Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ammonium, Nitrate, And Nitrite In The Oligotrophic Ocean: Detection Methods And Usefulness As Tracers, Robert T. Masserini Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overall focus of this research was to achieve the first detailed understanding of temporal and geographical distributions of inorganic-nitrogen-nutrients within an oligotrophic euphotic zone. In addition to low supply of nutrients, the uptake of nutrients by phytoplankton within the euphotic zone draws the nutrient concentrations down, resulting in very low concentrations of these nutrients and results in these regions being classified as oligotrophic. The site selected for the research was the West Florida Shelf (WFS). There were two main challenges. One was that the detection limits of the standard chemistries used to determine inorganic nitrogen nutrients are not low …

The Effects Of The Presence Of A Dog On The Social Interactions Of Children With Developmental Disabilities, Stephanie Walters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effects of the presence of a dog on the social interactions between children with developmental disabilities and their teacher were analyzed in this study. We examined whether the presentation of a dog would improve the social interactions of three children with developmental disabilities. A baseline condition consisting of the child and teacher in the presence of three toys, one of which was a toy dog was followed by an intervention in which a real dog was added to the sessions. A multiple baseline design across participants was employed to assess experimental changes in interactions during the intervention condition.

All …

Disentangling The Repurchase Announcement An Event Study Analysis To The Purpose Of Repurchases, Robin S. Wilber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have consistently shown that a firms repurchase announcement is met with positive abnormal stock price return reactions. Open-market repurchases are extremely flexible, non-committal and non-punitive; thus, it is puzzling that the mere announcement of an open-market repurchase will likely increase a firms stock price. I propose to disentangle a firms choice to repurchase its stock to determine when a repurchase announcement is good news for shareholders and when the announcement is not.

I find that the purpose of the repurchase announcement matters. At the announcement date, managers intention of avoiding dilution is significantly negative and enhancing shareholder value is …

Design And Evaluation Of A New Authentication Mechanism For Validating The Sender Of An Email, Sai Sakamuri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A new authentication mechanism for validating the source of messages over the Internet is designed and evaluated. This mechanism is applied to email and is called Email++. Email++ prevents identity forging (spoofing) and tampering of email contents. By preventing identity forging, Email++ can reduce the amount of spam received and limit the spread of viruses like Melissa, Love Bug, Bagle Worm, and Killer Resume. Email++ validates both the sender and the receiver of an email by confirming the senders identity with the domain mail server that delivered the email for the sender, and authenticates the receiver with hash value comparisons. …

Giving Voice To Parents Of Young Children With Challenging Behavior, Jonathan Worcester

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been increased interest in the science of child development, particularly relative to early childhood (i.e., birth to 5 years) and children with challenging behavior. A broad interest in brain-behavior relationships and prevention services for young children has led to a renewed interest in the developmental significance of early life experiences (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000). Armed with an increasingly large body of neuroscience research, researchers have begun to examine the efficacy of prevention services and supports for young children and families, particularly those with challenging behavior (i.e., behaviors that interfere with optimal …

Optimization Study Of Ba-Filled Si-Ge Alloy Type I Semiconducting Clathrates For Thermoelectric Applications, Joshua Martin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thermoelectric phenomena couple thermal and electric currents, allowing for solid-state conversion of heat into electricity. For decades Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators have supplied power to NASA satellites and deep space probes. A more accessible application to consumers is the automotive industry's aspiration to incorporate thermoelectrics into active waste heat recovery systems. Higher power demands require these new thermoelectric devices to operate at higher temperatures and higher efficiencies, justifying new materials research. Recently, clathrates have gained interest for thermoelectric applications due to the unique properties they possess.These properties are directly related to their crystal structure. Therefore, clathrates are not only of interest …

Reconstructing Women's Identities: The Phenomenon Of Cosmetic Surgery In The United States, Cara L. Okopny

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of cosmetic surgery in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the last ten years - particularly for women, who make up the largest group of cosmetic surgery consumers. Cosmetic surgery can include relatively simple procedures such as permanent hair removal or Botox to more complicated procedures like breast augmentations and face-lifts. The rise in popularity of cosmetic surgery exalts only one kind of beauty and excludes many women from ever attaining this ideal, so while women may feel empowered, surgery acts as a form of assimilation, because the act of cosmetic surgery reifies an exclusionary beauty norm. With …

Toward A Social-Cognitive Psychology Of Speech Technology: Affective Responses To Speech-Based E-Service, Melanie Diane Polkosky

