Digital Commons Network^™

Subglacial Meltwater Supported Aerobic Marine Habitats During Snowball Earth, Maxwell A. Lechte, Malcolm W. Wallace, Ashleig Van Smeerdijk Hooda, Weiqiang Li, Ganqing Jiang, Galen P. Halverson, Dan Asael, Stephanie L. Mccoll, Noah J. Planavsky

Geoscience Faculty Research

The Earth’s most severe ice ages interrupted a crucial interval in eukaryotic evolution with widespread ice coverage during the Cryogenian Period (720 to 635 Ma). Aerobic eukaryotes must have survived the “Snowball Earth” glaciations, requiring the persistence of oxygenated marine habitats, yet evidence for these environments is lacking. We examine iron formations within globally distributed Cryogenian glacial successions to reconstruct the redox state of the synglacial oceans. Iron isotope ratios and cerium anomalies from a range of glaciomarine environments reveal pervasive anoxia in the ice-covered oceans but increasing oxidation with proximity to the ice shelf grounding line. We propose that …

Isolation Of Metrosideros (`Ohi`A) Taxa On O`Ahu Increases With Elevation And Extreme Environments, Elizabeth A. Stacy, Tomoko Sakishima, Heaven Tharp, Neil Snow

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Species radiations should be facilitated by short generation times and limited dispersal among discontinuous populations. Hawaii’s hyper-diverse, landscape-dominant tree, Metrosideros, is unique among the islands’ radiations for its massive populations that occur continuously over space and time within islands, its exceptional capacity for gene flow by both pollen and seed, and its extended life span (ca. >650 years). Metrosideros shows the greatest phenotypic and microsatellite DNA diversity on O`ahu, where taxa occur in tight sympatry or parapatry in mesic and montane wet forest on 2 volcanoes. We document the nonrandom distributions of 12 taxa (including unnamed morphotypes) along elevation gradients, …

Altered Central Hemodynamics In Individuals With Down Syndrome, Thessa Irena Maria Hilgenkamp, Elizabeth Cornellia Schroeder, Sang Ouk Wee, Georgios Grigoriadis, Alexander Jacob Rosenberg, Tracy Baynard, Bo Fernhall

Physical Therapy Faculty Research

Background: Individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) have autonomic dysfunction impacting regulation of heart rate, Blood Pressure (BP), and peripheral vasoconstriction. This may alter central hemodynamics through different wave reflections. We investigated central hemodynamics including wave reflection during rest and a sympathoexcitatory stimulus [Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP)] in individuals with DS and controls. Methods: Radial applanation tonometry was performed on participants with and without DS before and during 5-min LBNP stimulus of −20 mmHg. Waveforms were calibrated to mean and diastolic BP. Generalized transfer function was used to estimate aortic pressures [Systolic Blood Pressure (aSBP), Diastolic Blood Pressure (aDBP), mean …

Test Anxiety, Performance Expectancy, And Actual Performance On The Professional Licensure Examination Among Diploma Nursing Graduates, Melissa L. Mastorovich

Theses

This prospective study examined the relationship between test anxiety and performance on the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) in diploma nursing graduates. A convenience sample of 77 diploma graduate nurses, who were eligible for licensure and volunteered to participate, was utilized.

The Relationship Between Exercise And Quality Of Life In Adults In The U.S. Who Suffer From Cystic Fibrosis, April Renae Pitts

Theses and Dissertations

Cystic Fibrosis is a life-threatening lung condition that affects many yet the knowledge of its existence is very little. There is a relationship between the health and well-being of Cystic Fibrosis patients and physical activity. This research is designed to expand the knowledge on the effects exercise and lung function may have on the quality of life on adults that suffer from Cystic Fibrosis. The researcher also seeks to examine what control and behavioral beliefs might contribute to the intentions of an adult with Cystic Fibrosis exercising regularly while using the behavioral and control belief constructs of the Theory of …

Analysis Of The Duration And Energy Consumption Of Aes Algorithms On A Contiki-Based Iot Device, Brandon Tsao

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

With the growing prevalence of the Internet of Things, securing the sheer abundance of devices is critical. The current IoT and security landscapes lack empirical metrics on encryption algorithm implementations that are optimized for constrained devices, such as encryption/decryption duration and energy consumption. In this paper, we achieve two things. First, we survey for optimized implementations of symmetric encryption algorithms. Seconds, we study the performance of various symmetric encryption algorithms on a Contiki-based IoT device. This paper provides encryption and decryption durations and energy consumption results on three implementations of AES: TinyAES, B-Con’s AES, and Contiki’s own built-in AES. In …

