Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of An Accelerated Life Testing Method For Reliability Assessment Of Wire Bonded Interconnects Subjected To Mechanical And Electromigratory Stresses, Whit Vinson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Power electronic advancement trends indicate that device power density will continue to increase as a result of increased power requirements and desired device form factor reduction in order to reduce weight and material costs and increase ease of integration into next-generation power systems. With these advancements come concerns regarding device reliability. The compounded effects of increased power density and form factor reduction in electrical conductors will yield amplified joule heating effects in addition to the already increasing device temperature profiles resulting from the incorporation of wide bandgap technology into power systems. Joule heating effects can lead to a variety of …

Assessing Employees’ Perceptions Of The Frequency And Intensity Of Workplace Interpersonal Conflict In Lateral And Hierarchical Dyads, Matthew Shayne Castillo

Doctoral Dissertations

Workplace interpersonal conflict has been identified as a potential major source of stress for several occupations. Occupational stress literature concerning this stressor reveals that interpersonal conflict can have adverse outcomes for organizations including absenteeism, turnover, and workers’ compensation claims for psychological injury. Accordingly, researchers have developed measures aimed at capturing perceptions of workplace interpersonal conflict to remediate and prevent it in organizations. Although workplace interpersonal conflict has received considerable attention, there is little research assessing perceptions of conflict from a dyadic perspective in lateral (coworker-coworker) and hierarchical (supervisor-subordinate) relationships between supervisors and non-supervisors. This is important because conflict may be …

Master Of Agriculture Education Graduate Internship Report, Emma Swift

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

This report details the role of an assistant coach with the Cal Poly Rodeo Program and the responsibilities associated with managing rodeo sponsorships.

Prosecution In Public, Prosecution In Private, Lauren M. Ouziel

Notre Dame Law Review

Criminal procedure has long set a boundary between public and private in criminal enforcement: generally speaking, enforcement decisions at the post-charging stage are exposed to some degree of public view, while those at the pre-charging stage remain almost entirely secret. The allocation of public and private is, at heart, an allocation of power—and the current allocation is a relic. When private prosecutors were the mainstay of criminal enforcement, public court processes effectively constrained them. But those processes do little to constrain the spaces where enforcement power today resides: in decisions by the servants of a state-run, professionalized enforcement apparatus on …

How Favored, Exactly? An Analysis Of The Most Favored Nation Theory Of Religious Exemptions From Calvary Chapel To Tandon, Luray Buckner

Notre Dame Law Review

In this Note, I argue that Justice Kavanaugh’s most favored nation test for religious exemptions actually differs from the one employed by the majority of the Court in Tandon. The majority’s formulation of the test is vague and explicitly requires courts to engage in a fact-intensive comparability analysis. Practically, lower courts applying Tandon to religious exemption questions have exploited this comparability step to rule against religious claimants generally, but more specifically to deny them strict scrutiny. Because the Tandon test was formulated to apply to all free exercise claims, the test is necessarily framed in more general terms and …

The Nebraska Covid-19 Early Care And Education Provider Survey Iii: “Holding It Together—And Hanging By A Thread” May 2022, Alexandra Daro, Kathleen C. Gallagher, Kristen M. Cunningham

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

In February 2022, the Buffett Early Childhood Institute conducted the Nebraska COVID-19 Early Care and Education Survey III, in collaboration with state agencies, University of Nebraska faculty, and organization partners. This third survey examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Nebraska’s child care professionals and its implications for practice and policy. Results from the previous surveys, released in April and August 2020, indicated that early care and education professionals in Nebraska, who were already vulnerable prior to the pandemic, have been negatively impacted from the start of the pandemic. The first survey elevated providers’ immediate needs, including funding relief, …

Inter-Cell Slicing Resource Partitioning Via Coordinated Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning, Tianlun Hu, Qi Liao, Qiang Liu, Dan Wellington, Georg Carle

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Network slicing enables the operator to configure virtual network instances for diverse services with specific requirements. To achieve the slice-aware radio resource scheduling, dynamic slicing resource partitioning is needed to orchestrate multi-cell slice resources and mitigate inter-cell interference. It is, however, challenging to derive the analytical solutions due to the complex inter-cell interdependencies, interslice resource constraints, and service-specific requirements. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach that improves the max-min slice performance while maintaining the constraints of resource capacity. We design two coordination schemes to allow distributed agents to coordinate and mitigate inter-cell interference. The …

Identifying Motivators, Facilitators, And Barriers To Engaging In An Online Fine Motor Exercise Program, Kristine Ricossa, Kyndra Menefee, Lauren Rally, Mia Do, Charis Chan

