Digital Commons Network^™

Unheard Voices: Minority Female Presence In Fiction Including Folklore And Fantastical Elements, Breanna Renae Grayson

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the representation of women and racial minorities and the incorporation of folklore and fantastical elements in contemporary American short fiction. This incorporation includes the characterization of nonwhite characters in fiction and the role they serve. Also, the main idea is to provide an explanation concerning the importance and relationship it has for minority female writers and readers. The Artistic Statement defines the author’s reasons, inspirations, and creative process for her choices in creative writing. The Critical Paper is supported by research and data to describe the use of fantastical elements and how they are implemented into …

Technology In Cognitive Research: Methods To Examine Second Language Processing In Study Abroad Research, Mandy Faretta-Stutenberg, Irene Finestrat, Kara Morgan-Short

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

This chapter provides an overview of research instruments and technologies that can inform questions about language processing among study abroad learners. Specifically, we consider behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological methods. For each method, we provide a description of the approach, including how data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted. Then, we summarize findings from research employing the method that includes a study abroad context. Finally, we consider the limitations of the method and gaps in the extant literature, and provide guiding principles for researchers interested in utilizing the technique. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research and a discussion of the …

Sga 54 Senate 2023-02-03 Minutes, Niu Student Government Association Senate

Student Government Association Archives

No abstract provided.

Remote Staff Instruction To Implement Thorough Handwashing With Individuals With Autism, Monica Patel

Doctoral Dissertations

Behavioral skills training (BST), a behavior analytic training model including instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback, has been a widely effective training method for staff, caregivers, and students. Results from BST component analyses suggest that instructions, when presented without subsequent rehearsal and feedback, are often ineffective; however, the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the physical distancing measures required to prevent its spread have increased the need for easily disseminated virtual staff training models, particularly with respect to implementing activities of daily living programs which may further help to prevent the spread of infectious disease in the workplace. Thus, we evaluated …

Emotion Classification Of Indonesian Tweets Using Bidirectional Lstm, Aaron K. Glenn, Phillip M. Lacasse, Bruce A. Cox

Faculty Publications

Emotion classification can be a powerful tool to derive narratives from social media data. Traditional machine learning models that perform emotion classification on Indonesian Twitter data exist but rely on closed-source features. Recurrent neural networks can meet or exceed the performance of state-of-the-art traditional machine learning techniques using exclusively open-source data and models. Specifically, these results show that recurrent neural network variants can produce more than an 8% gain in accuracy in comparison with logistic regression and SVM techniques and a 15% gain over random forest when using FastText embeddings. This research found a statistical significance in the performance of …

Cognitive Appraisal, Workplace Social Courage, And Psycap, Quinn Denny

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study responds to calls for empirical investigation of courage as well as the discovery of positive psychological capital (PsyCap) antecedents. Courage and PsyCap are considered positive constructs associated with beneficial workplace outcomes. As an example, Workplace Social Courage (WSC) predicts organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). PsyCap is robustly correlated with performance outcomes, well-being, and sustainability. For its societal appeal, courage is not yet robustly validated. Further, interventions have demonstrated resultant increases in PsyCap, yet little is known of its antecedent variables. Also, to be discovered, are what variables mediate WSC. These gaps in research present opportunity for additional empirical investigation …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Former Foster Students Learning Through Online Educational Environments, Tiffany Sue Beckwith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of former foster students in online educational environments. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs acted as the theory guiding this study, as it was essential when investigating how unmet needs for foster children affected their motivation to learn and feelings of belongingness with their school. This study was designed to answer the following central research question: What are the experiences of former foster students who have taken part in online education? Using a transcendental phenomenological approach, I collected the lived experiences of the participants to uncover emerging themes during online …

The Difference In Geometry Achievement Between Students Who Utilize Lfm Strategies And Those Who Do Not: A Nonequivalent Control-Group Pretest/Posttest Study, Amanda Nicol

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental nonequivalent control-group pretest/posttest study was to identify whether there is a difference in Geometry achievement between students who utilize Learning for Mastery (LFM) strategies compared to those who do not at the high school level. This study provided insight into instructional and assessment strategies that may increase student achievement, understanding, and retention. Seventy-three high school mathematics students enrolled in Geometry courses, grades nine through twelve, from a suburban high school in Northwestern New Jersey were assessed in this study. Students were given a pretest, participated in daily classwork and instructional strategies for ten weeks, …

The Impact Of Mental Health Diagnoses In Combination With Learning Disorders, Tanya S. Gulledge

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this research is to build on previous research that showed a significant relationship between students with socially devalued identities, poor mental health, and lower academic achievement and suggested tailored and targeted treatments as a possible protective factor. To develop programs to assist students in achieving higher scores, one must first determine the impact of comorbid mental health diagnosis and specific learning disorder on academic achievement. A quantitative causal-comparative study was used to determine if there is an impact of mental health diagnoses in combination with specific learning disorders for students with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or …

