Digital Commons Network^™

Cutr Connections [December 2020], Cutr

CUTR Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Epidemiology Of Covid-19 And Predictors Of Outcome In Nigeria: A Single-Center Study., Olayinka Rasheed Ibrahim, Bello Muhammed Suleiman, Suleiman Bello Abdullahi, Taofeek Oloyede, Abdallah Sanda, Maruf Sanusi Gbadamosi, Bashir Olajide Yusuf, Rabilu Yandoma Iliyasu, Lawal Magaji Ibrahim, Adamu Danladi Dawud, Sulaiman Saidu Bashir, Nwawueze Efam Okonta, Wasinda Francis Umar, Abiodun Gbenga Tekobo, Muhammadu Sani Abubakar, Bashir Taiye Aminu, Shuaibu Onoruoyiza Ibrahim, Rasaq Olaosebikan, Olugbenga Ayodeji Mokuolu

Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Faculty Papers

There is a paucity of information regarding the epidemiology and outcome of COVID-19 from low/middle-income countries, including from Nigeria. This single-center study described the clinical features, laboratory findings, and predictors of in-hospital mortality of COVID-19 patients. Patients admitted between April 10, 2020 and June 10, 2020 were included. Forty-five patients with a mean age of 43 (16) years, predominantly male (87%), presented with fever (38%), cough (29%), or dyspnea (24%). In-hospital mortality was 16%. The independent predictors of mortality were hypoxemia (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 2.5; 95% CI: 1.3-5.1) and creatinine > 1.5 mg/dL (aOR: 4.3; 95% CI: 1.9-9.8).

Burden Of Care As Perceived By Informal Caregivers Of The Patients Receiving Chemotherapy In Tertiary Care Hospital Of Karachi, Pakistan, Asher Ghori, Rubina Barolia, Naghma Rizvi, Ghulam Qadir

School of Nursing & Midwifery

Background: Almost 32.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer annually. The huge number of cancer patients with deteriorating health renders a far greater number of informal caregivers bearing the burden of care in different forms and magnitude. The main purpose of the study was to explore the types of burden perceived by the informal caregivers and the factors associated with the caregiving burden.
Methods: A quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study design was adopted to answer the research questions from April to May 2016. Around 200 informal caregivers were recruited from one of the tertiary hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan. The modified ZBIS …

The Impact Of A Digital Intervention On Perceived Stress, Resiliency, Social Support, And Intention To Leave Among Newly Licensed Nurses: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Lisa Concilio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The nursing shortage has been deemed a public health crisis with the turnover rate of newly licensed nurses (NLNs) growing (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2014). One out of five NLNs are leaving the profession due to work dissatisfaction and feelings of inadequacy (National Academy of Medicine, 2017). NLN attrition during the first year of hire has been associated with feelings of overwhelming stress and decreased sense of support which negatively impact patient safety (Spence Laschinger et al., 2016). As seasoned nurses are attempting to retire amidst a nursing shortage (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2018), NLNs require more support …

Fixed Income Fund Report, December 2020, Bryant University, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.

Sleep Induction By Mechanosensory Stimulation In Drosophila., Arzu Öztürk-Çolak, Sho Inami, Joseph R. Buchler, Patrick D. Mcclanahan, Andri Cruz, Christopher Fang-Yen, Kyunghee Koh

Department of Neuroscience Faculty Papers

People tend to fall asleep when gently rocked or vibrated. Experimental studies have shown that rocking promotes sleep in humans and mice. However, the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon are not well understood. A habituation model proposes that habituation, a form of non-associative learning, mediates sleep induction by monotonous stimulation. Here, we show that gentle vibration promotes sleep in Drosophila in part through habituation. Vibration-induced sleep (VIS) leads to increased homeostatic sleep credit and reduced arousability, and can be suppressed by heightened arousal or reduced GABA signaling. Multiple mechanosensory organs mediate VIS, and the magnitude of VIS depends on vibration frequency …

Vision-Based Analytics For Improved Ai-Driven Iot Applications, Amit Sharma

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) sensor systems, primarily driven by cheaper embedded hardware platforms and wide availability of light-weight software platforms, has opened up doors for large-scale data collection opportunities. The availability of massive amount of data has in-turn given way to rapidly growing machine learning models e.g. You Only Look Once (YOLO), Single-Shot-Detectors (SSD) and so on. There has been a growing trend of applying machine learning techniques, e.g., object detection, image classification, face detection etc., on data collected from camera sensors and therefore enabling plethora of vision-sensing applications namely self-driving cars, automatic crowd monitoring, traffic-flow analysis, occupancy …