Occupational Therapy | MSOT Capstone Projects

Purpose: The aim of this qualitative study was to examine the impact of the motivators, facilitators and barriers for individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) in engaging in a fine motor exercise program given online. Methods: Using a phenomenological design, a purposive sample of 6 individuals with PD were recruited. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews via zoom with follow up member checks. Data were analyzed through an inductive approach by developing generalizations from themes based on the interview data. Results: Three common themes were developed, ‘integrating and forming habits’, ‘acknowledging participation in exercise can fight the disease’, ‘recognizing improvement in …

Hadron, Lily Song '23, Anisha Kolambe '24, Gautham Anne '23, Samuel Go '23

Hadron Magazine

• Pg 4 : The Impact of a Sip of Coffee
• Pg 8 : Any Ideas About Sonoluminesence?
• Pg 11 : Memory, Memory, and the Brain
• Pg 13 : Climate Change Soon to Be a Thing of the Past?
• Pg 15 : Non Fungible Tokens

Higher Education Housing Professionals And Disability: A Grounded Theory Exploration Of Resident Directors’ Understandings Of Disability, Christopher Toutain

Education (PhD) Dissertations

The residential experiences of students with disabilities in higher education play a pivotal role in their overall campus education. However, little is known about the ways in which the staff who manage and support these residential environments understand and work with issues and concepts of disability. Utilizing constructivist grounded theory, this study examines the ways in which resident directors think about and work with disability within their positions of residential management. The study also explores the ways in which resident directors think about and understand disability as a component of diversity, the steps that resident directors take in working with …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Teacher Preparation Standards Within Inclusion-Intensive States, Kay Lynn Ceja

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Federal law calls for students with disabilities to be educated in the least restrictive environment possible. However, this still allows for students with disabilities to be placed in a range of educational settings, from the general education classroom to a separate school. The number of students with disabilities that are included to the maximum extent possible in the general education classroom varies by state. This study focused on the role of teacher training as defined by state drive teacher education standards. The purposeful outlier sample was selected by identifying the 12 states with the highest levels of inclusion of students …

Beta Drift: Forecasting The Manifold Relationships Between Students And Their Pursuit Of Stem Careers, Douglas D. Havard

Education (PhD) Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which motivational and persistence factors predict the occupational career choices of underrepresented students in their pursuit of a STEM career. Data selected from the High School Longitudinal Study beginning with the base year through the fourth wave were employed in a large-scale multinomial regression analysis. Anticipated STEM occupation at the age of 30 was examined across six years of complex survey data using multiple taxonometric definitions. Social Cognitive Career Theory provided the theoretical framework for defining relevant factors affecting this STEM pursuit construct. The findings from the study suggest …

Comparison Of Treadmill Training For Individuals Post-Cerebrovascular Accident In Normalizing Reciprocal Gait And Improving Balance: A Systematic Review, Gregory Bell, Kayla Harrell, Alex Loya, Nora Salgado

DPT Capstones

Background. Optimizing rehabilitation techniques for patients with chronic stroke remains an ongoing effort. Previous research has yet to synthesize the effectiveness of underwater treadmill training (UTT) and body weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) for improving common impairments in balance and gait.

Purpose. The purpose of this review was to compare the effectiveness of UTT in helping to normalize reciprocal gait pattern and improve balance compared to BWSTT in patients with chronic cerebrovascular accidents (CVA).

Data Sources. CINAHL, Medline, PubMed, and Embase databases were searched over a period of several months from October of 2020 through March of 2021.

Study Selection. …

Implicit Bias Regarding Race In Physical Therapist Students: A Mixed Method Study, Brianna Dawkins, Joseph Kennerly

DPT Capstones

Introduction: Bias is defined as a tendency to show favor for or against something or someone; bias can be implicit or explicit. When their implicit biases are left unchecked, healthcare practitioners are more likely to negatively affect patient health outcomes. The purposes of this study were to examine implicit racial bias among physical therapist students, and explore their perspectives about how cultural competency content regarding race and ethnicity could be improved in their current education program.

Methods: Thirty-three students from the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) Program at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) completed a pre-Implicit Association …

Examining Grit And Social Capital In First-Generation And Continuing Generation Students In A Doctor Of Physical Therapy Program, Maria Isabel Avila

DPT Capstones

Background and Purpose: Decreasing educational disparities experienced by minorities is an important step toward improving diversity in healthcare. The purposes of this study were to identify if grit or social capital is related to Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) student success, and to identify if First Generation College Students (FGCSs) have different levels of grit and social capital compared to their Continuing Generation College Student (CGCS) peers.

Subjects: Participants were 1st, 4th, and 7th-semester students in the 9-semester DPT Program at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in summer 2020.

