Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Sickle Cell Disease On Gingival Bleeding And Oral Health Of Adults, Natalie Roa

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Oral health may serve as an indicator of overall systemic health, with each disease or condition manifesting differently in the oral cavity. Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a genetic disorder in which sickled red blood cells cause blood vessel occlusion and potentially bleeding in specific sites (e.g., gastrointestinal and intracranial bleeding). With SCD being one of the most common hereditary diseases in the world, it is essential to understand the disease and improve awareness to better treat this population. While studies have been done to evaluate the oral health of persons with SCD, few have explored the occurrence of gingival …

Investigating The Phytochemical Profiles Of Wild And Cultivated Blueberries (Vaccinium Spp.) In Central Florida, Anisa Khalid

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) are valued for their high nutritional quality and flavor. There are five species in the Vaccinium genus native to the state of Florida, but only three are palatable to humans: V. myrsinites, V. darrowii, and V. corymbosum. While V. darrowii has been studied extensively due to its successful hybridization with northern highbush blueberry cultivars, V. myrsinites and wild V. corymbosum have been understudied. This study aims to 1) quantify the abundance of various phytochemicals in fruits of these wild blueberry species and compare fruit quality both among the wild taxa and two varieties of …

Serotonin's Proliferative Effects On Lung Cancer Cell Lines, Jessy K. Ntabo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Serotonin has been widely explored in the brain. Recently, there have been new findings on how serotonin works in the periphery. Serotonin is introduced to the periphery by the enterochromaffin cells and metabolized by the liver and lung. Studies have shown that serotonin plays a role in controlling lung cancer. However, the mechanism by which it initiates tumor formation has not been fully explored. Cell viability was measured in several lung adenocarcinoma cell lines treated with serotonin to study this effect. In GFP-labelled cells, fluorescence intensity was measured for quantification of cell viability. Our data showed an overall increase in …

Impact Of Upper Limb Amputation And Prostheses On Disability Stigma, Tal Minks

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study was conducted to examine the perception of others towards individuals with upper limb amputation and to determine how their ratings were affected by the presence of a prosthesis. The survey included 469 participants from a university in the southeastern United States. Participants read a brief background scenario and then rated pictured individuals with or without amputation, and with and without prostheses. Our assumption was that if one type of image was rated more negatively than others, this discrepancy would quantify stigma and stereotype. After viewing the images, participants rated several attributes associated with disability stereotypes and perceived functional …

The Effects Of Anxiety On Vision Related Performance Among Collegiate Athletes, Aviana R. Fedele

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Anxiety is an intense feeling of worry or fear and can often be overwhelming, taking over someone’s everyday activities. Oftentimes, individuals who have feelings of anxiety or are in stressful situations that are anxiety inducing, they can get physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, sweating, fatigue and rapid breathing. Anxiety can also affect an individual’s quality of vision. In circumstances that are highly stressful, individual’s vision can start to diminish temporarily, affecting the peripheral vision as well as making central vision blurry. This study examines the effects of anxiety and vision quality on athletic performance among collegiate athletes. It …

Associations Between Shame And Guilt, Self-Esteem, And Health Risk Behavior Among Undergraduate Students, Hanya Irfan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Health Risk Behavior (HRB) is defined as behavior that increases the likelihood of adverse outcomes: injury, morbidity, or mortality. University students are particularly susceptible to HRB due to their age, academic pressures, social environment, and newly unsupervised lifestyle. Despite major efforts by university campaigns to make students aware of the potential health risks of HRB, students continue to consistently engage in behavior that risks both their short-term and long-term health. Previous literature indicates the importance of self-esteem in positive decision-making and the inhibiting role of shame in increasing withdrawal and social isolation. Shame and guilt are distinct self-conscious emotions often …

The Impact Of Endometriosis-Associated Pelvic Pain On The Social And Academic Wellbeing Of Women Enrolled In University, Ava E. Bettencourt

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Background: Endometriosis, a medical condition in which endometrial tissue lining grows outside of the uterus, affects approximately 10-15 percent of women of reproductive age. While research has shown that symptoms of endometriosis negatively affect quality of life in women, few studies have examined the impact of this condition specifically in college students who may be overwhelmed with the stress of school, living independently, and managing the symptoms of their endometriosis. Purpose: To examine the impact of endometriosis on academic and psychosocial factors in university students. Methods: Four college females completed the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ), a 10-item survey used to …

Exploring The Relationship Between Nutrition And Cribra Orbitalia: The Comparison Of Dietary Stable Isotope Comparisons Of Juveniles From Kuelap, Peru, Lissette S. Osorio