State Assessment Of English Language Arts Neglect Established Standards, Helen Hernandez

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

The Comparative Effect Of Automated Reminders/Recalls Interventions On The Appointments Rate Of Adolescent Wellness Care Visit, Biai Dominique Elmir Digbeu

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

An Adolescent Wellness Care (AWC) visit is an annual preventive doctor visit predestined to assess the overall health of adolescents aged between 12 and 21 years old. Compared to their younger counterparts, adolescents who are using public insurance are at risk of not completing AWC visits due to several factors related to age or providers disparities in their living environment. This research was a quasiexperimental study aiming to compare two methods of automated Reminders/Recalls (RR) interventions, ‘phone-only’ versus ‘phone-and-text’, in order to evaluate which method is more effective in helping parents/guardians or young adults to schedule an AWC visit. A …

The Impact Of Gamification On The Mathematics Achievement Of Elementary Students, Tamisha Kimble

Doctor of Education in Teacher Leadership Dissertations

This study explores the use of gamification in elementary math. Living in a Global society requires students to use technology in classes daily. Students are using technology to complete a task that is aligned to state standards. These tasks are geared to help students master grade-level skills. So often, teachers are finding that students are completing the task just to comply. Teachers are seeking problems that will help with student engagement and prepare students for mastery of grade-level skills. Teachers are looking for a problem that serves the purpose of both. Teachers are looking for programs that engage students as …

2020-December-01-Going Places, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Rebecca Fugate is a family-focused solutions counselor with the Center for Community Outreach and Applied Research. She was previously a travel counselor with World Travel Service Inc. She holds an M.A. in psychology-clinical counseling from The Citadel.

Bridget Garland is an assistant HIPAA compliance officer in the Office of HIPAA Compliance and Security after serving ETSU Physicians as EHR director. She holds a master’s degree in English from ETSU.

Brianne A. Hayes is the bursar in Business and Finance after serving as bursar at the University of Memphis. She holds a B.S. degree in accounting from the University of South …

Six Years Of Shiny In Research: Collaborative Development Of Web Tools In R, Peter Kasprzak, Lachlan Mitchell, Olena Kravchuk, Andy Timmins

The R Journal

The use of Shiny in research publications is investigated over the six and a half years since the appearance of this popular web application framework for R, which has been utilised in many varied research areas. While it is demonstrated that the complexity of Shiny applications is limited by the background architecture, and real security concerns exist for novice app developers, the collaborative benefits are worth attention from the wider research community. Shiny simplifies the use of complex methodologies for people of different specialities, at the level of proficiency appropriate for the end user. This enables a diverse community of …

News From The Forwards Taskforce, Heather Turner

The R Journal

Forwards is an R Foundation taskforce working to widen the participation of under represented groups in the R project and in related activities, such as the useR! conference. This report rounds up activities of the taskforce during the second half of 2020.

Trace: A Differentiable Approach To Line-Level Stroke Recovery For Offline Handwritten Text, Taylor Neil Archibald

Theses and Dissertations

Stroke order and velocity are helpful features in the fields of signature verification, handwriting recognition, and handwriting synthesis. Recovering these features from offline handwritten text is a challenging and well-studied problem. We propose a new model called TRACE (Trajectory Recovery by an Adaptively-trained Convolutional Encoder). TRACE is a differentiable approach using a convolutional recurrent neural network (CRNN) to infer temporal stroke information from long lines of offline handwritten text with many characters. TRACE is perhaps the first system to be trained end-to-end on entire lines of text of arbitrary width and does not require the use of dynamic exemplars. Moreover, …

Global Solidarity, Global Worker Empowerment, And Global Strategy In The Anti-Sweatshop Movement, Matthew S. Williams

Sociology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I explore the ideology of worker empowerment among U.S. anti-sweatshop activists, particularly United Students Against Sweatshops, and its strategic consequences for transnational campaigns. This ideology is central in shaping the movement’s transnational strategy and organization, fostering communication and accountability, particularly to organizations representing sweatshop workers. Such organizational choices, in turn, shape how transnational networks strategize. For example, the anti-sweatshop movement rarely uses the familiar tactic of boycotts, due to opposition from workers. The more empowered sweatshop workers in such networks, the more informed decisions their allies can make, and the more strategically effective the movement can be.

