Digital Commons Network^™

Press Freedom Under Threat In Europe: A Case Study Analysis Of The Increasing Threat To Press Freedom In Greece, Italy, And Hungary, Maya O'Leary-Cyr

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research critically examines the legal systems of European countries and their relationship to press freedom. This research focuses on the vexatious legal threats used by government officials and corporations to silence journalists. These legal threats are known as SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) and their use has increased exponentially in the last decade. Considering the scope of the problem, this research analyzes the issue through the lens of European countries Greece, Italy, and Hungary. Being members of the European Union, each of these countries have an obligation to uphold the democratic standards put forth by the EU as …

Recommendations For Sustainable Tourism In Patagonia: An Exploratory Analysis Of Sustainable Tourism In Costa Rica, The Nordic Region, And Thailand’S Communities, Julia K. Lowery

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores different levels of governance and its role towards actualizing sustainable tourism in Patagonia. With the growing threat of climate change, international destinations such as Patagonia are looking to continue building their tourism industries in a sustainable way. Through analyzing case studies of national governance in Costa Rica, multi-national governance in the Nordic region, and community-based tourism in Thailand, we can better understand how each form of governance has the potential to create a sustainable tourism industry. With this understanding of successful governance in my case studies, as well as understanding the historical and political forces that have …

Latkes Or Placki Ziemniaczane?: The Culinary Conception Of Jewishness In Poland’S National Imagination, Elias Andrejs Siddall

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Poland, a country ravaged by the events and memory of the Holocaust, has enjoyed a great deal of cultural and religious Jewish revival in the decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain—something never thought possible after War World II. It has also seen a proliferation of high-end restaurants and a robust gastronomic culture develop as it is incorporated into a modern European food landscape. At times their lives paradisiacal and at other times turbulent, Polish Jewry once constituted the largest Jewish community in the World, so what is its status now? And what do non-Jewish Poles think of Jewish …

Student Perceptions In Conferring: A Phenomenographic Exploration Of Student Perceptions On Teacher-Student Writing Conferences, Jacqueline Johnson

Doctor of Education in Secondary and Middle Grades Education Dissertations

This phenomenographic research explores how students perceive one-on-one (teacher-student) writing conferences. At least twice a year, I sit with my 9th-grade English students to discuss their writing. Together, we go over their last writing assignment. I coach them to make their writing better while pointing out positive elements of their writing. I check for understanding by having the students verbally repeat a summary of their conference. While I feel connected to the students and their writing by conferring, I have rarely considered what they thought about the conference. After our conference, do they feel like they truly learned something? I …

Teachers’ Burnout Experience In A Title I Suburban Elementary School, Shakoiya Aiken

Doctor of Education in Teacher Leadership Dissertations

This qualitative case study focused on the experiences of Title I suburban elementary school teachers in the Southeastern United States. The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the reasons why teachers in Title I suburban schools experience burnout and how their burnout manifests. I also conducted this study to fill the gap in the literature and gain insight on the specific supports and strategies that Title I suburban school teachers need to help manage or eliminate their burnout. The theoretical framework that informed this study was the Burnout Theory. Several data gathering techniques (interview, reflective …

Of Bugs And Wildfires: Tracing The Impacts Of Changing Wildfire Regimes On Aquatic Bacteria And Macroinvertebrates Using Edna, Isabella M. Errigo

Theses and Dissertations

Human disruption of climate, habitat, and ignition has altered the behavior of wildland fire at local to continental scales. In many regions, novel fire regimes are emerging that threaten to exceed the capacity for local management to protect human wellbeing and ecosystem function. Simultaneous changes in climate, species composition, and fire management have resulted in extreme fire behavior in many regions. For the Western United States, the emerging novel fire regime consists of more frequent, severe, and intense wildfires, with annual area burned by wildfire having doubled and high-severity wildfire area having increased 8-fold since the 1980s. The impacts of …

System Shock: Using -Omics Data To Characterize Biological Remodeling In The Microbiome, Resistome, And Transcriptome Of Bacteria, Winston Eugene Anthony

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The human experience is indelibly linked to microbial life. So much so, that the holobiont theory has been coined to define the assemblage of host and microbe as a discrete ecological unit. Perturbation of the commensal microbiome can create niche space for pathogens, which through the concomitant rise of antimicrobial resistance represent an ever-evolving danger. In Chapter 2 of this dissertation, I describe the results of an interventional study designed to directly perturb the healthy gut microbiome and observe the dynamics of taxonomic composition and functional recovery. I observe significant decreases after 5 days of antibiotic treatment in the gold …

The Benefits Of Using Inclusive Literature In Kindergarten Through Fifth Grade Classrooms, Guidelines For Selecting Inclusive Texts, And Resources To Help Teachers, Librarians, And Community Members Use Inclusive Children’S Books, Erin Lynch

Honors Projects

This project outlines the great importance of inclusive children’s literature and the benefits of implementing high-quality, inclusive picture books within elementary school classrooms. Additionally, the project provides suggested guidelines for selecting inclusive literature as well as copious examples of high-quality picture books within a variety of subject matter categories. In addition to a thorough paper, this project contains a large online resource referred to as the “Virtual Library” that utilizes technology and graphic design to simulate a real library full of inclusive literature.

