Digital Commons Network^™

Cognate Awareness Training For Novice L2 Learners: Orthographic And Phonological Routes To Vocabulary Learning, Jennifer M. Martin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Within the study of cross-linguistic influence, research on cognate facilitation has consistently shown that proficient bilinguals process cognates (e.g., English “sock” and German “Socke”) more efficiently than non-cognates. However, less is known about how novice adult learners may benefit from these similarities during the earliest stages of second language acquisition or how instructional interventions might facilitate this process. This dissertation addressed this gap through experiments with English-speaking adults learning German. A series of experiments examined the effects of cross-linguistic similarity and explicit cognate awareness training on vocabulary acquisition. Experiment 1A found robust similarity effects in written recall and …

Hydroclimate Variability And Itcz Migration Over The Last Millennium Inferred From A New Speleothem Record In Central Colombia Using Paleo Data Assimilation, Derick Appiah Kubi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hydroclimate variability over tropical South America is strongly influenced by meridional shifts in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), yet the spatial expression and dynamical controls of these changes during the last millennium remain poorly understood. This work investigates hydroclimate variability and ITCZ migration over the last millennium (850-1850 CE) using a new isotope-enabled data assimilation (DA) reconstruction made from a suite of speleothem δ¹⁸O records from the neotropics on both sides of the ITCZ. The reconstruction targets the March-August (MAMJJA) season in order to capture the rainfall regimes most relevant to central Colombia and northeastern Brazil. The focus on these …

A Comprehensive Investigation Of Service Utilization In Innovative Models Of Hepatitis C Care And Treatment For Persons Who Inject Drugs In New York State, Amanda C. Sue

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most prevalent blood-borne infection in the United States and is primarily transmitted through the sharing of unsterilized drug injection equipment. With surges in opioid overdose deaths, there has been an increase in people diagnosed with HCV that can be attributed to persons who inject drugs (PWID) in the United States. PWID have therefore been identified as a priority population to achieve the goal of eliminating HCV as a public health threat. Despite the availability of safe and effective direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies that can cure people with HCV, uptake of HCV treatment in PWID …

Victimized And Criminalized: The Intertwined Narratives Of Trauma And Offending, Caitlin Maria Udas

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

How do pathways between childhood victimization, drug use, and offending behavior vary for recordholders of different races and genders? Prior literature and theory indicates that there are distinct processes that can link childhood victimization to drug use and other offending behavior. These processes are rooted at least partially in experiences of racism/discrimination, placement relative to sociocultural power structures, and norms established over one’s childhood through peer and familial influences. However, less is known about how these differ by race, gender, and the intersection thereof. This dissertation examines the intersectional differences in narrative pathways that link childhood victimization, drug use, and …

Analysis Of Vertical Tropospheric Atmospheric Profiles Associated With Extreme Rainfall Events Over KauaʻI, HawaiʻI, Amanda Maria Maminimini

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Extreme rainfall is a persistent hazard in the Hawaiian Islands, where steep terrain and short catchments convert heavy rain into damaging floods with little warning. The trade wind inversion, a subsidence-driven stable layer that caps the marine boundary layer over the subtropical North Pacific, limits the depth of convection and is therefore expected to govern whether available moisture can be converted into extreme rainfall. Previous work has characterized the inversion climatologically and has related the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific-North American (PNA) pattern to Hawaiian rainfall totals, but the behavior of the inversion on the specific days when …

Weather-Related Road Condition Detection Using Co-Developed Machine Learning Methods, Carly Sutter

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Transportation agencies make critical operational decisions during hazardous weather events, including assessment of road conditions and resource allocation. In this study, machine learning models are developed to provide additional support for the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) by automatically classifying road conditions across the state. Convolutional neural networks and random forests are trained on NYSDOT roadside camera images and weather data to predict road surface conditions. This task draws critically on a labeled dataset of 22,000 camera images containing six road surface conditions (severe snow, snow, wet, dry, poor visibility, and obstructed) generated from an iterative hand-labeling process …

Where Perspectives Meet: A Comparative Case Study Of How Participatory Practices Shape Deliberation During District-Level Educational Change, Gregory Vincent Massara