Common Law Judging In An Age Of Statutes, Douglas Baird

University of Chicago Law Review

Well into the twentieth century, a justice on the Supreme Court was a common law judge. Before the rise of the regulatory state and Erie Railroad Co v Tompkins’s¹rejection of general federal common law, a master of the warp and woof of the common law such as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr was securely in his element.² The modern federal judge, by contrast, is a master of federal statutes and regulations. But the common law still matters as it remains the foundation on which federal statutes are written.

A clear grasp on how common law principles undergird …

The Population Council's Center For Biomedical Research: A Nonprofit Product-Development Entity, Population Council

Fact Sheets

No abstract provided.

Private Foundations: Keeping Themselves Rich While Giving Money Away, Jessica Leech

Social Work Theses - Archive

This paper examines the relational dynamics that maintain the imbalance between American private foundations and their grantees. Using conflict theory as a guide, the dynamics of power at play between the two entities is examined. These dynamics are analyzed through the history of philanthropy in the United States with a particular focus on the sector’s reaction to the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Both international events led to an evolution of how many private foundations interact with grantees. A closer examination of American philanthropy’s response to the COVID-19 crisis specifically will be compared to the segment’s historical actions. …

Tchaikovsky: Sonata-Form Style And Tendencies, Lorena Beatriz Ferrer Maldonado

Music Theses - Archive

William Caplin’s Formal-Function Theory and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s Sonata Theory were designed to analyze the tendencies of sonata forms written during the eighteenth century, particularly in the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. During the nineteenth century, this musical structure became altered in significant ways by many composers. Nonetheless, Caplin’s and Hepokoski and Darcy’s theories can still be used to analyze nineteenth-century sonata forms. Tchaikovsky made major changes in the sonata-form structure of his works by modulating to apparently unrelated or distant keys in his expositions. The relationship between the keys becomes clear once you analyze the recapitulation. …

Stable Isotope Composition Of Surface Water Across Central Mexico, Jordan Foote

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses - Archive

Understanding the controlling factors of modern surface water stable isotope compositions is important for reconstructions of paleoclimate and paleoelevation. Few studies have attempted to understand patterns of surface water isotope compositions and their controlling factors in Mexico. Here I study the δ18O, δD and d-excess values of 124 modern river, lake and spring water samples across the Sierra Madre Occidental, Central Mexican Plateau and Sierra Madre Oriental to constrain the spatial pattern and lapse rate. These samples were collected at various elevations after the wet season in 2019. The isotope data were integrated with moisture back trajectory analysis and climatic …

Textile And Apparel Supply Chain During Covid 19: A Perspective From Bangladesh, Mohammad F. Ahsan

Major Papers by TMD Master of Science Students

The viral COVID-19 outbreak resulted in restricted movement of people and products. It followed one of the biggest recessions in the history of mankind. Apart from all other affected sectors, Textile and Apparel Supply Chain is in the most vulnerable position because of China is, the largest exporter of textile raw materials and was affected the most by the virus. An overall decrease in demand led to a substantial decrease in textile and apparel product manufacturing that ultimately shut down factories and laid off workers in Bangladesh, where four million people are employed in the sector. This paper illustrates the …

Develop And Standardize A Dot&Pf Statewide Airport Construction Specifications Updating Process, Virginia Corazon Groeschel

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

This research study evaluates the operational performance of an experimental process model developed to provide a systematic and repeatable approach to updating the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) Statewide Standard Airport Construction (SSAC) specifications to comply with the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) Advisory Circular (AC) 150/5370-10H – Standard Specifications for Construction of Airports, (10H). In order to develop and standardize an effective process within DOT&PF, this study must examine how a large government organization, like DOT&PF, implements change. This study also discusses which key Project Management Institute’s (PMI’s) knowledge areas provide the framework for initiating, planning, and …

How Peer Support Specialists Uniquely Initiate And Build Connection With Young People Experiencing Homelessness, James Erangey, Connor Marvin, Danielle Maude Littman, Meredith Mollica, Kimberly Bender, Tom Lucas, Tara Milligan

Graduate School of Social Work: Faculty Scholarship

Young people experiencing homelessness are often apprehensive to engage in conventional service systems due to prior mistreatment by providers and others in their lives, as well as stigma associated with accessing services. Even when relationships between service providers and young people are initiated, they often end prematurely. Mutual aid, or peer-to-peer support, has a long and promising history within the mental health field, yet has received little empirical attention in work with young people experiencing homelessness. The present study used participatory qualitative methods to understand how peers uniquely initiate and build connection with young people experiencing homelessness. Through interviews and …

Investigation Of Clinoptilolite Zeolite As A Candidate System For Study By Positron Annihilation, Edward Perez

