Digital Commons Network^™

Echoes Of Time: An Exploration Of Photography, Land, And Memories, Mary Pearson

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

Echoes of Time: an exploration of photography, land, and memories is an art-based research project that investigates how photography can be employed to examine the relationship between land and memory. The artistic output of this research reflects a personal experimental documentation of a meaning of place, the local, the home, and the imagined through the lens of memory and belonging. Belonging, attachment to place, and family connections have been the conduits to encounter, interrogate, and engage through various photographic practices. The use of different visual representations explores attachment and engagement with place and allowed the creative element of this research …

Performance Writing, Objects And Millennial Precarity: A Co-Authored Par Exploration Between Friends, Katheryn Owens

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

This practice-as-research project uses performance writing to understand, illustrate and work through aspects of millennial experience, with a specific interest in precarious housing and labour. For us, experiencing precarity means that fundamental aspects of what is required to experience what Lauren Berlant calls ‘a good life’ (including secure working contracts, renters’ rights, access to leisure time) are not being met. This leads to a feeling of ‘living on the edge’ (Ahmed, 2017: 238), which in turn prevents us from being able to imagine alternatives. This performance writing takes the form of scores, instructions, maps, walking, knitting, zines, and audio recordings. …

Multicultural And Social Justice Counseling Within The Scope Of Rehabilitation Counseling, Jeong Han Kim, Kayi Ntinda, Christopher Townsend, Kenneth Thomas, Dong Hun Lee, Cameron Ortega, Hee Jung Yu

School of Rehabilitation Services & Counseling Faculty Publications

Historically, people with disabilities are a marginalized cultural group in that their lived world is less well represented in mainstream services. The rehabilitation counseling profession has the goal to prioritize and empower people with disabilities for thriving in their personal and community lives. However, cultures exist within social systems often characterized by inequities, obliging a need to go beyond multicultural counseling to address social injustices that would occur to populations with historical disadvantages such as people with disabilities. The present study discusses the multicultural counseling movement and its impact in the field of rehabilitation counseling. The study first introduces the …

Financial Stress In The Asian Christian Immigrant Community During Covid-19, Jinhee Park, Roy K. Chen, Chu-Ling Lo, Heekyung Lee

School of Rehabilitation Services & Counseling Faculty Publications

The purpose of the current study was to examine how individual, economic, and psychological factors contributed to the financial concerns of Asian Christian immigrants in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., the impact of COVID-19 on employment status and income change, intolerance of uncertainty, hope, and personal meaning in life). The sample consisted of 103 immigrants from three East Asian countries affiliated with Christian churches. A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to observe how the aforementioned variables predicted the participants’ financial worries. The results showed that intolerance of uncertainty accounted for a significant amount of variance in financial worries …

Mathematical Analysis Of Convolutional Neural Networks, Daniel Mccarter

Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis, the main topic is convolution as a mathematical operation and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN’s). While convolution is classically defined as a function, it can also be defined as an operator from Lp(R) to itself for 1 ≤ p ≤ 2 where Tw(f ) = f ∗ w given some w ∈ L1(R). CNN’s use convolution in its convolutional layers. Defining a neural network to be the composition of layer maps, we find that the neural network is, by necessity, Lipschitz. While CNN’s can be very powerful for image classification, slight changes to an image can completely fool …

A Study Of Verbal Rumination, Relationships, Stress And Identity On Health Communication In Collegiate Athletics, Landon Mary Ellen Kemp

Dissertations and Theses

College athletes are a unique group of individuals as they face many positive and negative challenges when competing in a collegiate sport. Verbal rumination is repetitive talk about a particular issue, accompanied by adverse effects for an individual. Verbal rumination is a common strategy athletes use to cope with difficulties along with managing challenging situations in their athletic program. To explore factors that might inspire or impede verbal rumination in collegiate athletics, the present study examines the quality of coach and teammate relationships, perceived stress and athlete identity. Results revealed the impact of relationships between coaches and athletes in respect …

Application Of Hierarchical Species Distribution Models To Avian Species Of South Dakota And The Upper Missouri River Basin, Reza Goljani Amirkhiz

Dissertations and Theses

Recognizing the distributional patterns of species can inform management actions and increase scientific knowledge about species. Habitat Suitability Models (HSMs) are valuable tools in modeling species’ niches and effects of climate change and anthropogenic and natural disturbances on species’ distributions and abundances. In this dissertation, I expanded the application of hierarchical HSMs for a rare bird (Virginia’s warbler) and an economically valuable bird (ring-necked pheasant) in South Dakota. Also, we developed multiscale HSMs for grassland birds in the Upper Missouri River Basin (UMRB) to quantify current habitat associations and predict the influences of climate and landcover change associated with the …