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Public education in the United States is socially and politically constructed, and ongoing reforms increasingly require collaborative engagement among diverse stakeholders amid heightened divisiveness. This mixed methods comparative case study examined how educational stakeholders make sense of one another’s perspectives during district-level collaborative work and the conditions that may foster conscientization, the critical reflection on one’s positionality. Two school districts developing a Profile of a Graduate (POG) and one engaged in deliberation about the relationship between public and charter schools within its community serve as comparative cases. The study triangulated meeting observations, a post-deliberation survey of stakeholders (N = 43), …

The Impact Of Downdraft Ventilation On Tropical Cyclone Intensity And Structure Using Aerial Reconnaissance Observations, Nicholas E. Johnson

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Tropical cyclone (TC) intensity can be challenging to predict since it is modulated by many physical processes. One of these processes is ventilation: the injection of relatively cool, dry environmental air into the warm core of a TC that acts as “anti-fuel”, inhibiting intensification and increasing uncertainty with intensity forecasts. While ventilation has been examined in numerical modeling studies, there have been a limited number of observational studies investigating ventilation. The two primary objectives of this dissertation are to develop methods for measuring downdraft ventilation from aerial reconnaissance observations and to use those observations to better understand how ventilation affects …

On The City-Scale Energy Balance Under Electrification And Renewable Generation: The New York City Case, Nour Elgalad

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Integration of renewable resources to meet the growing energy demand of dense urban regions is becoming a global priority under decarbonization mandates. This study contributes to these ongoing efforts by assessing the feasibility of using locally deployable urban renewable resources, namely offshore wind in the New York Bight region and rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems over New York City, to meet the electricity demand of the city, and the grid vulnerabilities that emerge, during two contrasting extreme-weather periods: the intense heatwave of June 2025 and a fully electrified winter cold snap in January 2018. A unified, meteorologically driven modelling framework, based …

Regulation Of Private Higher Education In Mexico: How Non-Elite Institutions Navigate Authorization, Edson Eduardo Navarro Meza

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Low quality, excessive commercialization, fraud, profit in disguise, and predatory dynamics remain the most pressing regulatory challenges in the context of private higher education in Mexico. These problems have been largely attributed to the ineffectiveness of authorization mechanisms, which have repeatedly become the focus of controversy and criticism from social, academic, and media sectors regarding their role in shaping the development of the sector. Some observers blame the government for its inaction in the face of rapid institutional proliferation, as well as for maintaining authorization procedures that have proven to be ineffective gatekeepers of sectoral expansion. Others place responsibility on …

Masses And The Gothic In The English Novel: 1700-1820, Szu Ying Chen

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation studies the eighteenth-century English novel and expands the understanding of realism by rereading realist novels through Gothic representations of the masses. The conventional understanding of realism is shaped by Ian Watt’s canonical concept of “formal realism” in The Rise of the Novel and Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the bourgeois public sphere. It identifies realism with a vision of civility grounded in the modern individual and bourgeois social reality. However, the masses and the Gothic challenge this conception of the novel’s realism by representing the social as constituted by collective agency, political violence, and struggles over power rather than …

Dynamic Effects Of Economic Shocks Under Uncertainty, Seojin Jung

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation studies the dynamic effects of economic shocks under uncertainty across three self-contained essays.

The first essay introduces a two-stage model averaging estimator for impulse response functions that flexibly combines local projection (LP) and vector autoregression (VAR) methods, as well as different statistical paradigms (Bayesian or frequentist). In the first stage, we compute weights within the LP and VAR groups. A second-stage weight then integrates the two groups by accounting for their structural differences and incorporating their respective strengths. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate a typical bias-variance trade-off: LP-based estimators tend to exhibit lower bias, whereas VAR-based estimators display lower …

Improving Modeling Of Corrosion Products In The Primary Circuit Of Light Water Reactors Through The Experimental Determination Of Crud Characteristics, Sri Saravana Konganapuram Narasimma Bharathi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

High-temperature water flowing through the coolant circuits in pressurized water reactors (PWRs) creates a harsh environment, deteriorating these materials. This corrosion results in the formation of oxide layer(s) primarily composed of nickel ferrites, iron oxides, nickel oxides, and other nickel-iron-chrome spinel oxides. Being exposed to fluid with high flow rates and pressure, these oxide layers can be eroded, resulting in particulate fouling due to the release of corrosion products (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits, CRUD) into the coolant circuit. When CRUD subsequently deposits on fuel surfaces, it negatively affects the fuel performance (heat transfer and fuel failure); in addition, the particles …

