Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Women's Political Representation In Europe: An Analysis Of Structural And Attitudinal Factors, Jenna Elaine Mcculloch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this mixed methods study, I explore the reasons for the low level of women in elected office in Europe. I analyze the impact of three structural factors (number of years since women's suffrage was enacted, type of electoral system, and presence of legal gender quotas) and three attitudinal factors (level of gender equality, percentage of female professionals, and level of religiosity) on the percentage of women in national legislatures in each of the European countries. Specifically, I pose the following research question: Which structural and/or attitudinal factors are more influential for women's political representation in European countries?

In order …

Habit, Education, And The Democratic Way Of Life: The Vital Role Of Habit In John Dewey's Philosophy Of Education, Brent Lamons

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Some have claimed that John Dewey was one of few thinkers that developed an

educational theory that is comparable to Plato.1 Dewey did something that William James

and Charles Sanders Peirce did not do; he applied Pragmatism and the Pragmatic method

to the study of education. The main tasks of this dissertation are as follows: (1) Argues

that habit is the most important and unifying element in John Dewey's philosophy of

education, (2) Critically investigates habit's fundamental role in his democratic project of

reconstructing culture toward establishing and sustaining the democratic way of life. In

addition to the latter points, …

Investigation Of Stress Changes At Mount St. Helens, Washington, And Receiver Functions At The Katmai Volcanic Group, Alaska, With An Additional Section On The Assessment Of Spreadsheet-Based Modules., Heather L. Lehto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Forecasting eruptions using volcano seismology is a subject that affects the lives and property of millions of people around the world. However, there is still much to learn about the inner workings of volcanoes and how this relates to the chance of eruption. This dissertation attempts to increase the breadth of knowledge aimed at helping to understand when a volcano is likely to erupt and how large that eruption might be. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on a technique that uses changes in the local stress field beneath a volcano to determine the source of these changes and help forecast …

Flexible Urban Drainage Systems In New Land-Use Areas, Jochen Eckart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban drainage systems are influenced by several future drivers that affect the performance as well as the costs of the systems. The uncertainties associated with future drivers and their impact creates difficulties in designing urban drainage systems sustainably. A review of the different future drivers for urban drainage systems illustrates that no sufficient future predictions for the long operational life spans of the systems are possible. This dissertation contends that to deal with future uncertainties, flexibility in urban drainage systems is necessary.

At present, profound insights about defining, measuring, and generating flexible urban drainage systems do not exist. This research …

Human Motion Tracking For Assisting Balance Training And Control Of A Humanoid Robot, Ahmad Adli Manasrah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This project illustrates the use of the human's ability to balance according to his center of gravity as demonstrated in two applications. The center of gravity of a human is explained in detail in order to use it in controlling the Aldebaran NAO robot and in the robot-assisted balance training.

The first application explains how a humanoid robot can mimic a human's movements via a three dimensional depth sensor where the sensor analyzes the position of a user's limbs and how the robot can lift one foot and balance on the other by redistributing the its body mass when …

A Study Of The Eastern Oyster, Crassostrea Virginica, In Tampa Bay: Effects Of Perkinsus Marinus On Reproduction And Condition, Bridgit Melora Mccrickard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Five sites in Tampa Bay, Florida, were sampled monthly from February 2006 to January 2007. These sites were located at the mouth of the Alafia River, in an inlet of Cross Bayou, on the easement of Gandy Bridge, near mangrove in Manatee County, and an inlet of Salt Creek, off Bayboro Harbor. Standard methods were used to determine shell height and Condition Index (CI). Intensity and prevalence of Perkinsus marinus were analyzed using Ray's Thioglycollate medium test, while Haplosporidium nelsoni was studied by histological examination. Histological methods were also used to determine sex ratios, reproductive phases, and egg diameters. …

Design And Synthesis Of Protein-Protein Interaction Inhibitor Scaffolds, David B. Badger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many currently relevant diseases such as cancer arise from altered biological pathways that rely on protein-protein interactions. The proteins involved in these interactions contain certain functional domains that are responsible for the protein's biological activities. These domains consist of secondary structural elements such as α-helices and Β-sheets which are at the heart of the protein's biological activity. Therefore, designing drugs that inhibit protein-protein interactions by binding to these key secondary structural elements should provide an effective treatment for many diseases. Presented in this dissertation are the designs, syntheses, and biological evaluations for both novel α-helix and novel Β-sheet mimics.

