Digital Commons Network^™

"I Expected Little, Although I Learned A Lot": Perceived Benefits Of Participating In Hiv Risk Reduction Sessions Among Women Engaged In Sex Work In Uganda, Ozge Sensoy Bahar, Proscovia Nabunya, Josephine Nabayinda, Susan S Witte, Joshua Kiyingi, Larissa Jennings Mayo-Wilson, Prema Filippone, Lyla Sunyoung Yang, Janet Nakigudde, Yesim Tozan, Fred M Ssewamala

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: The global HIV burden remains a public health concern. Women engaged in sex work (WESW) are at higher risk of acquiring HIV compared to the general adult population. Uganda reports high rates of HIV prevalence among WESW. While WESW in Uganda have long been the subject of surveillance studies, they have not been targeted by theory-informed HIV prevention intervention approaches. In this study, we explored the perceived benefits of an evidence-based HIV risk reduction intervention that was implemented as part of a combination intervention tested in a clinical trial in Uganda.

METHODS: As part of a larger randomized clinical …

A Historical Analysis Of Brand Activism And Its Impact On Company Success, Katy Sharon

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Corporate activism is a growing area of study that has become more important as the political climate becomes increasingly divided. This project evaluates how corporate activism affects company success. Four significant political events were chosen and within each event two to three companies with varying responses were analyzed to determine best practices for organizations looking to engage in corporate activism in the future. Going forward, companies should deliberate with employees and upper-level management to determine the best course of action, respond to the event in a timely manner, acknowledge previous company actions that may contradict its current position, and lastly, …

Where The Rainbow Ends: The Hidden Humanitarian Crisis For Members Of The Lgbtqia+ Community In International Business, John R. Krendel

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Before pursuing an international career, members of the LGBTQIA+ community must be aware of the hardship that may be exacerbated by living and working abroad. This study addresses the trends in laws, including employment and anti-discrimination laws, that provide and restrict certain rights of members of the LGBTQIA+ community in eight countries. These nations, both progressive and discriminatory, include the United States, England, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan, China, the Philippines and Kazakhstan. Eight LGBTQIA+ business professionals spoke on their experiences living and working in each of these countries and provided advice to members of the community wishing to pursue an international …

The Ncaa's Rise To Absolute Power And Confronting Its Distortion Of Amateurism, Terek J. Kirsch

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This paper examines the progression of the intercollegiate athletic space, from a small regatta in 1852 to the massive athletic environment we know now in contemporary society. It finds the National Collegiate Athletic Association snared in a trap of circular logic that has been closing in on it since its conception, as it has defined collegiate athletes as amateurs and then proceeded to argue for amateur status for those athletes because of the definition that it wrote. This paper concludes in its final two chapters, after analyzing the recent Supreme Court case NCAA v. Alston, and the Name, Image, and …

To The Shores Of Tripoli: A Barbary Retrospective, Kathleen J. Brett

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The First and Second Barbary Wars were incredibly influential in shaping the diplomatic and military tactics of the early United States. These wars were fought against the Barbary states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers, located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. The First Barbary War lasted between the years of 1801 to 1805. The First Barbary War began due to the United States’ desire to no longer pay tribute sums to the Barbary states, along with an increase in the number American merchantmen captured and enslaved by the Barbary states. Tripoli served as the primary aggressor in the …

The Effect Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Physical Activity In University Communities, Hannah M. Shouse

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Introduction: In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began, transitioning the university community from in-person learning to virtual learning, and shutting down many industries across the country. This study was conducted in order to analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic affected physical activity in university communities through the transition to virtual learning, and back into in-person learning.

Methods: Individuals who wore exercise tracking devices were recruited from university communities. Step count and activity data was collected from February 2020 to April 2021.

Results: 24 subjects completed the survey, with 17 being from Virginia, and other subjects being from other east coast states. …

Analyzing Insurgent Activity In The Cabo Delgado Province Of Mozambique, Alayna N. Stormer, Amanda Brotemarkle, Virginia Mcdaniel

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Al-Sunna Wa Jama’a (ASWJ), a violent Islamic Insurgency within the Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique, is likely to continue to exercise control and pose a strategic threat to United States (US) interests and possessions in the region due to violence, various illegal activities, and exploitation of regional humanitarian crises. Based on trend analysis, it is likely that these activities will contribute to an overall continuation of ASWJ’s influence. We also considered the true ideological nature of ASWJ and whether or not they have ties to other well known terrorist organizations. We utilized two methods, indicator analysis and strategy assessment, our …