Central Bank Liquidity Lines, European Central Bank (Ecb): Eurosystem

Documents

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Fpga Primitives To Improve Word Reconstruction During Netlist Reverse Engineering, Reilly Mckendrick, Corey Simpson, Brent Nelson, Jeffrey Goeders

Faculty Publications

While attempting to perform hardware trojan detection, or other low-level design analyses, it is often necessary to inspect and understand the gate-level netlist of an implemented hardware design. Unfortunately this process is challenging, as at the physical level, the design does not contain any hierarchy, net names, or word groupings. Previous work has shown how gate-level netlists can be analyzed to restore high-level circuit structures, including reconstructing multi-bit signals, which aids a user in understanding the behavior of the design. In this work we explore improvements to the word reconstruction process, specific to FPGA platforms. We demonstrate how hard-block primitives …

Analysis Of Regulatory Element Variation In Autism Spectrum Disorder, Evin Mitchel Padhi

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder that affects over 2% of the population. Studies of this disorder have demonstrated that genetics plays a strong role in the underlying etiology and over the past decade, substantial progress has been made in elucidating the genetic architecture. Large-scale studies have now been conducted to identify the genes involved in the genetic architecture by analyzing data from over 40,000 probands. However, the identification and characterization of regulatory elements involved have remained non-trivial for many reasons. Generally, studies that have analyzed whole genome sequencing (WGS) have demonstrated enrichment of de novo …

The Physics Of Associative Polymers And Applications To Biomolecular Condensates, Furqan Dar

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Biomolecular condensates represent a new and ubiquitous class of membraneless organelles (MLOs) that are essential for healthy cellular functioning. The constituent molecules of such condensates span a vast bio-macromolecular gamut from intrinsically disordered regions and proteins (IDPs/IDRs), to RNA and RNA-binding proteins (RNPs), to polymerases and DNA etc. Apart from being part of the regular healthy cell cycle, these condensates are also implicated in many diseases, most notably progressive neurodegenerative diseases like Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Huntingtin's Disease (HD). Since the constituent molecules of these condensates span a broad range of length scales and modes of interaction, uncovering a …

Testing Of A Novel Combined Eating-Disorder And Weight-Loss Online Guided-Self Help Intervention For Young Adults With A Binge-Type Eating Disorder And Overweight Or Obesity, Grace Elise Monterubio

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Binge-type eating disorders (EDs) and obesity-related health concerns are two serious medical issues, though study of their treatment has largely remained separate. This study implemented an online, guided self-help ED intervention that concurrently offered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)-based tools to improve ED symptoms, while also teaching energy-density food principles of behavioral weight loss (BWL), for individuals with clinical/sub-clinical binge-type EDs with comorbid overweight/obesity. The study aimed to examine change in weight, change in ED symptoms, and program engagement between a combined intervention (CBT + BWL) and an ED-only intervention. Participants in the combined intervention group received weekly session content pertaining …

Development Of Redox-Responsive Phenazine-Based Foldamers. Acylative Kinetic Resolution Of Hydroxamic Acids, Jingwei Yin

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Two different research directions have been presented in this thesis. The first project is about phenazine-based foldamers as molecular actuators. Researchers have been interested in the design and synthesis of foldamers and molecular actuators for years. We began our exploration by demonstrating that phenazine-1,6-dicarboxamides can function as redox-responsive molecular switches. We then designed and synthesized two generations of phenazine-based interleafed foldamers and studied their stability and redox behaviors under chemical and electrochemical conditions. In the second project, we have developed the first acylative kinetic resolution on hydroxamic acids. Although chiral hydroxamic acids have extensive applications, synthetic methods towards them are …

The Bidirectional Relationship Between The Circadian Clock And Alzheimer’S Disease, Patrick Sheehan

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The circadian clock and inflammation have a well-described bidirectional relationship in the peripheral immune system: the circadian clock regulates inflammatory responses, but inflammation also impacts oscillatory gene transcription controlled by the clock. The purpose of this thesis work is to understand if manipulation of the circadian clock can impact Alzheimer’s disease pathology, and if pathology itself can alter the circadian clock and its outputs. Here, I show that astrocyte-specific disruption of the circadian clock via deletion of the clock gene Bmal1 surprisingly decreased intra-neuronal protein pathologies. Further investigation found that deletion of the circadian clock resulted in a transcriptomic profile …

