Digital Commons Network^™

Chemical And Physical Characterization Of Verbenaceae Essential Oils Using Modern Analytical Methods And Chemometrics, Aleksandra N. Hilliard

Master's Theses

Essential oils have been used for generations to treat various health issues, including mitigating insomnia, reducing stress, inflammation, and preserving foods, to mention a few. Essential oils have complex chemistry, which defines the essence of the host plant. Recently, increased commercial uses of essential oils have prompted attention at the governmental level to monitor the chemical, physical, or biological activity of essential oils. This study is an attempt to add new information for consumers to the understanding of the composition of essential oils.

Modern analytical techniques including FTIR-ATR, GC-MS, LC-MS-MS, multivariate analysis statistics, and physio-chemical techniques (electrochemistry, DPPH, TRC, and …

Where The Soul Belongs: The Search For A Meaningful Life Through Han Funerary Art — With A Focus On The Mawangdui T-Shaped Painting And Jinqueshan Han Tomb Silk Painting, Tong Su

Theses - ALL

Perceptions of life and death are deeply embedded in the artistic expressions of a society, shaped by its cultural, philosophical and social environment. This study explores how funerary paintings from the early Han dynasty - the Mawangdui T-shaped painting and the Jinqueshan Han tomb silk painting - reflect evolving views of life and the afterlife under changing social conditions. While both paintings derive from the funerary traditions of Chu culture and Daoist beliefs in immortality, their differences highlight a significant shift: the Mawangdui T-Shaped Painting emphasizes ascent to the heavenly world through nature worship and ancestral connections, while the Jinqueshan …

Green Roots In The Grassroots: Conceptualizing Eco-Conservation And Eco-Funding For Women In Vihiga, Kenya, Phylis Musimbi Orado

Theses - ALL

Women’s grassroots ecological activism significantly influences environmental conservation in Vihiga County, Kenya. These women’s labor, expertise, and organizational skills are essential for addressing environmental degradation and resource scarcity. This study examines how rural women, through community-based organizations (CBOs), address the intersection of environmental issues and gendered socioeconomic hierarchies to promote ecological balance and community well-being. Recognizing that environmental crises disproportionately affect rural women due to their greater involvement in water collection, food production, and caregiving, the research situates women’s activism within a broader context of environmental justice, community ecology, and equitable development. This study examines the various goals, adaptive approaches, …

Reparative Justice In Late Twentieth Century Africa: The O.A.U, Durban, And Accra Reparations Conferences, Franklin Donudenu Adorsu

Theses - ALL

This thesis explores the evolution of African-led transnational reparations campaigns from the final decade of the twentieth century through the early decades of the twenty-first. It examines how reparative justice initiatives have emerged in response to the enduring legacies of slavery, colonialism, and systemic racial oppression, and how these campaigns reflect both historical memory and contemporary demands for justice by Africans and people of African descent worldwide. While early reparations discourse often centered on the diaspora, this research argues that recent mobilizations on the African continent in attempts to seek redress for historical injustices, particularly the 1993 Abuja Conference, the …

Independent Horror Video Games As Modern Zines, Kevin J. Wade

Theses - ALL

Video games are typically perceived as expensive projects requiring hundreds of specialized employees to produce. However, they can serve as a potent medium for personal expression and collaborative storytelling, especially in the realm of Independent games. This paper will examine video games as modern illustrated zines, particularly their role as tools for socially transgressive expression. To provide a baseline for understanding how horror games engage players through polished, more mainstream narratives, we will first examine Triple-A horror games with professional staff and publisher financing. We will use this as a stepping stone to delve into independent horror games, we will …

A Future Better Than The Familar: Development From A Passive Observer, Monae Kyhara Sims

Theses - ALL

Not only are humans disconnected from each other, they are even more so disconnected from themselves. Now more than ever the progression of technology, anti-progressive ideology and policy has impacted modes of communication, community, and our consciousness. Using empirical research based on self-experience and evaluation, mass social studies, and reviewing media such as The Body Keeps the Score, The Black Ball, Casablanca, and many other articles and short form videos, this writing argues that capitalism is the true puppet master of the growing failures in our communities; outside of the known financial struggles that come with it. Dating apps and …

The Synthesis Of A Photo-Affinity Probe Library For The Fatty Acid Amide Proteome And The Endocannabinoid System Within, Robert E. Feeney Iii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fatty acid amides are a large family of endogenous metabolites with significant biological activity, including that of the endocannabinoid system. Currently little is known about how this system of tightly regulated compounds works within humans. This work lays the foundation to explore the structure-activity relationship driving the selectivity of ligand-protein interactions involved with fatty acid amides. A library of activity-based proteomic profiling probes for fatty acid amides has been synthesized to this end. Additionally, progress towards phytocannabinoid probes has been made as well.