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Speech technologies, or technologies that recognize and respond to human speech, have recently emerged as a ubiquitous and cost-effective form of customer self-service (e-service). Although customer satisfaction is regarded as an important outcome of e-service interactions, little is known about users affective responses to conversational interactions with technology. Using a theoretical foundation derived from research in social cognition, interpersonal communication, psycholinguistics, human factors, and services marketing, two studies develop items for a speech interface usability scale, which is then used to examine interrelationships among individual differences (e.g., self-monitoring, need for interaction with a service provider, inherent novelty seeking), usability, comfort, …

Loving Loving? Problematizing Pedagogies Of Care And Chéla Sandoval’S Love As A Hermeneutic, Allison Brimmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My thesis project is an argument for and an investigation into the complex dynamics of what I term a critical, feminist, anti-racist pedagogy. Drawing from scholarly work in the fields of feminist theory, cultural studies, whiteness studies, and rhetoric and composition, in what follows I argue for a “blurring” of the traditional reason-emotion split that, I believe, continues to stifle learners in today’s U.S. educational system. I then offer a pedagogical theory that rejects or “blurs” this split, acknowledges and examines the affective realm, and is fueled by the more holistic notion and theory of “love as a hermeneutic” put …

School-Based Mental Health Services Delivered By School Psychologists, Emily Luis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study involved analyses of an existing database conducted for the purposes of identifying and understanding factors that are associated with the delivery of school-based mental health services by school psychologists. The study examined the average number of hours per week in which school psychologists engage in mental health services and the types of mental health services in which they engage. Factors such as training, desire to deliver mental health services, time available and support for mental health services were investigated. The database that served as the basis for these analyses had been created by mailing a survey to 1000 …

The Florida Burrowing Owl In A Rural Environment: Breeding Habitat, Dispersal, Postbreeding Habitat, Behavior, And Diet., Robert Mrykalo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first observations of Florida burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia floridana) occurred in the 19th century on historical dry prairie habitat in south central Florida. These early observations documented the ecology of burrowing owls in rural environments. Since then the vast majority of research on this subspecies has been undertaken in suburban and urban environments during the breeding period. The research undertaken on burrowing owls in suburban and urban environments includes determining natal dispersal distance, assessing female fecundity, mate fidelity, territory fidelity, date of juvenile and adult dispersal from breeding habitat, date of clutch initiation, nesting success, density of …

Racial Disparities In Breast Cancer Surgical Treatment And Radiation Therapy Use, Tracey Lynn Koehlmoos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between race and surgical treatment and radiation therapy use for localized breast cancer patients in the state of Florida in 2001. The study will be useful in raising awareness of the relationship between Black race and appropriate breast cancer treatment within the Florida Cancer Data System. The Healthy People 2010 initiatives call to eliminate racial disparities and the high placement of breast cancer on the national research agenda make this study timely and insightful for health policymakers, clinicians and other health researchers. Also, the study evaluates the effect of other health system and patient related …

The Impact Of Peer Tutoring And Self-Monitoring On Oral Reading Fluency For Children Who Exhibit Symptoms Of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Shannon M. Leis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of peer tutoring and self-monitoring interventions on the oral reading performance of students exhibiting symptoms of AttentionDeficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Predominantly Inattentive Type. A multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the peer tutoring and self-monitoring interventions with four second grade students who were tutored by fourth grade students. Results indicated that the median number of words read correct per minute as measured by curriculum-based measurement reading probes increased from baseline to intervention phases for three of the four tutee participants. In addition, the median number of errors from baseline to intervention …

System Level Energy Optimization For Location Aware Computing, Hariharan Sankaran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We present an energy conscious location-aware computing system that provides relevant information about the users current location. The location-aware computing system is initialized with a map (in the form of a graph) as well as audio files associated with several locations in the map. The system consists of: GPS receiver module, Serial port, Compact flash module, Stereo codec, Power manager module implementing three sub modules namely, GPS-to-real-world position conversion module (implements algorithm to convert GPS co-ordinates to graph nodes), Nearest-location-search module (implements modified Dijkstras algorithm), and User speed estimation module. The location-aware computing system receives the GPS co-ordinates for the …

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Aided Preparation Of Nickel Oxide/Alumina Aerogel Catalyst, Haitao Li

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The strength, thermal stability, pore structure and morphology are keys to success for wider deployment of aerogels. Furthermore, co or subsequent functionalization of the surfaces are equally, if not more important. This study addresses these issues through a new method. The path involves successful use of surfactant templating, supercritical extraction and drying, and supercritical fluid aided functionalization of the surface. Alumina support and alumina supported nickel catalyst particles are used to evaluate the approach. Initially thermally stable surfactant alumina was synthesized. The surfactant template was removed completely with the aid of a supercritical solvent mixture. Surfactant-templated alumina aerogel showed remarkable …

