Dissertations, Academic -- Florida Atlantic University

A hypothesis for the self-organization of receptive fields throughout the hierarchy
of biological vision is empirically tested using simulations of deep artificial neural
networks. Results from many fields for topographic organization of receptive fields
throughout the visual hierarchy remain disconnected. Although extensive simulation
research has been done to model topographic organization in early visual areas, little
to no research has investigated such organization in higher visual areas. We propose
that parsimonious structured sparsity principles, that permit the learning of topographic
receptive fields in simulated visual areas, are sufficient for the emergence of
a semantic topology in object-level representations of a deep neural network. These
findings suggest wide-reaching implications for the functional organization of the biological
visual system and we conjecture that such observed results in nature could
serve as the foundation for unsupervised learning of taxonomic and semantic relations
between entities in the world.

Across the US, 22% of Medicare patients hospitalized with a diagnosis of heart
failure (HF) will be readmitted within 30-days of discharge. There is no one costeffective
process identified to help patients transition home and maintain their own selfcare.
The aim of this study is to compare readmission rates, HF knowledge, self-care,
and quality of life for patients who transition home from the hospital under the care of a
Heart Failure Nurse Navigator (HFNN) with patients who receive usual care.
The HFNN is a home health RN with specialized training in HF care. The HFNN
visited intervention group (IG) participants once in the hospital, followed by weekly
home visits for one month. Control group (CG) participants received usual care,
consisting of discharge teaching by their primary nurse and follow-up with their primary
care provider (PCP) or cardiologist. Using a sequential mixed methods research design, this experimental randomized
controlled trial measured HF knowledge, HF self-care, and HF quality of life (QOL) at
enrollment and one month after discharge. Hospital readmissions and/or ED visits were
tracked in both groups. IG participants were interviewed using semi-structured
questions, findings of which were analyzed using conventional content analysis.
There were fewer all-cause hospital readmissions in the IG (3 of 19) than the CG
(6 of 21.) CG participants were 2.2 times more likely to be readmitted than the IG
participants. [x(1)=.935, p=.334 O.R.=2.2219]. Due to limited enrollment, these results
were underpowered and not statistically significant. There was improvement in HF
knowledge (p=.06) and HF self-care maintenance (p=.07), approaching significance. HF
self-care maintenance improved in both groups, although the IG was not significantly
better (p=.48). There was significant improvement in the IG for HF confidence (p=.002)
and HF QOL (p<.001).
The qualitative findings revealed two main categories from the IG: (1) personal
clarification of patient education, especially related to diet, exercise, and medications and
(2) feelings of support, reassurance, and safety. The HFNN may be one role to meet the
triple aim of improving patient quality care and health outcomes at a reduced cost,
especially in areas where a comprehensive HF management program is not available.

The Arbëresh of Italy founded their communities in the 1400s when they were
forced to flee their homeland, Albania, as the country was conquered and ruled by the
Ottoman Empire. For centuries, they kept a close community in the Italian villages
preserving their language, culture, rituals and traditions. These elements have defined
them as “others” in the Italian community over the centuries, but today, they are better
described as Italians who also embrace the Arbëresh culture.
This dissertation explores the narratives of Arbëresh authors such as Carmine
Abate, Anna Stratigò, and Pino Cacozza, who have preserved glimpses of their culture in
their writings, thus creating an oasis that I call “the Arbëresh Utopia.” I situate them in
the larger context of Arbëresh history, and in the environment where their stories are
located. A recent research conducted through interviews in the Arbëresh towns of
Calabria, will add an important “lived” tassel of information, by exploring the Arbëresh
culture today in a state of what Michel Foucault calls heterotopia. After many years of
living in a closed community, the Arbëresh have learned to live by addition.

The reality of changing state and federal policy, as well as the process of program
improvement across teacher preparation programs has prompted a line of research into
the exploration of an alternative curriculum-based value-added model (VAM). Based
upon a thorough review of VAMs as they have been applied to education policy and
decision-making, this line of inquiry focused on a curriculum-based approach to
increasing our understanding of how the instructional efforts of our candidates affect the
learning gains of the K-12 students they teach. Designed to conform to the fundamental
principles of evidence-based practice, candidate and program level data for 109 student
teachers between 2013 and 2017 were analyzed. Results indicate that variation in K-12
students’ learning gains can likely be attributed to the instructional efforts of our special
education teacher preparation program (TPP) completers. Limitations, implications, and
directions for future inquiry across policy, practice, and scholarship are discussed.

