamwork and safety culture. The purpose of this study is to determine associations between conducting post-fall huddles and repeat fall rates and between post-fall huddle participation and perceptions of teamwork and safety culture.

Methods: During a two-year demonstration project, we developed a system for 16 small rural hospitals to report, benchmark, and learn from fall events, and we trained them to conduct post-fall huddles. To calculate a hospital’s repeat fall rate, …

Attraction Among Late-Adolescents, C. Nathalie Yuen, Tom Koziol, Jonathan Santo

Psychology Faculty Publications

Using a within-subjects experimental design, this study assessed the association between age and level of attraction in 514 male and female participants 19 years of age or older when rating photographs of individuals 19-22. The hypotheses were formulated to test the evolutionary perspective of attraction, that males prefer a younger female mate while females prefer an older male mate. Additionally, this theory suggests that initial attraction is influenced largely by reproductive factors. To test these hypotheses, 320 different pictures for each sex were used to measure perceived attractiveness. Multilevel modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses which were partially …

A Tunable Electrostatic Mems Pressure Switch, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

We demonstrate a tunable air pressure switch. The switch detects when the ambient pressure drops below a threshold value and automatically triggers without the need for any computational overhead to read the pressure or trigger the switch. The switch exploits the significant fluid interaction of a MEMS beam undergoing a large oscillation from electrostatic levitation to detect changes in ambient pressure. If the oscillation amplitude near the resonant frequency is above a threshold level, dynamic pullin is triggered and the switch is closed. The pressure at which the switch closes can be tuned by adjusting the voltage applied to the …

Fungus Creates Zombie Insects On Dogwood, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

I have something I need to get off my chest. I have an obsession with, of all things, a fungus! And not just any fungus, but a fungus that infects, I am embarrassed to admit, Flowering Dogwood, the VNPS Wildflower of the Year for 2018. Yes, maybe I’ve gone off my rocker. But this fungus is so cool, so devious, so elegantly convoluted and weird—in a creepy sort of way—that I find myself utterly enthralled. Perhaps sharing my obsession with this fungus will prove therapeutic and permit me to return to my more socially respectable obsessive fascination with plants.

Unique Features Of Caenothus Trace To Earliest Stages Of Flower Development, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

The basics of flower structure are straightforward. A “typical” flower (Figure 1) has four whorls of floral organs arranged in stereotypical order: sepals (lowermost and outermost), petals, stamens, and, finally, one or more carpels (pistils) located in the innermost (or uppermost) position. This is not rocket science. Names of these floral organs and their relative placement within the flower can be grasped readily by schoolchildren. Also “typical” but seldom emphasized in elementary lessons is the fact that the organs of each successive whorl occupy alternate radii; i.e., petals are routinely positioned between sepals, and stamens (if only one whorl) are …

Special Focus Introduction. Set Up And Shut Out: Immigration And Criminality In Contemporary Spanish Fiction, Jeffrey K. Coleman

Spanish Languages and Literatures Research and Publications

The beginning of the twenty-first century has seen mass immigration from the Global South to the Global North. Unfortunately, the geopolitical and racial dynamics of this migration flow often lead to a purported nexus between immigration and criminality. In immigrant-receiving nations, this is especially the case, where sometimes the government, the media, and even the population support a xenophobic perspective based on the interconnection between immigration and criminality. Spain serves as an interesting case study for understanding how cultural productions reflect and/or critique that tendency because between 2000 and 2010 it had the world's second largest net immigration rate. The …

Single Parent Households And The Effect On Student Learning, Asia Watt

Masters Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine if there is a relationship between single-parent households and the effect on student learning. A total of seven parents and three elementary teachers took a survey. Students’ scores in math and reading from report cards and PARCC scores were also used as data sources. Results revealed that the involvement of single parents at school varies depending on the type of involvement, however, data from the report card review showed all the parents review their child’s report card. Approximately 70 % or more assisted their children in math and English homework. In addition, …

Solvation Properites Of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Using Chirped-Pulse Fourier-Transform Microwave Spectra Of Carbon Dioxide / 1, 1-Difluoroethene (Dfe) Mixtures, Tulana Ariyaratne Subasinghe Arachchige

