Digital Commons Network^™

Uncertainties In Retrieval Of Remote Sensing Reflectance From Ocean Color Satellite Observations, Eder I. Herrera Estrella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ocean Color radiometry uses remote sensing to interpret ocean dynamics by retrieving remote sensing reflectance (������) from satellite imagery at different scales and over different time periods. ������ spectrum characterizes the ocean color that we observe, and from which we can discern concentrations of chlorophyll, organic and inorganic particles, and carbon fluxes in the ocean and atmosphere. ������ is derived from the total radiance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). However, it only represents up to ten percent of the total signal. Hence, the retrieval of ������ from the total radiance at TOA involves the application of atmospheric correction …

Kinetics Of Photochemical And Mechanochemical Organic Reactions On Surface, Yerzhan Zholdassov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Solvents used in traditional chemical processes account for a large percentage of reaction mass and waste and can pose significant environmental and health risks. The environmentally friendly nature of mechanochemistry, in addition to other benefits, makes it a promising approach for sustainable chemistry over traditional solvent-based methods. However, it is still not a widely adopted method for performing chemical reactions on an industrial scale. This is partially due to the significant challenge associated with understanding the reaction kinetics under mechanochemical conditions. Many variations of scanning probe lithography (SPL) techniques are able to manipulate the organic molecules with precise control over …

Body Check: Transgressive Body Politics Of Gina Pane, Orlan, And Deborah De Robertis, Avant-Garde Performance Artists In France, 1960s–Present, Patricia Anne Winter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 1960s, when Gina Pane and Orlan were trying to gain a foothold in the art world, it was very much a man’s world. This created obstacles for them, yet, at the same time, being relegated to the margins, they were free to experiment and were less visible as objects of the gaze.

The point of departure of my study is the realization that a woman’s body is what most defines her identity (Alcoff, Bordo, Butler, Gonzenbach, Mulvey, Spelman, Suleiman). The female body is the material site from which I discuss how, and to what ends, women avant-garde performance …

Avoiding Success: How Does Fear Of Success Impact Today's Workforce?, Bradley E. Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fear of success refers to the anxiety experienced by individuals as they come close to accomplishing a goal, ambivalent and even paralyzed over choosing to accept or avoid success. Success fearers are more likely to avoid success, choosing to forego their goal to avoid the assumed negative repercussions that will accompany the success (Canavan, 1989). Though interest in fear of success has waned since its introduction in the 1970’s, evidence of fear of success still exists today. However, original theories of fear of success cannot explain its impact on both men and women, and little is known about how it …

Posthuman Lessons For Writing And Well-Being: Reparative Practices, Anna A. Larsson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The influence of post-humanist interdisciplinary theories on Writing Studies has displaced its conventional preoccupation with the cultivation and management of subjects via First-Year Writing (FYC), to productive but at times artificially divisive ends. This project aims at an inclusive, anti-racist first-year writing ecology through theories of networked consciousness and digital “making.” I reread and recuperate earlier variants of posthumanist writing theory and draw from feminist materialism and mindfulness studies to establish a vision of well-being that I call networked reparative practices. To bring the abstract into the tangible, an often-valued endeavor in a field historically defined by teaching, I introduce …

Out-Of-Distribution Generalization Of Deep Learning To Illuminate Dark Protein Functional Space, Tian Cai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dark protein illumination is a fundamental challenge in drug discovery where majority human proteins are understudied, i.e. with only known protein sequence but no known small molecule binder. It's a major road block to enable drug discovery paradigm shift from single-targeted which looks to identify a single target and design drug to regulate the single target to multi-targeted in a Systems Pharmacology perspective. Diseases such as Alzheimer's and Opioid-Use-Disorder plaguing millions of patients call for effective multi-targeted approach involving dark proteins. Using limited protein data to predict dark protein property requires deep learning systems with OOD generalization capacity. Out-of-Distribution (OOD) …

