Digital Commons Network^™

Iron In The New World’S Veins: Government, Ironworks, And Community In The Massachusetts Bay Colony, Abigail Adam

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The Massachusetts Bay Company conceived of a colonial iron industry as early as 1628; two years before its leaders migrated to the New World. The colony’s founders continued their efforts to establish a functioning iron industry in subsequent decades. With the General Court’s support, John Winthrop Jr. engaged in business with the London-based Company of Undertakers to make the iron industry a reality. Nevertheless, previous scholarship has neglected the iron industry’s place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s establishment. Yet surviving court records and correspondence indicates that these two bodies are inseparable. Indeed, the General Court used the ironworks to materially …

A Component Analysis Of Behavioral Skills Training In Teaching And Maintaining Social Skills In An Adolescent With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Hannah Lockwood

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Modern social skills literature show the use of behavioral skills training (BST) and role-play in social skills instruction in small-group and school-based settings, although there is limited research measuring the effects of components of the BST package in maintaining social behaviors. The purpose of the present study, in response to the work of Kornacki et al. (2013), was to measure the effectiveness of the role-play and feedback components of BST in maintaining social skills. A multiple-baseline design across behaviors was used to measure social skills acquisition across different behavior domains for an adolescent participant with autism spectrum disorder. The participant …

Greening The Edge: Investigating Riparian Buffer Restorations In A Pastoral Setting And Their Effects On Soil Carbon And Microbial Community Composition., Seth Mccullough

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Riparian buffer restoration represents a critical strategy for enhancing ecosystem health and resilience in agricultural landscapes. This study investigates the effects of riparian buffer restoration on soil properties, microbial communities, and carbon dynamics in Rockingham County, VA. Through a comprehensive field study, we assessed the physicochemical properties of soil, microbial biomass, community composition, and soil carbon storage in restored and unrestored riparian buffers. Our findings reveal significant improvements in soil physical properties in restored buffers, including increased soil moisture (p < 0.05) and decreased bulk density (p < 0.01), indicating enhanced soil structure and water retention capacity. While no significant differences were detected in soil pH or cation exchange capacity, restored buffers exhibited higher soil carbon stocks (p < 0.05) and carbon-to-nitrogen ratios, suggesting potential differences in nutrient cycling processes and organic matter decomposition rates. Moreover, restored buffers showed increased microbial biomass (p < 0.01), potentially driven by improved habitat conditions and shifts towards a fungal-dominated microbial community.

Although no significant differences were found in overall microbial community composition between restored and unrestored sites, specific shifts in bacterial …

"If You're Writing A Paper For Humans To Read, You Need A Human To Go Over It With You": Marketing Writing Centers In The Age Of Generative Ai, Adrianna Ladd

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Writing centers have been hindered by misconceptions for decades, and the recent onset of generative AI (genAI) technologies has the potential to exacerbate this issue. Now more than ever, effective marketing and outreach strategies are essential to combat misconceptions and articulate the value of writing centers. This thesis is made up of two articles. The first article considers first-year composition instructors’ and students’ perspectives on genAI to offer recommendations for writing centers’ responses to these technologies. The second article investigates a targeted approach to outreach in first-year composition courses, offering a simplified marketing approach for writing centers.

The Impacts Of Teacher's Pride Skill Acquisition On Student Challenging Behavior, Haley Gardner

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of teacher’s PRIDE (praise, reflection, imitation, description, and enjoyment) skill acquisition on student challenging behavior using direct measurement. PRIDE skills are positive attention skills that have demonstrated success in improving teacher-student rapport as well as reducing student maladaptive behavior within the classroom setting. A multiple baseline across behaviors design was used to assess the impacts of P + R and I + D pairings on the dependent variable, student behavior. Behavioral skills training (BST) and feedback was used to teach and maintain PRIDE skill acquisition in the intervention phases. Due …

Envisioning Our Ecological Futures. Diffracting Creative Expressions., Mariam Ismail