The 2015 Migrant Crisis: An Impact To Germany?, Irish Nicole Solinsky

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The 2015 European Migrant Crisis emerged when an influx of refugees settled in Europe from 2015-2019. The asylum seekers fled their homelands to evade a myriad of crises such as violence and war, corruption and abuse, and poor socioeconomic conditions. Of the European states, Germany welcomed the largest number of migrants. This was in part due to Germany’s existing immigration policies in a post-Second World War environment, but also due to Germany’s resounding economic strength. Germany has significantly low unemployment rates and the highest gross domestic product (GDP) in Europe. As such, Germany’s position is one of uncontested significance within …

Black Women’S Body Image, Breast Cancer, And Post Traumatic Growth, Harriette Richard, Antonia S. Mead

The Journal of the Research Association of Minority Professors

Black women’s body image is influenced by several factors but when women have breast cancer, a “new normal” extends from diagnosis to long after reconstruction. This pilot study examines Black women’s breast cancer experience beginning with social networks, diagnosis, health care, the medical community, and breast reconstruction, ending with PTSD and Post Traumatic Growth (PTG). A convenience sample was surveyed and a qualitative research methodology was utilized to analyze responses from Black female breast cancer survivors. Research questions included body image perceptions after surgery and post-reconstruction. The participants go through adversity, find strength, and grow, ready to face the next …

Eeg Decoding Of Finger Numeral Configurations With Machine Learning, Roya Salehzadeh, Brian Rivera, Kaiwen Man, Nader Jalili, Firat Soylu

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In this study, we used multivariate decoding methods to study processing differences between canonical (montring and count) and noncanonical finger numeral configurations (FNCs). While previous research investigated these processing differences using behavioral and event-related potentials (ERP) methods, conventional univariate ERP analyses focus on specific time intervals and electrode sites and fail to capture broader scalp distribution and EEG frequency patterns. To address this issue a supervised learning classifier—support vector machines (SVM)—was used to decode ERP scalp distributions and alpha-band power for montring, counting, and noncanonical FNCs (for integers 1 to 4). The SVM was used to test whether the numerical …

Rhino Conservation In Africa, Andrew N. Rowan

WellBeing News

The recovery of white rhinos from a small population of 20 animals in 1895 to tens of thousands today is a major conservation success story, but we are again facing a rapid decline in the numbers of both species of African rhinoceros due mainly to poaching. Demand for rhino horn, mainly from the Far East, has led to an epidemic of poaching. The healthy population of white rhinos in South Africa’s Kruger National Park has fallen from just under 12,000 individuals in 2010 to around 2,200 in 2022. At the current rate of decline, white rhinos will be eliminated from …

Knowledge Transfer In Technological Innovation Clusters, Vania Lopes Simoes Fioravanti, Fabricio Stocker, Flavio Macau

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose:

The aim of this research is to analyze the knowledge transfer process in technological innovation clusters. The problem of the study addresses how organizations can act in a network to enhance experiences and gains, particularly in the aspect of knowledge management.

Design/methodology/approach:

The study is qualitative, applied through a case study, cross-sectional and multiple sources of evidence – semistructured interviews, nonparticipant observation and analysis of documents and secondary institutional data. The case analyzed was the Technology Park of São José dos Campos, in Brazil, involving private companies, governmental organizations, universities and research institutions.

Findings:

The results reinforce the arguments …

Legitimacy And Online Proceedings: Procedural Justice, Access To Justice, And The Role Of Income, Avital Mentovich, J.J. Prescott, Orna Rabinovich-Einy

Law & Economics Working Papers

Courts have long struggled to bridge the access-to-justice gap associated with in-person hearings, which makes the recent adoption of online legal proceedings potentially beneficial. Online proceedings hold promise for better access: they occur remotely, can proceed asynchronously, and often rely solely on written communication. Yet these very qualities may also undermine some of the well-established elements of procedural-justice perceptions, a primary predictor of how people view the legal system’s legitimacy. This paper examines the implications of shifting legal proceedings online for both procedural-justice and access-to-justice perceptions. It also investigates the relationship of both types of perceptions with system legitimacy, as …

Reliable Detection Of Location Spoofing And Variation Attacks, Chiho Kim, Sang-Yoon Chang, Dongeun Lee, Jinoh Kim

Faculty Publications

Location spoofing is a critical attack in mobile communications. While several previous studies investigated the detection of location spoofing attacks, they are limited in their performance and lack the consideration of emerging attack variations. In this paper, we present a data-driven methodology for the reliable detection of location spoofing and its variations. To enhance the performance, we introduce and utilize a new set of features, which is differential in nature and enables the checking of the mobility constraints and inconsistency. Our comparison study with the previous research shows that the presented scheme using the new features significantly improves the accuracy …