Bow Articulations In The Late Galant (1775–1812): An Analysis Of Bow Strokes In Selected Violin Sonatas Of Mozart And Beethoven, Julia E. Danitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the evolving use of the violin bow during the late galant and Classical era (1776-1812) by means of several violin sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven (K. 305, K. 454. Op. 12, No. 1, Op. 96). An analysis of bow articulations supplemented with annotated music examples is provided for these works, as well as information on the bow innovations and French violin school pedagogy at the turn of the 19th century. Understanding the style of bowing during the late 18th century and turn of the 19th century can help inform a modern performer of …

Extraction, Property, And Rights In Southeastern Arabian Seascapes C.1820–Present, Scott Erich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a historical and ethnographic examination of fish, pearl, sponge, and oil extraction in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. These waters, which were fished and labored upon in much of the same way for millennia, have, in the last two centuries, undergone a sea change. Regimes of property and rights have transformed the ocean from a wild and undifferentiated space into a place which is enclosed, privatized, industrially fished, drilled, and otherwise despoiled. This dissertation, building on recent works in environmental history, Indian Ocean studies, and legal and economic anthropology, probes the many cultural, religious, social, …

The Role Of Nuclear Quantum Effects In Supercooled Water And Amorphous Ice, Ali H. Eltareb

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Water is one of the most important substances on Earth and plays a fundamental role in numerous scientific and engineering applications. Interestingly, water behaves much differently than other liquids. For example, water shows an anomalous density maximum at 277 K, the solid phase (ice) is less denser than the liquid, and its thermodynamic response functions, such as the specific heat C_P and isothermal compressibility κ_T, also increase anomalously upon cooling. In the glassy state, water can exist in two different forms, low-density and high-density amorphous ice (LDA and HDA). While water has been scrutinized for many centuries, …

Nursing Perspectives On Intimate Partner Violence Screening In The Emergency Department, Justin Cabrera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using descriptive and quality descriptive (QD) analysis, emergency department nurses from around the country completed a modified version of the Physician Readiness to Manage Intimate Partner Violence Survey (PREMIS) tool to gain insight on their attitudes, knowledge, and preparedness about working with patient survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) regarding their willingness to and comfort in engaging in IPV screening practices. In total, 1,523 responses were received from emergency department nurses currently or formerly in practice.

Findings show that there was no correlation between emergency department nurses’ education and training on IPV and willingness and comfort with IPV screening with …

Quantifying Temperature-, Pressure-, And Nuclear Quantum Effects On Hydrophobic And Hydrophilic Water-Mediated Interactions, Justin T. Engstler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Water-mediated interactions (WMIs) are responsible for diverse processes in aqueous solutions, including protein folding and nanoparticle aggregation. WMI may be affected by changes in temperature and pressure, and hence, they can alter chemical/physical processes that occur in aqueous environments. Traditionally, attention has been focused on hydrophobic interactions while, in comparison, the role of hydrophilic and hybrid (hydrophobic–hydrophilic) interactions have been mostly overlooked. Here, we study the role of T and P on the WMI between nanoscale (i) hydrophobic–hydrophobic, (ii) hydrophilic–hydrophilic, and (iii) hydrophilic–hydrophobic pairs of (hydroxylated/non-hydroxylated) graphene-based surfaces. We find that hydrophobic, hydrophilic, and hybrid interactions are all sensitive to …

Nonlinear Processes In Room Temperature Exciton-Polaritons, Prathmesh Deshmukh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Strong light-matter coupling in solid state systems is an intriguing process that allows one to exploit the advantages of both light and matter. In this context, microcavities have become essential platforms for studying the strong coupling regime, where hybrid light-matter states known as exciton-polaritons form, leading to enhanced light matter interaction, modified material properties, and novel quantum phenomena. In this thesis, we explore the phenomenology of exciton-polaritons in strained TMD microcavities, 2D perovskites, fluorescent proteins and organic dyes encompassing thermalization, polariton lasing, and the observation of nonlinear effects.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as a remarkable class of two- …

