Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Cross-National Analysis Of The Human Papillomavirus, Sexually Transmitted Infections, And Sexual Behavior Among Men, Euna Marie August

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a paucity of research on the risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and sexual behavior among general populations of men. Research with male populations predominantly has focused on those subgroups considered to be at high risk of disease transmission, such as gay and bisexual men, injection drug users, and adolescents/young adults. Considerably fewer studies have examined factors among men, in general, and heterosexual men, specifically. Therefore, I conducted analyses with a cross-national sample of adult, sexually active men in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States to investigate sexual behaviors and risk factors associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV) …

Differentiation Of Knowledge Types And Behavior Change In Youth In A School Based Suicide Prevention Program, Anabelle Ornelas

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Distinguishing The Types Of Knowledge And The Relationship To Behavioral Intentions And Referral Behavior, Gabriela Romero

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Dissolved Inorganic Carbon Uptake In Thiomicrospira Crunogena Xcl–2 Is Atp–Sensitive And Enhances Rubisco–Mediated Carbon Fixation, Kristy Jae Menning

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many autotrophic organisms living in environments with episodically low dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) concentrations compensate for these fluctuations by employing a carbon concentrating mechanism (CCM). By utilizing a CCM, these organisms can generate intracellular DIC concentrations much higher than extracellular, thereby providing sufficient substrate for carbon fixation. Carbon concentrating mechanisms have been well-studied in cyanobacteria but studies are lacking in other autotrophs. The gammaproteobacterium Thiomicrospira crunogena XCL-2 is a hydrothermal vent chemolithoautotroph that has a CCM, which is functionally similar to that of cyanobacteria. At hydrothermal vents, DIC concentrations and pH values fluctuate over time, with CO2 concentrations ranging from …

Biomechanical Testing On Cadaveric Spines For Different Treatments That Affect Lumbar Stability, Sabrina Alejandra Gonzalez Blohm

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Stenosis is one of the most common causes for spinal surgery. Laminectomy decompression and fusion are surgical procedures prescribed for this condition. The intention of this work was to investigate the effects of a laminectomy decompression, followed by fusion, on a lumbar functional spinal unit (FSU) through in vitro dynamic (±8Nm at 0.125Hz) and quasi-static (±7.5Nm at 0.1Hz) biomechanical tests, for flexion, extension, bending and rotation motions.

Six FSUs where disarticulated from four human cadaveric lumbar spines (63 ± 12 years) and were tested under the following sequence: (1) intact, (2) laminectomy decompression, and (3) Pedicle Screw System (PSS), using …

A Location-Based Incentive Mechanism For Participatory Sensing Systems With Budget Constraints, Luis Gabriel Jaimes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Participatory Sensing (PS) systems rely on the willingness of mobile users to participate in the collection and reporting of data using a variety of sensors either embedded or integrated in their

cellular phones. Users agree to use their cellular phone resources to sense and transmit the data of interest because these data will be used to address a collective problem that otherwise would

be very difficult to assess and solve. However, this new data collection paradigm has not been very successful yet mainly because of the lack of incentives for participation and privacy concerns. Without adequate incentive and privacy guaranteeing …

Daily Experiences Of Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment, Elizabeth Hahn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rationale and study aims: Persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) experience declines in everyday functioning and cognitive performance greater than what is experienced in normal aging but less than that of dementia. Daily stress and daily memory complaints associated with cognitive deficits may contribute to greater psychological distress in the day-to-day experiences of persons with MCI. However, research examining the occurrence of daily stressors, daily memory complaints and psychological distress in MCI is limited, and it is not clear how the daily processes of stress and affect in persons with MCI compare to cognitively healthy older adults. This dissertation examined …

A Framework For Participatory Sensing Systems, Diego Mendez Chaves

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Participatory sensing (PS) systems are a new emerging sensing paradigm based on the participation of cellular users in a cooperative way. Due to the spatio-temporal granularity that a PS system can provide, it is now possible to detect and analyze events that occur at different scales, at a low cost. While PS systems present interesting characteristics, they also create new problems. Since the measuring devices are cheaper and they are in the hands of the users, PS systems face several design challenges related to the poor accuracy and high failure rate of the sensors, the possibility of malicious users tampering …

Two Essays On The Sell-Side Financial Analysts, Xi Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay titled "The Information Role of Analysts' Contrarian Revisions," I study a special group of revisions: contrarian revisions, defined as recommendation changes that are inconsistent with sizable stock price movements during the past week. I find that contrarian revisions are relatively more informative than trending revisions. In particular, contrarian revisions are associated with a both statistically and economically larger post-announcement drift. I also find contrarian downgrades are less likely to be issued by all-star analysts and analysts with more experience. After implementation of Regulation RD, the market reaction to contrarian revisions issued by all-stars significantly decreases, indicating …

Fathers And Phiilosophers, Jonathan Campana

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Disaster Vulnerability Of University Student Populations, Jamie Lynn Auletta

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Student populations at Gulf Coast universities and colleges are subjected to multiple forces working together making them an especially vulnerable sub-group to hazards. Research has suggested that college students represent a segment of the population that hazards research has frequently overlooked and maybe not fully appreciated in university emergency planning. Most prior research has focused on university disaster experiences, highlighting what went wrong, and what should be done but little research focuses on what is actually taking place. The primary intent of this research was to gain better insight into university emergency planning and identify areas universities have neglected with …

On Algorithmic Fractional Packings Of Hypergraphs, Jill Dizona

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Let F₀ be a fixed k-uniform hypergraph, and let H be a given k-uniform hypergraph on n vertices. An F₀-packing of H is a family F of edge-disjoint copies of F₀ which are subhypergraphs in H. Let n_F0(H) denote the maximum size |F| of an F₀-packing F of H. It is well-known that computing n_F0(H) is NP-hard for nearly any choice of F₀.