Methods: This was an exploratory, non-experimental study employing …

Does Exergaming Improve Physical And Mental Health Outcomes For Individuals Living With Severe Mental Illness Compared To Traditional Treatment: A Systematic Review, David González, James Walther

DPT Capstones

Background: Physical activity improves physiological and psychological health outcomes. Increased research has been dedicated to the effect of physical activity through active video game play. Limited studies have explored active video game play in people diagnosed with severe mental illness (SMI). The term “exergaming” is relatively new but describes the current body of research studies that employ active video game play in lieu of traditional exercise. This review focuses on finding the most current available evidence exploring the effects of physical activity through exergaming on the physical and psychiatric health outcomes of people with SMI.

Methods: Articles across 6 databases …

Ultrasound Imaging Can Surrogate Mechanical Skinfold Calipers Assessing Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue And Body Fat Mass When A Standardized Protocol Is Used, Angel Rodriguez, Sebastian Lopez

DPT Capstones

Purpose: The purpose of this study is two-fold: 1) to determine the agreement between ultrasound (US) imaging and mechanical skinfold (SF) caliper measurements using a standardized protocol and 2) to determine the agreement between SF caliper and US imaging inestimating total body fat mass and percent body fat mass using anthropometric formulas for body composition.

Methods: The present study has a repeated measures design where 2 independent testers measured 8 SFs using a mechanical caliper and US imaging, respectively, on 49 volunteers (24 males and 25 females). Anthropometric protocol followed the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry’s (ISAK) standardization …

Efficacy Of 4-D Smart Wireless Motion Sensors For Analysis Of Gait: A Pilot Study, Juan Torres, Jonathan Britton

DPT Capstones

Background: Wearable technology has become a widely utilized method of objective data collection in healthcare. Several barriers currently exist that are limiting their clinical utility. 4-D Smart Wireless Motion Sensors (4-D SWMS) have been developed to offer a less obtrusive wireless sensor that can be used in a variety of settings. The addition of machine learning to captured motion sensor data has the ability to improve classification accuracy in the analysis of gait.

Purpose: The purpose of this pilot study is to determine whether the 4-D SWMS are sensitive enough to accurately differentiate normal gait parameters in healthy individuals.

Methods: …

Effects Of Neuromuscular Interventions Utilizing External Biofeedback Apparatuses On The Risk And Incidence Of Second Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries: A Systematic Review., Marisa Olmo, Rebecca Sharp

DPT Capstones

STUDY DESIGN: Systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is a common orthopedic condition with an estimated rate of 20,000 to 600,000 injuries in the US per year, with higher incidences in athletic and female populations. The rate of re-injury following surgical ACL repair (ACLR)ranges between 13.8-33.3%. Current clinical practice guidelines for ACLR rehabilitation cite inconclusive evidence for definitive outcome measures that accurately determine successful return to sport (RTS). There is a need to establish more effective avenues of rehabilitation interventions to decrease the rate of reinjury, particularly in female athletes. Recent evidence suggests interventions utilizing external biofeedback apparatuses …

Acute Hemodynamic Responses In Women Older Than 40 Years Old Following Resistance Training With Blood Flow Restriction Compared To Resistance Training Alone: A Systematic Review, Larissa Castro, Roger Castro, Michelle Constante, Seles Lerma

DPT Capstones

Introduction: Blood flow restriction (BFR) is a novel training method that has gained recent popularity given the benefits and similar results to resistance training (RT) with lower intensities. The authors of this systematic review sought to determine the acute hemodynamic effects of BFR plus RT compared to RT alone in women over 40 years old.

Methods: The databases searched included Pubmed, EBSCO (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINHAL), SPORTDiscuss, Medline, Academic Search Complete) and Cochrane. Keywords utilized included BFR, occlusion therapy, female, older female, women, older women, RT, hemodynamic, blood pressure, and the boolean phrase utilized was …

Traditional Physical Therapy Versus Traditional Physical Therapy Plus Pain Education For Treatment Of Chronic Neck Pain: A Systematic Review, Jesus Gabriel Altamiranda Molina, Adrian Joshua Llañez, Oscar Martinez, Collin Wigely

DPT Capstones

Objectives: Chronic neck pain, or neck pain that endures for longer than three months, is a very common musculoskeletal condition that affects a large number of individuals annually. Traditional physical therapy interventions used to treat this condition often include manual therapy techniques and neck specific exercises. Pain neuroscience education, which focuses on the pathophysiology of pain, is a method used to treat chronic pain conditions. The purpose of this systematic review is to determine whether the addition of pain neuroscience education techniques to traditional physical therapy interventions improves patient outcomes in those with chronic neck pain.