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis delves into the realm of eco-art, examining its multifaceted role in informing, educating, and mobilizing audiences towards sustainable environmental practices. Through an interdisciplinary lens that intertwines environmentalism, critical explorations of the anthropocene, ecofeminism, Indigenous knowledge, and social justice, this research investigates various themes, approaches, and methodologies employed by eco-artists. Utilizing a diffractive methodology, I acknowledge and respect these concepts’ contextual and theoretical differences while exploring their relationality to one another and to the artworks. By recognizing these entangled relationships, the diffractive framework creates and re-creates ‘research assemblages’ that shift away from conventional anthropocentric or representational methods of interpretation, …

The Call Is Coming From Inside The House: Sexual Misconduct In U.S. Band Programs, Hannah Greer-Young

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The purpose of this study was to articulate the experiences of former band students related to sexual misconduct among students and between staff and students. Researchers and investigators have claimed that band professionals have prioritized performance level and musical accomplishment over the safety and well-being of students (Office of University Compliance and Integrity, 2014; Nadolny, 2018; Wells, 2022). Authors of studies related to sexual misconduct in U.S. Bands have also suggested that educators in the band profession prefer to handle sexual misconduct “in-house” (Wells, 2022) and that, in general, teachers may be the least likely group to report educator sexual …

Enhanced Bariatric Surgery Preoperative Support To Improve Postoperative Surgical Outcomes, Jeffrey Eavey

Doctors of Nursing Practice (DNP) Final Projects, 2020-current

Abstract

Bariatric surgery is a procedure known to eradicate disease and improve the quality of life for patients suffering from obesity. The pathway to bariatric surgery is a comprehensive and lengthy process; therefore, patients require additional support from the multidisciplinary healthcare team and their support system. The accrediting body of an academic medical center bariatric surgery program (BSP) requires the program to limit and reduce 30-day all cause postoperative emergency department (ED) visits and 30-day all cause postoperative readmissions. A telemedicine visit within two weeks prior to surgery was added with the intent to assess patients for knowledge deficits and …

Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care And Education With Equity At The Center, Mark Nagasawa, Cristina Medellin-Paz

Straus Institute for Thriving Children & Families

Issue 51 of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series is a response to Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, and Alan Pence’s 25-year interrogation of the concept of quality in early childhood education (ECE) (Dahlberg et al., 1999, 2013, 2023). Their groundbreaking work has called early childhood educators to question deeply held assumptions about the universality of childhood and how these shape the standardization of practices in early childhood settings around the world. They have argued that the homogenization of ECE practices is a factoryization of early childhood that undermines cultural pluralism and the field’s equity aspirations. This raises an imperative to …

The Conceptual Design, Analysis And Optimization Of A Hydrogen Combustion And A Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Powered Aircraft, Michael Kiely

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In the effort to combat climate change worldwide, the aviation industry faces particularly complex design challenges in designing new, emission free vehicles. One potential solution to this problem is the use of hydrogen fuel as a means of propulsion. Hydrogen fuel has many benefits over traditional jet fuel such as a higher gravimetric energy density; however, it requires the aircraft to carry large, pressurized, cryogenic fuel tanks. This thesis examines the design challenges, potential solutions, and the analysis methods for the design of a short to medium range hydrogen powered commercial airliner. To accomplish this goal, a comprehensive conceptual design …

Essays In Macroeconomics, Development, And Entrepreneurship, Alexandros Loukas

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters that contribute to the fields of macroeconomics, economic development, and entrepreneurship. In the first chapter, "Entrepreneurship Selection and Performance in the U.S. and Across Countries: The Role of Human Capital," I seek to establish a set of stylized facts related to entrepreneurship and human capital, the latter being proxied by years of formal education. Analyzing individual-level survey data from nearly 100 countries unveils new empirical facts: there is a strong positive link between the mean-adjusted rate of entrepreneurship for higher educated individuals and output per worker or estimated total factor productivity (TFP). Further focus …