The …

Sigma Factor N (Σn): A Novel Regulator Of Extreme Acid Resistance In Enterohemorrhagic E. Coli O157:H7, Pamela Ann Fay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extreme acid resistance contributes to the successful transmission of enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) through acidic food matrices and the stomach, allowing it to gain access to the intestine and elicit disease in humans. Alternative sigma factor N (σ^N, encoded by rpoN) was previously identified as a novel regulator of extreme acid resistance in EHEC. This study investigated the role for σ^N and co-expressed products of the rpoN operon in the acid resistance phenotype of EHEC. The results revealed that σ^N primarily controls acid resistance through repression of the glutamate-dependent acid resistance (GDAR) system through control …

A Study Of Potential Risk Factors Of Depression Among Latina Breast Cancer Survivors, Claudia Ximena Aguado Loi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women with breast cancer commonly experience depression. However, this condition often goes unrecognized, undertreated, and understudied, especially in ethnic minorities. If left untreated, co-existing depression in women with cancer can complicate cancer treatment, lead to poor treatment adherence for both conditions, and decrease survival. These negative consequences are considerably higher among Latinas. With the growing number of Latinos and diversity within the Latino community, the literature has identified the need to disaggregate Latinos by region of origin. Unfortunately, few studies account for these differences and no study to date has examined risk factors of depression among Latinas diagnosed with breast …

Hierarchy Of Supramolecular Synthons In The Of Design Multi-Component Crystals, Padmini Kavuru

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Most of the biological systems in nature are sustained by molecular self-assemblies which are the finest examples of supramolecular architectures. Non-covalent interactions are key concepts which govern these molecular assemblies. Inspired by these examples crystal engineering emerged as an important tool in supramolecular chemistry which aids in the invention of new molecular structures with desired properties. Understanding of how the molecules interact at the molecular levels enables one to rationally design novel solid forms with modulated physicochemical properties. This feature of crystal engineering has heightened its position in materials chemistry and is currently one of the most well studied fields …

Assessment Of The Oxbow Morphology Of The Caloosahatchee River And Its Evolution Over Time: A Case Study In South Florida, Chloe Delhomme

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Caloosahatchee River, located in Southern Florida, was originally a meandering and relatively shallow river. During the 1920s, the Caloosahatchee River was channelized and became the C-43 canal. The channelization has significantly impacted the river ecosystem, particularly the oxbows. The oxbows are the U-shaped water bodies on each side of the river channel, which are the remnant bends of the original river. To understand how anthropogenic influence affects hydrologic systems, the proposed case study was designed to assess the geomorphic changes of the oxbows of the Caloosahatchee River, Florida. Understanding and documenting the evolution of river morphology is becoming increasingly …

On The Automatic Recognition Of Human Activities Using Heterogeneous Wearable Sensors, Oscar David Lara Yejas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Delivering accurate and opportune information on people's activities and behaviors has become one of the most important tasks within pervasive computing. Its wide spectrum of potential applications in medical, entertainment, and tactical scenarios, motivates further

research and development of new strategies to improve accuracy, pervasiveness, and eciency.

This dissertation addresses the recognition of human activities (HAR) with wearable sensors in three main regards: In the rst place, physiological signals have been incorporated as a new source of information to improve the recognition accuracy achieved by conventional approaches, which rely on accelerometer signals solely. A new HAR system, Centinela, was born …

A Location-Aware Architecture Supporting Intelligent Real-Time Mobile Applications, Sean J. Barbeau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents LAISYC, a modular location-aware architecture for intelligent real-time mobile applications that is fully-implementable by third party mobile app developers and supports high-precision and high-accuracy positioning systems such as GPS. LAISYC significantly improves device battery life, provides location data authenticity, ensures security of location data, and significantly reduces the amount of data transferred between the phone and server. The design, implementation, and evaluation of LAISYC using real mobile phones include the following modules: the GPS Auto-Sleep module saves battery energy when using GPS, maintaining acceptable movement tracking (approximately 89% accuracy) with an approximate average doubling of battery life. …

Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention Strategies For Pandemic Influenza Outbreaks, Dayna Lee Martinez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In case of a pandemic influenza outbreak, non-pharmaceutical interventions will likely be the only containment measure at the early stages of the pandemic when vaccines are not available. NPIs also oer an option for decreasing the probability of creating antiviral resistant viruses product of a mass prophylaxis campaign. In countries where there are not enough resources for vaccines and antivirals, NPIs may be the only mitigation actions available.

