Digital Commons Network^™

Beauty Consumed, Erika Galvin

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Sex Differences In The Anatomy Of Mam E17 Treated Rats: A Developmental Model Of Schizophrenia, Cassandra Hartsgrove

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Enlarged ventricles and reduced cortical volume are neuroanatomical abnormalities correlated with schizophrenia and typically more severe in males. The MAM model of schizophrenia is a developmental disruption model that involves exposing animals to a teratogen, methylazoxymethanol acetate (MAM), to reflect the neuroanatomical traits of schizophrenia. Rodents exposed to MAM on embryonic day 17 (E17) experience a reduction of cortical volume and increased ventricular volume. Measuring brain weight and ventricular volume can be used to inversely measure the severity of cortical reduction. The circling method was used to measure the lateral ventricles of a sample of 27 rodents; 8 MAM-females, 7 …

The Oppressed African American Female Voice In Zora Neale Hurston’S Their Eyes Were Watching God And “Sweat”, Kaitlyn Levine

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Zora Neale Hurston moved to New York from Alabama in 1925, where her work contributed to the growing trends of the Harlem Renaissance and had a major impact on African American culture. During Hurston’s lifetime, the voices of African American women were often suppressed by the intersecting forces of racism and sexism. Hurston’s literary work portrayed gender struggles in American society during the twentieth century and represented the oppressed voice of African American women.

The Human Connection Of Travel: Why Air Travel Will Never Go Away, Maimunah Qureshi

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Advancements in communication and environmental technology may mark the end of aviation as we know it. Numerous people who were forced to remain at home during the pandemic have gotten a taste of a life in which they spend more time with their immediate families and are just as productive at work. Many meetings that individuals used to travel across the nation to attend are now more commonly streamed online for their convenience. Not only that, but the ability to communicate with loved ones who live far away via Facetime and other video-calling technologies has made it possible for us …

Using Optical Tweezersto Probe Dna Polymerase Kappa’S Binding Mechanism To Dna, Joshua Watts

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The integrity of our DNA is constantly under threat from many internal and external factors. If the cell cannot properly protect the integrity of DNA, errors (lesions) in DNA may form which can lead to cancer. Most of these lesions serve as a roadblock to the protein, DNA polymerase (Pol), that replicates the DNA during cell division. The mechanism that is employed to read through these errors is called translesion DNA synthesis (TLS). During this process, a special class of DNA polymerases known as TLS DNA Pols that can tolerate and bypass the lesions in DNA are employed by the …

Civic Virtue In America During The Gilded Age, Daniel Gregory Lundstedt

Masters Theses

This study will seek to reevaluate the era which historians have traditionally labeled as the Gilded Age. It will do this through an examination of the state of civic virtue in the United States during this period. This will be accomplished through an interdisciplinary foray into America’s past. From it, hopefully some fresh understandings of what America is, and where it is going, can become apparent. This project falls within the broader exploration of the relationship between the citizen and society and will thus hopefully contribute to that set of literature. This project will be a convergence of several subdisciplines …

Engl 3360 - Introduction To Language Studies, Régine Pellicer

Open Educational Resources - Books

Language studies cover a large variety of situations as language is embedded in every aspect of our lives. Finding a book that would study all the possible topics related to language is impossible. Therefore, with our UTRGV librarians, we have assembled a free book that covers the basic linguistics concepts you need to know for this course and other linguistics courses. Linguistics concepts such as phonology or language acquisition are not subject to last minute discoveries and the principles remain the same. We hope you enjoy learning more about linguistics thanks to this free resource.

Conservatives At The Movies: Conservative Film Critics And Popular Culture, Alex Pinelli

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The study of modern American conservatism has flourished in the 21st century. However, there are some gaping holes in the historiography. One is the intersection between conservativism and popular culture and the arts. This study aimed to remedy this by analyzing hundreds of film reviews in nearly a dozen conservative publications over twenty-five years. In doing so, this first-of-its-kind analysis explored the underexamined world of the conservative film critic, while also identifying a group of principles that unified the varying critics under one conservative banner.

