Digital Commons Network^™

Clinical Procedure Training For Physician Assistants: An Evaluation Of Reported Exposure And Perception Of Comfort To Perform, Allison Martin

Anatomical Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine physician assistant (PA) students’ perceptions of clinical procedure training following completion of didactic and clinical phases within a single program based in eastern Tennessee. The cross-sectional study design utilized two survey instruments to record responses from PA students. Responses were gathered from one cohort following the clinical rotation training phase of their program and from a consecutive cohort prior to beginning rotation training.

Evidence among medical student populations suggest that exposure to common clinical procedures is declining and reports from students indicate lower confidence to perform common procedures. The PA profession has …

Population Dynamics And Habitat Use By Gray Bats In An Anthropogenically Altered Landscape, Haley Price

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Habitat loss resulting from land use change is among the greatest threats to biodiversity. Yet, in some cases, imperiled wildlife species may benefit from anthropogenic disturbance. The expansion of urbanization, agriculture, renewable energy, and mining practices impact conservation efforts for threatened and endangered bat species, and particularly species that are affected by white nose syndrome (WNS). The federally endangered gray bat (Myotis grisescens) is a cavernicolous species that is susceptible to WNS. Due to their unique roosting and foraging requirements, gray bats inhabit a small portion of the accessible caves within their geographic range. As habitat loss persists, …

The Effects Of Color On Flavor, Tiffany S. Yoo

Honors Capstones

Color and its relation to flavor, is a complex cognitive phenomenon that researchers today are still trying to decipher. The present literature review is an examination of the history of color, process of color perception, the effects of additional factors such as saturation, the exploration of senses that may potentially contribute to perception itself, and the different modern theories suggested. The purpose of this project was to review, revise, and narrow down which theories can be deemed as accurate in terms of the amount of support addressed by modern literature. While a clear-cut answer was not concluded, three potential theories …

The Affective Landscapes Of Herbalism In New Mexico, Samantha Angelou Stroud

Geography ETDs

Herbalism, or practices which use plants for medicinal purposes, is tied to traditions in several cultures of the American Southwest, including Indigenous herbal medicine, Mexican-American curanderismo, and Western herbal traditions. Herbalism has been steadily gaining mainstream popularity since the late 1960s, alongside counterculture, holistic health, and back-to-nature movements, introducing many newcomers to the practice. This study asks: How does herbalism create and attach meaning to plants, cultures, and place in New Mexico? What are the affective landscapes produced by herbalism in New Mexico? And, to what extent do meaningful attachments manifest in ethics and actions of care? I argue that …

Quantitative And Qualitative Analysis Of Mutation In Pam-1 Of Model Organism Caenorhabditis Elegans., Jessica Stein, Jessica Stein

Honors College Theses

The pam-1 gene in the model roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans governs meiotic exit and establishment of cellular polarity in the single-celled C. elegans embryo. Mutation of the pam-1 gene results in reduced fertility and fecundity in adult C. elegans and disrupts the anatomy of the germinal gonad. The aim of this study is to qualitatively and quantitatively define the changes in the germline cells associated with mutations to the pam-1 gene. Specifically, we examined the stages of germ cell development within the gonads of adult worms, both wild-type and pam-1 compromised, and identified the changes in the length of the mitotic, …

Impact Of Emotional Processing On Working Memory In Preadolescents With High Autistic And Anxiety Traits, Teagan Mullins

Psychology ETDs

Adolescence is an important neurodevelopmental period that confers both opportunity for positive change, and a risk for emerging psychopathology. In particular, anxiety disorders and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) both cause significant challenges during adolescence that impact individuals throughout their lifespan. Notably, functional impacts of anxiety and ASD are not limited to those who meet diagnostic criteria, and can be present at sub-clinical levels. However, despite high rates of co-morbidity of ASD and anxiety symptomology, the degree to which the neural bases of anxiety are similar or qualitatively different in individuals with and without autistic traits is unknown. One candidate neurobehavioral …

University Of Minnesota Morris Commencement 2023, Communications And Marketing

UMM Commencement

The University of Minnesota Morris's Sixtieth Commencement Saturday, May 13, 2023.