Health Care Provider’S Perceptions Of The Transition Between Pediatric To Adolescent And Adulthood: A Qualitative Inquiry, Antoinette W. Coward, Andrea E. Mcdonald

The Journal of the Research Association of Minority Professors

This study examines the current practices provided from pediatric to adult health care for children with special health care needs at FQHCs using the Six Core Elements of Health Care. Methods: A phenomenological approach was used to recruit and interview ten (10) health leaders from FQHCs. The participants were recruited through this letter sent to the Mid-Atlantic Association of Community Health Center. The researchers-initiated contact with the key informant to introduce them to the study. After consent was obtained, demographic information collected, and interviews were scheduled. During the semi-structured interview session, the key informant was asked questions related to their …

A Review Of 3d Polymeric Scaffolds For Bone Tissue Engineering: Principles, Fabrication Techniques, Immunomodulatory Roles, And Challenges, Hassan Nageh, Ahmed G. Abdelaziz, Sara M. Abdo, Mohga S. Abdalla, Asmaa A. Amer, Abdalla Abdal-Hay, Ahmed Barhoum

Nanotechnology Research Centre

Over the last few years, biopolymers have attracted great interest in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to the great diversity of their chemical, mechanical, and physical properties for the fabrication of 3D scaffolds. This review is devoted to recent advances in synthetic and natural polymeric 3D scaffolds for bone tissue engineering (BTE) and regenerative therapies. The review comprehensively discusses the implications of biological macromolecules, structure, and composition of polymeric scaffolds used in BTE. Various approaches to fabricating 3D BTE scaffolds are discussed, including solvent casting and particle leaching, freeze-drying, thermally induced phase separation, gas foaming, electrospinning, and sol–gel techniques. …

Mind The Gap: People-With-Disabilities Education, Kari Rezac

HSC Education Days

Purpose: The purpose of developing a diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum on people with disabilities was to engage in discussion on the social and health disparities and barriers of people with disabilities. In doing so, we delved into understanding key events in the history of United States disability policy and started a discussion on implementable solutions to these barriers with engagement from a panel of individuals living with disabilities. Methods: We developed a series of four mandatory 1-hour lectures for our physical medicine and rehabilitation residents (PM&R), which included traditional lectures, discussions, and a panel of people with disabilities. The …

Measurement Of The VE- Nucleus Charged-Current Double-Differential Cross Section At 〈EV⟩ = 2.4 Gev Using Nova, M. A. Acero, P. Adamson, L. Aliaga, N. Anfimov, A. Antoshkin, E. Arrieta-Diaz, L. Asquith, A. Aurisano, A. Back, M. Biard, N. Balashov, P. Baldi, B. A. Bambah, S. Bashar, K. Bays, R. Bernstein, V. Bhatnagar, D. Bhattarai, B. Bhuyan, J. Bian, Roberto Petti, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

The inclusive electron neutrino charged-current cross section is measured in the NOvA near detector using 8.02×10²⁰ protons-on-target in the NuMI beam. The sample of GeV electron neutrino interactions is the largest analyzed to date and is limited by ≃17% systematic rather than the ≃7.4% statistical uncertainties. The double-differential cross section in final-state electron energy and angle is presented for the first time, together with the single-differential dependence on Q² (squared four-momentum transfer) and energy, in the range 1  GeV≤E_νGENIE, GiBUU, NEUT, and NuWro neutrino event generators. The data do not strongly favor a model over the …

One Size Does Not Fit All: Self-Archiving Personas Based On Federally Funded Researchers At A Mid-Sized Private Institution, Meg M. Eastwood, Jennifer Bowers, Jenelys Cox, Jack M. Maness

University Libraries: Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: This mixed-method study analyzes the self-archiving behaviors and underlying motivations of researchers at an institution very recently recategorized by the Carnegie Classification system from “Doctoral– High Research Activity (R2)” to “Doctoral–Very High Research Activity (R1).”

Methods: A quantitative analysis of data provided by CHORUS, a multi-institutional open access (OA) infrastructure project designed to minimize the administrative costs of complying with federal public access mandates, was followed by semi-structured qualitative interviews with researchers to determine the underlying motivations for self-archiving research papers resulting from federal grant support.