How Do Co-Curricular Mentorship Programs Meet The Social-Emotional Needs Of Immigrant And Refugee Youth? A Case Study From Harrisonburg, Virginia, Katherine M. Clayton

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Immigrant and refugee youth are at greater risk of encountering the following stressors: trauma, acculturation, resettlement, and isolation. If neglected, these stressors can prove detrimental to one’s social-emotional wellbeing. Although a newcomer’s successful adaptation is often measured in terms of their academic success, social-emotional wellbeing and academic achievement are intertwined. Thus, a focus on social-emotional wellness for newcomer students benefits both the students and the school systems. Co-curricular mentorship programs can be utilized by schools to meet the social-emotional needs of their newcomer students. The Peer Leaders Program (PLP) of Harrisonburg, Virginia offers one such approach. Based on trauma-informed peer …

Circular Economy And The Potential For Extended Producer Responsibility Policies, Erin Quinn

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This thesis was developed based on an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Policy briefing I created during my internship at RISE (Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment) during the summer of 2021. This project expands upon the work created during the internship. It examines the connection between circular economy and EPR policies, as well as how they can create effective strategies for waste reduction and recycling in the U.S. It demonstrates how the current linear economic system under which the U.S operates and its connection to single-stream recycling are inefficient at best. The thesis then describes how a circular economy (CE) …

“For The Best Interest Of The Patient And Of Society;” Sterilization In Virginia’S Mental Institutions In The 20th Century, Grace M. Gordon

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The science of eugenics, or classifying and grouping people into the categories of genetically “inferior” and “superior” for the purpose of better breeding, thrived during the first decades of the 20th century in Virginia. The first recorded instance of eugenic sterilization in a Virginia Mental Institution occurred in 1915 by Dr. Albert Priddy. In 1924, the combined efforts of Dr. Joseph DeJarnette and Dr. Albert Priddy resulted in the passage of a state-sanctioned eugenic sterilization law that was later deemed constitutional in 1927 by Buck v. Bell. The 1924 law gave Western State Hospital, Central State Hospital, Eastern State Hospital, …

University Archives And Etds: Exploring Best Practices, Cory L. Nimer, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

This poster reports on a preliminary study of current best practices for the management of theses and dissertations (TD) by university archivists in the United States. This will include procedural concerns, such as the maintenance of print copies, digital preservation, microfilming, and participation in external databases of TDs. It also begins to explore the relationships between university archives programs and institutional repositories in electronic TD submission/management, and the status of theses and dissertations as student records.

The Effects Of High-Intensity Functional Training (Hift) On Perceptions Of Exercise In Middle-Aged Females, Halle Brin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The high prevalence of obesity and physical inactivity within the U.S. has become a public health crisis. PURPOSE: To examine the effects of High-Intensity Functional Training (HIFT) on the perceptions and beliefs towards exercise in an inactive sample of females. METHODS: Inactive, middle-aged females (n=8) were recruited to participate in an 8-week supervised and verified intervention (2-weeks High-Intensity Interval Training (On-Ramp), followed by 6-weeks of HIFT) three days per week. Pre- and post-assessments included: body composition (percent body fat (%BF)), strength (1RM bench press (BP), 5RM deadlift (DL)), a stage-graded exercise treadmill test ( O_2max), and a …

Untapped Talent: Immigrant Integration And Inclusion In Anchorage, Alaska, Nyabony Gat, Shannon Kuhn, Sara L. Buckingham, Amana Mbise, Tzu-Chiao Chen, Sofia Sytniak

Reports

Untapped Talent is a study of immigrants’ integration and inclusion in Anchorage with respect to education, employment, health care, access to public spaces, interactions with government agencies, social networks, and developing a sense of home. In this report, the term ‘immigrant’ is used for all people who moved from another country to the United States after their birth to live here indefinitely, including refugees, asylees, and asylum-seekers. The research team applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the results. In this document, we share findings and summarize what may help immigrants feel more at home in Anchorage.

Refreshing The Research Process, John Venecek, Rachel Edford

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This presentation was given at the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning Summer 2022 Conference. It was a discovery session designed to share fresh, innovative ideas for teaching research in an informal, personal setting. The hosts presented on their recent collaborations with instructors before inviting attendees to share their “fresh” approaches to teaching research, ideas for collaborations, best practices, and more.