The Political Philosophy Of Habitude: Conservatism Analytically Explained, Kyle S. Hodge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Conservatism is both undertheorized and poorly understood in philosophical political theory; all extant theories have proven deficient. They either conflate what is contingently associated with conservatism with its essence, draw mistaken generalizations from apparently conservative behavior, or else are explanatorily incomplete.

To avoid these deficiencies, I develop a rigorous, theory-neutral groundwork for evaluating theories of conservatism. This groundwork utilizes both traditional methods of analytic philosophy and, for the first time in the field, historiometry. Philosophical analysis determines the formal requirements of a successful explanation while empirical, historiometric data determines the most salient conservative exemplars whom any such theory must explain. …

Beyond The Gray Ghost: John S. Mosby And The Power Of Legend, Kevin R. Youngberg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Civil War generals are among the most celebrated figures of their time. In the post-Civil war era, many of these officers retreated to farms, and businesses and disappeared into obscurity. This was not the case with Colonel John Singleton Mosby, who quickly transformed into a figure whose legacy from the Civil war gave him a unique place in the American imagination as the legendary Gray Ghost of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He lived until 1916, a remarkable fifty years filling those decades with a host of accomplishments in public service both at home and abroad. His legacy is complex, …

Why Deliberate Practice Is Not A Basis For Teacher Expertise, Jim Hordern, Nick Pratt, Peter Kelly, Katherine Evans

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

In this paper we examine the notion of ‘deliberate practice’, which has formed the basis of several teacher education programmes in England and the United States and promises to improve the quality of teaching via highly structured training programmes. We identify early criticisms of deliberate practice and unpack the assumptions embedded in its underpinning thinking. We demonstrate that deliberate practice is insufficient as a basis for teacher expertise as teaching is not a ‘performance profession’, the activities of teachers cannot all be easily or meaningfully decomposed, and the ‘goals’ of teaching are not solely geared towards maximising measurable student attainment. …

Leaning In: Diversity, Dialogue, And Whiteness At A Quaker Independent School, Mauricio Thomas Torres

Dissertations - ALL

Diversity has emerged as a hallmark of institutional excellence in several fields. At the same time, it has been vilified and maligned by conservative pundits and politicians as Donald Trump has worked to frame diversity as un-American and unmeritocratic. This tension makes diversity worthy of sociological analysis. Though there is an emerging critical sociology of diversity, much of that work has been primarily concerned with the discursive, ideological, and symbolic dimensions of diversity. In contrast, this dissertation examines how diversity moves through and is contested and supported within the organization and cultural context of Friends Prep (FP), a progressive Quaker …

Landowners And Class Struggle: Life, Law And The Social Rent Relation In North Dakota, Chad Chambers

Dissertations - ALL

In the United States, land may be owned by governments, private landowners, corporations, tribes, etc. The rent relation involved in oil and gas extraction on private lands, however, remain largely unexplored in energy geography, and geography more broadly. In this dissertation, I explore the rent relation between the landowning class and oil capital in North Dakota. I argue rent is a class struggle where the interests of oil capital collide with the private landowning class over the capture of surplus-value. My analysis of class struggle is grounded in the social-historical relations that shaped private property and the rent relation in …

Curating Climate Change: Information Flows Across And Within Social Media Platforms, Yiran Duan

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation explores how climate change information spreads on X (formerly Twitter) and what content from YouTube travels to X, focusing on climate change related tweets posted during November 2022. Using content analysis, machine learning, and case studies, about 114,000 tweets and their embedded YouTube videos were analyzed. The findings show that not all climate-related content is equally shared, some information is more likely to spread than others. The findings also indicate that users with a moderate number of followers are the ones connecting YouTube and X, rather than those with the highest follower counts on X. The findings are …

Sparse Recovery Using Scale And Signed Permutation Invariant Functions, Jianqing Jia

Dissertations - ALL

Recovering sparse signals from limited and noisy measurements is an important problem in modern data processing. Traditional methods, which often rely on convex relaxations such as the $\ell_1$ norm, struggle in scenarios with high coherence or large dynamic ranges. A major challenge in these settings is to develop a unified and computationally efficient framework that can accommodate a broad class of sparsity-promoting functions. In this dissertation, we overcome these challenges by introducing a general framework for all scale and signed permutation invariant functions. This dissertation has three main parts. In the first part, we introduce the $(\ell_1/\ell_2)^2$-model for sparse recovery …

Refinement Or Disruption: Patterns Of Critical Inquiry In Computing Ethics Assignments, Vincent Barfield, Charles Wallace

