Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2015

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 18001 - 18030 of 18428

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Phase Transitions Under Nanoconfining Conditions, Reza Farasat Jan 2015

Phase Transitions Under Nanoconfining Conditions, Reza Farasat

All ETDs from UAB

The objective of this dissertation was to study the effects of nanoconfinement on the thermodynamic and kinetic parameters of phase transitions in selected compounds. The compounds were loaded into silica gel nanopores and filled them partially. A model was developed for estimating the fullness of the nanopores as well as the height of the compound layer deposited on the pore walls. A study of the phase transition in NH4Cl confined to the native silica gel nanopores revealed that the heat of transition increases with the increasing the layer height. Also the transition temperature measured on heating and cooling respectively increases …

Go to article

Exercise Adherence Among Pregnant Women: The Roles Of Socioeconomic Status, Attitudes Towards Prenatal Exercise, And Social Support, Lee Anne Flagg Jan 2015

Exercise Adherence Among Pregnant Women: The Roles Of Socioeconomic Status, Attitudes Towards Prenatal Exercise, And Social Support, Lee Anne Flagg

All ETDs from UAB

Drawing on the sociological theories of fundamental causes and social support, it was hypothesized that exercise during pregnancy would be positively associated with both socioeconomic status (SES) and social support for exercise and that the association between SES and exercise levels would be at least partially explained by attitudes towards exercise. It was also hypothesized that there would be a positive interaction between SES and social support for exercise in relation to exercise levels during pregnancy. Cross-sectional observational data was obtained from a survey of pregnant women, predominantly from those accessing prenatal care at Birmingham, AL area obstetric clinics. The …

Go to article

Emotion Regulation And Neuropathic Pain Following Spinal Cord Injury (Sci): Influence Of Emotional Processes On The Efficacy Of A Novel Treatment Paradigm For Sci-Related Pain, Juliette Galindo Jan 2015

Emotion Regulation And Neuropathic Pain Following Spinal Cord Injury (Sci): Influence Of Emotional Processes On The Efficacy Of A Novel Treatment Paradigm For Sci-Related Pain, Juliette Galindo

All ETDs from UAB

While spinal cord injury (SCI) is a relatively rare in the general population, it has significant implications on functionality, independence, and quality of life for individuals who are affected by it. Common sequelae of SCI include sensorimotor dysfunction and pain symptoms that are often severe. More specifically, approximately 33% of individuals with SCI experience severe, intractable neuropathic pain. Additionally, treatments for neuropathic pain have variable efficacy and/or many side effects. While SCI-related neuropathic pain is thought to be related to cortical reorganization and nerve damage, there may be psychological factors that contribute to increased pain severity and variable treatment response. …

Go to article

Benefit Finding Among Caregivers Of Childhood Cancer Survivors, Molly Gardner Jan 2015

Benefit Finding Among Caregivers Of Childhood Cancer Survivors, Molly Gardner

All ETDs from UAB

With improved survival rates for children diagnosed with cancer brings a focus on the psychological adjustment of both children and caregivers. Benefit finding, defined as positive change in the face of adversity, has been documented among caregivers of children with cancer and other chronic illness conditions. The first manuscript is a comprehensive literature review of studies investigating benefit finding among caregivers of children with chronic illness conditions, including caregiver demographic and psychosocial, and child demographic and medical predictors, as well as outcomes of benefit finding. The second manuscript reports on predictors of benefit finding in a sample of caregivers of …

Go to article

A Redescription Of The Cretaceous Marine Turtle Ctenochelys Acris Zangerl, 1953 And A Systematic Revision Of The 'Toxochelyid'-Grade Taxa Using Cladistic Analysis, Andrew Douglas Gentry Jan 2015

A Redescription Of The Cretaceous Marine Turtle Ctenochelys Acris Zangerl, 1953 And A Systematic Revision Of The 'Toxochelyid'-Grade Taxa Using Cladistic Analysis, Andrew Douglas Gentry