Complete Pick Spaces And Operator Inequalities, Georgios Tsikalas

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is concerned with the treatment of three different research topics, all lying at the interface of complex analysis and operator theory. The first chapter is based on two distinct research projects, both revolving around complete Pick spaces. These are reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces that host an analogue of the Pick interpolation theorem for multipliers. First, we study a generalized inner-outer factorization in the setting of a particular complete Pick space over the annulus. The second project deals with the characterization of interpolating sequences for multipliers between certain pairs of function spaces that enjoy an analogue of the complete …

Novel Bioinformatics Tools For Biomarker Discovery In Prostate Cancer, Jace Webster

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Prostate cancer (PCa) accounts for 29% of all expected cancer diagnoses in men in 2024, but patients presenting with different disease stages can have significantly different outcomes. Patients with indolent PCa may experience little to no impact on their quality of life and have a 5-year survival as high as 98%, but progression to aggressive disease causes 5-year survival to plummet to 30%. Patients with the most lethal form of the disease, metastatic castration-resistant PCa (mCRPC), have a median survival of only 5.5 months if they become resistant to treatment. Due to this clinical heterogeneity, it is critical to quickly …

The Relationship Between Social Risk Factors And Pre-Term Births In Hawai’I, Rina Therese Ramos Amposta

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Premature birth remains the leading cause of neonatal death and is associated with birth defects and long-term health morbidities. Hawai’i, with dominant Pacific Islander, Asian, and White populations, ranks 18th amongst the states with the highest rate of preterm birth. Guided by the social ecological model, the purpose of this quantitative, cross-sectional research study was to determine the extent of the association of social risk factors and preterm birth in the state of Hawai’i for the years 2012-2015 using the Hawai’i Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring Systems (PRAMS). Preterm birth in Hawai’i from 2012- 2015 was found to be 17% …

Trouble, Shu Li

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Generally, we do not want trouble, but oftentimes trouble is the most interesting thing in finance. This thesis has three essays related to trouble. The first essay suggests predictors of trouble (accounting fraud or financial distress) also predict excess returns for newly-listed firms. The second and third essays offer suggestions about what approaches best mitigate damage from nontraded wealth that can have trouble in the form of big losses. The second paper offers general results, including an indicator of when hedging is good and when it is bad, and the third essay provides technical results used in the second essay.

Implementing A Clinical Practice Guideline To Reduce Antibiotic Use In Asymptomatic Bacteriuria, Connie Sue Clum

Dissertations

Antibiotic use in asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) may not be necessary. At the project site, there was no systematic process to manage ordering antibiotics and urine cultures without first diagnosing a urinary tract infection, so an evidence-based solution was sought. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to determine if implementing an antimicrobial stewardship program utilizing the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Asymptomatic Bacteriuria would impact urine cultures ordering and antibiotic use among adult patients admitted to the general medical service. The project was piloted over 12 weeks in an urban hospital …

Modulation Of The Blood-Brain Barrier By Sigma-1r Activation, Eugen Brailoiu, Jeffrey L Barr, Hailey N Wittorf, Saadet Inan, Ellen M Unterwald, Gabriela Cristina Brailoiu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Sigma non-opioid intracellular receptor 1 (Sigma-1R) is an intracellular chaperone protein residing on the endoplasmic reticulum at the mitochondrial-associated membrane (MAM) region. Sigma-1R is abundant in the brain and is involved in several physiological processes as well as in various disease states. The role of Sigma-1R at the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is incompletely characterized. In this study, the effect of Sigma-1R activation was investigated in vitro on rat brain microvascular endothelial cells (RBMVEC), an important component of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and in vivo on BBB permeability in rats. The Sigma-1R agonist PRE-084 produced a dose-dependent increase in mitochondrial calcium, …

