Digital Commons Network^™

How Undocumented Latino Parents’ Legal Status Affects Their U.S. Citizen-Children’S Health, Karla Garcia Hernandez

Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to review studies that have assessed how undocumented parents’ legal status have affected their United States citizen-children’s health. This issue involves nurses from different specialties, such as pediatric nursing, mental health nursing and community health nursing. Eight articles were reviewed in regard to how parental legal status affects the child’s access to healthcare services, the child’s physical health and the child’s mental health. The articles revealed that citizen-children of undocumented parents had limited access to health care services, had poorer health, and had higher chances of having mental health illnesses. The paper provided implementations …

A “Steph” In The Process: How The Golden State Warriors Have Hyper-Commercialized Professional Sports, Danielle Arena

Senior Theses

This research aims to highlight the significant impact the Golden State Warriors have had on the commercialization of sports. This is especially relevant and corresponds to the Warriors back-to-back championships and their rise from an overlooked team to one of the most popular teams in the National Basketball League (NBA). According to Forbes, the Warriors have gone from NBA obscurity to the third most valuable team in the NBA. The objective of this research is to prove the importance of both physical prowess and business savvy in the sports world to become truly successful as a professional franchise. As the …

Balance, Inject, React: How High School U.S. History Teachers Adapt Under National Curriculum Standards, Andriana Stenros

Senior Theses

History teachers across the United States are constantly shaping the minds of their students, yet the historical content they teach is based on broad, national standards. Since the establishment of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) in 1994, a dynamic process of adaptation to standards has been credited to high school history teachers across the nation. Each teacher has a unique relationship with their class, which generate signature teaching objectives and prompt teachers to reexamine and adapt what parts of curriculum they choose to share with their students. Expectations, context, and experience all play into the relationship between …

Two Sides Of A Democratic Coin: President Johnson's International Approach To The Civil Rights Movement, Kayla Marie Robinson

Senior Theses

The Declaration of Independence famously states, “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.” These words quintessentially set the course for the American ideal of democracy; yet, debate as to who was and was not included in this ‘equality’ has clouded this American ideal. This debate sparked international concerns at the end of World War II; specifically the Soviet Union, which questioned the validity of democracy in the United States. As the United States entered the Cold War against the Soviet Union, both ideologically and physically across the globe, the Civil Rights Movement gained …

From Spacewar! To Twitch.Tv: The Influence Of Competition In Video Games And The Rise Of Esports, Robert Boyle

Senior Theses

Since their inception in the 1950s, video games have come a long way; with that advancement came more popularity, a growing demand, and an evolving culture. The first person shooter (FPS) video game genre and the competitive scene that was born out of it is an ideal case study to analyze this change over time. To understand how video games became so popular, one must examine their history: specifically, their development, impacts the games have had on society, and economic trajectories. Similar to traditional professional sports, video games experienced a cultural shift around their lucrative profit margins and unfolding professionalization …

Food Pantry Evaluation And Assessment At The Dominican University Of California, Damian Cortez

Senior Theses

Food security continues to be a relevant and prevalent problem in the US that affects millions of people per year (1). In 2016, 12.3% of American households were food insecure. Although the percentage of food insecure households is experiencing a downward trend since the great recession in 2007, the current percentage is still higher than the percent of food insecure households before the recession (1).

Research shows that food insecurity is an indicator for negative health, academic, and social outcomes among elementary children leading to poor mathematical and reading performance, weight gain, and poor social development (2). The negative health …

Streaming Infrastructure And Natural Language Modeling With Application To Streaming Big Data, Yuheng Du

All Dissertations

Streaming data are produced in great velocity and diverse variety. The vision of this research is to build an end-to-end system that handles the collection, curation and analysis of streaming data. The streaming data used in this thesis contain both numeric type data and text type data. First, in the field of data collection, we design and evaluate a data delivery framework that handles the real-time nature of streaming data. In this component, we use streaming data in automotive domain since it is suitable for testing and evaluating our data delivery system. Secondly, in the field of data curation, we …

The Economic Analysis Of Kidney-Exchange Networks, Roksana Ghanbariamin

All Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the effects of the largest national kidney-exchange network, National Kidney Registry (NKR), on the speed of finding a transplant and the quality of donors in participant hospitals. It also examines the effect of surgeons in the network-adoption decision of hospitals.