Laboratory Investigation Of Infiltration Process Of Nonnewtonian Fluids Through Porous Media In A Non-Isothermal Flow Regime For Effective Remediation Of Adsorbed Contaminants, Fawad Naseer

Engineering

Contamination of soil and groundwater have serious health implications for man and environment. The overall goal of this research is to study a methodology of using nonNewtonian fluids for effective remediation of adsorbed contaminants in porous media under nonisothermal flow regimes. Non-Newtonian fluids (Guar gum and Xanthan gum solutions) provide a high viscous solution at low concentration and these fluids adjust their viscosities with applied shear rate and change in temperature. Adjustment of viscosity with an applied rate of shear is vital for contaminant remediation because non-Newtonian shear thinning fluids can penetrate to low permeability zones in subsurface by decreasing …

Retrodirective Phased Array Antenna For Nanosatellites, Justin W. Long

Engineering

This thesis presents a S-band phased array antenna for CubeSat applications. Existing state-of the-art high gain antenna systems are not well suited to the majority of CubeSats, those that fall within the 1U (10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm) to 3U (10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm) size ranges and in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The system presented in this thesis is designed specifically to meet the needs of those satellites. This system is designed to fit on the 1U face (10 cm x 10 cm) of a CubeSat and requires no deployables. The use of …

A Study Of Overpressure In The Navarin Basin, Alaska, Matthew Robison

Engineering

The Navarin basin is a region to the west of Alaska between the Aleutian Islands and Russia. It has been identified as a potential Petroleum prospect, and exploration wells have been drilled under the ocean up to depths of 17,000 feet. The exploration of the basin was started by Russia and the United States with several exploratory wells drilled in the 1980’s. The geology of the region consists of tertiary sedimentary rock deposited during the Eocene age with mudstone and siltstone from Paleogenic deposition. When dealing with such depths, it is expected that the pressure will increase beyond the hydrostatic …

Renewable Energy Development In Alaska: Policy Implications For The Development Of Renewable Energy For Remote Areas Of The Circumpolar Arctic, Gwen Pamela Holdmann

Engineering

The territories that comprise the Arctic region are part of some of wealthiest and most advanced countries on the planet; yet, rural Alaska, northern Canada, the Russian Far East and Greenland--characterized by off-grid communities, regional grids, and higher degrees of energy insecurity--have more in common with the developing world than the southern regions of their own country. This thesis explains this paradox of energy development in the Circumpolar North and tackles the issue of developing renewable energy in remote areas where technical and socioeconomic barriers are significant. The primary research questions are two-fold: 1) Why did the Alaska electrical system …

Flying The Frontier: A Case Study Comparison Of Newspaper Coverage Of Early Northern Plane Crashes, Leanna Prax Williams

Arctic and Northern Studies

From the early days of Alaskan aviation beginning in 1923, stories about Alaskan bush pilots leapt from newspaper pages, captivating readers and selling papers. These newspaper stories, along with magazine articles and other popular culture media accounts, portrayed pilots as pioneers, cowboys and brave adventurers, and referred to Alaska in terms heavily laden with American frontier imagery, a trend that persisted in Alaska but faded elsewhere. What did newspaper reports convey about the lives and deaths of these aviators and their relationships to Alaska and the frontier? How has the portrayal of these early Alaskan pilots in ways that perpetuated …

Comparison Of Reproducibility, Accuracy, Sensitivity, And Specificity Of Mirna Quantification Platforms, Paula M Godoy, Andrea J Barczak, Peter Dehoff, Srimeenakshi Srinivasan, Alton Etheridge, David Galas, Saumya Das, David J Erle, Louise C Laurent

Open Access Publications

Given the increasing interest in their use as disease biomarkers, the establishment of reproducible, accurate, sensitive, and specific platforms for microRNA (miRNA) quantification in biofluids is of high priority. We compare four platforms for these characteristics: small RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), FirePlex, EdgeSeq, and nCounter. For a pool of synthetic miRNAs, coefficients of variation for technical replicates are lower for EdgeSeq (6.9%) and RNA-seq (8.2%) than for FirePlex (22.4%); nCounter replicates are not performed. Receiver operating characteristic analysis for distinguishing present versus absent miRNAs shows small RNA-seq (area under curve 0.99) is superior to EdgeSeq (0.97), nCounter (0.94), and FirePlex (0.81). …

The Aminoalkylindole Bml-190 Negatively Regulates Chitosan Synthesis Via The Cyclic Amp/Protein Kinase A1 Pathway In Cryptococcus Neoformans, Brian T Maybruck, Woei C Lam, Charles A Specht, Ma Xenia G Ilagan, Maureen J Donlin, Jennifer K Lodge

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Castlepark: A Vernacular Architecture For Modern Ireland 1969-1972, Brian Ward

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

No abstract provided.

