Electronic Thesis or Dissertation

The current study examined how viewing an event from different perspectives (eye-level and elevated) at both encoding and retrieval changes the recognition of that event. Specifically, participants were shown various manipulations to the scenarios that they witnessed at encoding. The primary focus of the study was the participants’ ability to identify old scenarios along with scenarios that had been manipulated through differences in character clothing, object placement, or temporal order of events, while still resembling the old scenario in every other way. No support was found to support the prediction that perspective at either encoding or retrieval had an effect on recognition of the scenario or the different manipulation types. An exploratory analysis revealed a trend towards significance for perspective at encoding. An eye-level perspective at encoding was more likely to result in a higher rejection rate for temporal manipulations.

While the complexities and challenges facing healthcare continue to grow, the focus on improving surgical practices remains constant. Possessing a strong influence over patient referral patterns, public reputation/prominence, and financial performance, surgical practices command heightened attention on operational performance and clinical outcomes. Executive leadership cannot support (nor improve) a surgical practice without comprehending the importance of team dynamics in the operating room (OR) environment.
Previous literature offers mixed and incomplete results on themes of team familiarity and OR efficiency, frequently citing handoffs, late starts, and task disruptions as catalysts for negative performance. Studies routinely use historical interaction counts to measure team familiarity, which often neglect the degree of participation (engagement) across prior experiences. Similarly, counts of handoffs or individuals entering an OR do not offer an accurate assessment of team performance. Guided by historical studies, four hypotheses are presented and argue that enhancing surgical team dynamics yield favorable improvements for operational performance and clinical outcomes. Utilizing data from 9,049 neurologic surgery cases performed at two separate campuses (belonging to the same organization) over a three-year timeframe (March 2019 to November 2021), this study measures surgical team dynamics in a highly complex setting through the lens of case continuity and surgeon familiarity to assess key outputs: case scheduling errors (proxy for operational performance) and post-operative complications within 30-days of surgery (proxy for clinical outcomes).

To better understand the N170 event related potential (ERP), we examined how factors such as participant gender and implicit racial bias might reflect upon amplitude and latency. White male (18) and female (34) participants performed an implicit association test (IAT) and Simple viewing EEG task with own-race White and other-race Asian faces. We were able to make several conclusions from the data. (1a) Participants generally showed an implicit racial bias favoring their own race group. (1b) The degree of this implicit racial bias did not differ between male and female participants. (2) Male, compared to female, participants expressed longer N170 latencies but similar amplitudes. (3) Lower compared to higher levels of implicit racial bias did not appear to influence the N170. (4) Participant gender, stimulus race, and implicit racial bias did not interact to influence the N170.

Loose-line is a visual style where dramatic lines are created with quick, swift strokes, often randomly overlapping each other. Loose-lines can be used to depict a subject and emphasize its actions. They capture the viewer's attention and provide them with an understanding of the narrative depicted through its implication or suggestion of action.
In this thesis I will examine, the loose-line technique and its components. I will show how loose-line has been used as a foundational technique for pre-visualizing painting, sculpture, and architecture throughout art history, and especially with regard to its role in the development of cinema and animation. And finally, I will apply the loose-line technique to contemporary visual compositions and reveal how merging rough sketches with 3D renders contributes to an innovative aesthetic style.

This study aims to identify [or create] equitable accountability systems that can be used to drive sustainable school improvement. In this context, equitable accountability is defined as a measure more of the school’s impact on student achievement and less a measure of the socio-economic status of the students enrolled in the school. To do this, the study begins with a review of the history and current state of school accountability policies in the US and its relation to the concepts of school improvement, between accountability and student achievement, a review of accountability policy in each state and the possible future model of accountability policy. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods with a policy analysis informing state correlational comparisons, which in turn informed the models to be applied to the Florida data to identify how they perform (correlate), culminating in the development of a new school accountability model. The policy analysis revealed current school accountability in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as well as the relationship between socio-economic status and school accountability in each where data were available. Five of these state models were shown to be significantly less related to socio-economic status than Florida. However, only two of these models performed similarly when applied to Florida data. Finally, a model was proposed that included aspects from these states and available literature that performed similarly to these two states. This study represents an important first step in a larger policy discussion of how to hold schools accountable for their impact on students and not a measure of the demographics of the students they are serving.