Essays On Financial Econometrics And Macro-Financial Forecasting, Zhendong A. Li

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The first chapter proposes an innovative supervised learning technique for dimension reduction and forecasting financial and macroeconomic time series in the presence of weak factors that can undermine the effectiveness of traditional Principal Component Analysis (PCA). This approach employs double or multiple supervised learning procedures and is termed ``Supervised Scaled Principal Component Analysis'' (SsPCA). Initially, each predictor is scaled using its predictive slope on the target forecast variable, giving more weight to those with stronger predictive abilities and less to those with weaker ones. Subsequently, utilizing the scaled predictors, we intelligently identify the most informative subset for prediction. This involves …

James Stone & Sons Ledgers Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

Two ledgers which document the financial transactions in the Oxford, Mississippi law firm James Stone and Sons between June 1939 and August 1954.  The attorney Phil Stone was a friend of the young William Faulkner, sharing an intense interest in literature as well as serving as Faulkner’s attorney in later years.

Finding Aid For The Deavours Family Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

The Deavours Family Collection contains genealogical information about the Deavours and related families.  It also holds material related to Stone Deavours, a lawyer, who served as University of Mississippi Law School Dean from 1930 to 1932.  The collection also includes two nineteenth-century ledgers regarding Garlandsville, Mississippi and the journal of an unidentified Alabama dating from 1860 to 1874.

Finding Aid For The Orma R. Smith Collection (Mum00760)

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

Orma R. Smith was a judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern Mississippi from 1968 to 1982. His collection contains subject files, chamber papers from his tenure on the court, correspondence, photographs, and memorabilia.

Linking Social Entrepreneurship To Crime Reduction Among Young African Americans In Chicago’S South And West Sides, Grady C. Wheaton Jr.

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This study examined community members’ perceptions of social entrepreneurship as an employment-centered strategy for addressing youth violence among African Americans on Chicago’s South and West Sides. The study was guided by the following research question: Can social entrepreneurship be leveraged to reduce youth violence among African Americans on Chicago’s South and West Sides, as perceived by community members? Using Fillmore Laundry, a healthcare linen-processing social enterprise located in North Lawndale, as a case example, this quantitative, cross-sectional study collected survey data from 99 eligible community members recruited through community-based partnerships. The survey assessed perceived youth- and community-level program benefits, evaluations …

Works Progress Administration (Wpa) Inventories Of Church Records - Accession 410, Works Progress Administration, Church Records, South Carolina Historical Society

Manuscript Collection

These records were microfilmed by the South Carolina Historical Society through the cooperation of the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, under a grant from the South Carolina Committee for the Humanities as part of the grant titled “Genealogy, Community & Identity: Finding Local Roots.” These records represent the efforts of WPA field researchers who collected information on the history and records of approximately 2,500 South Carolina Churches in the late 1930s, including black congregations. The records include work forms, typed reports, newspaper clippings and short histories. The information pertains to physical descriptions of church buildings …

School-Level Gaps In Mmr Coverage As The Fuel For Measles Outbreaks, Meagan C Fitzpatrick, Chad R Wells, Abhishek Pandey, Lamia Ayaz, Peter J Hotez, Seyed M Moghadas, Alison P Galvani

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

No abstract provided.

Cerebellar Deep Brain Stimulation Rescues Purkinje Cell Mitochondrial Density In A Genetic Mouse Model Of Cerebellar Ataxia, Lauren N Miterko-Myers, Lauren E Peacoe, Lita Duraine, Zhongyuan Zuo, Roy V Sillitoe

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) improves motor function in a growing list of movement diseases including Parkinson's disease, dystonia, and tremor. There is evidence that DBS may also be effective in ataxia. It is not known why DBS is effective, but modulating cell activity and conferring neuroprotection are hypothesized to underlie its benefits. Understanding the effects of DBS on neurons is paramount to extending its clinical use in the treatment of various motor and non-motor diseases. Here, we stimulated the cerebellum of Car8 waddles (Car8wdl) mice, given the cerebellum's important role in ataxia pathophysiology. Using transmission electron microscopy, we tested the …