An Architecture Of Connections: The Ballybrack Cooperative 1969-1972, Brian Ward

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

No abstract provided.

Exploiting Memristors For Compressive Sensing Applications, Fengyu Qian

Doctoral Dissertations

The amount of sensory signal is increasing dramatically as we’re stepping into the era of Internet of Things (IoT). Compressive Sensing (CS), feature as Sub-Nyquist sampling rate and low complexity sensing architectures, is very promising for these kinds of applications where resources are restricted. Through applying this novel compression technology, data size of sensory signals are largely compressed such that it is very efficient within the signal processing, data transmitting and storage processes. Compared to conventional codec method, CS technique requires less hardware resources and achieve lower power consumption within sensor nodes.

However, there are several bottle-necks of existing compressive …

The Case For Not Giving Birth, Amanda D'Ambrosio

Capstones

Racism in medicine and a broken healthcare system has led to a maternal mortality crisis in the United States, one that disproportionately harms Black mothers. Though lawmakers and medical professionals have introduced legislation to expand healthcare and combat discrimination in clinical settings, reproductive justice leaders encourage new mothers to lean on their communities as a solution to the crisis.

Seed‐To‐Seedling Transitions Exhibit Distance‐Dependent Mortality But No Strong Spacing Effects In A Neotropical Forest, Philippe Marchand, Liza S. Comita, S. Joseph Wright, Richard Condit, Stephen P. Hubbell, Noelle G. Beckman

Biology Faculty Publications

Patterns of seed dispersal and seed mortality influence the spatial structure of plant communities and the local coexistence of competing species. Most seeds are dispersed in proximity to the parent tree, where mortality is also expected to be the highest, because of competition with siblings or the attraction of natural enemies. Whereas distance‐dependent mortality in the seed‐to‐seedling transition was often observed in tropical forests, few studies have attempted to estimate the shape of the survival‐distance curves, which determines whether the peak of seedling establishment occurs away from the parent tree (Janzen–Connell pattern) or if the peak attenuates but remains at …

Radiome: Artificially Intelligent Radio For People With Dementia, S Venkatesh, D Moffat, Er Miranda

School of Art, Design and Architecture

No abstract provided.

The Missing Mirror: A Critical Content Analysis Of Multicultural Children's Literature With Black Male Characters, Wendy Harris

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership Dissertations

Education in America is facing many challenges, such as the adoption of common core standards and the demand for highly qualified teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Further, the achievement gap lingers on, with Black males often performing poorly on national assessments of reading proficiency (Tatum, 2005). Although Black males are highly literate, they may feel alienated from traditional school systems and classroom reading selections (Kirkland, 2013). One of the most effective strategies for teachers to bridge the gap in reading is to inspire Black males to get engaged with their books and read for longer periods of time. However, children are more …

Walking Each Other Home: Sensemaking Of Illness Identity In An Online Metastatic Cancer Community, Ariane B. Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasingly, online settings serve as primary social contexts for patient interaction, playing a crucial role in ways participants access medical information and turn to each other for support. Stage IV (metastatic) cancer patients like myself know what it is like to be overwhelmed by the complex array of medical tests, treatments, and information we are expected to assimilate. My late stage disease status necessitates I routinely grapple with not merely the kinds of support I think I need or how those needs will be met, but also what meanings I assign to my experiences. Consequently, as a member of The …

Fits, Starts, And Finishes (Reviewing David Horton, Wills Without Signatures, 99 B.U. L. Rev. 1623 (2019)), Katheleen Guzman

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Novel Magnetic Delivery Systems For Platinum Anticancer Drugs, Lamis Alaa Eldin Refaat

Theses and Dissertations

Carboplatin's success in the treatment of major types of cancer has been attributed to its ease of administration and its high therapeutic index. However, despite its superior toxicity profile, myelosuppression remains to be its dose-limiting side effect. Liposomes have been researched extensively as carrier systems for therapeutic agents; their high biocompatibility, their ability to escape the immune system and most importantly their ability to incorporate both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs led to numerous liposomal formulations being designed for cancer therapy. Magnetic nanoparticles have been gaining attention as their properties enable them to be used in various therapeutic and diagnostic applications, …