Extensive Behavioral Phenotyping Of Williams Syndrome Locus Relevant Mouse Models To Assess Contributions Of Oxytocin And Gtf2ird1, Kayla Rose Nygaard

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The Williams Syndrome Critical Region (WSCR) at chromosome 7q11.23 provides a unique opportunity to untangle the relationship between genotype and phenotype in complex behaviors, from fear and anxiety to sociability and sensorimotor processing. Copy number variations (CNVs) in this region result in two syndromes, Williams Syndrome (WS) and Duplication 7q11.23 Syndrome (Dup7), which display phenotypes that may align, indicating a common disruption of a system, or diverge, reflecting an underlying gene dosage-dependent effect. While case studies of atypical deletions resulting in WS have implicated telomeric genes Gtf2ird1 and Gtf2i in the cognitive and behavioral profiles of WS, proving causation requires …

Uneasy Attachments: Postcolonial Anglophilia And Identity Formation In Twentieth-Century Anglophone Autobiographies, Anwesha Kundu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the impact of anglophilia on identity formation in the British empire. Since Britishness was an identity unavailable to non-white citizens of the empire, this attachment was necessarily unrequited. Analyzing works by Cornelia Sorabji, E.R. Braithwaite, V.S. Naipaul, and Tsitsi Dangarembga, I argue that the critical significance of anglophilia does not lie in the postcolonial subject’s success or failure in achieving a British-coded identity, but in the ways in which an affiliation to Britishness can be mobilized to accomplish a variety of personal, political, and social ends. I use a range of autobiographical literature—travel narratives, autobiographical novels, …

Native Language Attrition Among Immigrants, Fawzia Riji

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This study was a literature review, and it focused on native language attrition among immigrants. For many years, immigrant families have moved to places such as the United States and Europe as well as Canada because of war, abuse, persecution, environmental degradation, and poverty in their home countries. Once immigrant families arrived in their designated country, their children were placed in school. Due to the struggle with the language barrier, kids and adults quickly started to focus extensively on learning the English language.

The research occurred due to parents' raised concerns regarding their children's inability to communicate in their first …

The Contemporary "White Trash" Memoir In Literary, Social And Political Contexts, Ursula Hansberry

Student Theses and Dissertations

This senior thesis is about class in the United States, as expressed and represented in three critically and popularly successful memoirs published by white working-class writers between 2005 and 2018. My thesis explores how these memoirs and their critical and commercial reception demonstrate a profound shift in cultural and social representations of white working-class upbringings in the United States, although not in any simple or obvious way. While readers intuitively grasp that a memoir is not the truth in a directly literal sense, but rather a document that is constructed, edited, framed, shaped, and dramatized, readers and critics at the …

Multi-Plane Light Conversion: Devices And Applications, Yuanhang Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Multi-plane light conversion (MPLC) has recently been developed as a versatile tool for manipulating spatial distributions of the optical field through repeated phase modulations. An MPLC Device consists of a series of phase masks separated by free-space propagation. It can convert one orthogonal set of beams into another orthogonal set through unitary transformation, which is useful for a number of applications. In telecommunication, for example, mode-division multiplexing (MDM) is a promising technology that will enable continued scaling of capacity by employing spatial modes of a single fiber. MPLC has shown great potential in MDM devices with ultra-wide bandwidth, low insertion …

Data Dimensionality Reduction Techniques: What Works With Machine Learning Models, Yuting Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

High-dimensional data has a wide range of applications in research, such as education, health, social media, and many other research fields. However, the high dimensionality of data can raise many problems for data analyses. This study focuses on commonly used techniques of dimensionality reduction for machine learning models, which play an essential and inevitable role in data prepossessing and statistical analysis. The main issues of high-dimensional data for machine learning tasks include the accuracy of data classification and visualization in machine learning models. Therefore, in this study, machine learning algorithms are used to predict and classify datasets to evaluate the …

Distributed Detection In Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks, Ghazaleh Ardeshiri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A conventional wireless sensor networks (WSN), consisting of sensors powered by nonrechargeable batteries, has a strictly limited lifetime. Energy harvesting (EH) from the environment is a promising solution to address the energy constraint problem in conventional WSNs, and to render these networks to self-sustainable networks with perpetual lifetimes. In EH-powered WSNs, where sensors are capable of harvesting and storing energy, power control is necessary to balance the rates of energy harvesting and energy consumption for data transmission. In addition, wireless communication channels change randomly in time due to fading. These together prompt the need for developing new power control strategies …