Tau, a microtubule-associated protein, is involved in more than 20 different tauopathic disorders characterized by aberrant intracellular aggregation of tau in the brain. However, it is still unclear how this highly soluble tau protein aggregates inside the brain. Thus, understanding the mechanistic details of tau aggregation is critical for unraveling the underlying pathology of tauopathies and developing effective strategies to inhibit tau aggregation. Herein, we investigated the aggregation of a novel 20-residue model peptide, tau₂₉₈₋₃₁₇, derived from the key microtubule-binding domain of the full sequence tau. Our study demonstrates that tau₂₉₈₋₃₁₇ highly mimics full-length tau's physical and aggregation properties. The fibrillation of the peptide is strongly dependent on external factors. The presence of polyanionic heparin (Hep) significantly promotes the aggregation of this peptide to form amyloid fibrils. The Hep-induced aggregation is sensitive to the ionic strength of the solution, suggesting an important role of electrostatic interactions in the mechanism of Hep-mediated aggregation. In addition, two positively charged polysaccharides, chitosan (CHT) and its quaternary derivative N-trimethyl chitosan (TMC), effectively inhibit Hep-induced aggregation of tau₂₉₈₋₃₁₇ in a concentration-dependent manner. Attractive electrostatic interactions between the positively charged moieties in CHT/TMC and the negatively charged residues of Hep play a critical role in inhibiting Hep–peptide interactions and suppressing peptide aggregation.

We examine how best to associate quantum states of a single particle to modes of a narrowly collimated beam of classical radiation modeled in the paraxial approximation, both for scalar particles and for photons. Our analysis stresses the importance of the relationship between the inner product used to define orthogonal modes of the paraxial beam, on the one hand, and the inner product underlying the statistical interpretation of the quantum theory, on the other. While several candidates for such an association have been proposed in the literature, we argue that one of them is uniquely well suited to the task. Specifically, the mapping from beam modes to ”henochromatic” fields on spacetime is unique within a large class of similar mappings in that it is unitary in a mathematically precise sense. We also show that the single-particle quantum states associated to the orthogonal modes of a classical beam in the henochromatic approach are not only orthogonal, but also complete in the quantum Hilbert space.

This multiple-case study sought to understand how adult students with disabilities demonstrate grit in the pursuit of higher education. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this study found that adult students with disabilities demonstrate grit through seeking to understand their own disabilities and the impacts of those disabilities on their academics, finding solutions-based approaches in improving their academic skills, persevering through various forms of sacrifice, “pushing through,” and practice, seeking help from their support networks, and maintaining consistent interests in their courses of study while also keeping a greater purpose in mind. These findings are discussed in detail and implications for practice as well as future research are identified.

The goal of this project is to gain access to valuable genetic information that will be utilized to create a genetics-based selective breeding program. This selective breeding program will be implemented to produce and maintain a healthy and diverse breeding stock of the Florida Pompano Trachinotus carolinus. The Florida Pompano is a popular food fish found in abundance off Florida's east and west coasts. There has been interest in the aquaculture of this species for decades with minimal success. With recent improvements in aquaculture systems and nutrition, now is the time to bring this fish to commercialization. The main research objectives of this study are to create a bioinformatics workflow to generate a draft whole-genome of the Florida Pompano, identify variation sites within this genome, and run a comparative analysis with two closely related Trachinotus species, Permit T. falcatus and Palometa T. goodei. These two species were chosen because they are found in the same environment as the Florida Pompano but grow to substantially different sizes. To sequence and assemble the whole genome of the Florida Pompano, a hybrid method was applied using long and short-read sequencing technologies. The draft genome was found to be 733.5 Mb in length with a total of 26,891 protein-coding genes. Sites of variation within this assembled genome were identified using a 2b-RAD sequencing method on 62 individuals collected off Florida’s east and gulf coasts.

Amine-grafted silica (i.e., aminosilicas) was investigated for single-stage landfill gas purification via simultaneous removal of CO2, H2S, and water vapor. Aminosilica materials were synthesized by covalent triamine grafting onto mesoporous silica with custom amounts of water and amine. Screening adsorption experiments were completed in dry 30 vol.% CO2 in N2 at 40 °C and assessed using thermogravimetric analysis. Materials with equilibrium CO2 uptakes greater than 1.5 mmol/g were chosen for CO2 adsorption kinetics assessments. The highest-performing aminosilica achieved fast CO2 adsorption by reaching 80% of its equilibrium uptake in one minute. This material also maintained 100% of its initial CO2 uptake when subjected to rigorous 100-cycle testing. It underwent column-breakthrough tests in the presence of different dry and humid gas streams containing CO2, H2S, and water vapor, and achieved concurrent and complete (100%) removal of all target impurities. The results suggest that aminosilicas can purify landfill gas in a single stage.