Results: Fifty-one authors with federal research funding published 71 journal …

Emergenet: A Novel Deep-Learning Based Ensemble Segmentation Model For Emergence Timing Detection Of Coleoptile, Aankit Das, Sruti Das Choudhury, Amit Kumar Das, Ashok Samal, Tala Awada

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

The emergence timing of a plant, i.e., the time at which the plant is first visible from the surface of the soil, is an important phenotypic event and is an indicator of the successful establishment and growth of a plant. The paper introduces a novel deep-learning based model called EmergeNet with a customized loss function that adapts to plant growth for coleoptile (a rigid plant tissue that encloses the first leaves of a seedling) emergence timing detection. It can also track its growth from a time-lapse sequence of images with cluttered backgrounds and extreme variations in illumination. EmergeNet is a …

Decomposition Rate As An Emergent Property Of Optimal Microbial Foraging, Stefano Manzoni, Arjun Chakrawal, Glenn Ledder

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

Decomposition kinetics are fundamental for quantifying carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Several theories have been proposed to construct process-based kinetics laws, but most of these theories do not consider that microbial decomposers can adapt to environmental conditions, thereby modulating decomposition. Starting from the assumption that a homogeneous microbial community maximizes its growth rate over the period of decomposition, we formalize decomposition as an optimal control problem where the decomposition rate is a control variable. When maintenance respiration is negligible, we find that the optimal decomposition kinetics scale as the square root of the substrate concentration, resulting …

Metal Contents In House Geckos (Squamata: Gekkonidae) From Industrial And Urban Areas Of Southern Tamaulipas, Mexico And Western Andalucía, Spain, May Reflect Airborne Metal Pollution, Luisiana Morales-Zamudio, Alejandro Fierro-Cabo, Md. Saydur Rahman, Miguel Antonio Dominguez-Crespo

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

House geckos share living quarters with humans in the tropical and subtropical regions inhabited by these reptiles. Gecko behavior, biological traits, continuous exposure to suspended particulate matter 0 µm in diameter (PM10) and dust, as well as status as exotic species, motivated the choice of these species to examine environmental exposure to ambient air pollutants, in particular metals, and subsequent accumulation in these organisms. One part of the study was conducted in Tamaulipas (Mexico) where Hemydactylus frenatus is abundant in urban and industrial environments, the other part was conducted in Andalucia (Spain) where Tarentola mauritanica is found in similar environments. …

A Parameter Discovery Process For The Data Washing Machine Created For Unsupervised Data Curation, Kris E. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

The Data Washing Machine (DWM) is a known and documented open-source Python Jupyter Notebook project that is the foundation for an Unsupervised Data Curation process. The DWM ingests reference data without a prior data cleansing activity and ultimately runs Entity Resolution (ER) on acceptable entity data to cluster duplicate references within the dataset. The DWM currently has 17 modifiable parameters that are used to help tokenize, cleanse, organize, link and cluster like references. With such a large number of parameters, some type of beginning settings as optimal as possible are needed for the DWM process for it to be useful …

Multimodal Image Retrieval Combining Image And Text, Md Imran Sarker

Theses and Dissertations

Retrieving visual or textual similarities from an image query and vice versa has drawn much interest in computer vision. With the growth of the E-commerce marketplace, image retrieval provides excellent competitive opportunities for vendors and customers through a robust recommendation system. Feature integration has always been an essential task for multimodal-based image retrieval approaches. However, different existing matching techniques have been used separately for visual and text similarity. Still, researchers are looking for new methods when it comes to multimodal Image Retrieval. In this paper, I study the image retrieval task, where the input query is an image plus text …

Office Of Interprofessional Education: Ipe Honors Program, Heidi Rogers, Patricia Marshik

HSC Education Days

To assist the HSC Colleges in meeting their Interprofessional Education accreditation requirements, and prepare students for effective patient centered practice, the HSC Office of Interprofessional Education designed and implemented an innovative interprofessional education (IPE) Honors program (the first in the United States) in the Summer of 2019. The standard definition of IPE is, “Interprofessional Education happens when two or more professionals learn with, and from each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes.” (WHO, 2010) This program was built through a dynamic and responsive partnership with health professions students from multiple programs. The program was piloted in the …

The Current - Volume 33 Issue 5, Nova Southeastern University

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Volume Cxliii, Number 12, February 3, 2023, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

Coronary Care Unit Nurses’ Experiences Of Care Management Self-Efficacy: A Qualitative Content Analysis, Fatemeh Mansouri, Parand Pourghane, Maryam Rajab Pour Nikfam, James C. Oleson

The Qualitative Report

Recognizing various aspects of the self-efficacy concept in specialized medical units such as intensive care units (ICUs) and coronary care units (CCUs) has the potential to help nurses improve their quality of care. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative content analysis study in 2018 in hospitals of the Guilan Province, northern Iran, to help explain nurses’ perceptions of self-efficacy in care management within CCU wards. Thirty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted with nurses from CCUs. Using Graneheim and Lundman’s (2004) analytical techniques, we extracted three main themes and nine sub-themes from the data: decline in self-efficacy (e.g., time constraint, high work pressure, …