Why Constitutional Argument Matters, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The program for this symposium promised that I would be discussing the “descriptive grammar of constitutional law.” To put my purpose less benignly, I should say that I mean to attack the practice of limiting what I will call “modal analysis” to its descriptive virtues. Part of that attack will be the claim that courts and their commentators should pay closer attention to the modal requirements of the fundamental forms of constitutional discourse, but not because straying from this is a kind of grammatical faux pas. After all, if the system I have urged for constitutional analysis — the system …

Assessment Of In-Frame Indel Variants In An Unsolved Cohort Of Inherited Retinal Diseases Using Machine Learning, David E Rauch, Meng Wang, Muhammad Jafar Hussain Hafiz, Daniel C Brock, Yumei Li, Molly Marra, Mark E Pennesi, Paul Yang, Everett Lesley, Irma Lopez, Robert Koenekoop, Edward Ryan Collantes, Joanne Bolinao, Rui Chen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The standard for in silico pathogenicity prediction of in-frame insertions and deletions (indels) is less established compared to other types of variations. We aimed to systematically assess the performance of in silico machine learning (ML) tools on a patient cohort with inherited retinal diseases (IRDs). The performance of four ML tools (CADD, FATHMM-indel, VEST4, and MetaRNN-indel) was compared. Among them, MetaRNN-indel showed the best overall results. MetaRNN-indel was then applied to 1013 unsolved IRD patients, identifying two likely pathogenic causal variants in two unrelated IRD patients by confirming clinical phenotypes. Hence, our findings indicate that reliable prediction of the pathogenicity …

Identification Of Cand1 As A Dna-Dependent Protein Kinase-Regulated Coactivator Of Androgen Receptor And The Arv7 Splice Variant, Ross A Hamilton, Basil Paul, Ping Yi, Kimal Rajapakshe, Anil K Panigrahi, Sandra L Grimm, Cristian Coarfa, Anna Malovannaya, Nancy L Weigel, David M Lonard, Charles E Foulds

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

ARv7, the most prevalent androgen receptor (AR) variant in castration-resistant prostate cancer, lacks the ligand binding domain (LBD), rendering it resistant to LBD-targeted therapies. Identifying new therapeutic targets requires defining the coregulators and associated regulatory enzymes that govern AR and ARv7 transcriptional activity. Here, we have developed a cell-free DNA pulldown assay employing androgen response elements (AREs) to isolate and characterize the AR- and ARv7-associated coregulator complexes formed on DNA. Mass spectrometry analyses of ARE DNA pulldowns revealed previously unrecognized AR and ARv7 associating coregulators, such as cullin-associated NEDD8-dissociated protein 1 (CAND1), in addition to previously known coregulators. ARv7 showed …

Therapeutic Potential Of Hookworm Proteins In Promoting Regulatory Immune Responses To Modulate Trypanosoma Cruzi Induced Liver Inflammation And Oxidative Stress, Maria Jose Villar, Cristina Poveda, Bin Zhan, Maya Gonsoulin, Kathryn M Jones

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection causes significant liver pathology, and current antiparasitic treatments often worsen hepatic damage. Hookworm-derived proteins have shown immunomodulatory effects in inflammatory diseases, including T. cruzi-induced myocarditis.

Objective: This study evaluates recombinant hookworm proteins AIP-1 and AIP-2 for treating liver inflammation in a murine model of chronic Chagas disease (CD).

Methods: Female BALB/c mice infected with T. cruzi were treated with AIP-1 or AIP-2 (1 mg/kg) for seven days. Controls were untreated or received aspirin (25 mg/kg) for 14 days. Liver tissues were analyzed for parasite burden (quantitative polymerase chain reaction - qPCR), histopathology (H&E, Picrosirius Red), …

Beyond Exposure: Belief In Police Misinformation, Media Consumption, And Support For Policing Reform, Linda Balcarova Dietz

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In today’s post-truth era, misinformation has become a central feature of modern society. While not a new phenomenon, the 2024 Presidential election demonstrated what a serious problem it represents, as public perceptions were driven more by information they received (true or false) than by objective social conditions. Policing is one of the most debated topics in criminal justice, dividing public opinion along partisan and racial lines. Studies show that the information people receive about police shapes their attitudes, yet criminologists have largely overlooked how misinformation may influence those views. This dissertation fills that gap by experimentally testing how exposure to …