Effect Of Methyl Jasmonate And Ga3 On Canola (Brassica Napus L) Growth, Antioxidants Activity, And Nutrient Concentration Cultivated In Salt-Affected Soils, Subhan Danish, Sundas Sana, Muhammad Baqir Hussain, Khadim Dawar, Hesham S Almoallim, Mohammad Javed Ansari, Misbah Hareem, Rahul Datta

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Salinity stress is a significant challenge in agricultural production. When soil contains high salts, it can adversely affect plant growth and productivity due to the high concentration of soluble salts in the soil water. To overcome this issue, foliar applications of methyl jasmonate (MJ) and gibberellic acid (GA3) can be productive amendments. Both can potentially improve the plant's growth attributes and flowering, which are imperative in improving growth and yield. However, limited literature is available on their combined use in canola to mitigate salinity stress. That's why the current study investigates the impact of different levels of MJ (at concentrations …

From Counterspaces To Community:A Qualitative Case Study Analysis Of Black Community Making At A Pwi, Charles Watkins

Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how Black college students build and maintain a sense of community at a predominantly white institution (PWI). Informed by relational sociological methodology and the conceptual framework of Black placemaking, this study foregrounded the nuanced process of community building, focusing on the interplay between Black students and the spaces—physical and digital—they cocreate collectively. This study particularly emphasized the significance of the Black Student Union (BSU) as a foundational Black student organization at PWIs. The following lines of inquiry guided this study: (a) How do Black undergraduate students at a PWI define the Black community? (b) What …

Promises Kept And Lives Touched: Local Educators Ignite Hope Through Learning And Literacy, May 9, 2024, Tisa Mason Ed.D.

Heart of a Tiger Columns

No abstract provided.

Vista: May 9, 2024, University Of San Diego

USD Vista (1965-)

No abstract provided.

Nyls Clinic Students Go To Congress, Joanne Doroshow

NYLS Community News

No abstract provided.

Nanograv 15-Year Gravitational-Wave Background Methods, Aaron D. Johnson, Patrick M. Meyers, Paul T. Baker, Neil J. Cornish, ‪Jeffrey S. Hazboun, Tyson B. Littenberg, Joseph D. Romano, Stephen R. Taylor, Michele Vallisneri

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use an array of millisecond pulsars to search for gravitational waves in the nanohertz regime in pulse time of arrival data. This paper presents rigorous tests of PTA methods, examining their consistency across the relevant parameter space. We discuss updates to the 15-year isotropic gravitational-wave background analyses and their corresponding code representations. Descriptions of the internal structure of the flagship algorithms enterprise and ptmcmcsampler are given to facilitate understanding of the PTA likelihood structure, how models are built, and what methods are currently used in sampling the high-dimensional PTA parameter space. We introduce a novel version …

Neurocognitive Functioning In Adults With Trichotillomania: Predictors Of Treatment Response And Symptom Severity In A Randomized Control Trial, Kathryn E. Barber, Douglas W. Woods, Thilo Deckersbach, Christopher C. Bauer, Scott N. Compton, Michael P. Twohig, Emily J. Ricketts, Jordan Robinson, Stephen M. Saunders, Martin E. Franklin

Psychology Faculty Publications

Trichotillomania (TTM) is associated with impairments in response inhibition and cognitive flexibility, but it is unclear how such impairments relate to treatment outcome. The present study examined pre-treatment response inhibition and cognitive flexibility as predictors of treatment outcome, change in these domains from pre- to post-treatment, and associations with TTM severity. Participants were drawn from a randomized controlled trial comparing acceptance-enhanced behavior therapy (AEBT) to psychoeducation and supportive therapy (PST) for TTM. Adults completed assessments at pre-treatment (n=88) and following 12 weeks of treatment (n=68). Response inhibition and cognitive flexibility were assessed using the Stop Signal …

Autowaze: Automated, Real-Time, And Accurate Traffic Analytics, Vijay Bajracharya