NPIs have been increasingly used in preparedness plans. We can see recommendations and guidelines regarding the use of NPIs in countries, health departments and universities. Also, researchers all around the world have …

Franz Marc As An Ethologist, Jean Carey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Keywords: Animalisierung, Einfühlung, Ethology,

Expressionism, Painting, German Modernism

In this study I deploy the perspective of ethology to examine Franz Marc's paintings of animals. To perceive animals ethologically means acknowledging that animals feel, think, experience, and imagine the world. Ethology has come to include interpretive pursuits as well as traditional field studies, and as I show, Marc's practice encompassed both aspects of this evolving discipline. To establish the presence of ethology in the humanities I give a "case study" of what I call "retroactive ethology" in the work of J.M. Coetzee. I present an account of Marc's deep …

Patient Care Provider Safety: Examining One Intervention To Reduce Hospital Violence, Paul Leslie Ford

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

In the summer of 2009, Tampa General care providers met with Hospital Administration to express concern that violence on care units was a growing problem and making it difficult to provide quality care. Nurses stated that such violence was one important reason many of their peers choose to retire. Administration took this situation seriously and formed a committee to gather information and submit suggestions to reduce the violence. The committee consisted of representatives from several nursing units, human resources, risk management, security, and administration. Duties assigned included investigation of the actual number of reports on all units and trends. …

Social Skills Training For Adolescent Youth: Measurement Of Skill Acquisition, Shannon Koehler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a classroom based training in teaching social skills to four adolescent females between the ages of 13–17 years old and residing in foster care. The training took place over a three week period, one night a week, for three hours at a time and utilized a Behavioral Skills Training format. The assessments were conducted via role play scenarios; pre- and posttraining. The results show each participant demonstrated an overall increase in skills from pretraining to posttraining indicating that youth in foster care were capable of learning the skills taught.

Implementation And Optimization Of An Inverse Photoemission Spectroscopy Setup, Ervin Gina

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Inverse photoemission spectroscopy (IPES) is utilized for determining the unoccupied electron states of materials. It is a complementary technique to the widely used photoemission spectroscopy (PES) as it analyzes what PES cannot, the states above the Fermi energy. This method is essential to investigating the structure of a solid and its states. IPES has a broad range of uses and is only recently being utilized.

This thesis describes the setup, calibration and operation of an IPES experiment. The IPES setup consists of an electron gun which emits electrons towards a sample, where photons are released, which are measured in isochromat …

Groupdrink: An Examination Of The Social Facilitation Of Reward Evaluation And Alcohol-Related Behavior, Maureen Caroline Below

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging adults- youth between the ages of 18-25- experience high rates of alcohol use and drinking-related consequences, yet risky drinking in this group seems to occur in the context of adaptive developmental processes. Such risk-taking behavior is thought to result from neurobehavioral changes impacting personality, cognitive development, and social functioning beginning in early adolescence. Youth seek out stimulation that, while objectively dangerous, may provide opportunity for evolutionary pay-offs. Social environmental cues signaling such pay-offs may facilitate risky behavior. This study aimed to manipulate social context, subsequent drinking-related behavior, and related shifts in risk and reward evaluation. Participants participated in a …

Systematics Of Harrisia (Cactaceae), Alan R. Franck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The genus Harrisia Britton (Cactaceae) comprises species of columnar cacti that are united by a unique seed morphology. The species range in form from prostrate shrubs to large trees and are native to South America and the Caribbean region. Harrisia is placed in an unresolved position within subtribe Trichocereinae of tribe Cereeae of subfamily Cactoideae. Relationships among the species within Harrisia are also poorly understood. In this study, several species of Harrisia were sequenced for as many as seven different regions of nuclear and plastid DNA. Species in the Caribbean were also examined with amplified fragment length polymorphisms. The morphology …

An Evaluation Of The Implementation Of "The Happiest Toddler On The Block" Parenting Strategies By Young Mothers, Amye Elizabeth Bock

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Young parents and their children are considered a high-risk population as they are more likely to lack social support networks, have limited access to opportunities to enhance parenting skills, and are often financially dependent. Young children whose mothers have poor parenting skills are more likely to have persistent problem behavior. Three young mothers living in a transitional housing facility participated in this study. The purpose of this study was to determine if these mothers could implement parenting strategies that are a part of a commercially available parenting book and DVD. This study found that: (1) mothers were able to correctly …

Learning Without Being Taught: A Look At How Schools, The Home And The Neighborhood Influence "Race" Conceptualization, Owen Christopher Gaither

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Where do we get our ideas about the concept of `race'? The conceptualization of `race' has long been a topic of interest in the social sciences and society in general. The word `race' has been used and defined in different ways and different purposes throughout U.S. history. The definition of `race' therefore is arbitrary, changing according to the situation, but the consequences of how the word `race' is used are concrete and effect peoples lives daily. This research, in accord with much of the literature on the topic, shows that public schools play a major role in the conceptualization …