Modeling And Characterization Of Cmos Logic Gates Under Large Signal Rf Injection, Zahra Abedi

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

This research addresses the issue of electromagnetic interference (EMI) in digital electronics, which can cause undesired behavior in active electronic components and systems. As technology advances and transistor size decreases, devices become more susceptible to EMI. In addition, as voltage is scaled down to save energy, silicon chips become more susceptible to soft errors. While there are several ways to mitigate the impact of severe EMI on digital systems, minimal electromagnetic coupling can still cause significant problems. We develop analytical models to predict device upset due to EMI. The study focuses on identifying vulnerable parameters of operation related to device …

Journey With A Purpose, Walter Prescher

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The modern church is in bondage from years of trauma rooted in the Post-Christendom decline. As the church has responded to the trauma it is enduring, it has responded by becoming stagnant as it seeks to maintain any relevance it still has. What the modern church is going through has strong parallels with the Hebrew people who were in bondage in Egypt and were delivered through the wilderness into the promised land of Canaan. Following this example, this dissertation walks church leadership through an understanding of the traumatized church and presents a what a modern-day Exodus journey could look like …

A Feminist Approach To Solutions In Urban Development, Lourdes Yessenia Gracia Cantu

Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering: Sustainability and Development Capstone Projects

Are there ways of occupying space and producing places that somehow contest, challenge, and problematize the dominant modalities of organization, of space and place?

A Feminist Approach to Solutions in Urban Development presents an exploration and proposal of a more equitable and diverse urban design that guarantees the use of public space as a place for economic development. With a focus on the recent theory and social movement concerning the impact of the built environment on women, children and older adults, urban feminist, comes across as a participatory planning process that ensures the involvement of multilevel agendas, to react and …

Incentives To Learn: A Location-Based Federated Learning Model, Ryan Kilpatrick-Morrison Brown

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Federated Learning (FL) effectiveness depends, among others, on the quality and quantity of the training data and process realized at the end computing nodes. In this paper, we introduce a novel location-based federated learning model, enabled by a low-cost and fast deployable Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) - based approach that allows to accurately determine the distributed computing nodes’ positions. Furthermore, in order to train a global model to support different types of smart city applications, while considering two types of servers, offering a prime and common service, respectively, under different costs, the proposed location-based FL model is complemented by an …

Machine Learning Based Prediction Models For Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cell Optimization, Rahul Jaiswal

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Silicon heterojunction solar cell of Heterojunction with Thin Intrinsic Layer (HIT) structure is a commercially available technology, and its market share will significantly increase by the next decade. With such a significant market share, any minor improvement in the device’s overall efficiency can be beneficial three folds - customer return on investment, industry revenue, and the overall carbon footprint (from manufacturing to recycling/ disposing of the device). Conventionally, device optimization for solar cells has been achieved using a hit & trial approach where multiple experiments are done to evaluate the best process conditions and device parameters. This approach has some …

Vi Energy-Efficient Memristor-Based Neuromorphic Computing Circuits And Systems For Radiation Detection Applications, Jorge Iván Canales Verdial

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Radionuclide spectroscopic sensor data is analyzed with minimal power consumption through the use of neuromorphic computing architectures. Memristor crossbars are harnessed as the computational substrate in this non-conventional computing platform and integrated with CMOS-based neurons to mimic the computational dynamics observed in the mammalian brain’s visual cortex. Functional prototypes using spiking sparse locally competitive approximations are presented. The architectures are evaluated for classification accuracy and energy efficiency. The proposed systems achieve a 90% true positive accuracy with a high-resolution detector and 86% with a low-resolution detector.

Spring Commencement: May 13, 2023, University Of North Dakota

UND Commencement Programs

UND Spring Commencement program from May 13, 2023.

The Role Of Social Media Activism In Achieving Good Water And Sanitation In Ghana, Inusah Mohammed

Communication ETDs

This thesis examined the role of social media activism in ensuring good water and sanitation in Ghana. The study conducted a thematic analysis of Facebook posts (403) from March 2020 to December 2022 and found seven themes on how social activists are presenting issues concerning water and sanitation in Ghana. The study also found outcomes of the activism and also found theoretical implications of activism on social media usage in Ghana.

