Digital Commons Network^™

Monetization For Content Generation And User Engagement On Social Media Platforms: Evidence From Paid Q&A, Jonathan Hua Ye, Cecil Eng Huang Chua

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Social media platforms want to increase their valuation in terms of total content quantity and user engagement. Monetization is often used to induce user content generation. However, research documents that while monetization increases the quantity of specific kinds of content, it does not necessarily increase the total content quantity or user engagement (i.e., platform value). Furthermore, the impact of monetization may depend on the social status of content creators. This article investigates paid question and answer (paid Q&A). Based on expectancy theory and relevant research, this article hypothesizes the effects of introducing paid Q&A on both total content quantity and …

Assessment Of Scientific Payload Carrying Spirulina Onboard Blue Origin’S New Shepard Vehicle, Pedro J. Llanos, Morgan Shilling, Kristina Andrijauskaite, Kody Kidder, Vijay V. Duraisamy

Publications

The research team at ERAU and UTHSCSA analyzed the effects of suborbital flight stressors and various light conditions (red, white, no light) on the Arthrospira platensis (Spirulina), onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle. Commercially available cyanobacterium species were cultivated and closely monitored in mother colonies several months before the suborbital flight mission. The aim of this study was to estimate the biomass production and growth as a potential dietary alternative for prospective human spaceflight's life support system. Spirulina samples were flown in a NanoLab with adjacent avionics supporting the light conditions and sensors to monitor the temperature, relative humidity, and …

Post-Seismic Response And Repair Of Earthquake-Damaged Reinforced Concrete Bridges, Giacomo Fraioli

Doctoral Dissertations

“In bridge structures, column members are typically designed to be the primary source of energy dissipation during an earthquake. Therefore, reinforced concrete (RC) bridges that are damaged in an earthquake tend to have damage to the column members. While many studies have been conducted on seismic strengthening of RC bridge columns, most are focused on retrofit instead of repair. In addition, the limited research on seismic repair of RC bridges has focused on evaluating the response of individual columns (member level), not the bridge structure (system level), due to limitations in modeling and especially testing of full bridge structures. Local …

Scale Formation, Properties And De-Scaling In Steelmaking, Richard Osei

Doctoral Dissertations

During continuous castings, reheating, and hot rolling, slab surfaces are exposed to atmospheres containing oxidizing gases which results in scale formation. Inefficient removal of the formed scale during reheating affects product surface quality. The effect of steel composition and operating parameters on scale formation and scale removal efficiencies were investigated. Experimental investigations were carried out using a thermogravimetric (TGA) apparatus designed to replicate the combustion gas atmosphere and temperature in actual industrial slab reheat furnaces. Report on oxidation kinetics, scale structure and properties, and descaling were conducted on laboratory cast and industrial samples. Different characterization techniques were used to analyze …

Evaluation Of Recrosslinkable Preformed Particle Gel (Rppg) As A Fluid Loss Control Material During Drilling Operations, Mohamed Saad M. Ahdaya

Doctoral Dissertations

"One of the most intense, expensive, and time-consuming problems during drilling operations is the loss of circulation, which could result in several consequences, including wellbore collapse, fluid inflow, formation damage, environmental issues, and nonproductive time. This research aims to evaluate novel materials that can mitigate lost circulation and overcome the limitation of other materials. In this research, a comprehensive evaluation of a re-crosslinkable preformed particle gel (RPPG) has been conducted to determine the extent to which it can be used to control drilling fluid losses during drilling operations. The RPPG consists of swellable gel particles that can self-crosslink to form …

Forecasting Nodal Price Difference Between Day-Ahead And Real-Time Electricity Markets Using Long-Short Term Memory And Sequence-To-Sequence Networks, Ronit Das, Rui Bo, Haotian Chen, Waqas Ur Rehman, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Price forecasting is at the center of decision making in electricity markets. Much research has been done in forecasting energy prices for a single market while little research has been reported on forecasting price difference between markets, which presents higher volatility and yet plays a critical role in applications such as virtual trading. To this end, this paper takes the first attempt at it and employs novel deep learning architecture with Bidirectional Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) units and Sequence-to-Sequence (Seq2Seq) architecture to forecast nodal price difference between day-ahead and real-time markets. In addition to value prediction, these deep learning architectures …

Pet Imaging Reveals Reduced Synaptic Density In People With Well-Controlled Hiv Infection, Julian Joseph Weiss

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Background: Synaptic injury is a pathological hallmark of neurological impairment in people living with HIV (PLWH), a common complication despite viral suppression with antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, there are no biomarkers sensitive to neurocognitive impairment in PLWH. Measurement of synaptic density in living humans may allow better understanding of HIV neuropathogenesis and provide a dynamic biomarker for therapeutic studies. We applied novel synaptic vesical protein 2A (SV2A) positron emission tomographic (PET) imaging to investigate synaptic density in the frontostriatalthalamic region in PLWH and HIV-uninfected (HIV-) participants.