Centrality Effects On Heavy-Flavor Quark Production And Invariant Yield In Phenix Proton–Gold Collisions At Center-Of-Mass Energy 200 Gev, And Assembly, Testing, Calibration, And Installation Of The Sphenix Hadronic Calorimeters, Daniel Richford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hadrons created in heavy-ion collisions interact with the open color-charge of the quark-gluon plasma through their constituent quarks. The medium imparts substantial modifications to heavy-flavor hadrons' momentum spectra. For collisions of small systems, the centrality of those collisions affects both the production of heavy-quarks and the medium modifications that the heavy-quarks experience. This analysis uses the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which collected data from proton--gold collisions in 2015, with a trigger to preference the collection of the five-percent most-central collisions. This analysis uses the distance-of-closest-approach of electron tracks to study semileptonic decays from charm and bottom …

Rotation Period Distributions And Light Curve Morphologies Of Low Mass Stars And Young Associations, Mark Popinchalk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is centered around the rotation periods of low-mass stars and association of young stars. Rotation periods are a link to the age of the star, as they lose angular momentum over time. To understand how this angular momentum evolves requires understanding the rotation period distributions of a range of stellar types and ages. Traditionally, M dwarf stars and young stars were challenging to describe due to their intrinsic faintness and dispersed sky positions respectively. I approached this subject from several directions.

Structural Basis Of Signal Transduction Within Environmental Sensing Pas Regulated Ser/Thr Kinases, Roksana Azad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

To sense environmental cues, nature has evolved molecular switches that are widely used across life. This process often relies on environmentally controlled PPIs (Protein-Protein Interactions) within a sensory domain that senses various stimuli and alters the functional activities of downstream effectors. This study focused on the superfamily of PAS (Per-ARNT-Sim) environmental sensory domains and their roles in regulating two Ser/Thr Kinases (STKs). PAS domains achieve their regulatory control by internally binding small molecule ligands/cofactors (e.g., O₂ binding to heme …

The Relationship Between “Black Lives Matter” Movement Protests And Police Arrests In New York City, Chicago, And Los Angeles: An Empirical Analysis, Lukas Louwagie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The summer of 2020 marked a boiling point of protest and frustration at long-criticized police behavior in the United States. The events that summer revealed the “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) movement as something that could not be ignored and was capable of drawing national support and attention across many dividing lines (Mitchell 2020). Today, it seems evident that the BLM movement has had a substantial impact on modern political discourse—yet its impact on police behavior and reform, the primary target of the movement, is murky. Police departments across the nation are pushing back against calls to defund and reform their …

Recursive Functional Learning In Nonfluent Aphasia, Gerald C. Imaezue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

People with nonfluent aphasia (PWNA) require feedback from an external agent as well self-feedback to facilitate performance of language production tasks. The extent to which PWNA can use self-feedback alone to improve their task performance is unknown. In addition, it is argued that self-feedback may reinforce or minimize performance errors over time. To test whether either is the case, we introduce an original learning mechanism, recursive functional learning, which uses self-feedback loops to optimize recursively multiple subsystems (cognitive and linguistic subsystems) that PWNA engage during task performance. We used this mechanism to underpin a novel automated procedure we developed, recursive …

Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities In Works By Helmut Lachenmann, Simon Steen-Andersen, And Johan Svensson, John Popham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities in Works by Lachenmann, Steen-Andersen, and Svensson, I analyze three compositions that foreground the cellist-body, its physical gestures, and instrumental interactions: Helmut Lachemann’s Pression für einen Cellisten (1969/2010), Simon Steen-Andersen’s Study for String Instrument #3 (2011), and Johan Svensson’s marionette for string instrument, electro-mechanical devices and lights (2018). These works center sound production and the performing body as sites of ontological and creative exploration. Their physical gestures serve multiple sensorial functions, heightening the visual and kinesthetic dimensions of a traditionally aurally oriented practice. For each work, I develop a corresponding analytical method based on …

Burnout And Depression In Teachers And Members Of Other Occupational Groups: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analyses On Potentially Overlapping Conditions, Gail Swingler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Burnout has long been recognized as a workplace issue among teachers, and other occupational groups. Burnout has potentially been increasing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Researchers tend to regard burnout as a distinct syndrome comprising emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and reduced personal accomplishment (rPA). Recent evidence suggests that burnout (as a tripartite syndrome) lacks discriminant validity vis-à-vis depression. The overlap between burnout and depression was examined through two meta-analytic studies.