All ETDs from UAB

Within this thesis are two separate articles, each representing a distinct chapter. The first chapter is a redescription of the ‘toxochelyid’-grade marine turtle Ctenochelys acris Zangerl, 1953. This redescription, based on several nearly complete specimens from the early Campanian Mooreville Chalk of Alabama, reveals multiple previously undescribed autapomorphic characteristics of this species and contributes significantly to our understanding of ‘toxochelyid’ alpha taxonomy. The second chapter is comprised entirely of the results of multiple cladistic analyses of the ‘toxochelyid’-grade taxa that produce a hypothesized phylogenetic system of classification for this clade. 108 characters from the cranium, carapace, plastron, and appendicular skeleton …

Go to article

On Fire Or Burnt Out? The Social Psychological Health Of United Methodist Pastors, Philip Gibson Jan 2015

On Fire Or Burnt Out? The Social Psychological Health Of United Methodist Pastors, Philip Gibson

All ETDs from UAB

This study examines the social processes and structures that shape the social psychological health of United Methodist pastors. These individuals play a central role in a religious institution that is in a state of decline in the 21st century United States. In addition, burnout, a state of compromised social psychological health related to work involving relationships, is a salient issue among clergy. Using a qualitative approach based in grounded theory methodology, 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with current and former United Methodist pastors, including those in a supervisory role within the Church hierarchy. Using grounded theory coding practices, data from …

Go to article

County-Level Homicide In The United States: An Analysis From A Social Disorganization Perspective, Julien Grayer Jan 2015

County-Level Homicide In The United States: An Analysis From A Social Disorganization Perspective, Julien Grayer

All ETDs from UAB

The United States has the highest rates of homicide among industrialized nations. The analysis of variations in the homicide rate lends itself to interpretation through various theoretical frameworks, one of which is social disorganization. Social disorganization is commonly used as a means to discuss crime in the context of neighborhoods and communities. The argument of social disorganization is that criminal activity is curbed by collective efficacy. That collective efficacy is affected by structural variables such as poverty, residential stability, and heterogeneity. The question then became whether social disorganization could be utilized for county-level analysis. The results showed that social disorganization …

Go to article

Effects Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (Tdcs) On Symptoms Of Binge Eating Disorder (Bed) And Sub-Threshold Bed, Emilee Elizabeth Burgess Jan 2015

Effects Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (Tdcs) On Symptoms Of Binge Eating Disorder (Bed) And Sub-Threshold Bed, Emilee Elizabeth Burgess

All ETDs from UAB

The present study investigated the efficacy of a single administration of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to reduce binge eating symptoms, namely food consumption, food cravings, and binge urges, in individuals clinically diagnosed with BED and sub-threshold BED. The study used a within-subjects crossover design whereby each participant received both a real and a sham condition of tDCS in counterbalanced order. Results indicated that tDCS significantly reduced caloric intake of specifically preferred foods during an in-lab eating test, decreased food cravings induced by food photo images, and decreased binge desire on the same day as treatment, compared to sham stimulation. …

Go to article

The Adaptive Significance Of Phenotypic Plasticity In The Wild: An Experimental Test Using The Brown Anole Lizard (Anolis Sagrei), Corey Dale Cates Jan 2015

The Adaptive Significance Of Phenotypic Plasticity In The Wild: An Experimental Test Using The Brown Anole Lizard (Anolis Sagrei), Corey Dale Cates

All ETDs from UAB

The conditions that embryos experience during development have substantial effects on offspring phenotypes and fitness. Although plastic responses to developmental environments are widespread, whether they are adaptive is unknown in most cases. Developmental plasticity is often thought to be adaptive in heterogeneous environments, but it can also enhance fitness when environments experienced by embryos provide cues for the conditions they will eventually experience later in life. Under the latter scenario, early embryonic conditions could program an individual’s physiology to appropriately deal with predictable future conditions. This hypothesis has received support in the ecological and medical literature on diverse organisms. However, …