Michigan Tech Publications

Ethical inquiry in computing has an evolving nature, where repeated critical questioning may lead to a series of reframings of the problem. Since many computing students have experience with agile project-based courses, an iterative approach can provide a familiar entry into ethics. Agile development, however, is typically oriented around satisfaction of customer goals, while ethical inquiry requires constant questioning that may cast those goals into doubt. Does the similarity between critical ethical inquiry and iterative development provide a helpful model or breed a false familiarity? To address this question, we examine student work in a computing ethics course, involving iterative …

F2) Seeking Zion: Motivations Behind Latter-Day Saint Pilgrimage-Like Travel To Religious Heritage Sites, Daniel H. Olsen

International Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Conferences

This presentation examines the motivations behind pilgrimage-like travel among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to religious heritage sites such as Palmyra, Nauvoo, and Salt Lake City. Although LDS doctrine does not include a formal theology of pilgrimage, these journeys fulfill spiritual, social, and pedagogical functions that align closely with traditional pilgrimage frameworks. Drawing from the interdisciplinary fields of pilgrimage studies, religious tourism, and Latter-day Saint theology, this research conceptualizes LDS heritage travel as a form of modern, constructed pilgrimage grounded in processes of place-making, memory, identity, and faith reaffirmation.

Through qualitative synthesis of existing …

Effect Of Coaching On School Heads’ Servant Leadership Qualities: A Case Of Adventist Primary Schools In Southern Tanzania, Baraka Manjale Ngussa, Devotha Dioniz Magere, Randy Siebold, Ramiro Quero

Adventist Human-Subject Researchers Association

Using the quasi-experimental design, this study assessed the role of coaching on school heads’ servant leadership in Tanzania. Twenty-seven employees assessed nine school heads’ servant leadership qualities before and after coaching sessions. Posttest leadership qualities results were significantly higher than pretest results. Therefore, coaching significantly improved the servant leadership qualities.

Lessons Learned: Luis Jácome, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Luis Jácome was appointed president of the board of Ecuador’s central bank in 1998 by newly elected President Jamil Mahuad. He and other members of the board resigned in 1999 in protest against a number of crisis-intervention measures they saw as threatening the bank’s independence to set monetary policy. Since the 1970s, Ecuador’s economy had experienced a period of growth fueled by oil exports, but by the mid-1990s the economy was reeling from a series of shocks, among them: a sharp drop in the price of oil, the effects of severe flooding on the country’s agricultural production, and the cost …

Emergency Liquidity Assistance And Monetary Financing In The European Union: A Case Study In Fiscal Cooperation?, Vincient Arnold

Journal of Financial Crises

In the European Union (EU), primary EU treaty law prohibits central banks from engaging in monetary financing, which includes lending to insolvent firms. This legal prohibition exists alongside, and in parallel to, various regulatory provisions of the Eurosystem. As a result, EU Member State central banks face unique legal limitations when acting in their roles as lenders of last resort, providing emergency liquidity assistance (ELA). In practice, European central banks—both members of the Eurosystem and not—lend to firms of questionable solvency with some frequency, often creatively employing fiscal guarantees to limit their balance sheet exposure and shift the lending risk …

United States: Rhode Island Limited Bank Holiday, 1991, Ayodeji George, Sophia Alden

Journal of Financial Crises

In 1990, the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation (RISDIC) was a private mutual deposit insurance corporation funded by member institutions. Late that year, after the failures of two of its insured institutions in July and October, other RISDIC member institutions faced large depositor withdrawals, as concerns began to focus on the financial health of RISDIC itself. RISDIC had maintained inadequate reserves, and on December 31, 1990, it found itself lacking the resources to cover depositor withdrawals from member institutions. RISDIC leadership requested a state-appointed conservator, which meant that all its member institutions no longer had the deposit insurance …

India: Yes Bank Moratorium, 2020, Salil Gupta

Journal of Financial Crises

By December 2019, Yes Bank’s capital levels had dropped below the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) mandated threshold, as the bank was facing a combination of deposit withdrawals, losses from extraordinary credit provisions, and overexposure to stressed sectors. On March 5, 2020, India’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the RBI placed Yes Bank under a 30-day moratorium that restricted most banking functions and limited deposit withdrawals to INR 50,000 per person (USD 663). The purpose of this moratorium was to allow the RBI time to design a plan of reconstruction or amalgamation for Yes Bank to allow depositors limited access …