Investigation Into The Mechanism Of Salicylate-Associated Genotypic Antibiotic Resistance In Staphylococcus Aureus, Nada Salah Helal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Growth of Staphylococcus aureus with the NSAID salicylate increases phenotypic resistance (SAPAR), and the frequency at which heritable resistance occurs to various antibiotics (SAGAR). This study describes the effect of salicylate on heritable and phenotypic resistance to a set of antibiotics for laboratory and multi-drug resistant strains of S. aureus and investigates the link between resistance and SAGAR. Drug gradient plates were used to determine phenotypic resistance to antibiotics targeting DNA replication, transcription, translation and the cell wall in the presence or absence of salicylate. To measure heritable resistance, mutation frequencies were determined for each antibiotic in the presence and …

Training And Assessment Of Toothbrushing Skills Among Children With Special Needs, Rachel A. Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The success of applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions relies heavily on adherence to measures of social importance. One area identified by caregivers, educators, and researchers as having social importance is the area of daily living skills; particularly in populations of children with special needs. A number of studies employed the use of a task analysis to objectively measure toothbrushing, with various training procedures utilized. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an effective procedure used to train a variety of skills. Further, research indicates the addition of an in situ assessment promotes generalization of trained skills. The current study examined the use …

Toward A Working Theory Of Neurorhetorics, Jeffrey L. Honnold

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This piece makes the claim that rhetoric is first philosophy--before philosophy, epistemology, ontology, or any other field--or that rhetoric is, at the least, on equal footing as these fields because:

empathy--and thusly the impulse for communication--is physiologically hardwired into humans; special distinctions between human and animal are largely artificial constructions, as is evidenced by neurosciences; "hard" science, in the form of neurosciences, is providing entrance points & opportunities for rhetoric to raise its status within the academy; and said neurosciences, in addition to empathy studies, have shown strong evidence supporting linguistic and evolutionary links between humans and other species, thereby …

Bradenton, Fl: A Patchwork City, Rebekah G. Brightbill

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The City of Bradenton is a patchwork city, whose neighborhoods vary greatly in quality. While its neighborhoods differ in type based on consumer preference, they vary in quality because of federal, state, and local planning and urban policy. These policies have resulted in inequality of place and race, clustering racial minorities in center city neighborhoods with deteriorated infrastructure and income inequality. This impacts the ability of the City to be competitive with other cities as a metropolitan whole. The City's economically and racially segregated neighborhoods are not the inevitable outcome of market forces, but rather reflect decades of federal, state, …

Essays On Mental Accounting And Consumers' Decision Making, Ali Besharat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is structured in the form of two empirical essays, each investigating one type of irrational decision caused by mental accounting. The first essay, titled "Managing the Cost of Multiple Debt Accounts: A Behavioral Perspective", explores why many people pay off credit cards' with the lowest rate first when rationally speaking they should repay the debt with the highest rate most quickly. This essay suggests that irrationality emerges when people seek to close `mental accounts' associated with their credit cards and reduce the total number of outstanding loans rather than decrease the amount of total debt among all credit …

On The Efficiency Of Us Equity Markets, Mikael Carl Erik Bergbrant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Most papers in empirical finance implicitly or explicitly assume the same price of risk, for each priced systematic risk factor, across all risky assets within a given domestic market. In doing so, they rely on the assumption that markets are domestically integrated and, as such, that the price of risk is determined independently of individual investors attitude towards risk. This is true in frictionless markets where investors have complete information, homogenous beliefs, and hold the mean-variance efficient combination of the market portfolio and a risk-free asset. However, investors might not hold the market portfolio because of exogenous reasons. In fact, …

Citizen Action, Power Relations And Wetland Management In The Tampa Bay Urban Socio-Ecosystem, Cornelius Owusu Adjei

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wetlands are vital ecosystems that provide ecological, economic and social benefits to societies. In the Tampa Bay region in West Central Florida, a growing population has put immense pressure on wetlands. The situation has not gone unnoticed in the public domain with concerns raised about the need to formulate policies that would protect them. However, it has been difficult to ascertain the level of citizen involvement in the decision making process.

This study aimed at investigating whether the perceptions and concerns of citizens drove them to influence local water policy. Questionnaires were used to collect data from residents living in …

Predictors Of Latino Mothers' Involvement In Their Children's Education, Liza Maria Arango

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parental involvement has a major influence on students' academic and overall success; however, Latino parents tend to be less involved than non-Latino parents. Additionally, Latino students have higher dropout rates than other ethnic groups, and their continued underachievement is of great concern to many educators. The purpose of this study is to better understand Latino mothers' involvement and identify the precursor factors that may influence these mothers' involvement in their children's education. Specifically, the study investigated specific family factors that may potentially impact Latino mothers' involvement at school and at home (i.e., mothers' number of years residing in the U.S., …