Scaling Up Support Vector Machines With Application To Plankton Recognition, Tong Luo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Learning a predictive model for a large scale real-world problem presents several challenges: the choice of a good feature set and a scalable machine learning algorithm with small generalization error. A support vector machine (SVM), based on statistical learning theory, obtains good generalization by restricting the capacity of its hypothesis space. A SVM outperforms classical learning algorithms on many benchmark data sets. Its excellent performance makes it the ideal choice for pattern recognition problems. However, training a SVM involves constrained quadratic programming, which leads to poor scalability. In this dissertation, we propose several methods to improve a SVM's scalability. The …

Adolescents And Their Fathers: Do Dads Make A Difference?, Dimitra Kamboukos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the role of fathers in adolescents behavioral and emotional functioning. Results revealed gender differences in adolescent ratings of their parents. Compared to girls, boys endorsed significantly lower negative affect toward mothers and fathers. Girls reported higher levels of maternal versus paternal involvement, monitoring and acceptance, and higher positive and lower negative affect toward mothers than fathers. Few gender differences were found in associations between maternal and paternal variables and adolescent outcomes. Results supported the unique contribution of fathers in explaining adolescent emotional and behavioral functioning. When considering boys and girls separately, fathers added unique variance in explaining …

The Origins Of Jewish Apocalyptic Literature: Prophecy, Babylon, And 1 Enoch, Sarah Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From what wells did the apocalyptic writers draw? What motivated them to write such bizarre and fantastic stories about the future end of history and battles between the forces of good and the forces of evil? The Book of Daniel is considered the first and only apocalypse of the Hebrew Bible, and it was the primary inspiration for much of the Book of Revelation, Apocalypse of John in the Christian New Testament. But well before Daniel, apocalyptic passages appeared in Jewish literature. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 came also the discovery of the oldest …

Sensitivity Analysis Of Design Parameters For Trunnion-Hub Assemblies Of Bascule Bridges Using Finite Element Methods, Jai P. Paul

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be lost due to failures during the fabrication of Trunnion-Hub-Girder (THG) assemblies of bascule bridges. Two different procedures are currently utilized for the THG assembly. Crack formations in the hubs of various bridges during assembly led the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to commission a project to investigate why the assemblies failed.

Consequently, a research contract was granted to the Mechanical Engineering department at USF in 1998 to conduct theoretical, numerical and experimental studies. It was found that the steady state stresses were well below the yield strength of the material and could not …

Voices From A Marginalized Population: Life Histories Of Individuals With Physical Impairments, James Peter Marsh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with physical impairments have been marginalized and discriminated against since the social identification of these individuals occurred as a sub-group within society. While much has been done to resolve prejudice against individuals with physical impairments, more needs to be done to decrease, or at least deter, discrimination and prejudice against individuals who have been marginalized. The purpose of this study is to give four individuals with physical impairments the opportunity to tell their stories. Through the telling of these stories, I believe others can identify with these individuals, and thereby, help decrease discrimination against individuals with physical impairments.

Life …

Developing An Anthropology Curriculum For High School: A Case Study From Durant High School, Hillsborough County, Florida, Kory Mcneil Bennett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has become increasingly apparent that anthropology has much to offer when it comes to educating our youth. This is true for all grade levels, kindergarten through senior level studies in high school. Here, this idea will be explored further by focusing on the students of Durant High School (DHS) of Plant City, Florida.

This project was designed to explore the idea of combining widely accepted pedagogical theories (Gardner 1983, 1993, 1999; Geraci 2000; Silver, Strong and Perini 1997) with anthropological theory and methods in order to devise effective curricula for high school archaeology and other anthropology courses. More essentially, …

Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Career Development Strategy, Martha J. Sutton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goals of the present study were to 1.) develop a model of career related factors that could be related to organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB); and 2.) determine if the proposed relationships between the career focused variables and OCB differed across rating source. A total of 262 volunteers from a Corporation and University completed a survey in either online or by paper and pencil that included demographics and measures of: job involvement, career motivation, occupational commitment, perceptions of career plateau, career stage, and OCB. Ratings of OCB were obtained from approximately 195 participant supervisors and/or coworkers.