Theses

A key factor leading to the inefficiency of transportation systems is the lack of real-time, fine-grained traffic analytics. An average motorist in the United States spends a significant amount of time looking for parking spots during their daily commute. Existing systems for traffic analytics are either not scal- able to large metropolitan areas or require a human-in-the-loop. This project focuses on automating the detection of fine-grained traffic analytics. Lever- aging on-board stereo cameras, Autowaze utilizes a crowd-sourced strategy to take time-windowed snapshots of the road containing 3D map points of the environment. These snapshots are used to extract changes in …

Effect Of Waste Covid-19 Masks On Compaction Characteristics Of Silty-Clay Soil, Sydney K. Lawson

Honors College Theses

The present study aims to explore the effect of adding shredded waste Covid-19 masks to silty-clay soil on the soil’s compaction characteristics for beneficial use in embankment, the subgrade of roadways, or backfill. This was accomplished by using two different types of masks: blue surgical masks and KN95 masks. Both mask types were hand shredded into half-inch sections using safety-scissors. The maximum dry density (MDD) and optimum moisture content (OMC) are the two most important compaction characteristics, and they were determined by the Standard Proctor Compaction Test (ASTM D698 / AASHTO T99). The change of both the MDD and OMC …

A Nlp Approach To Automating The Generation Of Surveys For Market Research, Anav Chug

Honors College Theses

Market Research is vital but includes activities that are often laborious and time consuming. Survey questionnaires are one possible output of the process and market researchers spend a lot of time manually developing questions for focus groups. The proposed research aims to develop a software prototype that utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automate the process of generating survey questions for market research. The software uses a pre-trained Open AI language model to generate multiple choice survey questions based on a given product prompt, send it to a targeted email list, and also provides a real-time analysis of the responses …

Do Factors Contributing To Wrongful Conviction Differ By Crime Type?, Kaylee Baldwin

Honors College Theses

Wrongful convictions play a big role in the criminal justice system, resulting in individuals being punished for crimes they did not commit. This study investigates the factors contributing to wrongful convictions across different crime types, utilizing data from the National Registry of Exonerations. The research aims to identify common contributors to wrongful convictions and explores variations by crime type. Results highlight the challenges associated with specific offenses. Understanding how factors vary by crime type is essential for developing strategies to prevent and address wrongful convictions.

Navigating The Relationships Among Food Waste Practices, Environmental Intentions, And Sustainability Knowledge Of Students, Merri Claire Minshew

Honors College Theses

Colleges and university campuses are among the greatest food wasters in the US due to combined over production and plate waste from consumers. While some schools have developed programs aimed at reducing and sustainably managing food waste, much of it ends up in landfills and produces greenhouse gas emissions. The overall goal of the research was to collect a comprehensive data set on university students’ food waste practices and behavior, environmental and sustainability knowledge, and environmental intentions. For probing relationships among these drivers, a structural equation model and student survey was developed. The survey of 37 questions was collected on …

Distinct Autoantibody Profiles Across Checkpoint Inhibitor Types And Toxicities, Hong Mu-Mosley, Mitchell S Von Itzstein, Farjana Fattah, Jialiang Liu, Chengsong Zhu, Yang Xie, Edward K Wakeland, Jason Y Park, Brad S Kahl, Catherine S Diefenbach, David E Gerber

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are increasingly used in combination. To understand the effects of different ICI categories, we characterized changes in circulating autoantibodies in patients enrolled in the E4412 trial (NCT01896999) of brentuximab vedotin (BV) plus ipilimumab, BV plus nivolumab, or BV plus ipilimumab-nivolumab for Hodgkin Lymphoma. Cycle 2 Day 1 (C2D1) autoantibody levels were compared to pre-treatment baseline. Across 112 autoantibodies tested, we generally observed increases in ipilimumab-containing regimens, with decreases noted in the nivolumab arm. Among 15 autoantibodies with significant changes at C2D1, all nivolumab cases exhibited decreases, with more than 90% of ipilimumab-exposed cases showing increases. Autoantibody …