Platelet Extravasation In The Microvasculature: An Under-Appreciated Role For Platelets, Justin A Courson, Vahid Afshar-Kharghan, Alan R Burns, Rolando E Rumbaut

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

In recent years, evidence has accumulated highlighting the presence and role of platelet extravasation - wherein platelets accumulate in tissue parenchyma - at a variety of sites throughout the body. While platelets are traditionally known for their roles in hemostasis and thrombosis, it is evident that platelets are potent mediators of inflammation across an array of physiological and pathological contexts. While anucleate and small in size, platelets contain a rich diversity of molecules in their granules capable of modulating cell proliferation, tissue repair, and a host of immune responses. There is growing evidence that platelet extravasation out of the vascular …

Using Medication Pass Analysis To Examine Longitudinal Changes In Va Inpatient Nurse Staffing And Workload Before And Through The Covid-19 Pandemic: 2019-2022, Melissa K Knox, Chase S Eck, Lynette Dorsey, Paras D Mehta, Christine Yang, Laura A Petersen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in extended disruption to the health care system. National-level data-driven comparisons of inpatient nurse staffing and workload before and during the pandemic have been limited.

Objectives: Assess the extent to which registered nurse (RN) staffing and workload changed from prepandemic levels in a national integrated health care system.

Research design: Longitudinal descriptive analysis. Medication pass analysis using bar code medication administration data for the peak-time medication pass (PTM) assessing year-over-year changes from 2019 to 2022. To assess significance of year-over-year changes in means we used the Welch 2-sample t test.

Subjects: Staff (N=42,999) administering PTM …

Ptpn1 Regulation Via Ybx1-Ptbp1 Interaction Promotes Fibroblast Activation And Fibrotic Remodeling In The Lung, Huibing Liu, Cong Xia, Yingying Zhang, Yulong Gan, Lianhui Cheng, Xuqian Wang, Airu Chang, Wenyu Zhao, Bin Li, Yaxuan Wang, Yajun Li, Ivan Rosas, Juntang Yang, Guoying Yu, Lan Wang

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, progressive interstitial pneumonia of unknown etiology. Its pathogenesis involves complex multicellular interactions and signaling pathways, with fibroblast-to-myofibroblast transition (FMT) being critical for fibrogenesis. Although the transcription factor Y-box binding protein 1 (YBX1) regulates processes such as cell proliferation, transcription, translation, and DNA repair, its role in IPF remains undefined. Here, we demonstrate that YBX1 overexpression significantly promotes transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)-induced pulmonary FMT, leading to substantially increased extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition in primary human (PHLFs) and mouse (PMLFs) lung fibroblasts. Conversely, YBX1 inhibition markedly suppresses TGF-β1-driven aberrant fibroblast migration and activation. Mechanistically, YBX1 …

Immune-Mediated Diarrhea And Colitis With Normal Biochemical, Endoscopic And Histologic Findings: A Retrospective Study, Malek Shatila, Sharada Wali, Carolina Colli Cruz, Kei Takigawa, Andres Caleb Urias Rivera, Kian Abdul-Baki, Tanvi Gupta, Elliot Baerman, Linfeng Lu, Irene Jeong-Ah Lee, Raakhi Menon, Hamza Salim, Andrew Sullivan, Varun Vemulapalli, Cristina Natha, Ayesha Khan, Krishnavathana Varatharajalu, Stephane Champiat, Kerry L Reynolds, Lucy B Kennedy, Katy Tsai, Anusha Shirwaiker Thomas, Yinghong Wang

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Immune-mediated diarrhea and colitis (IMDC) due to checkpoint inhibition infrequently presents with normal stool biomarkers and no endoscopic or histologic evidence of inflammation. Little is known about the treatment needs and outcomes of this subset of patients. We aimed to describe this entity and clarify the role of immunosuppressive treatments in its management.

Method: This was a single-center, retrospective study of patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors who developed clinical symptoms of IMDC, with no evidence of inflammation based on fecal calprotectin or endoscopic/histologic evaluation, between January 2010 and February 2024.

Results: Of 1151 patients with IMDC, 131 (11.4%) …