Experimental Study On Shear Strength Of Silty Clayunder Dry-Wet Cycles, Lv Guangdong

Journal of China & Foreign Highway

To investigate the effects of the dry-wet cycles, degree of compaction, saturation, and confining pressure on the strength of silty clay, this paper conducted UU tests to determine the stress-strain curves of prepared samples under the influence of several factors. The cohesion c and internal friction angle φ of the prepared samples were measured, with the deterioration rules explored. The experimental results show that with the increasing times of dry-wet cycles, the stress-strain curve of the soil changes from the strain hardening mode to the strain softening mode, and the softening rate increases after two dry-wet cycles. Meanwhile, the cohesion …

Are We Compulsively Chasing Rainbows?, Olivier George, Serge H. Ahmed, Nicholas W. Gilpin

School of Medicine Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Kindness And Severity Of God: A Defense Of The Conquest Of Canaan, Jordan Peter Ballard

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The Conquest of Canaan has become a hot-button issue in Christian apologetics because of the moral dilemma it poses. Would an all-loving God command the wholesale slaughter of the Canaanite men, women, and children? Christians throughout the centuries have grappled with this problem and have offered many interpretations to alleviate the tension between God’s love and God’s wrath displayed in the Conquest. This dissertation defends a straightforward reading of the account: God really did command the destruction of the Canaanites, and the Israelites carried it out as described in the pages of the Old Testament. When understood in its biblical, …

Association Of Chinese Herbal Medicine Use With The Depression Risk Among The Long-Term Breast Cancer Survivors: A Longitudinal Follow-Up Study, Shu-Yi Yang, Hanoch Livneh, Jing-Siang Jhang, Shu-Wen Yen, Hua-Lung Huang, Michael W.Y. Chan, Ming-Chi Lu, Chia-Chou Yeh, Chang-Kuo Wei, Tzung-Yi Tsai

Counselor Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background

Breast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation(CHM) into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.

Methods

A cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer at least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients …

Characterizing Habitat Suitability For Gulf Sturgeon (Acipenser Oxyrinchus Desotoi) In Southern Louisiana, Jenna N. Brogdon

LSU Master's Theses

A generalized additive modeling (GAM) framework was used to characterize fish-habitat relationships and develop habitat suitability maps to predict spatiotemporal and ontogenetic shifts in Gulf sturgeon distribution within an impacted estuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico, Lake Pontchartrain. Gulf sturgeon (n = 103) were fitted with acoustic transmitters in the Pearl River during the early summer and fall from 2013 to 2018, and an array of acoustic receivers (n = 81) was used to monitor Gulf sturgeon habitat use and movement in the estuary from 2016 to 2019. Daily presence data from the telemetry array were paired with environmental …

Hybrid Incompatibility Between Ldrosophila Virilis And D. Lummei Is Stronger In The Presence Of Transposable Elements, Dean M. Castillo, Leonie C. Moyle

Nebraska Cooperative Extension: Faculty and Staff Publications

Mismatches between parental genomes in selfish elements are frequently hypothesized to underlie hybrid dysfunction and drive speciation. However, because the genetic basis of most hybrid incompatibilities is unknown, testing the contribution of selfish elements to reproductive isolation is difficult. Here, we evaluated the role of transposable elements (TEs) in hybrid incompatibilities between Drosophila virilis and D. lummei by experimentally comparing hybrid incompatibility in a cross where active TEs are present in D. virilis (TE+) and absent in D. lummei, to a cross where these TEs are absent from both D. virilis (TE−) and D. lummei genotypes. Using genomic data, …

Zhang And Colleagues Win An $11.2 Million Nih Program Project Grant (Ppg), Public Relations

Browse All News

No abstract provided.

Examining The Effects Of Eating Behaviors On Mental Health And Internalization Of Weight-Based Messaging, Avery E. Bollinger

Theses and Dissertations

The current study sought to explore the effects of eating behaviors on mental health and the internalization of attitudes toward one's appearance. This was performed through a survey distributed through a global online market research firm, Dynata, and gathered 495 eligible participants. Of those, 78 represented the plant-based group, and 417 represented the non-plant-based group. Each completed the survey containing sections with the Mizes Anorectic Cognitions Scale (MACS) to assess if they were at low or high risk for having/developing an eating disorder, a section determining if participants were plant-based (defined as a regimen that encourages whole, plant-based foods and …

Archaic Sites, Ecological Zones, And Wetlands Resources In The Eastern Great Basin, Lindsey R. Lyle

Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological data has increased significantly with Cultural Resource Management agencies finding and recording archaeological sites all across Utah. With the site data from the Utah State Historical Preservation Office, I examine the expansion of Archaic sites in the Eastern Great Basin from the Early Archaic through the Late Archaic, through the lens of elevation and ecological zones and proximity to wetland resources. I argue that the aridness of the Middle Holocene caused the people to expand into the mountains of Utah, and that the expansion continued into the Late Archaic period, even though the environment became more moist again. I …

Meta-Analysis Reveals Both The Promises And The Challenges Of Clinical Metabolomics, Heidi E. Roth, Robert Powers