Cultural Trauma Fiction: Political Violence, Rampage Violence, And Structural Violence In Contemporary American Literature, Courtney Mullis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies and proposes a new subgenre of American literature, Cultural Trauma Fiction, that has arisen since the late 20^th century in response to numerous large-scale traumatic events and their representation in the media. Cultural trauma occurs when a shocking, shared event fractures collective identity and initiates a discursive process to understand what took place, why it happened, and how the affected culture can heal. Cultural traumas differ from individual trauma because cultural traumas affect a culture, rather than an individual, and because they are mediated; many members of the culture experience the trauma of these events secondhand …

Novel Epigenetic Therapeutics For The Treatment Of Opioid Use Disorder, Suzannah De Almeida

Honors Scholar Theses

Epigenetic-based therapeutics are promising treatment options for Substance Use Disorder (SUD) due to their ability to influence gene expression and reverse behavioral responses associated with addiction. For example, previous studies have shown that epigenetic reader proteins, called Bromodomains and Extra Terminal Domain (BET), are increased in the nucleus accumbens following cocaine self-administration and that pharmacological inhibition of BET proteins reduced cocaine-seeking behaviors in rodents. Although BET inhibitors reduced cocaine- seeking behaviors in animal models, a role for BET proteins in animal models of Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) remains unknown. To identify a role for BET proteins in OUD, we measured …

2022-05-13 Institutional Animal Care And Use Committee Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate., Institutional Animal Care And Use Committee.

Faculty Senate Records

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee meeting minutes from May 13, 2022.

Concepts Of Leadership And The Value Of Leadership For Health Care Professionals: Perspectives From Doctor Of Physical Therapy Students, Tara Haj

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

The complex and rapidly changing environment of health care requires health care professionals with leadership knowledge and skills. Many health professional education programs have recognized the importance of developing the leadership abilities of students studying to be professionals in their field. There is emerging evidence of the need for leadership development for physical therapists, including a set of leadership competencies that has recently been identified by physical therapists. The perspective of Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students regarding leadership and the value of leadership for health care professionals is unknown.

This qualitative phenomenological study utilizing semi-structured interviews was conducted to …

A Qualitative Study Of Parental Needs In Supporting Home Literacy Environments And Child Literacy Interest, Leah Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Literacy education begins long before students step foot in their first classroom. Much research has been done that highlights the importance of the home literacy environment and the development of literacy interest in children (Jeynes, 2018). Home literacy environment (HLE) refers to the variety of literacy materials and activities found within the home. Literacy interest, broadly put, is a child's desire to engage in literacy activities. The development and practice of these has shown to be correlated with students' later reading success in school. Considering this, the role of a parent in their child’s success is influential. However, it seems …

A Quantitative Study Of An Online Learning Platform’S Impact On High School Students' Engagement, Academic Achievement, And Student Satisfaction In A Mathematics Class, Mariah Minkkinen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

The present study investigated the impact using the online learning platform Pear Deck had on an online high school math class. The study measured student engagement, academic achievement, and students’ overall satisfaction with using the online learning platform. The participants in this study were online Algebra 2 students. The study was conducted during synchronous online lessons using an online learning system. Data was collected from two different live classes. One class used the online learning platform Pear Deck and the other did not. Engagement was measured by charting the number of student responses for each question posed. Students’ academic achievement …

Natural Products Center Celebrates 20th Botanicals Forum, Patrick Smith

University of Mississippi News

International Conference on the Science of Botanicals brings discussion, innovation to Oxford

The Achilles Heel Of Police Body-Worn Cameras: Understanding The Factors That Influence Variation In Body-Worn Camera Activation, Charles M. Katz, Jessica Huff

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

While body-worn cameras (BWCs) are increasingly becoming commonplace in police organizations, researchers and policymakers still know little about their implementation in the field and the factors related to their actual use. Using data collected from 146,601 incidents in Phoenix, Arizona, the present study examines the prevalence and correlates of BWC activation. In doing so, we examine the impact of incident-level factors, officer characteristics, neighborhood context, and changes in BWC activation policy on whether an officer who is assigned to wear a BWC activates their camera during a police-citizen contact. Cross-classified models are used to simultaneously assess the influence of factors …

Teacher And Lawyer, Constance Browne Is Driven By Social Justice, Constance A. Browne

Shorter Faculty Works

Constance Browne’s passion for justice has deep roots.

William Holt, her grandfather, was born in a women’s prison outside Boston in either 1887 or 1888. His mother had been incarcerated—no one is sure why. Then, when Holt was three or four years old, he was taken by rail to Maine with other orphans intended to become farm laborers. Did his mother consent to letting him go? No one knows that either.