Chemistry Of Fluorinated Functional Groups: Impact On Molecular Packing, Optoelectronic Properties, Electrochemical Polymerization, Photochemistry, And Reagent Development, Shankar Gairhe

Dissertations and Theses

Fluorinated functional groups have attracted great interest in various aspects of chemistry applications including pharmaceuticals, organic electronics, and polymers. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of fluorinated functional groups on 1) optimization of crystal structures and electronic properties of organic semiconductor molecules, 2) electrochemical polymerization of fluorinated aromatics, 3) photochemical reactivity of carbonyl compounds, and 4) generating new nucleophilic fluorination reagents. Our initial work demonstrates that long fluoroalkyl side chains on planar aromatic systems give rise to fluorine-fluorine (F---F) attractive interactions, assisting formation of lamellar packing motif in the solid state. Surprisingly, introducing shorter perfluoroalkyl side …

An Examination Of Pell Grant Recipient Graduation Rates And Institutional Expenditures At Public Baccalaureate Institutions, Lamont Alphonso Sellers

Dissertations and Theses

The present study examines the differences between public baccalaureate institutional expenditures and Pell Grant recipient graduation rates at high and low Pell Grant recipient graduating institutions. IPEDS data were analyzed, including instructional, academic support, student services, institutional support, and Pell Grant recipient 6-year graduation rates from the 2018 academic reporting year. Results from a Mann-Whitney U test compare 99 institutions divided into a high graduation rate group (N_high=40) and a low graduation group (N_low=59). The analysis showed there are mean rank differences between the groups that are statistically significant. These results support the need for further study to make sense …

In Whitman's Wake, Kacie Megan Fodness

Dissertations and Theses

In Whitman’s Wake argues that nineteenth-century American writing includes a living invitation for its future readers. The kind of invitational writing prioritized in this work has not yet been fully accounted for in literary criticism. What’s more, even when we as readers have experienced such an invitation (one we feel is for us) we have not followed the feeling far enough. As a result, scholarship has largely neglected, and perhaps has consciously rejected, the intentional action of a writer that creates an encounter with their future reader. My project contributes to the ongoing critical conversation around the relationship of readers …

Dietary Counselling Of Children With Food Allergy, Julia Eisenblaetter

School of Health Professions Theses

Background: The management of food allergy is challenging for children and their families. Several international guidelines recommend involving dietitians in the management; however, their tasks remain uncertain, and the effectiveness of dietary counselling has rarely been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this project was to evaluate the effectiveness of dietary counselling in children with food allergy regarding food allergy related quality of life (QoL), number of allergic reactions, and growth as indicator of nutritional status and diet diversity. Methods: The project was guided by the Complex Intervention Model by the Medical Research Council. To reach the overall aim there needed …

A Novel Interactive Training Device To Improve Walking Ability And Quality Of Life For Children With Cerebral Palsy Trial: Accept Study An Exploration Of Balance, Its Measurement And Usual Physiotherapy Care In Children With Cerebral Palsy, To Inform A Mixed Methods Feasibility Rct., Rachel Rapson

School of Health Professions Theses

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a common disability with its onset in childhood, resulting from a non-progressive lesion to the brain. Motor impairments associated with CP are spasticity, weakness and reduced selective movement; these interfere with various aspects of balance. Children undertake physiotherapy to maintain or improve their mobility but find it hard to train at the correct frequency, intensity and in functional positions. A novel interactive trainer, the Happy Rehab™ (Innovaid, Denmark), was designed to address this. Its efficacy as an intervention to improve walking and balance is unknown. To evaluate this requires a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). The usual …

Investigating Letter Identification For Visual Acuity Measurements In The Paracentral Visual Field, Hatem Barhoom

School of Health Professions Theses

Sloan letters are commonly used optotypes in clinical practice, but they exhibit different relative legibility, which may be attributed to response bias, sensitivity differences, and letter similarity. In this thesis, we employed Luce’s choice model and developed a new noisy template model to investigate the role of response bias, sensitivity differences, and letter similarity in letter identification of Sloan letters at central and paracentral locations. Results show that the best model was the one that accounted for the effects of bias, sensitivity, and similarity, with bias contributing more than sensitivity and similarity. However, when estimating the letter acuity from the …

Efficacy And Acceptability Of Mobilisation And Stretches Of The Foot And Ankle In People With Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy, Vasileios Lepesis