In this thesis, we consider the special case when F₀ is a linear hypergraph, that is, when no two edges …

On The Design Of Socially-Aware Distributed Systems, Nicolas Kourtellis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media services and applications enable billions of users to share an unprecedented amount of social information, which is further augmented by location and collocation information from mobile phones, and can be aggregated to provide an accurate digital representation of the social world. This dissertation argues that extracted social knowledge from this wealth of information can be embedded in the design of novel distributed, socially-aware applications and services, consequently improving system response time, availability and resilience to attacks, and reducing system overhead. To support this thesis, two research avenues are explored.

First, this dissertation presents Prometheus, a socially-aware peer-to-peer service …

Impact Of Life History Theory On Host Compentence Through The Selection Of Divergent Immunological Strategies, Alessandra Araujo

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Surface Mass Transfer In Large Eddy Simulation (Les) Of Langmuir Turbulence, Cigdem Akan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past century the study of gas exchange rates between the atmosphere and the ocean has received increased attention because of concern about the fate of greenhouse gases such as CO₂ released into the atmosphere. Of interest is the oceanic uptake of CO₂ in shallow water coastal regions as biological productivity in these regions is on average about three times larger than in the open ocean. It is well-known that in the absence of breaking surface waves, the water side turbulence controls gas transfer of sparingly soluble gases such as CO₂ from the air to the …

The Ecological Role Of Rhizophytic Green Algae In Soft-Bottom Habitats, Laura Bedinger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rhizophytic algae are large, abundant primary producers throughout tropical and subtropical areas worldwide where they grow as an understory in seagrass beds, as well as form mixed or monospecific beds of exclusively rhizophytic algal species. In this dissertation, "rhizophytic algae" refers to coenocytic green algae (Chlorophyta) in the order Bryopsidales that use a net of rhizoids to anchor in unconsolidated sediments. In the development of seagrass beds, rhizophytic algae colonize bare patches and are thought to facilitate seagrass colonization by stabilizing sediments and providing organic matter. However, despite their prominence little is known about many aspects of the ecology of …

Listening To The Shield Of Achilles: Sound & Motion In Ancient Ekphrasis, Darin Peachee

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Speaking Style On Variability Of Vowel Production For Native Monolingual English Speakers, Amber Gordon

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Wronskian, Grammian And Pfaffian Solutions To Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, Alrazi Abdeljabbar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is significantly important to search for exact soliton solutions to nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) of mathematical physics. Transforming nonlinear PDEs into bilinear forms using the Hirota differential operators enables us to apply the Wronskian and Pfaffian techniques to search for exact solutions for a (3+1)-dimensional generalized Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation with not only constant coefficients but also variable coefficients under a certain constraint

(u_t + α ₁(t)u_xxy + 3α ₂(t)u_xu_y)_x +α ₃ (t)u_ty -α ₄(t)u_zz + α ₅(t)(u_x + α ₃(t)u_y) = …

Perceived Firm Transparency: Scale And Model Development, Jennifer Dapko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last few years alone, calls for transparency by consumers have grown louder. No longer are consumers willing to sit back and allow firms to make `closed door' decisions that benefit the company (and its executives) at the expense of consumers and society. This dissertation begins to answer the call for a greater understanding of transparency from both practitioner and academic perspectives. In particular, this dissertation focuses on systematically developing a succinct definition of perceived firm transparency, developing a valid measure of transparency, and empirically testing antecedents and consequences of transparency.

Two studies were conducted to develop the transparency …

Carotenoid- Based Plumage And Its Effects On The Immune System Of Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis Cardinalis) Within An Urban-Rural Gradient, Brittany Leigh

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

We All Like New Things: A Comparison Of Human Ape Reactions To Novelty, Desirae Wiley

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Quelling Fear Of Chemistry: A Method Designed For The Incorporation Of General Chemistry Concepts Into The Education Of Elementary And Middle School Students, Caitlin Howell

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Modeling Travel Time And Reliability On Urban Arterials For Recurrent Conditions, Prony Bonnaire Fils

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Travel time reliability is defined as the consistency or dependability in travel times during a specified period of time under stated conditions, and it can be used for evaluating the performance of traffic networks based on LOS (Level of Service) of the HCM (Highway Capacity Manual). Travel time reliability is also one of the most understood measures for road users to perceive the current traffic conditions, and help them make smart decisions on route choices, and hence avoid unnecessary delays (Liu & Ma, 2009). Therefore, travel time reliability on urban arterials has become a major concern for daily commuters, …

Innovative Desalination Systems Using Low-Grade Heat, Chennan Li

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water and energy crises have forced researchers to seek alternative water and energy sources. Seawater desalination can contribute towards meeting the increasing demand for fresh water using alternative energy sources like low-grade heat. Industrial waste heat, geothermal, solar thermal, could help to ease the energy crisis.

Unfortunately, the efficiency of the conventional power cycle becomes

uneconomically low with low-grade heat sources, while, at the same time, seawater desalination requires more energy than a conventional water treatment process. However, heat discarded from low-grade heat power cycles could be used as part of desalination energy sources with seawater being used as coolant …

History Of Lawn Mowers, Amber Shukitis

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Oars To Sail, David Chang

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Green Labs Are Gold: Evaluating And Improving Environmental Impact Of Usf's Laboratories, Benjamin Cottrell

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Nicotine On Responsivity To Repeated Social Stress In Early Adolescent, Late Adolescent, And Young Adult Male Rats, Kathryn Dean

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Rewriting Introduction To Composite Materials Software To Function On 64-Bit Windows Operating Systems, Daniel Boston

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.