Recently a new strategy for age-at-death estimation has been developed. In Stephanie Calce’s 2012 article, ‘A New Method to Estimate Adult Age-at-death Using the Acetabulum,’ she redesigns the previous attempts made by Rissech et al. (2006). Her technique simplifies Rissech et al. seven traits by condensing them into three easily identifiable traits. The aim of this paper is to determine that Calce’s original intent to create a more user-friendly and comprehensible scoring method was successful. My focus is to reveal if Calce’s technique is effective between different populations or whether interpopulation variation renders it an unstable approach to age estimation. I tested Calce’s forensic method of aging human skeleton’s on a random sample of skeletons of known age from the Hamann-Todd collection. In the test, Calce’s method proved to work well. As it is simpler than previously proposed methods, investigators should consider adopting it under appropriate circumstances.

Stroke is the third leading cause of mortality in the United States, and so far, no clinical interventions have been shown completely effective in stroke treatment. Stroke may result in hypoxia, glutamate release and oxidative stress. One approach for protecting neurons from excitotoxic damage in stroke is to attenuate receptor activity with specific antagonists. Disulfiram requires bio-activation to S-methyl N, N-diethylthiolcarbamate sulfoxide (DETC-MeSO). In vivo, DETC-MeSO is further oxidized to the sulfone which is carbamoylated forming Carbamathione, a glutathione adducts. Carbamathione proved to be useful as a pharmacological agent in the treatment of cocaine dependence with the advantage that it lacks ALDH2 inhibitory activity. Carbamathione is a partial NMDA glutamate antagonist. The purpose of this dissertation study is to evaluate the neuroprotective effects of Carbamathione drug on PC-12 cell line and to understand the protective mechanisms underlying in three stroke-related models: excessive glutamate, hypoxia/reoxygenation and bilateral carotid artery occlusion (BCAO). Carbamathione was administered 14 mg/kg subcutaneously for 4 days with the first injection occurring 30 min after occlusion in the mouse BCAO stroke model. Mice were subjected to the locomotor test, and the brain was analyzed for infarct size. Heat shock proteins, key proteins involved in apoptosis and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, were analyzed by immunoblotting. Carbamathione reduced both cell death following hypoxia/reoxygenation and brain infarct size. It improved performance on the locomotor test. The level of pro-apoptotic proteins declined, and anti-apoptotic, P-AKT and HSP27 protein expressions were markedly increased. We found that Carbamathione suppresses the up- regulation of Caspase-12, Caspase-3 and significantly declined ER stress protein markers GRP 78, ATF4, XBP-1, and CHOP. Carbamathione can down- regulate ATF 4 and XBP1 expression, indicating that Carbamathione inhibits the ER stress induced by hypoxia/reoxygenation through suppressing PERK and IRE1 pathways. Carbamathione elicits neuroprotection through the preservation of ER resulting in reduction of apoptosis by increase of anti-apoptotic proteins and decrease of pro-apoptotic proteins. Carbamathione can suppress the activation of both PERK and IRE1 pathways in PC-12 cell cultures and has no inhibitory effect on ATF6 pathway. These findings provide promising and rational strategies for stroke therapy.

Workplace mistreatment (bullying, horizontal violence, and incivility) has been
shown to impact nurses’ work satisfaction, job turnover, and physical and mental health.
However, there are limited studies that examine its effect on patient outcomes. A
correlational descriptive study of 79 acute care nurses was used to test a social justice
model for examining the relationship between workplace mistreatment, quantified as
threats to dimensions of nurses’ well-being (health, personal security, reasoning, respect,
attachment, and self-determination), and nurses’ ability to provide quality patient care. In
addition, this study considered the moderating effect of caring work environment among
co-workers on nurses’ ability to provide quality patient care in the face of workplace
mistreatment. Stories of workplace mistreatment were collected anonymously and
analyzed for alignment with threats to six dimensions of well-being. Ability to provide
patient care was measured using the Healthcare Productivity Survey and a caring work
environment was measured via the Culture of Companionate Love scale. The results demonstrated that threats to all six dimensions of well-being described
by Powers and Faden (2006) were expressed in nurses’ stories of workplace
mistreatment. Furthermore, 87% reported a decrease in ability to provide patient care
after an incident of workplace mistreatment. Yet frequency of threatened dimensions did
not have a significant relationship with ability to provide patient care. Moreover, there
was a significant moderator effect of the caring work environment on the relationship
between number of threatened dimensions of well-being and ability to provide quality
patient care. Nurses in high caring environments loss less ability to provide care than
nurses in low caring environments when one to three dimensions of well-being were
threatened. However, this relationship reversed when four or more dimensions were
threatened. Implications include further research on the relationship between workplace
mistreatment and nurse well-being and changing practice to include fostering a caring
work environment in healthcare facilities.