Eventually Holt landed with a family in North Waterford who treated him well, though it seems he was never adopted. He graduated from Bowdoin College and the Medical School …

A Priori And A Posteriori Error Estimates For The Quad-Curl Eigenvalue Problem, Lixiu Wang, Qian Zhang, Jiguang Sun, Zhimin Zhang

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

In this paper, we consider a priori and a posteriori error estimates of the H(curl²)-conforming finite element when solving the quad-curl eigenvalue problem. An a priori estimate of eigenvalues with convergence order 2(s − 1) is obtained if the corresponding eigenvector u ∈ H^{s − 1}(Ω) and ∇ × u ∈ H^s(Ω). For the a posteriori estimate, by analyzing the associated source problem, we obtain lower and upper bounds for the errors of eigenvectors in the energy norm and upper bounds for the errors of eigenvalues. Numerical examples are presented for validation.

Development And Evaluation Of A Measure For Social Support Provided By Friends During Lifestyle Management Programs, Laurie Abbott, Jennifer Lemacks, Tammy Greer

Faculty Publications

Obesity is a public health crisis that contributes to chronic disease prevalence, morbidity, and mortality. Nutrition and physical activity are risk factors for many chronic diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease, the leading causes of death in the United States. Lifestyle management programs to address obesity and potential sequelae such as chronic conditions have shown efficacy, with social support an important factor in interventions. Instruments that assess social support specifically provided by friends are lacking but could be important predictors of program success. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the 10-item Social Support …

Adults Perspectives Of Friendships And Social Interaction Between Students With And Without Complex Support Needs During A Pandemic, Jorden Morales

Special Education ETDs

Social interactions and friendships are important for all individuals including those with complex support needs (CSN). The voices of adults including parents/guardians, primary caregivers, teachers, and related service providers who responded to a survey provided insight into supporting social interactions and friendships for children with CSN during the Covid-19 pandemic This mixed methods study used thematic analysis to explore participants’ responses to open-ended questions while multiple choice questions were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Additionally, this study included a research narrative to speak to the various roles I hold related to this study (i.e., parent, educator, researcher). Three themes emerged from …

Pituitary Metastasis Of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Faris Alkhouri, Joseph Salib, Jack Artinian

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Lung cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide. Metastasis to other organs is also common. Of these, approximately 25% involve metastasis to the brain. In the brain, however, it is known that only 1% of brain metastasis involve the pituitary gland. In this report, we present a 70-year-old woman that was diagnosed with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) a year ago presenting with metastasis to the pituitary. A 70-year-old woman with past medical history of longstanding tobacco abuse, COPD, hypertension, and lung cancer (NSCLC stage IB in the upper right lobe diagnosed 1 year ago) presented to the emergency …

Research Impact Fluxkit: A Playful Exploration Of Research Assessment, Erica Finch

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Librarians sure do love their toolkits—but what happens when the tools we use reinforce systems of discrimination and exclusion? The Research Impact Fluxkit is a playful and interactive interpretation of the library toolkit intended to spark discussion about how we assess the impact of our research.

Scalable Deeper Graph Neural Networks For High-Performance Materials Property Prediction, Sadman Sadeed Omee, Steph-Yves Louis, Nihang Fu, Lai Wei, Sourin Dey, Rongzhi Dong, Qinyang Li, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Machine-learning-based materials property prediction models have emerged as a promising approach for new materials discovery, among which the graph neural networks (GNNs) have shown the best performance due to their capability to learn high-level features from crystal structures. However, existing GNN models suffer from their lack of scalability, high hyperparameter tuning complexity, and constrained performance due to over-smoothing. We propose a scalable global graph attention neural network model DeeperGATGNN with differentiable group normalization (DGN) and skip connections for high-performance materials property prediction. Our systematic benchmark studies show that our model achieves the state-of-the-art prediction results on five out of six …

A Modular Synthesis Of Processable And Thermally Stable Semi-Fluorinated Aryl Ether Polymers Via Step-Growth Polymerization Of Fluoroalkenes, Ketki Eknath Shelar

Theses and Dissertations

Tailored fluoropolymers remain the leading choice for a wide variety of advanced high-performance applications, including electronic/optical and energy conversion, owing to their unique blend of complementary high-performance properties. Amorphous semi-fluorinated polymers exhibit improved solubility and melt processability when compared to traditional perfluoropolymers. A leading class of semi-fluorinated aryl ether polymers includes perfluorocyclobutyl (PFCB), perfluorocycloalkenyl (PFCA), and fluoroarylene vinylene ether (FAVE) polymers. Monomers containing aromatic trifluorovinyl ethers (TFVE) are used to synthesize PFCB polymers via radical-mediated [2+2] cyclodimerization. On the other hand, FAVE and PFCA polymers are polymerized via base-mediated nucleophilic addition/elimination of bisphenols with TFVE monomers and decafluorocyclohexene respectively. The …