Masters Theses

Supercritical carbon dioxide (sc-C0₂) is a highly utilized industrial substance identified as an excellent solvent and a surfactant, which is cheaper and less hazardous than other typical solvents. The higher solubility of fluorinated hydrocarbons than their hydrocarbon (HC) analogs is not well understood and the theory behind the microsolvation of sc-C0₂ cannot be fully explained with the existing chemical information. Microwave spectroscopy is a good method of identifying the structural arrangement of clusters made from fluorinated HCs and C0₂. I n this project, microwave scans of the four different mixtures of 1 , 1-difluoroethene (DFE) …

Investigating The Prevalence Of An Insecticide Resistance Gene In Culex Mosquito Populations Of Central Illinois, Kylee R. Noel

Masters Theses

The globalization of society has led to the spread of the vectors, mosquitoes, and diseases. Each year millions of people are killed by diseases vectored by mosquitoes. For example, West Nile Virus alone killed over 2,000 people in North America in 2017; 8 of those deaths being in Illinois. Two prominent vectors of West Nile Virus are Culex pipiens and Culex restuans; which are difficult to differentiate based upon morphological features. In this study, mosquitoes collected from two Illinois counties, Coles County and Champaign County, were first identified based upon morphology and this identification was then compared to probe-based …

Pokemon Go And Mental Health, Nathaniel Ed

Masters Theses

Pokémon GO is a new type of game that emphasizes physical activity and social interaction. In the literature, both physical activity and social interactions have been shown to be positively correlated with mental health. Much research has been conducted on the effects of gaming on mental health, but to date no research has been done on the possible correlations of the game Pokémon GO and mental health. The present study was conducted to determine whether Pokémon GO players scored significantly lower than a control group of traditional garners on scales of depression, anxiety, and pathological gaming, and if they reported …

Government Expenditure And Unemployment: Empirical Investigation Of Sub-Saharan African (Ssa) Countries, Grace Ayiwah Fosu

Masters Theses

Over the years, there have been increasing trends in government expenditures in most countries in Sub-Sahara Africa, but some of the social-economic indicators such as health, unemployment, education, inflation, and the others paint a blurry image of the effect of the rising public spending. It is worrisome to see that pictures painted by the economic indicators show that budgets made by governments in Sub-Sahara Africa look good on paper than their actual effect in the economy (Andrews, 2010; Peterson, 2010). As a result of this, the question that keeps emerging is that “does government spending actually impact economic indicators in …

Teachers' Perception Of Mental Health In The School System, Nicholas Caldwell

Masters Theses

The study examined teachers' perceptions of their school's mental health system. Specifically, teachers were asked about their role in the identification process, how effective their school's system is at identifying and treating mental health problems, and their suggestions for improvement. Mental health problems affect a significant portion of today's youth (Merikangas et al., 2010). Mental health problems can negatively impact an adolescent's academic achievement, social relationships, and behavioral functioning (Woodward & Fergusson, 2001). Six teachers from a southeastern, rural Illinois high school participated in the study. Each teacher participated in a single interview and discussed their perceptions of the school's …

The Transition Of Male Student-Athletes To A Division I College, Tori Harrison

Masters Theses

Using a qualitative methodology, the researcher studied high school student-athletes transitioning to becoming college student-athletes at the Division I-level. The study was narrowed down to six, second-year male student-athletes. There were two participants from baseball, two from football, and two from men's track and field. These participants were interviewed and asked a range of questions about their high school experience, their legal guardians' involvement in high school and in college, what their recruiting process was like, and how they managed their transition from high school to college. The interview was broken up into three parts to better understand their transition: …

Gwas Of Qrs Duration Identifies New Loci Specific To Hispanic/Latino Populations, Brenton R Swenson, Tin Louie, Henry J Lin, Raúl Méndez-Giráldez, Jennifer E Below, Cathy C Laurie, Kathleen F Kerr, Heather Highland, Timothy A Thornton, Kelli K Ryckman, Charles Kooperberg, Elsayed Z Soliman, Amanda A Seyerle, Xiuqing Guo, Kent D Taylor, Jie Yao, Susan R Heckbert, Dawood Darbar, Lauren E Petty, Barbara Mcknight, Susan Cheng, Natalie A Bello, Eric A Whitsel, Craig L Hanis, Mike A Nalls, Daniel S Evans, Jerome I Rotter, Tamar Sofer, Christy L Avery, Nona Sotoodehnia

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: The electrocardiographically quantified QRS duration measures ventricular depolarization and conduction. QRS prolongation has been associated with poor heart failure prognosis and cardiovascular mortality, including sudden death. While previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 32 QRS SNPs across 26 loci among European, African, and Asian-descent populations, the genetics of QRS among Hispanics/Latinos has not been previously explored.