Lower costs of clean energy generation, the need for a more secure grid, and
environmental concerns are leading to create more opportunities for integration of
renewable energy resources utilization in the power systems. The recent concept of
Microgrid (MG), as a part of the development of smart grid, is required in order to
integrate the renewable sources in the utility grid. An MG is described as a small-scale
distribution grid that consists of diversified Distributed Energy Resources (DERs),
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs), and local flexible loads that typically can
either be operated in islanded or grid-connected modes. The optimal utilization control of
such an MG system is a challenging task due to the complexity of coordination among
the DERs, BESSs and load management possibilities. Therefore, in this dissertation,
optimal component sizing and operation of MGs under different operational strategies is
proposed. MGs typically consist of Photovoltaic (PV) systems, wind turbines as well as
microgas turbines, fuel cells, batteries and other dispatchable generating units. Firstly, a methodology to perform the optimal component sizing for DERs in
islanded/grid-tied modes is developed. The proposed optimal algorithm aims to
determine the appropriate configuration among a set of components by taking into
consideration the system’s constraints. An Iterative optimization technique is proposed in
order to minimize the annual cost of energy and cost of emissions including CO2, SO2,
and NOx. A case study from South Florida area, given the local weather data and load
demand is investigated for the modeling verification. Using the results from optimal
component sizes, a day-ahead optimization problem for the operation of an MG under
different scenarios is introduced. Also, the objective function is formulated as a
constrained non-linear problem. The uncertainties of stochastic variables (solar radiation,
wind speed, and load) are modeled and renewable generations and load demand are
forecasted. An advanced dynamic programing procedure is proposed to assess various
operational policies. The simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed method.

This project focuses on race and gender in the works of author Octavia Butler.
The primary texts analyzed are Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. In these
novels, Butler alludes to slavery in antebellum America by drawing strong parallels
between the roles race and gender played in the survival of the escaped slaves of
America’s past and the role they play in the survival of the main character of Butler’s
apocalyptic future. The themes of race and gender frequently intersect and maintain an
important role throughout the novels. I argue that, by reading Butler’s novels within this
significant historical context, Butler’s use of passing as a tool for subverting both racial
and gendered identity as a means to secure the safety and privilege necessary for survival
emerges. Further, the parallels between racial and gender passing serve to expose the
performative nature of these identifying characteristics.

In wireless communications systems, it is well known that the instantaneous
received signal is a random variable that follows a given distribution. The randomness
mainly stems from e ects such as multipath fading, shadowing, and interference.
The received signal is a relevant metric, such that several distributions have been
used in the literature to characterize it. However, as new radio technologies emerge,
the known distributions are deemed insu cient to t simulated and measure data.
Subsequently, as the wireless industry moves onto the fth generation (5G), newer
distributions are proposed to well represent the received signal for new wireless technologies,
including those operating in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band. These
are mainly application speci c and may not be adequate to model complex 5G devices
performance. Therefore, there is a need to unify and generalize the received signal
distributions used for performance analysis of wireless systems.
Secondly, an explosion of new radio technologies and devices operating in the
same limited radio spectrum to collect and share data at alarming rates is expected.
Such an explosion coupled with the 5G promise of ubiquitous connectivity and network
densi cation, will thrust interference modeling in dense networks to the fore-front. Thus, interference characterization is essential when analyzing such wireless
networks.
Thirdly, the classical distributions used to model the received signal do not
account for the inherent mobility feature for emerging radio technologies, such as
avionics systems (e.g. drones), which may make the distributions inadequate as mobility
e ects can no longer be ignored.
Consequently, in this dissertation, we propose the use of a unifying distribution,
the Fox's H-function distribution, with subsume ability to represent several
traditional and future distributions, as a statistical tool to evaluate the performance
of wireless communications systems. Additionally, two interference models, one with
a xed number and the other with a random number of interferers, are considered to
derive interference statistics, and further utilize the results to analyze system performance
under the e ect of interference. Finally, we extend the classical distributions
to include the mobility regime for several wireless network topologies, and perform
network analysis. The analytical results are validated using computer Monte Carlo
simulations.