Methods: In this cross-sectional pilot study,13 older male PLWH on ART underwent neurocognitive assessments, …

"How To Succeed": Determining And Comparing The Musical And Non-Musical Influences Behind The Broadway Adaptation Of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Gary Bogers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The following research project is the result of comparing and contextualizing the original non-musical and musical drafts of the original 1961 Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. The intention is to detail the process of musically adapting a non-musical source, specifically the 1952 satirical text How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying: The Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune by businessman-turned-satirist Shepherd Mead. Research was predominantly completed through analysis of the non-musical draft written by television writers Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert in the 1950s and acquired from the Billy Rose Theatre Division of …

Breaking The Mold: Haunted Attraction Mazes; A Study In Reducing Predictability & Increasing Intensity, Within Unconventional Halloween Attraction Experiences, Amy Avalos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Every enchanted Fall season, a segment of the public flocks to a multitude of haunted Halloween attractions across the U.S., to experience fear as a form of amusement and entertainment. Psychologists continue to research the physiological and cognitive behaviors that are associated with fear and the "fight or flight" responses that are triggered when individuals are engaged in a heighten sense of danger. However, as guests traverse through these haunted attraction experiences, it's commonplace for guests to enter into these typical modes of "fight or flight" behaviors very quickly. Once this response kicks in, the guests' instinct is to scramble …

Choreographing Closeness: The Effects Of Intimacy Choreography Best Practices In Educational Theatre, Morgan Cobb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Power dynamics between teacher/director and student/actors in an educational theatre setting are inevitable and directly impact the way consent is viewed and given, specifically with youth performers. In response to the #MeToo movement within theatre and film, the role of intimacy choreographer emerged with the goal of creating a consent-based rehearsal process that ensured the mental, emotional, and physical safety of the actor (Pace 25) while conveying the intimacy required to effectively support the script. The use of intimacy choreographers is almost exclusively used in professional film and theatre settings. Applying the pedagogies created and taught by leading intimacy organizations …

Nurse Managers' Patient Safety Communication, Christine Deatrick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Medical errors are a continuing issue for healthcare organizations and can lead to patient harm or death. To bring about organizational learning and therefore reduce medical errors, information must successfully flow through an organization. Nurse managers play an essential role as the conduit of information between frontline staff and the organization. The primary purpose of this study is to describe the decision-making process of how nurse managers actively select and transmit information on patient safety concerns. A qualitative constructivist grounded theory approach was used. Nineteen unit-level nurse managers, working full-time in an acute care hospital with a minimum of one-year …

Two Essays On Investor Disagreement And Asset Prices, Sulei Han

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

My dissertation studies the measurement of investor disagreement and the effects of investor disagreement on asset prices. In my first essay, I clarify the seemingly contradicting theoretical predictions of Miller (1977), and Varian (1985, 1989) and Abel (1989), and design empirical analysis to test the predictions in a unified framework. Miller models the effect of the level of disagreement on asset prices and predicts a negative relation between investor disagreement and subsequent asset returns. Varian and Abel present results on the effect of the change in disagreement on asset prices and the resulting positive relation between disagreement and subsequent asset …

National Identity And Civil War Memory In The American South: How History, Ideology, And Media Inform The Culture Wars Of The Late Twentieth Century, John Lancaster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

On Veterans Day weekend, 1994, the remains of a Confederate soldier named Lewis Powell were reinterred in a cemetery in Geneva, Florida and given military honors. This thesis begins by historicizing Powell's burial ceremony to the final decades of the twentieth century to argue for new ways of viewing and understanding how Americans engaged with Civil War memory and legacy at a time of particularly felt social and cultural change. The 'culture wars' of the 1980s and 1990s describe the many battles and debates fought over issues as wide-ranging as race, politics, gender, sexuality, religion, and education, and were often …

A Theoretical Prototype For Narrative And Interactive Development Within A Theme Park Parade, Carson Luter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

While theme park parades have developed with technology and guest demands, there is an opportunity to continue innovating the medium with additional guest interactivity. This thesis tracks experiential comparatives that provide iterative components to be utilized for a new theme park parade concept; parade "show stops" that allow for guests to approach the parade floats up-close, participatory entertainment offerings with live actor-driven branching narratives, roleplay and gameplay-driven interactive experiences, and theme park parades that follow a direct linear narrative. What follows is a theme park parade design concept, accompanied by a production and operational plan, that combines the existing spectacle …