United States: National Bank Holiday, 1933, Ayodeji George

Journal of Financial Crises

By mid-February 1933, the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression and the banking system faced sustained depositor runs and currency hoarding. On February 14, the governor of Michigan declared a holiday for all banks and trusts in the state. There followed a wave of declared bank holidays and bank runs across the country. The public withdrew $1.8 billion in gold and currency from banks in February and early March, with nearly two-thirds of those withdrawals occurring in the week ended Friday, March 3. By that date, 25 of 48 states had implemented bank holidays or restricted …

Greece: National Bank Holiday, 2015, Stella Schaefer-Brown

Journal of Financial Crises

In December 2014, deposit outflows from Greek banks intensified owing to political uncertainty following the announcement of a snap presidential election and a subsequent crash of the Greek stock market. This led to a liquidity crisis in the first half of 2015. Intensifying political uncertainty, worsening liquidity, and volatility in the macroeconomic and financial markets environment peaked in the first half of 2015. The crisis was exacerbated by a February decision by the European Central Bank (ECB) that made it difficult for Greek banks to continue borrowing from its monetary policy-related liquidity programs. On June 28, 2015, the ECB announced …

Ecuador: National Bank Holiday, 1999, Bailey Decker

Journal of Financial Crises

After a series of exogenous shocks hit Ecuador’s economy in 1997 and 1998, foreign creditors reduced external credit lines to the country, draining liquidity. The newly created Deposit Guarantee Agency (Agencia de Garantía de Depósitos, AGD) administered deposit insurance and a new blanket guarantee and had the authority to resolve failing banks. Despite these actions, bank runs continued. After depositors reportedly withdrew USD 400 million from banks over a two-week period, on Monday, March 8, 1999, one hour before banks were supposed to open, the bank superintendent declared a surprise bank holiday effective that day; banks reopened a week later …

Argentina: National Bank Holidays, 2001, Owen Heaphy

Journal of Financial Crises

Starting in 1991, Argentina operated a currency board regime under which the central bank guaranteed a one-to-one peg of the Argentine peso to the US dollar. But in 2001, markets became increasingly concerned that the central bank would be unable to maintain the peg and would allow the peso to devalue against the dollar. At that time, more than two-thirds of Argentine bank deposits were denominated in dollars. Throughout 2001, depositors withdrew funds from banks; by November, peso deposits had declined by more than one-third and dollar deposits had fallen by one-tenth. On November 28, 2001, the systemwide banking run …

Survey Of Bank Holidays And Fund Suspensions, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Owen Heaphy, Anmol Makhija, Stella Schaefer-Brown, Greg Feldberg, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In this paper, we analyze seven case studies involving bank holidays and two involving mutual fund suspensions produced by the Yale Program on Financial Stability. Our main purpose is to assist policymakers who are considering utilizing a bank holiday in designing the most effective program as efficiently as possible. We find that a bank holiday may be most useful when designing and implementing a comprehensive remedy to an underlying problem distressing banks, particularly when an exogenous shock rather than balance sheet weaknesses is the cause of general distress to the system. A holiday is also useful to “ring-fence” one or …

Argentina: Mutual Fund Suspensions, 2019, Owen Heaphy, Anmol Makhija

Journal of Financial Crises

With Argentina facing a liquidity crisis and collapse in demand for government debt, on Wednesday, August 28, 2019, the country's minister of economy, Hernán Lacunza, announced after markets closed that the government was extending the maturity of USD 7 billion of its short-term public debt securities, among other measures. Lacunza stated that domestic retail investors would not be subject to the terms of the maturity extension and would be paid principal and interest on the affected securities per the original maturity schedule. This announcement caused confusion about the treatment of individual investors who held the affected securities indirectly through mutual …

Enhancing Social Sustainability In Parcel Hubs Using Discrete Event Simulation And Multi-Objective Optimization, Harald Steinkellner, Domenik Kaever, Christoph Rockenschaub

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

No abstract provided.

Throughput Comparison Between An Amr-Based Sorting System And A Loop Sorter: A Case Study On High-Performance Parcel Sorting, Moritz Roidl

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Faith Integration In Student Motivation In Graduate Counseling Program Selection, Timothy J. Evans, Andrew J. Graham, Jim Zapf, Ronnie L. Pace

Journal of Counseling and Psychology

This study examines the role of faith integration in motivating graduate counseling students to select faith-based programs and its impact on their perceived preparedness to integrate faith into counseling practice. Using a quantitative approach, 239 participants from five graduate counseling programs completed a survey exploring their motivations for becoming counselors, reasons for program selection, and perceptions of faith integration in their education. Results revealed that students motivated by spiritual factors, such as pleasing God or influencing others spiritually, were significantly more likely to choose programs emphasizing faith integration and shared spiritual values. Older students placed greater importance on faith integration …