Go to article

The Impact Of Student Loans On Homeownership, Matthew Eric Click Jan 2015

The Impact Of Student Loans On Homeownership, Matthew Eric Click

All ETDs from UAB

This thesis examines the relationship between student loan debt and homeownership. I hypothesize that a negative relationship exists, and control for a respondent’s age, household income, household size, race, gender, marital status, and level of education. Using a binary logistic regression model to examine data from the 2012 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) and the 2014 Survey of Household Economic Decisions (SHED), I model the odds-ratios and predicted probabilities of homeownership for respondents with and without student loans. I find a decrease in the predicted probability of homeownership by 8.4% and 9.3% in the NFCS and SHED datasets, respectively. While …

Go to article

Interlayer Utilization (Including Metal Borides) For Subsequent Deposition Of Nsd Films Via Microwave Plasma Cvd On 316 And 440c Stainless Steels, Jared Ballinger Jan 2015

Interlayer Utilization (Including Metal Borides) For Subsequent Deposition Of Nsd Films Via Microwave Plasma Cvd On 316 And 440c Stainless Steels, Jared Ballinger

All ETDs from UAB

Diamond thin films have promising applications in numerous fields due to the extreme properties of diamonds in conjunction with the surface enhancement of thin films. Biomedical applications are numerous including temporary implants and various dental and surgical instruments. The unique combination of properties offered by nanostructured diamond films that make it such an attractive surface coating include extreme hardness, low obtainable surface roughness, excellent thermal conductivity, and chemical inertness. Regrettably, numerous problems exist when attempting to coat stainless steel with diamond generating a readily delaminated film: outward diffusion of iron to the surface, inward diffusion of carbon limiting necessary surface …

Go to article

On The Simplest Lamination Of A Given Identity Return Triangle, Brandon Lee Barry Jan 2015

On The Simplest Lamination Of A Given Identity Return Triangle, Brandon Lee Barry

All ETDs from UAB

Laminations are models for locally connected Julia sets of complex polynomials. This paper is concerned with laminations associated with degree 3 polynomials. We introduce and discuss simplest laminations and prove that subject to certain conditions a finite collection C of periodic polygons is associated with a simplest lamination L_C. This lamination is unique with respect to some collection of pullback schemes. We apply this result to the case where the collection C consists of the orbit of a periodic chord. We then introduce and characterize simple Fatou gaps by their boundary leaves and discuss the relationship between simple Fatou gaps …

Go to article

Innovative Dart™ Ms Applications For Rapid Opioid Detection In Ante- And Post-Mortem Specimens, Rachel Crocker Beck Jan 2015

Innovative Dart™ Ms Applications For Rapid Opioid Detection In Ante- And Post-Mortem Specimens, Rachel Crocker Beck

All ETDs from UAB

The studies presented herein were born through the observations of the challenges that are faced by forensic toxicology laboratories. While these challenges were first observed in the forensic toxicology field, they are common across clinical, workplace drug testing, and pain management laboratories alike. The challenge is how to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality. Current drug screening protocols such as immunoassays (IA), gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS), and liquid-liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) are robust but inefficient and limited, with some analyses providing only class information. These analyses when coupled require up to four days to complete for a confirmed, …

Go to article

Mechanisms Of Npy-Induced Phase Shifts And Gsk3 Modulation Of Rhythmic Molecular Clock Gene Expression, Neurophysiological Function, And Memory., Rachel Besing Jan 2015

Mechanisms Of Npy-Induced Phase Shifts And Gsk3 Modulation Of Rhythmic Molecular Clock Gene Expression, Neurophysiological Function, And Memory., Rachel Besing

All ETDs from UAB

The current set of studies addresses three main hypotheses. We first tested the hypothesis that NPY-induced phase advances are accompanied by persistent suppression of core circadian clock gene PER2 and are mediated by long-term depression of neuronal excitability in a phase-specific manner. We found that NPY induced phase advances in PER2::LUC cultures, as well as decreased neuronal firing in SCN slices, are largest when NPY is given in the early part of the day and PER2::LUC phase advances were blocked by depolarization with potassium chloride, suggesting that NPY-induced phase advances are mediated by long-term depression of neuronal excitability. The second …