Department of Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Clinical metabolomics is a rapidly expanding field focused on identifying molecular biomarkers to aid in the efficient diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. Variations in study design, metabolomics methodologies, and investigator protocols raise serious concerns about the accuracy and reproducibility of these potential biomarkers. The explosive growth of the field has led to the recent availability of numerous replicate clinical studies, which permits an evaluation of the consistency of biomarkers identified across multiple metabolomics projects. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the third-leading cause of cancer-related death and has the lowest five-year survival rate primarily due to the lack of an …

Non-Canonical Odor Coding In The Mosquito, Margaret Herre, Olivia V Goldman, Tzu-Chiao Lu, Gabriela Caballero-Vidal, Yanyan Qi, Zachary N Gilbert, Zhongyan Gong, Takeshi Morita, Saher Rahiel, Majid Ghaninia, Rickard Ignell, Benjamin J Matthews, Hongjie Li, Leslie B Vosshall, Meg A Younger

Center on Aging Staff Publications

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are a persistent human foe, transmitting arboviruses including dengue when they feed on human blood. Mosquitoes are intensely attracted to body odor and carbon dioxide, which they detect using ionotropic chemosensory receptors encoded by three large multi-gene families. Genetic mutations that disrupt the olfactory system have modest effects on human attraction, suggesting redundancy in odor coding. The canonical view is that olfactory sensory neurons each express a single chemosensory receptor that defines its ligand selectivity. We discovered that Ae. aegypti uses a different organizational principle, with many neurons co-expressing multiple chemosensory receptor genes. In vivo electrophysiology demonstrates …

Habitat Loss Exacerbates Pathogen Spread: An Agent-Based Model Of Avian Influenza Infection In Migratory Waterfowl, Shenglai Yin, Yanjie Xu, Mingshuai Xu, Mart C M De Jong, Mees Rs Huisman, Andrea Contina, Herbert H T Prins, Zheng Y X Huang, Willem F. De Boer

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications

Habitat availability determines the distribution of migratory waterfowl along their flyway, which further influences the transmission and spatial spread of avian influenza viruses (AIVs). The extensive habitat loss in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) may have potentially altered the virus spread and transmission, but those consequences are rarely studied. We constructed 6 fall migration networks that differed in their level of habitat loss, wherein an increase in habitat loss resulted in smaller networks with fewer sites and links. We integrated an agent-based model and a susceptible-infected-recovered model to simulate waterfowl migration and AIV transmission. We found that extensive habitat loss …

Localization Of Epigenetic Markers In Leishmania Chromatin, Jacquelyn R Mcdonald, Bryan C Jensen, Aakash Sur, Iris L K Wong, Stephen M Beverley, Peter J Myler

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Eukaryotes use histone variants and post-translation modifications (PTMs), as well as DNA base modifications, to regulate DNA replication/repair, chromosome condensation, and gene expression. Despite the unusual organization of their protein-coding genes into large polycistronic transcription units (PTUs), trypanosomatid parasites also employ a "histone code" to control these processes, but the details of this epigenetic code are poorly understood. Here, we present the results of experiments designed to elucidate the distribution of histone variants and PTMs over the chromatin landscape of

Experimental Infection Of Brazilian Free-Tailed Bats (Tadarida Brasiliensis) With Two Strains Of Sars-Cov-2, Angela M. Bosco-Lauth, Stephanie M. Porter, Karen A. Fox, Mary E. Wood, Daniel Neubaum, Marissa Quilici

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is presumed to have originated from wildlife and shares homology with other bat coronaviruses. Determining the susceptibility of North American bat species to SARS-CoV-2 is of utmost importance for making decisions regarding wildlife management, public health, and conservation. In this study, Brazilian free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) were experimentally infected with two strains of SARS-CoV-2 (parental WA01 and Delta variant), evaluated for clinical disease, sampled for viral shedding and antibody production, and analyzed for pathology. None of the bats (n = 18) developed clinical disease associated with infection, shed infectious virus, or …

Effects Of Strategic Communications Of Middle-Level Managers On Strategic Thinking And Organizational Performance: A Quantitative Study, Anthony Uwem Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study explored the relationship between Middle-Level Managers' (MLM) strategic communications, strategic thinking, and organizational performance. Pieces of evidence about strategic communications processes and strategic thinking supporting increased organizational performance are critical to an organization. According to researchers, when strategic communications and strategic thinking are not in the manager’s thought processes, any plans based upon such methods might fail to achieve the desired outcomes concerning organizational performance. While strategic communications and strategic thinking are essential to corporate performance, researchers have not fully substantiated their impact on the performance outcomes of an organization. Identifying to the highest Degree how a relationship …