Correlational and multiple regression …

Effect Of Heat Treatments And Reduced Absorber Layer Thickness On Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Thin Film Solar Cells, Vinodh Chandrasekaran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thin film solar cells with Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide (Cu(In,Ga)Se₂) absorber layers is one of the most promising candidates to emerge as an efficient solar cell technology in the near future. CIGS cells with efficiencies of 19.2 % have already been reported [1]. In this study, CIGS absorber layers are fabricated by a two-stage all-solidstate manufacture-friendly process. In the first stage, designated as precursor deposition, Copper and Gallium are sequentially deposited followed by co-deposition of Indium and Selenium. In the second stage, designated as selenization, the substrate is annealed at high temperatures in a selenium environment during which …

Twinkle While You Shake It., Thomas Hallock

USF St. Petersburg Campus Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Stability Studies Of Cdte/Cds Thin Film Solar Cells, Bhaskar Reddy Tetali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

CdTe/CdS solar cells have shown great potential for terrestrial solar power applications. To be commercially viable they need to operate efficiently for about 30 years. CdS/CdTe solar cells fabricated at USF have shown record efficiencies upto 16.5% [46]. This research involves the study of thermal stress (TS) and light soaking (LS) on the stability of high efficiency (>10%) solar cells. The change in key electrical parameters V_oc, FF, J_sc, A and J_o are quantified for more than 2000 hours of stressing.

The device degradation was found to increase with stress temperature for TS. Below …

Process Monitoring And Feedback Control Using Multiresolution Analysis And Machine Learning, Rajesh Ganesan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Online process monitoring and feedback control are two widely researched aspects that can impact the performance of a myriad of process applications. Semiconductor manufacturing is one such application that due to the ever increasing demands placed on its quality and speed holds tremendous potentials for further research and development in the areas of monitoring and control. One of the key areas of semiconductor manufacturing that has received significant attention among researchers and practitioners in recent years is the online sensor based monitoring and feedback control of its nanoscale wafer fabrication process.

Monitoring and feedback control strategies of nanomanufacturing processes often …

Design And Optimization Of Broadband Planar Baluns And Dipole Antennas, Sergio E. Melais

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Due to the rapid growth in the filed of RF and Microwaves circuits, the demand for smaller, faster, and more precise devices has increased. In this thesis, a compact shielded balun, a diode detector, and a broadband sleeve dipole are modeled and implemented resulting in optimal devices presenting accurate operation.

The balun circuit is designed to meet the need for a miniaturized device with broadband application. A balun is a transformer used to connect unbalanced to balanced circuitry, for example, the unbalanced connection from a power splitter (coax) to the balanced input (two-wire) of a dipole. The main objective for …

Stress Diagnostics And Crack Detection In Full-Size Silicon Wafers Using Resonance Ultrasonic Vibrations, Anton Byelyayev

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Non-destructive monitoring of residual elastic stress in silicon wafers is a matter of strong concern for modern photovoltaic industry. The excess stress can generate cracks within the crystalline structure, which further may lead to wafer breakage. Cracks diagnostics and reduction in multicrystalline silicon, for example, are ones of the most important issues in photovoltaics now. The industry is intent to improve the yield of solar cells fabrication. There is a number of techniques to measure residual stress in semiconductor materials today. They include Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and infrared polariscopy. None of these methods are applicable for in-line diagnostics of …

Assessing The Issue Of Arbitrariness In Capital Sentencing In North Carolina: Are The Effects Of Legally Relevant Variables Racially Invariant?, Judith Kavanaugh Earl

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzed case and sentencing data from 632 capital cases involving Black and White defendants and victims, processed in North Carolina from May 1990 through December 2002. Logistic regression analysis of all cases and race-specific data allowed assessment of the variable effects of jury acceptance of statutory aggravating and mitigating factors on capital sentencing outcomes (death versus life). The purpose was to evaluate the role race plays in shaping jury use of legally defined factors in capital sentencing. Significant variance in the effect of jury acceptance of aggravators was observed between Black and White defendants. Black defendants pay a …

The Impact Of Victim-Offender Familial Relationships On Capital Sentencing Outcomes, Katharine D. Evans

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is an investigation of whether familial relationships among offenders and their victims affect capital sentencing. Using a sample of capital cases from North Carolina restricted to familial homicides, logistic regression models are used while controlling for legal and extra-legal factors that influence decision outcomes. Such models of capital sentencing are developed to (1) determine whether familial-victim cases have unique correlates; and (2) whether there are variations in the effects of these correlates across gender. Contradictory to these hypotheses, results suggest that acquaintance and stranger relationships are less likely to receive a capital outcome when compared to familial relationships. …