Deep Learning Applications For Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies, Eric Guzman

Physics Theses and Dissertations

Next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys will map the microwave sky with unprecedented precision presenting a wide range of opportunities for new insights into cosmology. To maximize the scientific value of upcoming surveys, new methods that can disentangle primary and secondary CMB anisotropies are required. The CMB secondaries encode information about the cosmological sources that cause them and act as a source of noise in the observation of primary anisotropies. Quadratic estimators are the current standard techniques for reconstruction of the sources of CMB secondaries. While successful for reconstruction of distortion fields with current data, quadratic estimators will become sub-optimal …

Fayetteville State University Spring Undergraduate Commencement 2023, Fayetteville State University

Graduation Exhibit

Fayetteville State University Spring Undergraduate Commencement May 13th 2023

Keynote Speaker: Honorable Lloyd J. Austin III, US Secretary of Defense

Rigorous Analysis Of Markov Processes With Applications To Quantum Information, Samuel Edwin Slezak

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

We present a rigorous analysis of the rapid convergence of techniques based on Markov chains for the simulation of thermal quantum systems. We show that a classical computing algorithm called path integral Monte Carlo is capable of simulating thermal states of transverse field Ising models above a threshold temperature by demonstrating the existence of a rapidly mixing Markov chain. We then turn to quantum computing algorithms and show that an idealized version of quantum Metropolis sampling can efficiently simulate systems that satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. In a related result, we find a class of stoquastic frustration free Hamiltonians that …

Equity In Transportation: Data Driven Analysis Of Transportation Services And Infrastructures, Javad Jomehpour Chahar Aman

Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Achieving equity in transportation is an ongoing challenge, as transportation options still vary tremendously when it comes to marginalized populations. This dissertation addresses this challenge by conducting a comprehensive review of existing transportation equity literature and identifying two critical gaps: the lack of data-driven approaches to studying spatial mismatch between transportation supply and demand, and limited information on women's perceptions and expectations towards emerging transportation services.

Chapter two introduces the concept of transportation "deserts," specifically transit deserts and walking deserts, and develops data-driven frameworks to identify and investigate neighborhoods with limited transportation service supply but high demand. The frameworks compare …

"Prodigals Of Traitors: American Pows During The Korean War, Brainwashing, And National Security", Brett Fearer

History Theses and Dissertations

American prisoners of war (POW) in Korea endured unimaginable hardship and pain while in captivity. American POWs suffered through long marches through the freezing mountains of Korea, were given little food or medical attention, and were sometimes executed on the spot when captured. Upon reaching the permanent POW camps along the Yalu River, POWs encountered a new challenge: Communist indoctrination. When the war ended, twenty-one American POWs chose to stay behind with their Chinese captors instead of returning. Additionally, American POWs were accused of collaborating with the enemy, and some military officials and journalists were suspicious of some POWs having …

A Southern People: The Choctaw Nation From Removal Through The Civil War, Josh Phillips

History Theses and Dissertations

While scholars have begun in recent years to give more attention to the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi region (including the Indian Territory), few have attempted to provide nuanced and comprehensive explanations for the actions of native peoples who took part in the conflict. While the pre-removal era of Choctaw history has received copious attention, the thirty years between removal and the Civil War have received only sparse examination. Historians who have written about this period have typically either gone into very little detail about why the Choctaws sided with the Confederacy or they have identified only one or two …

A Mechanics-Based Analytical Solution For Restrained Beams With Application To Progressive Collapse Behavior, Leven Deputy

Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents an axially restrained beam (ARB) model that incorporates axial-flexural interaction throughout the entire static load-deflection curve: the elastic material range, the plastic, flexural dominant range, the range beyond plastic flexure with increasing catenary effect, and the full catenary range. Energy methods are applied to static load-deflection curves to determine dynamic load-deflection relationships. Specifically, this dissertation considers the two conditions; Pinned-Pinned-Pinned (PPP) which has no flexural resistance at the boundaries, and Fixed-Fixed-Fixed FFF (also Pinned-Fixed-Pinned, PFP) condition which provides the beam with flexural resistance at the boundaries equal to flexural capacity of the beam. Behavior is explained analytically …

Transport Mechanisms In Electrochemical Immunoassay Biosensors With Applications To Sarscov-2 Neutralizing Antibody Detection, Mohammad Karim Dehghan Manshadi

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Biosensors are used in diverse applications spanning from clinical diagnosis and drug discovery to environmental and safety monitoring. Among different types of biosensors, electrochemical ones have demonstrated high sensitivity, short detection time, and selectivity with a low cost, and have been widely used to detect various diseases. In this thesis, we have introduced an inexpensive, rapid, sensitive, and quantifiable impedance-based immunosensors to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody (NAb), which shows the real protective immunity against COVID-19. We demonstrated that our device enabled assessment of NAb in a physiological buffer with conductivity equivalent to that of blood plasma. This technique can be …