Go to article

Preliminary Characterization Of The Microbial Community In The Bonneville Salt Flats, Garner Lansing Boogaerts Jan 2015

Preliminary Characterization Of The Microbial Community In The Bonneville Salt Flats, Garner Lansing Boogaerts

All ETDs from UAB

Hypersaline environments (salt concentrations greater than two molar) are found on all continents and represent a woefully understudied ecosystem. To date, most of the hypersaline environments studied have been either lakes (e.g. The Great Salt Lake, Utah) or deep ocean/sea brine pools (e.g. Red Sea), both of which have an abundance of accessible water for the organisms living there. However, more extreme hypersaline environments have not been characterized as thoroughly. One of these environments is the Bonneville Salt Flats (BSF) in Western Utah. The BSF is 80 square miles in size and consists of a salt crust of varying thickness …

Go to article

Women Manufacturing Methamphetamine: Gender In The Context Of Shake And Bake Cooking In Alabama, Jessica Rae Deitzer Jan 2015

Women Manufacturing Methamphetamine: Gender In The Context Of Shake And Bake Cooking In Alabama, Jessica Rae Deitzer

All ETDs from UAB

Researchers of women in the drug economy have been divided, with some portraying women involved in drug manufacturing, dealing, and trafficking as limited participants, and others acknowledging women’s use of agency and gender to successfully accomplish higher roles in drug economies. Additionally, some suggest that the context of the local community and drug market has a strong influence on the roles women occupy within the drug economy. In this study, I examine women’s roles within a particular style of meth cooking (shake and bake) to determine the various opportunities and constraints they face as women meth cooks. To do so, …

Go to article

The Effects Of Inter-Age Class Competition On Habitat Use In A Territorial Lizard, David Michael Delaney Jan 2015

The Effects Of Inter-Age Class Competition On Habitat Use In A Territorial Lizard, David Michael Delaney

All ETDs from UAB

All organisms have specific habitat requirements that allow them to properly function in the environment. However, optimal habitats often differ across age classes, and accordingly, juveniles shift habitat choice as they age. Field observations of the brown anole lizard (Anolis sagrei) suggest that juveniles perch in open-canopy areas on low vegetation whereas adults reside in forest edges on higher vegetation. I hypothesized that this age-specific habitat variation is because adults force juveniles to less preferred habitat. To address these issues, I conducted a series of experiments to examine the role of inter-age class competition in driving variation in perch use …

Go to article

The Adhd Medication Process Model: A Qualitative Investigation Of Teaching Pedagogies, Ideal Student Behavior, Labeling Processes, And Attitudes Towards Adhd Medication., Zachary Robert Simoni Jan 2015

The Adhd Medication Process Model: A Qualitative Investigation Of Teaching Pedagogies, Ideal Student Behavior, Labeling Processes, And Attitudes Towards Adhd Medication., Zachary Robert Simoni

All ETDs from UAB

The number of children diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD has increased within the last decades. In this study, I assert that ADHD is a serious mental health issue with a biological etiology which in many cases is alleviated by the use of medication. However, I also argue that powerful socio-cultural forces are important to understanding ADHD and medication use in the American Educational system. Physicians and psychiatrists are responsible for assigning medication as a treatment for ADHD. Nevertheless, teachers are at the front lines of the ADHD issue and handle it on a daily basis. Despite this fact, very …

Go to article

Just Past The Trestle, Gentry Chance Turner Jan 2015

Just Past The Trestle, Gentry Chance Turner

All ETDs from UAB

JUST PAST THE TRESTLE GENTRY CHANCE TURNER MASTER OF ARTS ENGLISH ABSTRACT The fall of the Old South is the backdrop for this chronicle of one family's descent and resurrection throughout the violent upheaval of the twenty-first century. Several generations of Turner men are examined in this tale of power, hatred and the collateral damage of arrested development. The following chapters give a truncated vision of a lifetime of competing forces and the pain of escaping from "loved" ones.