METHODS: We performed a GWAS of QRS duration among Hispanic/Latino ancestry populations (n = 15,124) from four studies using 1000 Genomes imputed genotype data (adjusted for age, sex, global ancestry, clinical and study-specific covariates). Study-specific results were combined using fixed-effects, inverse variance-weighted …

Free Water In White Matter Differentiates Mci And Ad From Control Subjects, Matthieu Dumont, Maggie Roy, Pierre-Marc Jodoin, Felix C Morency, Jean-Christophe Houde, Zhiyong Xie, Cici Bauer, Tarek A Samad, Koene R A Van Dijk, James A Goodman, Maxime Descoteaux

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Recent evidence shows that neuroinflammation plays a role in many neurological diseases including mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), and that free water (FW) modeling from clinically acquired diffusion MRI (DTI-like acquisitions) can be sensitive to this phenomenon. This FW index measures the fraction of the diffusion signal explained by isotropically unconstrained water, as estimated from a bi-tensor model. In this study, we developed a simple but powerful whole-brain FW measure designed for easy translation to clinical settings and potential use as a priori outcome measure in clinical trials. These simple FW measures use a "safe" white matter …

Multistate Outbreaks Of Foodborne Illness In The United States Associated With Fresh Produce From 2010 To 2017, Christina K Carstens, Joelle K Salazar, Charles Darkoh

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

In the United States, the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables has increased during recent years as consumers seek to make healthier lifestyle choices. However, the number of outbreaks associated with fresh produce that involve cases in more than one state (multistate) has increased concomitantly. As the distance along the farm-to-fork continuum has lengthened over time, there are also more opportunities for fresh produce contamination with bacterial pathogens before it reaches the consumer. This review provides an overview of the three bacterial pathogens (i.e., pathogenic

Twenty Questions About Design Behavior For Sustainability, Michal Strahilevitz, Additional Author(S)

School of Economics and Business Administration Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

State Estimation For An Agonistic‐Antagonistic Muscle System, Thang Tien Nguyen, Holly Warner, Hung La, Hanieh Mohammadi, Daniel J. Simon, Hanz Richter

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Research on assistive technology, rehabilitation, and prosthetics requires the understanding of human machine interaction, in which human muscular properties play a pivotal role. This paper studies a nonlinear agonistic‐antagonistic muscle system based on the Hill muscle model. To investigate the characteristics of the muscle model, the problem of estimating the state variables and activation signals of the dual muscle system is considered. In this work, parameter uncertainty and unknown inputs are taken into account for the estimation problem. Three observers are presented: a high gain observer, a sliding mode observer, and an adaptive sliding mode observer. Theoretical analysis shows the …

High Order Volumetric Directional Pattern For Video-Based Face Recognition, Almabrok Essa, Vijayan Asari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Describing the dynamic textures has attracted growing attention in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition. In this paper, a novel approach for recognizing dynamic textures, namely, high order volumetric directional pattern (HOVDP), is proposed. It is an extension of the volumetric directional pattern (VDP) which extracts and fuses the temporal information (dynamic features) from three consecutive frames. HOVDP combines the movement and appearance features together considering the nth order volumetric directional variation patterns of all neighboring pixels from three consecutive frames. In experiments with two challenging video face databases, YouTube Celebrities and Honda/UCSD, HOVDP clearly outperformed a set …

Examining Coteaching To Lessen And/Or Preclude The Segregated Placement Of Students With Emotional Disturbance Via Southern California School Districts, Christa Sara Stepanian

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods case study examined the systems thinking component of collaboration through coteaching at inclusive public school environments to facilitate the need of special education students who are presently segregated at nonpublic schools. This study first analyzed qualitative data in the form of interviews from a sample population of 5 district representatives to disclose the chief reason for such failure on the part of a plethora of public school districts in southern California to facilitate the needs of their students (characterized with emotional disturbance and/or another disability who also display behavior issues) in inclusive and collaborative environments. Secondly, this …