The first study (K = 13) examined the relationship between burnout and depression in teachers with burnout assessed using the MBI. The findings indicated that exhaustion (EE), and depression …

Improving Collagen-Mimetic Fibrils To Study Fibrillogenesis And Effects Of Disease-Causing Mutations On Fibrillogenesis, Faizunnahar Dewan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Collagen, the most abundant protein in the human body, serves as the scaffold of connective tissue and has biomaterial applications to promote wound healing. The need to study collagen further stems from a disease perspective, as mutations in collagen lead to numerous connective tissue diseases. While collagen has been explored extensively at the triple helix level, much remains undiscovered regarding its function at the fibril level due to the lack of an effective collagen model system. Using tandemly repeating “sequence units” that contain sequences from native collagen, our lab has previously developed fibril-forming collagen-mimetic peptides (FCMPs), which provide tools to …

Development Of Chemical Probes For Two Pro-Metastatic Enzymes: Cysteine Cathepsins And Nek2 Kinase, Ashif I. Bhuiyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Proteases, specifically cysteine proteases, are crucial for the survival and growth of living organisms. They hydrolyze proteins and use different mechanisms to function. Cysteine proteases are classified into three types: papain, caspase, and picornaviridae. The papain class, with 11 cysteine cathepsins, regulates essential physiological functions, and abnormal expression is linked to various diseases. Our research aims to develop small molecules that inhibit cathepsins B and L to develop probes for functional proteomics.

The centrosome is critical for proper cell division and is regulated by multiple kinases, including Nek2. Nek2 is highly concentrated at the centrosome in vertebrates and plays a …

Between Two Messiahs: An Ethnography Of Settler-Colonizers In The West Bank, Amir Reicher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of settler-colonialism. Based on fieldwork among Jewish settlers in the West Bank, it analyzes from an anthropological perspective how a settler-colonial process takes place. Officially, since the signing of the Oslo Accords, with few exceptions, Israel ceased to build new settlements in the West Bank. But, on the ground, from the 1990s onwards, the West Bank hinterland was scattered with over 150 illegal outposts, strategically constructed to appropriate as much land as possible. Often established on remote hilltops, the illegal outposts are the central tool today in appropriating Palestinian land, and the “outpost people” who …

This Little Light Of Mine: The History Of The Amalgamated Nursery School, Kimberly F. Vanderbilt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research focuses on the history of one small nursery school to analyze the factors that influenced the school: the labor unionists founders, the changing neighborhoods of the Bronx, the Progressive Education Movement and the Women's Leadership Movements that helped define and support the school. Recent policy changes have had impact on this school and on all early childhood programs in New York City.

Fifteenth-Century Sienese Art In Its International Setting: A Case Study Of Cross-Cultural Exchange In Italy And Beyond, Maria Lucca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars often frame the Republic of Siena as isolationist and inward-looking, yet from its beginning in 1262 the city-state was internationally vital, sending artists to work in foreign cities and calling upon foreign artists to do significant work in Siena. Although Siena temporarily retreated from this internationalism to a period of relative cultural autonomy in the mid-Trecento, in the early Quattrocento it re-opened the gates of its medieval walled city to artistic interchange between Sienese and Florentine sculptors, setting in motion the dramatic shift that occurred in the mid-Quattrocento. Sienese sculptors embraced the Renaissance artistic humanism flourishing in Florence and …

Complexity Of Verification In Self-Assembly With Prebuilt Assemblies, David Caballero, Timothy Gomez, Robert Schweller, Tim Wylie