Electromagnetically Actuated Modular Robots With Controlled Self-Assembly And On-Demand Disassembly, Anuruddha Bhattacharjee

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Modular reconfigurable robots, with on-demand assembly and disassembly, offer the possibility of mesoscale (milli- and microscale) manufacturing. However, most of the existing modular robotic platforms currently being designed and functionalized rely on complex actuation and assembly mechanisms and so lack further scalability and transformability required for mesoscale applications. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to develop a novel scalable modular robotic platform with controlled self-assembly, disassembly, and reconfiguration techniques using an external electromagnetic field. While current cutting-edge research in this area uses a single magnet to move one module at a time into the target position, this dissertation explores processes to move …

Photonic Sensors Based On Integrated Ring Resonators, Jaime Da Silva

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the application of integrated ring resonators to different sensing applications. The sensors proposed here rely on the principle of optical whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonance shifts of the resonators. Three distinct sensing applications are investigated to demonstrate the concept: a photonic seismometer, an evanescent field sensor, and a zero-drift Doppler velocimeter. These concepts can be helpful in developing lightweight, compact, and highly sensitive sensors. Successful implementation of these sensors could potentially address sensing requirements for both space and Earth-bound applications. The feasibility of this class of sensors is assessed for seismic, proximity, and vibrational measurements.

Being Culturally Relevant And Responsive: A Comparative Analysis Of The Girl Scouts Of Usa Leadership Experience Program To The Diné Philosophy Of Hózhó And The Kinaaldá, To Illuminate Leadership, Rekindle Identity, And Revitalize Language Among Diné Girls, Deborah J. Belone

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

How does analytically comparing the Girl Scouts of the United States of America’s (GSUSA) Leadership Experience program to the Diné philosophy of Hózhó (harmonious way of life) and the Kinaaldá (female puberty ceremony) positively affect the unique diversity of each Diné girl and give attention to leadership skills, self-identity, and the Diné language? This is the research question that guided this research study of comparative analysis. In addition, there are three subquestions: (a) How does aligning the GSUSA Leadership Experience program to the Diné philosophies of Hózhó and the Kinaaldá build leadership skills, positive self-identify, and a healthy social and …

The Effect Of Shrub Cover On Conifer Water-Use Patterns, Growth, And Response To Climate Change In The Southern Sierra Nevada, Marissa Goodwin

Biology ETDs

As wildfires increase in size and severity, large areas of forest are undergoing substantial increases in shrub cover. In forests where water is the limiting resource, the partitioning of soil water between shrubs and trees may determine how shrubs affect tree growth and water-stress. We analyzed the δ²H and δ¹⁸O values of xylem water for two conifer species (Abies concolor and Pinus jeffreyi) and two shrub species (Arctostaphylos patula and Ceanothus cordulatus) to assess how shrub cover affects the water-uptake patterns of conifers in the southern Sierra Nevada. We found that growing …

Morphosemantic Integration Of -Ing Anglicisms Into Russian And Kazakh In The Context Of Trilingual Code-Switching, Timur Akishev

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current dissertation is an attempt to determine and describe the characteristics of the process of linguistic integration of English noun loans into Russian and Kazakh. One of the main objectives that my study was guided by was the analysis of the relationships between or across the linguistic and quantitative parameters of the loans based on the data drawn from the Russian National Corpus, an online database containing multiple examples of using the Russian language. Another important objective of the research conducted was to provide a holistic interpretation to the process of secondary adaptation of the nominal Anglicisms from Russian …

University Of Mississippi 170th Commencement, 2023, University Of Mississippi, Glenn F. Boyce, Noel E. Wilkin, Stephanie Hickman

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

New Methods For Core-Hole Spectroscopy Based On Coupled Cluster Theory, Megan Simons

Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) is a method used to investigate atomic local structure and electronic states. Coupled cluster method is a numerical method used for describing many-body systems and electron correlation in a wavefunction. When equation-of-motion coupled cluster is used in XAS calculations, the ground state is applied to the excitation operator, which excites or ionizes the electron. This causes a large orbital relaxation error, normally ~5 eV, which leads to the need for triple excitations in order to obtain accurate results.

This dissertation introduces a coupled cluster method that uses "transition potential" reference orbitals to reduce the orbital relaxation …