Honors Undergraduate Theses

A juvenile’s dependency on their caregiver is significant to the overall development of nutritionally related pathological lesions. However, not all skeletal pathology is caused by nutritional stress; despite anemia being the usual inferred cause, the origin of Cribra Orbitalia (CO) – lesions on the orbital roofs of the cranium– is undetermined. The purpose of this research is to compare the reconstructed diets of juveniles with and without CO and explore connections to dietary patterns (inferred from stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen). Rib bone samples of 79 juveniles with and without CO were sampled from the Kuelap archaeological site …

Citizen Trust And Governments' Response To Disasters, Berenice Belizaire

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this descriptive study is to determine if there is a difference in citizen trust in Orange County government regarding the handling of disaster. Various dimensions like competence, benevolence, and integrity can determine a citizen's trust within its government. Disasters, such as man-made and natural, are described as a disruption to society through widespread damage to people and material. Counties experience man-made and natural disasters. Depending on its response to the incidents, counties can determine if the citizens view the county as a trustworthy and responsible government body. This study explored if there were differences in citizen trust …

Novel Ultrasound Shearing-Based Fabrication Method For Nanobubble Synthesis In Gene And Drug Delivery Systems, Tara M. Pattilachan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This project introduces a novel ultrasonic shearing-based fabrication method for synthesizing nanobubbles, which can then be utilized as a platform for any theranostic applications in clinical medicine, such as drug/gene delivery systems. Our standard in situ sonochemical synthesis of nanobubbles incorporates a perfluorocarbon gas core (300 μl) and an albumin outer shell, which are then incorporated into phosphate-buffered saline (4 ml) and later sonicated with a US probe. The initial optimization phase consisted of experimenting with various amounts of human serum albumin (HSA), which stabilizes the nanobubble gas core. Of the parameters (20 mg, 40 mg, and 80 mg HSA), …

Clark Magazine, Winter/Spring 2022, Clark University

Clark Magazine

The Winter/Spring 2022 edition of Clark Magazine. Clark Magazine is a twice-yearly publication primarily geared towards Clark University Alumni.

The cover story is 'Mission of the Mind: The Mosakowski Institute merges psychology with technology to confront the mental health crisis devastating America's youth.'

Co-Producing A Shared Characterization Of Depredation In The Gulf Of Mexico Reef Fish Fishery: Comprehensive Report, James M. Drymon, Ana Osowski, Amanda Jargowsky, Matthew Ajemian, Angela Collins, Bryan Fluech, Steven Gray, Julie Lively, Steven Scyphers

CREC Publications

Depredation, defined as the partial or complete removal of a hooked fish by a non-target species, is a cryptic form of mortality that can affect the accuracy of stock assessments and species management efforts. Accounting for depredation is crucial to minimize uncertainty in stock assessment models and to obtain accurate and reliable fisheries catch data. If these interactions are frequent, failure to properly quantify this form of mortality can lead to the underestimation of reef fish population removals, inappropriate harvest recommendations, and stakeholder unrest. In recent years, depredation has escalated in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) reef fish fishery. Although …

Proceedings Of The 2022 Passion Fruit Conference: Growing The U.S. Passion Fruit Industry A Strategic Conference For: Growers, Marketers, Researchers, And Stakeholders, Eric T. Stafne

CREC Publications

We are pleased to deliver these proceedings of the passion fruit conference that was held in Homestead, Florida on June 14 and 15, 2022. It was a culmination of a lot of hard work by many people, most of them listed in the previous page. However, it would not have been a success without the attendees who came from various parts of the country to share their experiences growing passion fruit. What follows in these proceedings are the slides of the presentations with by notes taken by attendees along with notes taken of discussion regarding the five priority topic areas: …

Cellular Activation Following Acute And Chronic Ethanol In Glutamatergic Projection Neurons, Annalise Hassan, Sam Gottlieb, Michael F. Miles Md, Phd

IRBEH/Spit for Science Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Protective Factors Against Alcohol Use In High-Risk College Students, Delani F. Warner, Karen G. Chartier Phd, Msw, The Spit For Science Working Group

IRBEH/Spit for Science Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Flow Of History Along Chester Creek, Walt Cressler

University Libraries Faculty Publications

The Chester Creek watershed comprises 67.2 square miles of southeastern Pennsylvania and includes parts of fourteen townships, five boroughs, and one city. The main branch flows from its source in Westtown Township and runs a length of 24.5 miles through rural, suburban, and urban parts of Chester and Delaware Counties before reaching the Delaware River.This illustrated story highlights many of the natural and cultural features of the Chester Creek watershed, from its sources to where the creek finally meets the waters of the Delaware River.