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We analyze the complexity of two fundamental verification problems within a generalization of the two-handed tile self-assembly model (2HAM) where initial system assemblies are not restricted to be singleton tiles, but may be larger prebuilt assemblies. Within this model we consider the producibility problem, which asks if a given tile system builds, or produces, a given assembly, and the unique assembly verification (UAV) problem, which asks if a given system uniquely produces a given assembly. We show that producibility is NP-complete and UAV is coNPNP -complete even when the initial assembly size and temperature threshold are both bounded by a …

A Framework For Confusion Mitigation In Task-Oriented Interactions, Na Li, Robert J. Ross

Conference papers

Confusion is a mental state that can be triggered in task-oriented interactions and which can if left unattended lead to boredom, frustration, or disengagement from the task at hand. Previous work has demonstrated that confusion can be detected in situated human-robot interactions from visual and auditory cues. Therefore, in the next step, we propose appropriate interaction structures in this study, which should be used to mitigate confusion. We motivate and describe this dialogue mechanism through an information state-style dialogue framework and policies, and also outline the approach we are taking to integrate such a meta-conversational goal alongside core task-oriented considerations …

Research At Georgia Southern, Georgia Southern University

Research & Economic Development

No abstract provided.

Guar-Based Injectable Hydrogel For Drug Delivery And In Vitro Bone Cell Growth, Humandra Poudel, Ambar R. Rangumagar, Pooja Singh, Adeolu Oluremi, Nawab Ali, Fumiya Watanabe, Joseph Batta-Mpouma, Jin-Woo Kim, Ahona Ghosh, Anindya Ghosh

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Injectable hydrogels offer numerous advantages in various areas, which include tissue engineering and drug delivery because of their unique properties such as tunability, excellent carrier properties, and biocompatibility. These hydrogels can be administered with minimal invasiveness. In this study, we synthesized an injectable hydrogel by rehydrating lyophilized mixtures of guar adamantane (Guar-ADI) and poly-β-cyclodextrin (p-βCD) in a solution of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) maintained at pH 7.4. The hydrogel was formed via host-guest interaction between modified guar (Guar-ADI), obtained by reacting guar gum with 1-adamantyl isocyanate (ADI) and p-βCD. Comprehensive characterization of all synthesized materials, including the hydrogel, was performed using …

The Bactericidal Activity Of A Novel Aneurinibacillus Aneurinilyticus Isolate Effectively Controls Foodborne Pathogens Campylobacter Jejuni And Listeria Monocytogenes, Peter M. Rubinelli, Rohana Liyanage, Jackson Lay, Jennifer C. Acuff

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Human zoonotic infection with Campylobacter is a major cause of gastroenteritis in the United States and worldwide. Listeria monocytogenes causes a potentially fatal infection in humans and is often attributed to contaminated food. Genetic typing has demonstrated that Campylobacter infection is often associated with the consumption of contaminated poultry products, with Campylobacter often colonizing the poultry gastrointestinal tract, while listeriosis is commonly associated with the consumption of contaminated ready-to-eat (RTE) foods. In this study, a strain of endospore-forming bacterium (strain NH) that is bactericidal towards the human food pathogens Campylobacter jejuni and Listeria monocytogenes was identified and characterized. Transwell experiments …

Deepening Undergraduate Students’ Thinking About Central Dogma Through Problem-Based Learning, Katherine Alberta Sharp, Rebecca Mc Nall Krall, Jeffrey Chalfant

Teacher Education and Certification Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Common Belief among Pre-Medical and Medical Students is that Biochemistry is Not Relevant to Practicing Medicine. the Problem-Based Approach of Case Studies Has Been Used in Medical Education to Scaffold the Application of Content to Clinical Cases, But Few Studies Report on a Similar Use in Undergraduate Biochemistry. Case Studies in Biochemistry and Related Disciplines Have Been Previously Reported as Increasing Learning Motivation and Supporting Depth of Knowledge. Additionally, Students Engaging in Case Studies Outperform Students in Traditional Instruction. the Objective of This Qualitative Case Study Was to Find How the Timing of a Medical Case Study within the …