The prohibition of monetary transactions for human organs under U.S. law generates a shortage of kidneys available for transplant. In 2017, about 100,000 patients were waiting on the long wait-lists to receive a kidney for transplant. Creation of distinct kidney-exchange networks that find compatible matches between patients who each have willing but incompatible living kidney donors reduced …

Essays On Price Discrimination And Information Disclosure, Liuna Issagholian

All Dissertations

The first chapter of this dissertation deals with different cash-back rebates in the new-automobile market. In the automotive industry, manufacturers use different types of cash-back rebates to attract buyers to their brands. In this chapter, I mainly focus on the use of “conquest cash” and “loyalty cash” which enable manufacturers to discriminate price among different groups of customers. The conquest cash and loyalty cash are based on consumers’ purchase history. The purpose of conquest cash is to poach the rival manufacturers’ customers, whereas the loyalty cash lowers prices for the manufacturer’s customers. Moreover, I examine “college-graduate” discounts and “military” discounts …

Welfare Reform, Disability, And Federalism: The Economics Of Government Assistance Programs In The United States, Steven Johnson

All Dissertations

This dissertation explores how the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) changed incentives for lawmakers and individuals. The 1996 welfare reform delegated primary rule-making authority over welfare to state governments and changed the way the United States funds welfare programs. The passage of this reform provides an opportunity to examine the role of federalism in government assistance programs. I explore several questions related to the 1996 reform in three studies.

In the first study, I examine the effects of state-level welfare policy on disability acceptance rates. The 1996 reform transitioned welfare funding from a matching grant …

Essays On Earnings And Labor Supply Of Married Women In India, Smriti Bhargava

All Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two essays, examining trends in wages, education, and labor supply of married women in India. The first chapter examines the key question\textemdash why Indian married women's labor force participation(LFP) declined from 35% in 1983 to 24% in 2011, during a period accompanied by high economic growth (between 6% and 7% per year), increasing educational attainment, and falling fertility. Importantly, real wages of both men and women grew over the same period, which economic theory suggests should have opposite effects on the incentive of married women to participate in market work. As straightforward as this proposition …

Influence Of Student Values, Knowledge, And Experience And Socioscientific Topic On Measures Of High-School Student Socioscientific Reasoning, Heidi Cian

All Dissertations

Socioscientific issues (SSIs) are used to guide science instruction by presenting scientific real-world problems as multifaceted, consisting of social as well as scientific components that must be considered when constructing solutions to the issues. Using SSIs in classrooms can support students in developing scientific literacy by enhancing their understanding of the social implications of science and how science is guided by social values. It has been suggested that students rely on their Knowledge, Values, and Experiences (KVP) associated with an SSI when they reason about the issue, but this relationship has not been tested directly, nor has reasoning about SSIs …

Purpose-Driven: Employee Engagement From A Human Flourishing Perspective, Crystal Susan Wiedemann

All Dissertations

Employee engagement continues to be one of the most popular topics in the organizational sciences over the past few decades. Despite this popularity, however, the antecedents of employee engagement and its underlying motivational framework are still unclear and unavailable to guide organizational interventions (Macey & Schneider, 2008). Using data from a sample of 518 employees in a southeastern university, this study investigated the work environment antecedents of job demands-abilities fit, transformational leadership, and corporate social responsibility and found positive significant relationships with employee engagement. Additionally, in a time where an increasing number of workers are searching for more meaning and …

Tourism Development In The East Africa Community Region: Why Is Tourism Development A Shared Agenda Among Only Some Eac Countries?, Carmen Nibigira

All Dissertations

Marketing and developing tourism within regional economic blocs is a growing phenomenon at a time when globalization is at the center stage of geopolitics, trade wars, and scientific revolutions. However, this development is occurring haphazardly, with little attention to managing existing socioeconomic inequalities and differing political interests among member states. This absence heightens the need for a shared tourism agenda among member states. Using the case of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, this study investigates whether tourism development within the East Africa Community (EAC) region – with the exception of South Sudan, another member of the same community – …

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Nmr) Applications In Nanoparticles: Dynamic Nuclear Polarization And Nanoparticle Surface Interaction, Yunzhi Zhang

All Dissertations

NMR is well known for its strong ability to detect the structure of chemicals and has been widely used in many science and engineering areas. As a useful analysis tool, NMR has been combined with nanoparticle to reveal many important factors related to nanoparticle applications. NMR techniques have been used for protein-nanoparticle interaction measurement, nanoparticle size measurement. Nanoparticle, on the other hand, can also improve the development of NMR technology. At present, there are still many open questions stayed in NMR working in nanoparticle research areas and need further studies.