Post-Secondary Career Technical Education Instructional Practices, Giselle D. Bice

Theses and Dissertations

Although the current public education system's vision of college and career readiness is creating a substantial space for career technical education (CTE) in schools, little has been done regarding researching the current state of career educational education and adult learners. As colleges become further impacted by fiscal constraints, adding additional years for the completion of any post-secondary degree, a need exists to reassess the state's adult school CTE programs as an essential partner in post-secondary education. This study aimed to elucidate instructional best practices of CTE instructors within a public school setting as a foundation for further research in this …

Leadership Challenges For Patient Advocates: A Cross Sector Alliance Perspective, Monica Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Innovative and enduring solutions to the myriad of complex social and environmental challenges facing the world today require the shared resources and combined talents of government, nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Interactions between these sectors are called cross sector partnerships (CSPs). An example of CSPs, nonprofit patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) are increasingly entering relationships and collaborations with for-profit pharmaceutical companies (FPPCs). Using a phenomenological approach, this study sought to contribute to the body of knowledge on PAO/FFPC partnerships, as well as broader CSP phenomenon, by exploring how leaders in the field of PAO/FFPC alliances experience collaborations with one another. Three research …

Exploring The Influence Of Spirituality In The Initial Development Of Authentic Leadership Identity, Rosalie L. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to explore the connection between authentic leadership, spirituality, and human development theory to determine if spirituality contributes to the emergence or formation of an authentic leadership identity. An interdisciplinary research approach was conducted by reviewing literature on authentic leadership, spirituality, and human development. A sequential explanatory mixed method design was used to collect and analyze the personal beliefs and life experiences of individuals who were nominated as authentic leaders. Sixty-one participants completed a questionnaire and a subset of eleven participants completed semi-structured interviews. Quantitative findings identified that nearly 94% of participants considered themselves to …

Authentic Leadership, Employee Engagement, And Trust At A Major Logistics Service Company, John C. Mason

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods study examined the correlation between authentic leadership among management and employee engagement among unionized hourly workers in a major logistics service company and examined the factor of trust between management and union workers. Within a context of positive organizational behavior, by analyzing and comparing results of the Authentic Leadership Inventory and the Employee Engagement Survey and conducting interviews within a business division, the study determined that there are high levels of authentic leadership, employee engagement, and trust with the district where the study took place. The qualitative part of the study found a very weak negative correlation …

Leadership Effectiveness And Social Emotional Learning Competency Skills In An Urban School Setting, Rose Ann Bomentre

Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative research study was developed to support school principals leading in urban school settings with rates of poverty crime, and violence with a need for a set of skills to create a positive school culture with kindness, empathy, and compassion. To prepare administrators for the stressors of working in an urban school setting, a leader must be able to maintain effectiveness under stressful, or even hostile, conditions. Thus, school principals must improve their Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) competency skills to be effective in creating a positive school culture with kindness, empathy, and compassion. This research study utilized a …

Exploring Motivations And Informal Learning Of School Administrators Adopting Google Apps For Education, Justin Michael Locketz

Theses and Dissertations

As K-12 organizations continue to increase adoption of cloud-based information technology such as Google Apps for Education, there is a need to understand the factors that influence behaviors of school leaders in adopting and using these technologies. The purpose of this study was to explore the motivations and learning experiences of school site administrators related to adopting Google Apps for Education as a cloud-based knowledge management technology. These administrators have used the software applications with varied purpose and success, and learning more from their lived experiences might assist in the development and implementation of effective professional learning activities to support …

Leading Consciously: Examining Global Leadership Self-Awareness Across Healthcare Executives, Carole N. Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

The well-being of people around the world and in every community depend on healthcare. Yet, exponential shifts in globalization, technology and the environment have destabilized healthcare systems across the globe. Hence, the future of healthcare is forecast to be volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (Porter & Teisberg, 2006). To face current and future challenges, healthcare leaders will be expected to operate consciously and effectively while under extreme pressure. While a number of inter- and intra-personal characteristics and traits are associated with effective leadership through volatility, chief among them is self-awareness (Hernandez, Luthanen, Ramsel, & Ostauke, 2015). Unfortunately, however, no study …