Methods: An electronic search …

Assessing Gender Bias In Student Evaluations Of Teaching In Collegiate Aviation, Kary M. Randall

Doctoral Dissertations

Student evaluations of teaching (SET) are commonly used to assess teaching effectiveness and influence personnel decisions in higher education. This quantitative study sought to determine if gender and years of teaching experience were related to SET ratings for collegiate aviation faculty. Constructs evaluated related to gender stereotypes and consisted of expressiveness and immediacy as stereotypically female and professionalism and openness as stereotypically male. The overall rating was also analyzed as a fifth construct. Evaluation ratings from 54 participants associated with nine Aviation Accreditation Board International affiliated institutions were analyzed for the 2017 to 2020 academic years. Findings from the two-way …

Science Instructional Leadership Knowledge: A Qualitative Case Study, Mary Ann Chapman

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative case study aimed to investigate instructional leaders’ depths of science content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge and how their depths of that knowledge supports effective instructional leadership. Implementation efforts around the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have highlighted the need for science instructional leaders to have in-depth content and pedagogical knowledge to function as effective instructional leaders in secondary science classrooms across the United States. Semi-structured interviews with 19 teachers and instructional leaders in a public high school in the southern United States informed the study. The findings revealed that teachers expect instructional leaders to have higher levels …

Land And Water Resources For Irrigated Agriculture In The Pilbara, Paul Galloway, John A. Simons, Karen Holmes, Dennis Van Gool

Resource management technical reports

This report documents the procedures used to identify suitable locations for irrigation development in the Pilbara region. It is the first study to investigate the potential for irrigated agriculture across the Pilbara. We used a desktop analysis to ascertain water availability and spatial data modelling to determine the potential of the land and soil resource to support irrigated agriculture. This study was part of the Pilbara Hinterland Agricultural Development Initiative (PHADI).

We used existing rangeland land inventory information augmented with digital spatial environmental data, in a process known as map disaggregation, to create soil and landform maps that had a …

When Problems Become Solutions: Harnessing The Osteogenic Capacity Of Disease-Causing Stem Cells To Repair Bone Fractures, Mehreen Pasha

University Scholar Projects

While we often perceive disease as negative, there is potential to engineer seemingly negative biological phenomena into therapeutics to treat a variety of human illnesses. Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a genetic disorder involving uncontrolled, widespread, extraskeletal bone growth, or heterotopic ossification (HO). In FOP patients, stem cells called fibro/adipogenic progenitors (FAPs) follow an abnormal, osteogenic pathway. In the present study, we investigate whether we can adapt these Acvr1 mutant FAPs, which are exceptional at producing bone, to repair bone fractures in otherwise normal patients. The primary aims of this study are (1) to devise and optimize a novel method …

What About Generic "And"- And "Or"-Operations: From Levels Of Certainty (Philosophical-Physical-Mathematical) To A Natural Interpretation Of Quantum-Like Negative Degrees Of Certainty, Miroslav Svitek, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Fuzzy techniques -- techniques designed to convert imprecise human knowledge into precise computer-understandable terms -- have many successful applications. Traditional applications of fuzzy techniques use only important general features of human reasoning and, to make an implement more efficient, ignore subtle details, details which are not important for the corresponding application. But from the more fundamental viewpoint, it is desirable to understand, in all the detail, how people actually reason. In this paper, we use general ideas of fuzzy approach to answer this question. Interestingly -- and somewhat unexpectedly -- the resulting analysis leads to a natural explanation of existence …

How Can The Opposite To A True Theory Be Also True? A Similar Talmudic Discussion Helps Make This Famous Bohr's Statement Logically Consistent, Miroslav Svitek, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In his famous saying, the Nobelist physicist Niels Bohr claimed that the sign of a deep theory is that while this theory is true, its opposite is also true. While this statement makes heuristic sense, it does not seem to make sense from a logical viewpoint, since, in logic, the opposite to true is false. In this paper, we show how a similar Talmudic discussion can help come up with an interpretation in which Bohr's statement becomes logically consistent.

In The Absence Of Information, The Only Reasonable Negotiation Scheme Is Offering A Certain Percentage Of The Original Request: A Proof, Miroslav Svitek, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the case of complete information, a reasonable solution to a negotiation process is Nash's bargaining solution, in which we maximize the product of all agents' utility gains. This is the only solution that does not depend on the order in which we list the agents, and does not change if we use a different scale for describing each agent's utility. In this paper, we apply similar invariance criteria to a situation when practically all information is absent, and all we know is the smallest and largest possible gains. We show that in this situation, the only invariant negotiation strategy …

Why Some Theoretically Possible Representations Of Natural Numbers Were Historically Used And Some Were Not: An Algorithm-Based Explanation, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Historically, people have used many ways to represent natural numbers: from the original "unary" arithmetic, where each number is represented as a sequence of, e.g., cuts (4 is IIII) to modern decimal and binary systems. However, with all this variety, some seemingly reasonable ways of representing natural numbers were never used. For example, it may seem reasonable to represent numbers as products -- e.g., as products of prime numbers -- such a representation was never used in history. So why some theoretically possible representations of natural numbers were historically used and some were not? In this paper, we propose an …

Himmelfarb Library Liaison Letter - May 2022, George Washington University, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Himmelfarb Library Liaison Letters

No abstract provided.