Physics Theses - Archive

This thesis reports on the characterization of a clinoptilolite zeolite (〖Na〗_3 [〖Al〗_3 〖Si〗_15 O_36 ]12H_2 O) using Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX/EDS) for chemical analysis, low energy Secondary Electron (SE) analysis for three-dimensional imaging and topography, and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) for two-dimensional imaging at the nanometer level. The goal of this work was to provide additional information that can aid in the interpretation of the data obtained using positron beam based spectroscopies. The measurements were performed using the Hitachi S-3000N Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) integrated with a NORAN 7 EDS/EBSD system, the Hitachi S-4800 II Field Emission Scanning …

Determining The Molecular Events Underlying The Role Of Estradiol In Mediating Sex Differences In Cocaine Reward., Saurabh Sanjeev Kokane

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

Research has demonstrated that women rapidly progress from recreational cocaine use to dependence, consume greater quantities of cocaine, experience more positive subjective effects of cocaine and have higher incidences of relapse during abstinence. These effects have been well replicated in animal models of cocaine addiction and indicate an enhanced sensitivity and therefore, vulnerability of females to cocaine addiction. This increased vulnerability of women and female animals to cocaine addiction has been attributed to enhanced cocaine reward. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the female hormone estradiol (E2) is a key mediator of the aforementioned effects of cocaine in women and …

Humility And Leadership Potential: Testing A Moderated Moderated Mediation Model, Christa Mason

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

Despite the growing research on humble leadership, views on humility remain mixed and little is known about how humble individuals become leaders. To address this gap, this study examined how expressed humility was related to perceptions of an aspiring leader’s warmth, competence, and leadership potential. It tested a moderated moderated mediation model to assess: (1) if perceived warmth and competence explained the relationship between humility and leadership potential, and (2) if this relationship varied based on an aspiring leader’s perceived dominance and gender. Professionals with hiring experience (N = 187) evaluated male and female leadership candidates who demonstrated different combinations …

The Pain In The Pleasure: Electrophysiological Analysis Of The Tail Region Of The Ventral Tegmental Area (Tvta), Akshay Parchure

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

The mesolimbic (midbrain) reward system is well documented to be involved with the analgesic effects of opioids, which involves the ventral tegmental area (VTA) causing release of dopamine (DA). The dopamine neurons from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) directly innervate the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the prefrontal cortex via D1 DA Receptors. GABAergic inhibition of VTA DA system occurs regularly, but in 1990s Johnson and North showed the administration of opioids led to hyperpolarization of GABA interneurons in the VTA removing this inhibition, further leading to the “disinhibition model”. However, more recent studies have defined a new structure heavily influencing …

Judicial Voting In U.S. District Courts Located In The Second And Fifth Circuits In First Amendment Retaliation Cases Involving Law Enforcement Officers, Selena Renee Aguirre

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses - Archive

This study examined the influence of party affiliation, as measured by the party of the appointing president; legal precedent; judicial circuit (Second or Fifth); race; gender; and prior prosecutorial experience on voting by U.S. District Court judges in First Amendment retaliation cases brought law enforcement officials against their employers. Applying binary logistic regression analyses to a data set comprised of 163 judicial votes with pro-plaintiff and pro-defendant voting serving as the dependent measure, the results indicated that only judges’ party affiliation had a significant effect on voting (Wald= 4.469, 1 df., p= .035) president. There was a .437 decrease in …

An Examination Of School Characteristics, Shooter Characteristics, And Incidental Characteristics Of School Mass Shootings, Amber Elizabeth O'Dell

Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses - Archive

School Mass Shootings (SMS) continue to be an ongoing issue for k-12 schools, technical/vocational schools, and on college campuses in the United States. Recent studies have shown that these crimes are increasing in both frequency and lethality. However, SMS are still considered to be statistically rare events making them difficult to study quantitatively. Many extant studies use an exclusive definition of SMS where an incident must have four or more deaths to be categorized as this type of crime. The present study utilizes an inclusive definition of 2 or more deaths, where every four injuries count as a death in …

Health Literacy, Illness Perception, And Diabetes Self-Management In Korean-Speaking Immigrants With Diabetes, Su Won Park

Nursing Dissertations - Archive

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is becoming an increasingly common disease with aging. As the prevalence of DM increases, the need for self-management is emphasized as a way to control DM and prevent its complications. According to the common-sense model, DM self-management is explained as an illness-related coping behavior that is affected by an individual's illness perception (IP). No studies were found that evaluated IP in Korean adults with DM in the United States, or that evaluated the association of health literacy (HL) with their IP and DM self-management. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between …