Utilizing Dramaturgy To Activate Creativity In Young Audiences, Joni Newman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Theatre for Young Audiences companies in the United States rely heavily on recognized titles to bring in audiences. As a result, most of their productions are adapted from recognizable titles, including films, television series, and popular literature. These adaptations draw audiences in that may not otherwise go to the theatre, which is especially important within the world of TYA where the target audience (children) only gains access to a theatre through adult caregivers. Additionally, most children go to the theatre as part of school field trips, further encouraging season selections that will fill educational needs in addition to providing theatrical …

Graph Neural Networks For Improved Interpretability And Efficiency, Patrick Pho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Attributed graph is a powerful tool to model real-life systems which exist in many domains such as social science, biology, e-commerce, etc. The behaviors of those systems are mostly defined by or dependent on their corresponding network structures. Graph analysis has become an important line of research due to the rapid integration of such systems into every aspect of human life and the profound impact they have on human behaviors. Graph structured data contains a rich amount of information from the network connectivity and the supplementary input features of nodes. Machine learning algorithms or traditional network science tools have limitation …

Inhibitory Effect Of Phytochemicals Towards Sars-Cov-2 Papain Like Protease (Plpro) Proteolytic And Deubiquitinase Activity, Anasha Kawall, Devin S M Lewis, Avini Sharma, Krishna Chavada, Rahul Deshmukh, Srujana Rayalam, Vicky Mody, Shashidharamurthy Taval

PCOM Scholarly Works

Recent studies have shown that RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (3CLpro), and papain-like protease (PLpro) are necessary for SARS-CoV-2 replication. Among these three enzymes, PLpro exhibits both proteolytic and deubiquitinase (DUB) activity and is responsible for disrupting the host's innate immune response against SARS-CoV-2. Because of this unique property of PLpro, we investigated the inhibitory effects of phytochemicals on the SARS-CoV-2 PLpro enzyme. Our data indicates that the phytochemicals such as catechin, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), mangiferin, myricetin, rutin, and theaflavin exhibited inhibitory activity with IC₅₀ values of 14.2, 128.4, 95.3, 12.1, and 43.4, and 7.3 μM, respectively, towards …

Our Weakness To Forgive: War Psychosis And The Impaired Humanity Of Colonel Gillespie, Raymond Mitchell

East Texas Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Characterizations Of The Press: An Empirical Study, Sonja R. West, Ronnell Anderson Jones

Scholarly Works

The erosion of constitutional norms in the United States is at the center of an urgent national debate. Among the most crucial of these issues is the fragile and deteriorating relationship between the press and the government. While scholars have responded with sophisticated examinations of the President’s and legislators’ characterizations of the news media, one branch of government has
received little scrutiny—the U.S. Supreme Court. This gap in the scholarship is remarkable in light of the Court’s role as the very institution entrusted with safeguarding the rights of the press. This Article presents the findings of the first comprehensive empirical …

Disclosure's Limits, Usha Rodrigues, Mike Stegemoller

Scholarly Works

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have exploded in popularity, luring both adventurous retail investors and sophisticated institutional investors. In a SPAC, a publicly traded shell corporation acquires a private target, thereby taking it public in a manner that circumvents the rigors of a traditional initial public offering (IPO). Proponents vaunt SPACs’ ability to simplify the process of accessing the public markets and democratize capitalism, but in their current form they pose risks to retail investors and to the market as a whole. Using a hand-collected dataset, this Article fills a gap in the literature by providing new empirical data regarding …

Artificially Intelligent Boards And The Future Of Delaware Corporate Law, Christopher Bruner

Scholarly Works

The prospects for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to impact the development of Delaware corporate law are at once over- and under-stated. As a general matter, claims to the effect that AI systems might ultimately displace human directors not only exaggerate the foreseeable technological potential of these systems, but also tend to ignore doctrinal and institutional impediments intrinsic to Delaware's competitive model – notably, heavy reliance on nuanced and context-specific applications of the fiduciary duty of loyalty by a true court of equity. At the same time, however, there are specific applications of AI systems that might not merely be accommodated by …

Schoolhouse Rap, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Rap on Trial, the treatment of rap music as evidence in the American criminal legal process, is well-documented and increasingly scrutinised. Research has shown that – with little restraint – police, prosecutors, probation officers and judges use rap lyrics to investigate, prosecute and punish individuals. Less noticed is that a similar phenomenon is occurring in the American K–12 educational system, which disciplines school-age youth who participate in rap culture and sometimes refers them to the juvenile or criminal legal systems for additional punishment. This article describes and analyses a small set of identified cases of this scenario, demonstrating that rap …

Modern Sentencing Mitigation, John B. Meixner Jr.