Faith Development In Eighth-Grade Christian Students Studying Creation-Theory-Based Science: A Phenomenological Study, Stephen Matthew Lowe

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the lived faith development experiences of eighth-grade Christian students following a creation-theory-based curriculum at a Northern Michigan Christian school. The 12 male and female students who participated were aged 13–14 years and self-identified as Christian. The study setting was a small Christian middle school in Northern Michigan. Researchers have thoroughly investigated many aspects of faith development but had not addressed the faith development of eighth-grade Christian students following a creation-theory-based curriculum. The theoretical framework underlying the study was Fowler’s faith development theory. Data were triangulated from semistructured interviews, focus groups, …

Exploration Of How Unified Theory Of Acceptance And Use Of Technology Enhances Trust In Communication, Samantha M. Ricciardi

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The qualitative study aims to understand the central phenomenon of how trust enhances communication with online grocery shopping for participants who are 25 years and older and are active online grocery shoppers. Venkatesh, Morris, and Davis created a technology acceptance model called Unified created Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, which explains the acceptance and use of information systems and communication technology innovations with consumers (Kim et al., 2008; Phillippi et al., 2021). The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology is an alternative theoretical model that ties into eight existing user acceptance models: (a) Technology Acceptance Model …

The Impact Of Kinesthetic Movement On Flute Performance Musicality And Performance Anxiety In Undergraduate University Flute Students, Regina Helcher Yost

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Kinesthetic movement has gained significant attention within the flute community over the last several decades as a performance enhancement tool. Somatic therapies such as the Alexander Technique, body mapping, Feldenkrais, and Dalcroze-Eurythmics incorporate kinesthetic movements into their practices. Although most musicians seek out these therapies solely to alleviate pain or injury, could these kinesthetic movements promote concentration and provide positive self-talk by decreasing mental distractions? Despite much research analyzing the impact of kinesthetic movements on reducing injury and pain, there is a lack of research explicitly regarding its abilities to enrich a flutist’s musical performances by reducing negative self-talk. This …

Interactive Textbooks: A Study On The Effects On Learning Gains And Course Grades Among Community College Minority Students, Victoria C. Brower

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study is to examine whether the use of interactive e-textbooks by community college minority students makes a difference in academic outcomes (as measured by final course test grades) and if the use of interactive textbooks could lead to course completion and terminal degrees. This study adds to the existing literature insight into alternative methods of increasing learning and developing positive attitudes among minorities in the community college setting. The sample population included minority students enrolled in a government class attending a community college in an urban area in South Florida. There were N = …

720-960 Steps: A Historical Review Of Contemporary Techniques And Pedagogies And How They Revolutionized Pageantry For The Modern Marching Band, Stanley K. Holloway

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There is a need for new and innovative marching band techniques in the music field, and most band directors have limited capacity to instill these concepts. Texts from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s concentrated primarily on these concepts and techniques. Gradually, a comprehensive show concept became standard practice. Examination of the existing literature does not reveal a need for more research. Still, some literature demonstrates a need for new and innovative band techniques for marching band, particularly in band pageantry. Although these materials help create a foundation for marching band concepts and have proven effective. They are dated and do …

The Watercooler Is Safer Than The Schoolyard: Lower Courts Dismissal Of Peer Sexual Harassment Under Title Ix Is Especially Failing Our Students In The “#Metoo” World, Christine Tamer

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

While the term #MeToo was first coined in 2006, the movement came to the forefront of American life in October 2017 when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted, “if you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Since then, the #MeToo movement has exposed the fact that sexual harassment remains all too common and has pushed for change in the legal procedures that have failed victims. In the #MeToo world, sexual harassment is “finally getting the public attention it has long deserved” and the public has come together to deem it—in one word—unacceptable.

While …

Treatment For An Tooth Ankylosis Patient With Corticotomy-Facilitated Orthodontics And Titanium Miniscrew – A Case Report, Po-Yu Yang, Tzu-Hsin Lee

Taiwanese Journal of Orthodontics

This case report is a 31-year-old man with Angle’s class I malocclusion (ANB: 1;wits: -3mm ) , upper and lower anterior crowding, missing lower right second premolar, and ankylosis of lower right first molar (beneath occlusal plane 7 mm). Orthodontic treatment consisted of extraction of #15 (upper right second premolar), and two buccal tipping maxillary third molars ( #18 & #28). A modified corticotomy was performed by the oral surgeon for the ankylosed molar (#46), and a miniscrew was inserted in the upper right first molar #16 region as anchorage. Via this way, we did upright the ankylosis molar and …