Advanced Deep Learning Methodologies For Deepfake Detection, Aminollah Khormali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The recent advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and an abundance of training samples along with robust computational resources have significantly propelled the field of AI-generated fake information in all kinds, e.g., deepfakes. Deepfakes are among the most sinister types of misinformation, posing large-scale and severe security and privacy risks targeting critical governmental institutions and ordinary people across the world. The fact that deepfakes are AI-generated digital content and not actual events captured by a camera implies that they still can be detected using advanced AI models. Although the deepfake detection task has …

Commander-In-Chief Authority And The Religious Rights Of Service Members In Crisis Times: The Vaccine Mandate As A Call For Reincorporating The Standing Army Fears In Jurisprudence And Depoliticizing The Bench, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Defamation, The First Amendment, And Justice William H. Rehnquist’S Attempts To “Hold The Balance True”: A Framework For Assessing The Continuing Viability Of New York Times V. Sullivan, David Elder

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Weaving Subjects At The Obraje De Chincheros: Indigenous Contributions To The Colonial Aesthetic, Maria Smith

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation highlights the contributions that colonial textile producers at the colonial textile mill, the Obraje de Chincheros (c. 1570-1820), influenced the colonial Peruvian aesthetic. Peruvian weavers were seen as superior weavers at the time of the Spanish invasion and obrajes were established to salvage this skill while they were simultaneously subjected to colonial control strategies. At the Obraje, rural indigenous and mestizo textile producers were disciplined into the colonial hierarchy via their labor and conversion to Catholicism. At the same time, the Obraje workforce, largely women and children, shaped the colonial aesthetic via their labor. It was their laborial …

Integration Of In Vitro And In Vivo Models To Predict Cellular And Tissue Dosimetry Of Nanomaterials Using Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Modeling, Zhoumeng Lin, Santosh Aryal, Yi-Hsien Cheng, Andre J. Gesquierre

Pharmacy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nanomaterials (NMs) have been increasingly used in a number of areas, including consumer products and nanomedicine. Target tissue dosimetry is important in the evaluation of safety, efficacy, and potential toxicity of NMs. Current evaluation of NM efficacy and safety involves the time-consuming collection of pharmacokinetic and toxicity data in animals and is usually completed one material at a time. This traditional approach no longer meets the demand of the explosive growth of NM-based products. There is an emerging need to develop methods that can help design safe and effective NMs in an efficient manner. In this review article, we critically …

Interpretive Language And Museum Artwork: How Patrons Respond To Depictions Of Native American And White Settler Encounters--A Thematic Analysis, Holli D. Rogerson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to conduct a thematic linguistic analysis of survey responses to museum-quality images depicting various Native American and white settler encounters. The survey asked participants to provide written responses (fill in the blank prompts) to a selection of twelve images composed of photographs and paintings representing one or more of three overarching themes: violence, immersion, and goodwill/collaboration. The research focused on four demographic groups: Latter-day Saints, Native Americans, museum employees, and total participants. Each response was individually analyzed by hand and assigned appropriate classification tags based on the types of words their responses contained including …

Karafsin, A Unique Mono-Acylated Flavonoid Apiofurnoside From The Leaves Of Apium Graveolens Var. Secalinum Alef: In Vitro And In Vivo Anti-Inflammatory Assessment, Noha Swilam, Mahmoud Nawwar, Eman Mostafa, Dalia Mostafa, Mai Ragab

Pharmacy

Celery ethanol extract (CEE) of leaves of Apium graveolens var. secalinum Alef, showed high phenolic content with significant antioxidant activity using DPPH and ORAC assay. Two unique unknown compounds, apigenin 7-O-mono-apiofuranoside and acylated flavonoid, 7-O- (5″-E-p-coumaroyl)-apiofuranside (karafsin) were identified in CEE for the first time by a full structural analysis, along with 6 known compounds. While karafsin significantly inhibited cyclooxygenase-2 by 42.52 ± 2.88 and 70.33 ± 2.97 % at 50 and 100 mg/mL and 5-lipoxygenase by 37.33 ± 2.87 and 75.77 ± 2.57 % at 50 and 100 mg/mL in raw macrophage cells challenged with Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide, CEE …

A Bayesian Susceptible-Infectious-Hospitalized-Ventilated-Recovered Model To Predict Demand For Covid-19 Inpatient Care In A Large Healthcare System, Stella Coker Watson Self Ph.D., Ms, Rongjie Huang, Shrujan Amin, Joseph Ewing, Carolina Rudisill, Alexander C. Mclain Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has strained healthcare systems in many parts of the United States. During the early months of the pandemic, there was substantial uncertainty about whether the large number of COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization would exceed healthcare system capacity. This uncertainty created an urgent need to accurately predict the number of COVID-19 patients that would require inpatient and ventilator care at the local level. As the pandemic progressed, many healthcare systems relied on such predictions to prepare for COVID-19 surges and to make decisions regarding staffing, the discontinuation of elective procedures, and the amount of personal protective equipment (PPE) …