In this dissertation, the thesis stated here will focus on …

Investigating The Cultural Context For Big Cat Conservation Around The World, Kathleen Elizabeth Krafte

All Dissertations

Populations of predators are in decline worldwide as human growth and development destroys and alters their habitats. At the same time, large predators are a tourist attraction in many regions of the world, bringing essential income to governments and local communities. The complex interactions between predator populations and local communities often result in conflicts that can negatively impact both humans and wildlife populations. To gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of human-predator conflict and potential solutions, this study focuses on assessing the social suitability for predator conservation that measures the cultural context for conservation in a region. First, a …

Evaluating Effects Of Character Appearance On Ownership And Learning In Virtual Applications, Lorraine Lin

All Dissertations

Virtual applications are now a dominant commercial and social platform. Sixty-seven percent of households own a gaming device, and eighty-one percent of the United States population has a social media profile. Now, virtual reality appears to be the next technological frontier that will take over mainstream markets. New, low-cost devices for virtual reality or mixed reality such as the Oculus Rift, Sony's PlayStation VR, or Samsung's Gear VR are already available or have been announced and might even outperform previous high-cost systems. With the prevalence of this technology, it is important to know how it influences us. One common factor …

Essays On Monetary Policy And Bitcoin Financial Economics, Kyle Lance Rechard

All Dissertations

This dissertation includes three chapters. The first chapter investigates the impact of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet

normalization using a Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) framework. I use counterfactual conditional forecasts to find that a reduction in asset holdings down to a level where the federal funds market is active again will reducereal GDP growth by an average of 0.18 percent per year and core inflation by a non-significant average of 0.07 percent per year under Quantitative Tightening, relative to a scenario where the Federal Reserve maintains a constant dollar amount of assets until 2024.

The second chapter models monetary policy …

Three Essays On The U.S. Film Industry, Chen Wang

All Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses three papers. My first paper assesses film makers' choices on product quality and variety in film production. Production budget and genre are used to represent quality and variety, respectively. My research is unique in that it exploits the peculiar lack of price variation in the film industry, as ticket prices are the same for each film. I construct a theoretical model of duopoly competition over genre and budget rather than the traditional focus on price. The model predicts that an increase in expected demand will result in an increase in the budgets of the films, as well …

‘There’S Stuff Beyond Sport’: A Study Of The Realities And Perceptions Of Student-Athlete Body Image Concerns, Drive For Muscularity, And Eating Behaviors, Lauren Elizabeth Stephens

All Dissertations

Eating-related pathologies such as body image concerns, drive for muscularity, and disordered eating behaviors are among the issues plaguing student-athletes today, as the pressure to look a certain way may rival the pressure to perform. Although concerns regarding body image and eating behaviors are not exclusive to student-athletes, their unique roles on college campuses and in communities often place them at greater risk for the development of eating-related concerns. As negative eating-related psychopathologies may have an impact not only on sport performance but also on overall health and well-being, it is important to understand predictive factors that may influence body …

The Role Of Tbx5 In Sinoatrial Node Differentiation In Mouse Embryonic Stem Cell Derived Cardiomyocytes, Yunkai Dai

All Dissertations

The sinoatrial node of the mouse embryo arises from the wall of the right atrium near the border of the sinus venosus. Early in development this region expresses the transcription factor Tbx5. Because of this, Tbx5 is thought to sit at the apex of a transcriptional cascade leading to sinoatrial node (SAN) differentiation. To test this we produced a mouse embryonic stem cell line B1 (pTripZ-mTbx5; αMHC::GFP) that conditionally overexpresses Tbx5, to determine if this would lead to enhanced SAN differentiation. We found that ES cells overexpressing Tbx5 showed enhanced overall cardiac differentiation and that cardiac cells showed increased beat …

Essays On Taxes, Guns, And Education, Benjamin Harbolt

All Dissertations

This dissertation studies three topics: sales tax avoidance, gun control, and management practices effect on student performance.

The first chapter studies the impact of a crackdown on e-commerce avoidance on cross-border shopping. As e-commerce has grown over the last few decades so has states' concern for its use for sales tax avoidance. Using a panel of Washington State tax jurisdictions from 2005 through 2015, I estimate the effect of a sales tax regime change on the elasticities of taxable sales. I find the regime change, targeted at reducing sales tax avoidance through remote purchases, had a differential impact that varied …

A Combined Molecular Dynamics And Density Functional Theory Approach For Generating Liquid Water Configurations For Aqueous-Phase Heterogeneous Catalysis Studies, Cameron Joseph Bodenschatz

All Dissertations

Aqueous-phase heterogeneous catalysis is an important chemical process in applications such as water remediation, fuel cells, and the production of fuels and chemicals, including from biomass sources. However, designing alternative, improved catalyst materials for these applications is difficult due to fluctuations in the solvation environment surrounding the catalytic species. In order to elucidate the thermodynamics and kinetics of the relevant reactions, it is imperative to gain a better understanding of the roles of liquid water molecules in these reactions. In this work, a method combining both classical and quantum simulations was developed to generate configurations of liquid water molecules over …