Go to article

Aping Nobility: Reinterpreting The Mma "Monkey Cup", Ruoxin Wang Jan 2015

Aping Nobility: Reinterpreting The Mma "Monkey Cup", Ruoxin Wang

All ETDs from UAB

The “Monkey Cup” in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) exhibits a unique rendition of the monkeys robbing the sleeping peddler theme. Generally believed to have been created in the second quarter of the fifteenth century in Burgundian territories, the exact origin of the beaker is not known. Based on visual evidence and the socio-historical context, I propose that the “Monkey Cup” was created in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and the attribution should be broadened to the greater circle of the Valois courts. In this thesis, I offer a new contextualized reading of the …

Go to article

The Influence Of State Politics On State Rainy Day Funds, Nathaniel Franklin Kelley Jan 2015

The Influence Of State Politics On State Rainy Day Funds, Nathaniel Franklin Kelley

All ETDs from UAB

States often find themselves facing fiscal hardships due to such issues as their own revenue volatility or through federal recessions. The methods taken by the states have varied over the years, but rainy day funds are becoming one of the leading mechanisms for coping with economic disparity. As more state officials look to rainy day funds as a solution, the field for research regarding rainy day funds has expanded. The existing studies have focused on the best way to build and maintain these types of funds, but there has been little information put forth that helps understand how they work. …

Go to article

Religious Affiliation As A Predictor Of Mental Health Outcomes Among Immigrants In The United States, Haley Medved Kendrick Jan 2015

Religious Affiliation As A Predictor Of Mental Health Outcomes Among Immigrants In The United States, Haley Medved Kendrick

All ETDs from UAB

Previous research largely (but not conclusively) suggests that religious participation is positively correlated with good mental health, but it is unclear what effect religion has on mental health outcomes of racial/ethnic and religious minorities. Prior findings that non-Christian (e.g. Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) migrants have lower levels of religious participation than Christian migrants suggest that there may be a disparity in mental health outcomes between religious groups. This study aims to fill the gap by comparing mental health outcomes (measured by four DSM-IV-based diagnoses) of Christian immigrants with non-Christian immigrants. The study uses data from the National Latino and Asian American …

Go to article

The Business Of Forgetting: How Atlanta Became A Future-Oriented City, 1865-1895, Tyler Malugani Jan 2015

The Business Of Forgetting: How Atlanta Became A Future-Oriented City, 1865-1895, Tyler Malugani

All ETDs from UAB

Modern Atlanta contains very few physical representations of its history. This stems from an ideal created by businessmen and New South boosters who placed profits and capitalistic endeavors above history and tradition. After the Civil War when General William Tecumseh Sherman left the city of Atlanta in ashes, this ideal was put into practice. The emphases and style of both the physical and economic reconstruction show the beginnings of Atlanta’s future-orientation. Likewise, the urge to promote Atlanta and its economy through national and world expositions in the 1880’s and 1890’s illustrate how this ideal matured into second-nature. The three decades …

Go to article

Spectroscopic Characterization Of Iron-Doped Ii-Vi Compounds For Laser Applications, Alan David Martinez Jan 2015

Spectroscopic Characterization Of Iron-Doped Ii-Vi Compounds For Laser Applications, Alan David Martinez

All ETDs from UAB

The middle Infrared (mid-IR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum between 2 and 15 μm has many features which are of interest to a variety of fields such as molecular spectroscopy, biomedical applications, industrial process control, oil prospecting, free-space communication and defense-related applications. Because of this, there is a demand for broadly tunable, laser sources operating over this spectral region which can be easily and inexpensively produced. II-VI semiconductor materials doped with transition metals (TM) such as Co2+, Cr2+, or Fe2+ exhibit highly favorable spectroscopic characteristics for mid-IR laser applications. Among these TM dopants, Fe2+ has absorption and emission which extend …

Go to article

They Pull Your Grown Up Card For This, Jamie Mcfaden Jan 2015

They Pull Your Grown Up Card For This, Jamie Mcfaden

All ETDs from UAB

THEY PULL YOUR GROWN-UP CARD FOR THIS JAMIE MCFADEN MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH ABSTRACT They Pull Your Grown-Up Card for This is a collection of six nonfiction pieces. The majority of the pieces in the collection are personal essays with the exception of one written specifically as nonfictional prose and another that adheres to the memoir tradition. Major themes coursing through this body of work include notions of family, friendship, and self-awareness.