Expanding The Educational Enclave: A New Teacher Starting With Inclusion, Catherine Wilder

CGU Theses & Dissertations

An enclave is a group of individuals who are somehow extraordinary and divided from the whole. By this logic, a special education classroom segregated from the general population is an educational enclave. Modern research has been moving toward inclusive practices making these enclaves less isolated. This ethnographic account is of a first year education specialist entering critical skills teaching without prior experience or knowledge of the moderate to severe field. Being introduced to this particular field in the midst of a pandemic this new teacher attempted several inclusion practices previously untouched at the particular school and district. Over the course …

Investigation Of Neutrophil-Like Hl-60 Cell Migration In A 3d Collagen Matrix, Pouye Sedighian

CGU Theses & Dissertations

It is known that cell migration in innate and adaptive immune system plays a fundamental role in human health. Among the immune cells, neutrophils are one of the most essential cells in protecting the body against invading pathogens. In the presence of chemoattractants, these cells are the first responders that start a directed migration toward the injured area. As neutrophils approach the site of infection, they transmigrate to the tissue and follow the chemoattractant concentration gradient to locate and eliminate the invading pathogens. Understanding the patterns and mechanism of neutrophil migration in the presence of chemoattractants could possibly play an …

Promoting Positive Development Among Rural, Left-Behind Youth In China: A Mixed-Methods Approach, Yaqiong Wang

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The positive youth development (PYD) framework has shifted our attention from a deficit-based approach to a strength-based perspective to studying adolescent development (Lerner, 2005; Lerner & Steinberg, 2009). Integrating both the PYD and resilience science frameworks, this study developed and validated an instrument for assessing the individual strengths and environmental supports that enable a positive developmental trajectory for rural, left-behind youth (LBY) in China, a vulnerable group of youth who are endangered by prolonged parent-child separation. This newly developed instrument contains two scales: the Individual Strengths (IS) Scale and the Environmental Supports (ES) Scale. Utilizing an exploratory sequential design, this …

Retaining Foster Parents In San Bernardino County: Identifying And Accessing Resources And Support Services Since California’S Continuum Of Care Reform, Charles A. Varadin

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Foster care is a vast social justice issue that impacts nearly every local community. Yet, it receives relatively little attention due, in part, to the low social constructs of many of the most affected groups (Schneider and Ingram 1997). Thus, it should come as no surprise that foster care and the child welfare system in California, and the United States in general, is in a crisis as more children enter the system than there are foster parents to care for them. Retention of quality foster parents reduces the need for recruitment and increases the likelihood of more stable placements with …

Teacher Perceptions Of Relationship Building With Students: A Case Study Of K-5 Schools In A Southern California School District, Anais Janoyan

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This mixed methods case study of K-5 schools in a medium sized Southern California school district, investigated teachers’ descriptions and perceptions of their teacher-student relationships and relationship building experiences with students. Teachers’ views were analyzed at district, school site, and individual levels to uncover both common and unique patterns across these various contexts. Surveys and interviews were used to gather data. Surveys were quantitatively analyzed, and interviews underwent a qualitative thematic analysis but were also supported by quantitative data (e.g., code recurrence frequencies and percentages). Data results of teachers’ descriptions and perceptions on teacher-student relationships provided teachers’ overall views, in …

The Intended Heroic Behavior Scale: Creation And Validity Of A Scale Predicting Heroism To Advance Developmental Research On Heroes, Brian R. Riches

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Heroism – the phenomenon of individuals putting themselves at risk for the benefit of others – is a topic of increasing empirical interest (Franco et al., 2017). Applied heroism training programs have emerged with the goal of fostering heroism (Heiner, 2018). Psychologists have examined the characteristics of heroes (e.g., Midlarsky et al., 2005) and the power of the situation to drive ordinary people to heroic action (Franco et al., 2017). These studies have raised important questions, such as how can heroism be predicted? Does heroism training work? And how do heroes develop? Current methods of studying heroism, including exemplar studies, …

Separate, But Not Equal: A Content Analysis Of Sexuality Education Curricula, Heather Jaffe

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Comprehensive sexuality education is important to the healthy development of adolescent during the identity formation process, especially for sexual minority and gender nonconforming adolescents. For sexual minority and gender nonconforming adolescents, the identity formation process can lead to fluctuations in both sexuality and gender identity (Steensma et al., 2013). If sexual minority adolescents struggle to integrate their sexual identity, they may have greater psychological adjustment issues (Rosario et al., 2011). The inclusion of LGBTQ+ topics in the curriculum, lowers rates of bullying and creates a safer school environment. The purpose of this dissertation was to analyze the content of sexuality …