Scholarly Works

Sentencing has become the most important part of a criminal case. Over the past century, criminal trials have given way almost entirely to pleas. Once a case is charged, it almost always ends up at sentencing. And notably, judges learn little sentencing-relevant information about the case or the defendant prior to sentencing and have significant discretion in sentencing decisions. Thus, sentencing is the primary opportunity for the defense to affect the outcome of the case by presenting mitigation: reasons why the nature of the offense or characteristics of the defendant warrant a lower sentence. It is surprising, then, that relatively …

A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach To Assessing Judicial Ideology, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

What do judges really care about? Scholars have used various methods to identify a judge’s policy preferences. The standard method in political science, called the Martin-Quinn score, counts a judge’s votes for conservative or liberal outcomes. But judges don’t just vote, they give reasons in written opinions. Reason-giving is not only part of the tradition of common-law decision making but is also central to rule-of-law ideals, concerns that are not the focus most empirical methodologies. What’s more, the reasons a judge gives for reaching a conclusion provide powerful evidence for what the judge herself cares about. That is especially the …

Regulating Dynamic Risk In Changing Market Conditions, Susan Navarro Smelcer, Anne M. Tucker, Yusen Xia

Scholarly Works

How successful are the SEC's attempts to regulate dynamic risk in financial markets? Using mutual fund disclosure data from two financial shocks-the Puerto Rican debt crisis and COVID- 19-this Article finds evidence that SEC open-ended regulations, like the obligation to disclose changing market conditions, are largely successful in capturing dynamic, future risk. Funds engage in wide- spread and, often, detailed disclosures for new risks-although these disclosures vary widely in specificity. But not all funds dis- close new risks. This creates perverse incentives for funds to opt out of disclosure or downplay threats with boilerplate language when new risks are emerging. …

A Qualitative Comparison Of Parent And Childcare Provider Perceptions Of Communication And Family Engagement In Children's Healthy Eating And Physical Activity, Danae Dinkel, Maggie Rasmussen, John P. Rech, Kailey Snyder, Dipti Dev

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Background: Parents and childcare providers play a substantial role in the development of health behaviors among the children they care for. In order to ensure the optimal growth and development of children, communication and family engagement in childcare is critical. Previous studies examining parent or provider perceptions about healthy eating or physical activity have explored these concepts individually and/or have only included only parents or providers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare childcare provider and parent perceptions of communication regarding healthy eating and physical activity as well as use of best practice strategies on family engagement for …

The Development Of Social Competence In Children With Disabilities, Soo-Young Hong, Elizabeth A. Steed, Lori E. Meyer, İbrahim H. Acar

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Children with disabilities experience unique challenges in developing social skills critical to achieve their social goals. Although there are individual differences, children with delays and disabilities may struggle to communicate with others, understand gestures, and take other people’s viewpoints. These differences may prevent children with disabilities from initiating and sustaining social interactions and, in turn, from developing high levels of social competence (Hebbeler & Spiker, 2016).

To support social development of children with disabilities, it is important to promote positive relationships within the family system as well as the teaching of social skills in inclusive early learning environments (Mahoney et …

Jail Health And Early Release Practices, Brandon L. Garrett, Deniz Ariturk, Jessica Carda-Auten, David L. Rosen

Faculty Scholarship

Local jails in the United States incarcerate millions of people each year. The COVID-19 pandemic made jail health a pressing public health concern nationally, where releasing individuals from jails occurred across the country in order to prevent pandemic spread. But releases also faced substantial resistance and exposed long-standing challenges in delivering adequate healthcare in jail settings. People in jail have substantially higher levels of medical need than individuals in the general population, with large numbers having serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders. Further, overcrowded conditions and poor healthcare standards and delivery make jails harmful to those already-vulnerable people. What …

Rural Parent's Experiences Of Stress And Resilience During The Covid-19 Pandemic And School Closure, Emily Wilson, Jungwon Eum, Yuenjung Joo, Martinique A. Sealy, Jentry Stoneman Barrett, Gwen C. Nugent, Joan M. Carraher, Angela G. Hinrichs

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated social and economic disruptions, resulting in cascading effects on the health and well- being of global citizens. However, little research has focused on how COVID-19 has affected rural regions, despite rurality being a critical factor for understanding community impact and response to the pandemic. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the experiences of rural Nebraskan parents with young children during the COVID-19 pandemic and school shutdown, and the strategies they used to support their families during that time. We conducted individual and group interviews with 22 white, non-Hispanic mothers living in rural …

Balancing User Experience For Mobile One-To-One Interpersonal Telepresence, Kevin Pfeil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The COVID-19 virus disrupted all aspects of our daily lives, and though the world is finally returning to normalcy, the pandemic has shown us how ill-prepared we are to support social interactions when expected to remain socially distant. Family members missed major life events of their loved ones; face-to-face interactions were replaced with video chat; and the technologies used to facilitate interim social interactions caused an increase in depression, stress, and burn-out. It is clear that we need better solutions to address these issues, and one avenue showing promise is that of Interpersonal Telepresence. Interpersonal Telepresence is an interaction paradigm …