Composing Counter-Memories: Using Memorial And Community Engagement To Disrupt Dominant Narratives, April Obrien

All Dissertations

This project focuses on the convergence of rhetorical theory, memory studies, and

community-based writing. I use this tripartite to call attention to the politics of

remembering Black history in the South. Specifically, I utilize the historic rural town of

Pendleton, South Carolina as a case study. Pendleton, like many towns and cities in the

American South, has a complicated relationship with its history, which is observable

through the town’s segregated physical spaces, as well as through its historic sites and

markers. Through a methodology I call chora/graphy, I create several associated maps of

Pendleton’s contested spaces, places, and objects, and, …

Bifactor Models And Factor Collapse: A Monte Carlo Study, Stephen Robertson

All Dissertations

Though available for over 80 years, bifactor models have recently experienced a resurgence in the psychological and social sciences literature (Reise, 2012). Bifactor models provide an attractive alternative to modeling multidimensional data compared to other approaches (e.g., correlated factors model, second-order factor model). Unlike alternative models, bifactor modeling can effectively model variance that is common between all items and variance that is specific to particular subscales (i.e., specific factors) within a measure. Given its unique benefits, researchers have applied bifactor models to previously validated multidimensional inventories. Researchers have found that when using bifactor modeling on some established scales (e.g., Chen, …

The Rhetoric Of Neo-Orientalism: The Perpetuation Of Ideological Entanglements For Pakistan, Firasat Jabeen

All Dissertations

This research is a re-imagination of Edward Said’s landmark scholarship Orientalism from a Pakistani perspective. The study focuses on the construction and creation of ideologies positioned in mass media (both US and Pakistani) messages. In doing so, I consider Edward Said’s Orientalism as a set of two distinctive theories: (i) the theory of representation, and (ii) the theory of power. For the former, I study the production and promotion of ideologies in the representation of events and case studies. These case studies include: (i) the Malala Yousafzai case (2012), (ii) the US Drone Strikes case (2010), (iii) the Daniel Pearl …

Visitor Impact At Historic Sites: An Assessment Of The Influence Of Usage, Interpretation, And Management On Material Degradation, Laurel Lynne Bartlett

All Dissertations

Protection of cultural resources and sustainable visitation have been significant issues in the management of historic sites since the early nineteenth-century when site managers at Mount Vernon discovered damages to architectural materials from relic hunters. As tourism and the number of historic sites grew in the twentieth century, professional architectural conservators also took note of physical damage due to increased tourism. However, the impacts themselves are often a confluence of external factors, such as individual visitor behavior and the interpretation and management strategies that provide access.

Thus, with the goal of sustainable visitation, the present problem is to understand the …

Electrically-Driven Ion Transmission Through Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials, Saheed Abidemi Bukola

All Dissertations

Two-dimensional nanomaterials such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride are being intensively studied as selective barriers in separation technology owing to their unique subatomic selectivity. In their pristine forms, they are impermeable to atoms, molecules, and ions except for thermal protons. Graphene, with its angstrom-scale thickness, is regarded as the thinnest membrane so its transport selectivity comes from the selectivity of active sites at which permeant transmission occurs. This dissertation tested the hypothesis that the selectivity ratio of hydrogen isotopes (protium, Deuterium, and tritium) through membrane could be improved by incorporating graphene and related 2D materials in the membrane electrode …

Development Of Helicoverpa Zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) In Transgenic Corn Producing Bt Toxins And Implications For Resistance, Thomas Bilbo

All Dissertations

The corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea, is a highly polyphagous insect that is a pest of corn, cotton, sorghum, and soybeans in the southern United States. It is currently managed primarily using transgenic cultivars producing insecticidal proteins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in corn and cotton, and foliar insecticides in sorghum and soybeans. However, the development of resistance to several Bt toxins has been reported and is the primary threat to the success and longevity of Bt crops. We performed a number of field and laboratory experiments over three years to investigate the development, survival, and feeding behavior …

Determining Wind Turbine Drivetrain Test Bench Capability To Replicate Dynamic Loads: Evaluation Methods And Their Validation, Philippe Giguère

All Dissertations

Wind turbine drivetrain test facilities are impressive laboratories that offer a controlled environment to test the response of drivetrains under design conditions. The stochastic nature of the wind results in highly dynamic loads and this is reflected in the design standards and certification process of wind turbines. A wide range of wind conditions and turbine operating states are prescribed as design load cases. The design process of a wind turbine yields thousands of time series of fluctuating forces, bending moments and speed to cover these design load cases. The capability of a test bench to replicate such dynamic loads has …