Systems Isomorphisms In Stochastic Dynamic Systems, Rajesh Venkatachalapathy

Dissertations and Theses

The identification of isomorphisms between disparate systems is an important focus of systems science. Such isomorphisms have not only conceptual and pedagogical value to systems science, but they also provide pragmatic value to specific disciplines by suggesting new ways to model familiar phenomena and by serving as reference models that show how even simple models can generate complex behavior. Specifically, this dissertation looks at certain classes of stochastic dynamic systems (SDS) and shows that similar equations can model phenomena in sociology and psychology. In both disciplines, what is modeled by these SDS isomorphisms is a certain type of reliability, defined …

Host-Parasite Ecophysiology Of Overwintering, Don J. Larson

Biological Sciences

To survive extreme winters, parasites must overwinter either in a host, as free-living larvae, or be reintroduced yearly through migratory hosts. This thesis examines interrelations between host parasite overwintering physiology and behavior in Alaska between the trematode Ribeiroia ondatrae and their host, wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus). The first chapter examines overwintering physiology and behavior of wood frogs in the field. The second chapter creates a laboratory method for determining physiological responses of wood frogs to environmental transitions from summer to fall. The third chapter examines if and how R. ondatrae survive within a frozen wood frog. Free-living wood frogs investigated …

Validating A Gps Collar-Based Method To Estimate Parturition Events And Calving Locations For Two Barren-Ground Caribou Herds, Joelle D. Hepler

Biological Sciences

In remote landscapes, it is difficult and expensive to document animal behaviors such as location and timing of parturition. When aerial surveys cannot be conducted as a result of weather, personnel or fiscal constraints, analyses of GPS collar movement data may provide an alternate way to estimate parturition rates and calving ground locations. I validated two methods (population-based method and individual-based method), developed to detect calving events of sedentary woodland caribou, on multiple years of data for two different migratory barren-ground caribou herds in Alaska, the Porcupine and Fortymile herds. I compared model estimates of population parturition rates, individual calving …

Foliage And Winter Woody Browse Quality Of An Important Salix Browse Species: Effects Of Presence Of Alder-Derived Nitrogen And Winter Browsing By Alaskan Moose (Alces Alces Gigas), Justin Burrows

Biological Sciences

In this study, I examined the relationship between soil nitrogen and winter browsing by moose on the physical and chemical characteristics of Salix alaxensis; specifically stem production, leaf nutritional quality, and stem nutritional quality of tissues produced the following growing season. I measured stem biomass production the 2013 growing season and offtake during the 2013-2014 winter browsing season at 16 sites on the Tanana River floodplain near Fairbanks, Alaska. I revisited the sites the following summer and autumn to assess regrowth and to collect soil, foliage, and stem samples. Browsing intensity and total soil nitrogen were similar in sites with …

A Mixed Methods Evaluation Of Patient And Provider Perspectives Of Chronic Illness Management Following Kidney Transplantation, Catherine Kelley Pantik

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Introduction: Inconsistent, fragmented care coordination in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs)—whose management requires long-term, complex care, and multiple handoffs among providers—has been shown to result in suboptimal care and higher costs. In order to move forward in improving long-term outcomes, it is necessary to fully assess current practice patterns with appropriate measures. With a full and accurate picture of how elements of the management plan influence both KTR and the health care provider (HCP), it will be possible to implement changes that improve long-term outcomes.Methods: The Chronic Care Model (CCM) was the framework for the study. A mixed method research approach …

Boilerplate: What Consumers Actually Think About It, Franklin G. Snyder, Ann M. Mirabito

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most difficult problems in modem contract law is the status of standard terms-often called "boilerplate"-in consumer transactions. On the one hand, standard terms are good because they reduce costs and increase efficiency and predictability. On the other hand, they can be used to impose unfair terms on consumers and even to evade important public policies. There is thus a vast and growing literature on the topic.

We know for a fact that most consumers do not read standard terms. They will not read them before they sign the writing or click "I agree" or "Buy now" on …

Analytic Non-Adiabatic Derivative Coupling Terms For Spin-Orbit Mrci Wavefunctions. I. Formalism, Lachlan T. Belcher, Gary S. Kedziora, David E. Weeks

Faculty Publications

Analytic gradients of electronic eigenvalues require one calculation per nuclear geometry, compared to at least 3n + 1 calculations for finite difference methods, where n is the number of nuclei. Analytic nonadiabatic derivative coupling terms (DCTs), which are calculated in a similar fashion, are used to remove nondiagonal contributions to the kinetic energy operator, leading to more accurate nuclear dynamics calculations than those that employ the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, i.e., that assume off-diagonal contributions are zero. The current methods and underpinnings for calculating both of these quantities, gradients and DCTs, for the State-Averaged MultiReference Configuration Interaction with Singles and Doubles (MRCI-SD) …