Go to article

Effect Of Vigilance On Driving Performance In Commercial Motor Vehicle Drivers, Ben Mcmanus Jan 2015

Effect Of Vigilance On Driving Performance In Commercial Motor Vehicle Drivers, Ben Mcmanus

All ETDs from UAB

Driving is a complex task requiring constant information processing made possible by attention. Because there are 5.7 million commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers in the United States, it is imperative to investigate factors affecting driving performance as well as methods to reduce motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) with the primary goal of eliminating transportation-related unintentional fatal and nonfatal injuries. Vigilance is a cognitive processing component that may play an important role in CMV driving safety. Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of vigilance on simulated driving performance in varying conditions. Experiment 1 focused specifically on the effect of vigilance …

Go to article

Malware Detection Through Disassembled Function Analysis, Ralph Frank Mcsweeney Jan 2015

Malware Detection Through Disassembled Function Analysis, Ralph Frank Mcsweeney

All ETDs from UAB

Antivirus software vendors have been forced into an industry of reaction because an abundance of new malware is discovered daily. The antivirus industry, handicapped by a low ratio of malware analysts to malware and antiquated techniques, floods the market with products with regrettably low detection rates, often only marginally outperforming competitors. This thesis presents a new function-edge-based set detection and identification method which significantly outperforms traditional antivirus techniques. The technique used reduces a malware binary to its fundamental assembly code and performs functional analysis using a newly created function hashing technique. Function hash edges are created by combining calling and …

Go to article

High Pressure High Temperature Phase Diagrams Of Heavy Rare Earth Metals, Jeffrey M. Montgomery Jan 2015

High Pressure High Temperature Phase Diagrams Of Heavy Rare Earth Metals, Jeffrey M. Montgomery

All ETDs from UAB

Two new high-pressure apparatus are developed and used to explore the phase diagrams of rare earth metals gadolinium, thulium, and lutetium. The first device incorporates natural diamond anvils that have been surface modified with a homoepitaxially-grown chemical-vapor-deposited layer of conducting boron-doped diamond. This layer is used as a direct electrical heating element to heat the diamond anvils independently of the rest of the diamond anvil cell. This allows for comparatively rapid, but controlled, changes in temperature at high pressure, primarily while cooling of a sample without a large energy or time expenditure. The second device incorporates a homoepitaxially-grown micro-anvil on …

Go to article

Gsk3 Regulation Of Suprachiasmatic Neuronal Excitability And Light Entrainment, Jodi Paul Jan 2015

Gsk3 Regulation Of Suprachiasmatic Neuronal Excitability And Light Entrainment, Jodi Paul

All ETDs from UAB

Circadian rhythms are approximately 24-hour cycles in behavioral and physiological processes, such as sleep/wake cycles and cognition. In mammals, these rhythms are endogenously generated and entrained to the external light cycle by the primary circadian pacemaker, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). A hallmark characteristic of SCN neurons is the daily rhythm in the spontaneous action potential frequency, with high activity during the day and low activity at night. These SCN firing rate patterns are critical for maintaining robust, consolidated behavioral rhythms, and persistent changes in SCN neuronal activity are involved light-induced behavioral shifts. Many of the ionic components underlying daily and …

Go to article

With Love, Flint, Sharanna Polk Jan 2015

With Love, Flint, Sharanna Polk

All ETDs from UAB

While With Love, Flint includes nine short stories that work together to tell the story of a slave woman’s descendants, each story is written so that it can stand separate from the entire piece. With Love, Flint begins in the year 1849 in Madison Mississippi, and travels through Memphis, New Orleans, Mobile and finally settles in Flint, Michigan, ending in 2013. The first five stories detail how each character eventually arrives in Flint, detailing some of America’s history along the way. The stories and characters are meant to reflect and offer exploration of Flint Michigan’s detriment. Through the characters, the …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last