School of Health Professions Theses

People with diabetic peripheral neuropathy and limited joint mobility syndrome (LJMS) can experience increased forefoot peak plantar pressures (PPPs). Elevated PPPs are a risk factor for diabetic neuropathic foot ulceration. Diabetic peripheral neuropathy can also affect balance and increase the risk of falling. This thesis investigated the efficacy and acceptability of foot and ankle mobilisations combined with home stretches in people living at risk of neuropathic diabetic foot ulceration and falling. A systematic review and meta-analysis examined the effects of foot and ankle physical therapy modalities for the management of foot and ankle joint mobility, PPPs, and balance. The review …

Core Outcomes For Refractory Childhood Epilepsy Treated With Ketogenic Diet Therapy: The Core-Kdt Study, Jen Carroll

School of Health Professions Theses

Background: Ketogenic diet therapy can result in seizure and non-seizure related benefits for children with drug resistant epilepsy. However, clinical trials report a wide range of outcomes which makes evidence synthesis difficult and they do not adequately reflect parent views on important outcomes for their child. To address this, we established the first international parent, health professional and researcher consensus to develop a core outcome set - a minimum standardised set of outcomes that should be measured and reported. (COMET registration #1116). Methods: Ethical approval was granted (London-Surrey REC19/LO/1680). A scoping review and interviews with parents identified a comprehensive list …

An Empirical Study Of Crowd Dynamics And Managing Safety At Events, Kristin Finn

Plymouth Business School Theses

The UK live events market has long been considered to be a growth sector. Given the range of challenges linked to event crowd safety felt by the industry in recent years, and despite recent setbacks associated with new safety measures and public uncertainty following the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, event organisers remain optimistic about the future. Many authors have studied crowd dynamics and safety planning in recent years, but often the emphasis has been one of objective observation and expert opinion. The outcomes of this thesis are timely as it aimed to investigate attitudinal differences among event …

Ten Years Ago I Wrote Poems About Having Babies, Rose Postma

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.

Probabilistic Invariance For Gaussian Process State Space Models, Paul Griffioen, Alex Devonport, Murat Arcak

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Gaussian process state space models are becoming common tools for the analysis and design of nonlinear systems with uncertain dynamics. When designing control policies for these systems, safety is an important property to consider. In this paper, we provide safety guarantees for Gaussian process state space models in the form of probabilistic invariant sets, where the state trajectory is guaranteed to lie within an invariant set for all time with a particular probability. We provide a sufficient condition in the form of a linear matrix inequality to evaluate the probabilistic invariance of the system, and we demonstrate our contributions with …

The Cost Of Debunking Conspiracy Theories, Scott Culpepper

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This chapter is published in QAnon, Chaos, and the Cross: Christianity and Conspiracy Theories edited by Michael W. Austin and Gregory L. Bock. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023. Eerdmans.com

Teacher Retention: Retaining Teachers In High-Needs, Urban Secondary Schools In A Midwest State Post-Pandemic, Christopher Kenneth Schmit

Dissertations and Theses

Teacher retention has been a challenge for most schools for several years. High-needs schools have been known to have twice the trouble with teacher retention as schools not considered high-needs. The purpose of this study was to identify effective practices school principals can implement to retain teachers at high-needs, urban secondary schools. This quantitative study called on teachers from high-needs schools in Iowa to complete a survey identifying principal qualities related to retention, perceived reasons for teacher attrition, and reasons they continue to teach at their current school. Three hundred eighty-five teachers from five different Iowa school districts participated in …

Evaluating The Effects Of A Social Skills Training Program For Children With Asd Generalized To A P.E. Setting, Anissa Johns

Dissertations and Theses

ASD is a developmental disability, or group of conditions which begin during the developmental period and impact day-to-day functioning, which can cause significant social, communication, and behavioral challenges (CDC, 2019). According to the CDC (2014) Autism Spectrum Disorder occur in every 1 in 36 children. ASD is characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts (American Psychiatric Association, 2020). The diagnosis also requires the presence of restricted repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. Among the number of social skills training modalities used to promote positive social skill development for children with ASD, the Superheroes …

Weatherford: Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Undergraduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

A Test Of A Dual Model Of Positive And Negative Eors: Dialogic Employee Communication Perceptions Related To Employee-Organization Relationships And Employee Megaphoning Intentions, Minjeong Kang, Ejae Lee, Young Kim, Sung-Un Yang