Critical- Diversity, Belongingness, Inclusion, And Equity Sel, Jeanny Eliana Marroquin

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The social and civil unrest across the United States has ignited a call for more school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) frameworks and practices that are social justice-oriented. The Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning (CASEL) is one of the organizations that chose to revisit their existing SEL framework and introduced transformative SEL as an attempt to take steps toward creating a more social justice-oriented approach. This critique will review the SEL landscape of some pre-K-12 SEL programs and their methods to highlight gaps and limitations in the fields for future research considerations. Then, a new social and emotional …

Blockchain-Based Digital Trust Mechanism: A Use Case Of Cloud Manufacturing Of Lds Syringes For Covid-19 Vaccination, Trupti Rane, Jingwei Huang

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Trust is essential in the digital world. It is a critical task to build digital trust for the ongoing digital engineering transformation. Aiming at developing a blockchain-based digital trust mechanism for Cloud Manufacturing or Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS), in this paper, we use the manufacturing of low dead space (LDS) medical syringes through Cloud Manufacturing as a motivating scenario to develop a basic framework. To meet the need of optimally saving COVID-19 vaccine doses to save more lives, the medical device manufacturing community needs to make a swift move to meet the surged need for LDS syringes. Cloud Manufacturing is a form …

The Federal Response To Covid-19: Lessons From The Pandemic, Nancy J. Knauer

UC Law Journal

When the first suspected human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus was reported in January 2020, the United States had in place an elaborate set of pandemic disaster and response plans that spanned hundreds of pages. The George W. Bush administration spearheaded national pandemic planning in 2005 as part of the post-September 11 efforts to modernize the country’s disaster response capabilities. Subsequent administrations revisited and revised the various pandemic plans, including the Trump administration as recently as 2017 and 2018.

Despite these detailed plans, the Trump administration was slow to respond to the emerging public health crisis or implement any of …

Conjecture And Evidence: Discovering The Costs Of Contemporary American Political Ideals, Joseph C. Immormino

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation offers an adaptation of the relative political capacity (RPC) research framework to domestic American politics, enabling a quantitative examination of the relative performance of state governments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Theoretically, I examine the notion that more politically capable states will be more effective in their efforts to mitigate mortality rates, and hypothesize that, in the United States, such a relationship is conditional upon the party identification of state leadership. The premise is tested by applying a series of multiplicative interaction models to a unique dataset spanning the first two years of the pandemic. Results confirm that measures …

Identity Centrality Influences Group Members’ Self-Uncertainty, Self-Esteem, And Evaluations Of Moral Deviants, Jeff Varun Ramdass

CGU Theses & Dissertations

A person who identifies with a group will gain many psychological benefits from their group identification. These benefits include reduced self-uncertainty (Hogg, 2007, 2021) and increased self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; see also Abrams & Hogg, 1988). Group members define and adhere to group norms (Turner et al., 1987) to gain the psychological benefits derived from group identification. However, not all group norms are equal. Moral norms, or norms relating to the group’s morality, are used to help people view themselves as moral people via being moral group members (Ellemers et al., 2013). Moral norms are viewed differently from nonmoral …

The Pervert’S Guide To The Museum, Seth Ifor Alt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation provides a sustained theoretical articulation of core Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts situated within the standing difficulties in the practice and theory of museums. Drawing upon research gathered from site visits, informational interviews, textual analysis, and an extensive engagement with the seminars of Jacques Lacan, I enumerate here a first attempt at what a Lacanian theoretical formation can contribute to museum studies scholarship. Through this research this dissertation shows psychoanalysis to be especially useful for museum studies owing to how the troubles immediately encountered in the everyday material practices of museological work are structurally analogous to the impossibilities experienced on …

The Nutritional Condition Of Moose Co-Varies With Climate, But Not With Density, Predation Risk, Or Diet Composition, Jennifer S. Forbey, Daniel P. Melody

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A fundamental question about the ecology of herbivore populations pertains to the relative influence of biotic and abiotic processes on nutritional condition. Nutritional condition is influenced in important, yet poorly understood, ways by plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) which can adversely affect a herbivore’s physiology and energetics. Here we assess the relative influence of various abiotic (weather) and biotic (intraspecific competition, predation risk and diet composition) factors on indicators of nutritional condition and the energetic costs of detoxifying PSMs for the moose population in Isle Royale National Park (U.S.A.). Specifically, we observed interannual variation in the ratio of urea nitrogen to …