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This study investigated how employees’ perceptions of an organization’s dialogic employee communication influence their evaluations of their positive and negative relationships with the organization. The study further examined how employees’ relationship assessments could drive their intentions for positive and negative megaphoning about their organizations. To test the differentiating effects of dialogic employee communication on positive and negative employee-organization relationships (EORs) and, subsequently, employee megaphoning intentions, we used a dual measure with the positive and the negative EORs. The online survey of 527 full-time U.S. employees showed that dialogic employee communication – particularly mutuality orientation – distinctively influenced the employees’ EOR …

Graduate Catalog 2023-2024, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Graduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Relaxation Intervention On Stress Levels And Cognitive Skills In Professional Students, Sandhra Sabu, Ravikiran Kisan, . Swapnali

Digital Journal of Clinical Medicine

Background: Medical Professional training is likely to encounter a variety of hassles and stress in relation to the developmental tasks associated with transition from school life to professional college life. The vast syllabus, peer competition for academic performance, continuous evaluation, and long duration of the training makes medical education stressful. Many students feel a need to relieve stress and it is a necessity to equip students with proven techniques to reduce stress and cope up with the situation. Proper cognitive functioning has been found to be an important factor for academic performance.

Methods: The present study is a cross …

Cooperative Deep Q -Learning Framework For Environments Providing Image Feedback, Krishnan Raghavan, Vignesh Narayanan, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Publications

In this article, we address two key challenges in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) setting, sample inefficiency, and slow learning, with a dual-neural network (NN)-driven learning approach. In the proposed approach, we use two deep NNs with independent initialization to robustly approximate the action-value function in the presence of image inputs. In particular, we develop a temporal difference (TD) error-driven learning (EDL) approach, where we introduce a set of linear transformations of the TD error to directly update the parameters of each layer in the deep NN. We demonstrate theoretically that the cost minimized by the EDL regime is an approximation …

A Semantic Web Approach To Fault Tolerant Autonomous Manufacturing, Fadi El Kalach, Ruwan Wickramarachchi, Ramy Harik, Amit Sheth

Publications

The next phase of manufacturing is centered on making the switch from traditional automated to autonomous systems. Future factories are required to be agile, allowing for more customized production, and resistance to disturbances. Such production lines would be able to reallocate resources as needed and minimize downtime while keeping up with market demands. These systems must be capable of complex decision-making based on parameters such as machine status, sensory/IoT data, and inspection results. Current manufacturing lines lack this complex capability and instead focus on low-level decision-making on the machine level without utilizing the generated data to its full extent. This …

Cable Television As A Platform For Community Media In The Philippines, Trina Leah T. Mendoza, Marifi T. Magsino

Journal Article

Cable TV in the Philippines was identified by the government in the 1990s as an instrument which could support information and services provided by local and international television. This study aimed to determine whether Philippine cable TV providers can serve as community media. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and participatory communication concepts formed the theoretical framework of the study. The community-based operations and management of selected cable TV providers are described, their strengths and opportunities as community media analyzed, and the levels of community participation with partners determined. In-person interviews were conducted with six cable TV providers in Luzon …

Agenda-Setting In The 2016 Philippine Election: Relations Among Media, Candidates, And The Los Baños Community, Miguel Victor T. Durian, Serlie B. Jamias, Garry Jay S. Montemayor, Girlie Nora A. Abrigo

Journal Article

The study analyzed the influence of the Facebook agendas of two major Philippine news networks, ABS-CBN and GMA, on the agendas of the Los Baños Online Community, and on two candidates, Rodrigo Duterte and Mar Roxas, during the 2016 Philippine Presidential Election campaigns, which ran from February 9 to May 7, 2016 (89 days). Guided by the Agenda-Setting Theory, the study content analyzed 4,969 Facebook posts published by the media, candidates, and LB Community on their respective pages. Time series analysis found support for the theory on the following: ABS-CBN’s influence on the community’s general issue agenda of government and …

Interpersonal Communication Between Patients And Health Providers In The Referral System For Selected Non-Communicable Diseases In Primary Health Care Units Of Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, Lolita B. Pua, Maria Stella C. Tirol, Rosario V. Tatlonghari, Normahitta P. Gordoncillo, Nancy A. Tandang

Journal Article

The referral system in a primary health care facility is an essential factor in addressing different health issues and concerns in the community Through an effective referral system, a steady flow of health and medical services rendered by health providers at the local level, will be provided paving the way of extending health services to people, especially the less fortunate who consult or seek additional medical procedures available in another facility. It is in this context that communication is crucial in the management of the referral system. However, very limited studies are done at the local level of consultation set-up …